The Point

Last updated: 27 June 2022.

Climate Change: The Debate is Over - Let the Action Begin

    Will Duckworth, Deputy Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales makes a clarion call for urgency in the wake of the fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

 

The fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes sobering, if not frightening, reading.

I don't intend to say much about the report itself as numerous summaries have been prepared and published ad nauseam but I will restate two crucial findings of this definitive report:

1) Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.

2) Human influence on the climate system is clear.

In other words, climate change is happening and we are to blame.

The sole argument the ostrich brigade of climate change deniers have clung to is the statement that there is only a 98% certainty that climate change is due to human activity. Only 98 per cent.

To put that into context, if we knew there was only a 2% chance of surviving if we crossed a motorway, we would probably build a bridge.

The Coalition and press must stop giving equal time to climate change deniers as to the scientists who understand the problem.

The flat earth society still exists and even has its own web site and Facebook page, but the media quite rightly doesn't give them equal time whenever astronomy is discussed. Nor do newspapers feel the need to consult faith healers when medical practice is discussed.

Balance is important. But facts are vital. Conjecture and speculation do not offer 'balance' to scientific fact: they solely serve to confuse an issue the world's scientists are sure about.

And it's not just scientists. Across Central Africa, people are already experiencing climate change. Their crops are destroyed and the fertile soil they rely on washed away by newly-unreliable rainfall. Those people may not have performed the scientific research, but they are experiencing what science has proved to be the case: climate change is here, and it's destroying lives already.

The debate about climate change and its causes is over. We now need to focus on how we tackle it. The good thing is that tackling climate change is good for us, and good for the planet.

The developed world – all of us living within it – is polluting the planet with carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels, and disposing of more material than ever, while others are so poor that they struggle to survive. And it is the poorest parts of the world that are already suffering – and will suffer yet more if we don't tackle the problem and tackle it now.

We must act now to prevent mass economic breakdown and huge migrations from the parts of the world which will be most badly affected by global warming and rising sea levels.

The Green Party is calling upon the UK government to adopt a process called Contraction and Convergence in international climate change negotiations.

Contraction and convergence, which would delegate fossil fuel use based on national population and limit the collective global output of CO2, would do much to lessen human-caused climate change. It may be better referred to as convergence and contraction, as the first stage of the process must be to reduce the carbon consumption of the richest countries while the poorest catch up so that we more or less equalise the CO2 emissions for all the citizens of the earth.

Only when we have some international fairness in the use of the world's resources will we be able to work together to contract; that is to reduce the use of raw materials to a sustainable level.

Aubrey Meyer, climate change campaigner, said that "since the world's atmosphere belongs equally to everyone if it belongs to anyone at all, the only basis on which such an agreement seems possible is that there must – eventually at least – be an equal allocation to everyone in the world".

We have been pushing hard for investment to be made in sustainable energy production, including photovoltaic cells, wind turbines, ground source and air source heat pumps, concentrated solar power and energy from waves and tide. But the Coalition seems intent on giving tax breaks and spending millions of pounds on policing to help frackers, while pouring money into nuclear fission and paying vast amounts to clear up the radioactive waste produced by this incredibly dangerous practice. It looks as if they are now going to pay the Chinese and French Governments twice the normal price for electricity generated in our country in nuclear power stations and they will guarantee to pay that for 30 or 40 years. And we all know who will be left to clear up the radio-active waste afterwards.

While the cost of nuclear energy is prohibitive, and it costs ever more to get the remaining fossil fuels out of the ground, we continue to sideline the obvious potential of long term sustainable natural energy.

 We must look increasingly at micro-generation.

Micro generation with small scale methane digesters, and community owned wind turbines and solar panels, can provide a lot of the energy we need. While we pour money into the pockets of the CEOs and shareholders of the big six energy companies we fail to admit that energy production and distribution needs to be planned for and controlled.

The only feasible answer is to return the production and distribution of electricity and gas to public ownership.

That brings up another important question: how much energy do we need? 

 Many of us live busy, stressful, wasteful and unsustainable lives.

Saving energy needs to be our first priority, whether by insulating our homes properly, living close to where we work, video conferencing instead of flying across the Atlantic for a two hour meeting, or eating less meat. We need governments to make these things easier, not harder.

The amazing side effect of reducing our energy use is that it improves our quality of life. We get warmer homes, we get home from work earlier, we don't have to sit for hours on a plane, and we have healthier hearts.

In short, we will all be healthier, happier and richer when we reduce our energy consumption.

Whatever our ideas, ideals or instincts, we must move on from the debate over the existence and cause of climate change.

We must work together nationally and internationally, to find the best way to deal with the climate crisis and to reduce the amount of carbon we use and pump into our already stressed atmosphere.

Will Duckworth

Deputy Leader, Green Party of England and Wales.