Talking about climate change endlessly

Since Mr Obama was elected President it is now the case that every leader of each major industrial or developed country in the world agrees that climate change is a serious threat and that we ought to cut back greenhouse gases created by humans by 80% before 2050 and hold the temperature rises caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases to less than two degrees Celsius.

Believing that a something is necessary and actually doing something about it are two different things. The history of governments of all nations’ climate change policies is high on pious hopes and very low on real action.

This is because however large and serious the climate change threat may be, governments cannot lead their nations into policies that may cause them to lose competiveness against other nations or what will create a more expensive way of life however compelling the reason. You do not find more compelling reasons for action that the likely effects of climate change, but those effects are in the future and it seems that politicians believe that  no one can face making a modest “sacrifice” today for their grand children’s benefit.

Furthermore, any real policy to reduce climate change brings governments into direct conflict with most of the vested interests that have supported them or that they regard as important to the prosperity of their country. When it comes to fighting with vested interests governments usually refuse to take them on, or in the unlikely event of a fight, governments get out smarted.

Tony Bair, ex Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, is now urging rich nations to fight climate change by increasing the amount of renewable energy that they generate. He calls climate change as urgent and says that the solutions are “within our grasp”. He is right about the first part – climate change is urgent – but wrong about the second part – the solutions are not within our grasp –solutions have been spurned for the past ten years by governments of all nations – including the government that he led for ten years.

No one has suddenly placed the solutions within anyone’s grasp. The solutions have been pushed hard towards policy makers and governments who have, in the main, pushed them away or thrown them away.

Mr Blair’s reaction to climate change when he was in office was to talk the talk but not walk the walk. He created a number of fairly useless quangos to talk about climate change, and the net effect of them did not amount to anything. He did not create conditions for any real investment in carbon reduction but simply subsidised the some favoured types of renewable energy and created conditions where measures to fight climate change depended upon human choice, rather than compulsion.

As I pointed out in 2004, the expenses of 650 Members of Parliament at Westminster were far higher than the United Kingdom’s investment in 2004 in microgeneration. I also point that out in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Mr Blair was Prime Minister for each of those years.

Mr Blair was not brave enough when in office to fight climate change and I wonder why any politician who is in office now should take his statements on the subject seriously or why any member of the public should listen. Mr Blair’s time at the top was a time when the United Kingdom’s emissions increased every year.

Any policy to fight climate change that is based upon choice, rather than compulsion will fail. People will not choose to fight climate change until the effects of it actually affect them rather than their children or grandchildren. Politicians will not have the courage to enact the necessary laws until it is too late, probably because they fear that their electorates will not re-elect them if they create the draconian laws that are needed.

We do not need Tony Blair to tell us what we must do; you could write down a policy to fight climate change effectively on the back of the fag packet, or in the back of a paper napkin in your local restaurant. We just need to do it.