The Committee on Climate Change – Will Mr Miliband try to compromise with the laws of physics?

 

The United Kingdom Committee on Climate Change, an independent body set up by law  under the Climate Change Act has advised the UK government that the United Kingdom ought to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 21% of the 2005 figure for emissions by 2020 – in twelve years time. It sounds such a modest reduction especially when you consider that just to leave carbon dioxide levels the same as they were in 2005 the whole planet will have to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% today. Because the greenhouse gas builds up cumulatively, a future reduction will not do much, especially by such a low figure.

Yet the 21% figure over the next twelve years is causing the Government and the fossil fuel industry many sleepless nights because to achieve what this much heralded advisor to the Government recommends will mean a radical change in how the United Kingdom sources its future energy supplies.

It would need the closure of all coal fired power stations until carbon sequestration is actually invented and proved to work, and it will mean many more wind turbines on the edge of the United Kingdom’s coastline and it would have to mean solar thermal water and space heating panels on virtually every roof, and many other forms of microgenration in almost every place; even then the target would be hard to meet.

The advice probably means the end of the new coal fired project at Kingsnorth, provided the advice of the independent body set up by this Government in its Climate Change Act, which the Government has boasted as being a world leading piece of legislation on climate change, is actually followed by the government that has made that boast.

The Committee also recommends something else which will give the Government even more sleepless nights. It recommends that emissions “saved” in other parts of the world should not count towards emissions saved in the United Kingdom; in other words we should not count as our savings the emissions traded under the various emission trading schemes.

I have been setting out identical objections to the emissions trade schemes ever since I started posting on this site over a year ago. I have written over 400 articles on this site, mainly about environmental matters and articles which criticised the Emissions Trading Scheme as a similar worthless device to those complex swaps and derivatives formerly much beloved of the banking industry, I have been heavily criticised for my views.

To me the Committee’s conclusion is simply a matter of common sense, except if we are to have targets expressed in terms of greenhouse gas reductions I believe the target it still far too low at 21%. Nevertheless, the Committee has spoke and it now remains to see whether its advice will be followed.

The minister in charge of climate change is Ed Miliband. He runs the department of energy and climate change and that is probably right now the most important job in the government. He has promised to give the Committee’s advice “in depth consideration”, whatever that means. We have paid for the advice; it seems generally sound, so why not follow it?

The trouble is that Mr Miliband cannot spin his way out of climate change. It will happen, and if we and the rest of the world do not put actual measures in place it will happen more quickly and more drastically than Mr Miliband expects.

It is his task to accept the report and convince his cabinet colleagues that following the advice of the Committee on Climate Change is what they must do. Traditionally Governments being made up of ministers of slightly differing views find consensus between them and present a united front to the electorate. This happens when considering policy on crime, fiscal policy, monetary policy and policy on all the other problems that Governments seek to solve. For solving most problems this is the only way. The United Kingdom has built its state upon compromise.

However all Governments should bear in mind that there is no room for compromise with the laws of physics and the natural events of nature. These are forces beyond our puny control.  If Governments attempt to compromise with them, they will be likened to a former King, Canute, who was told he could hold back the tides.