Brokenhagen

Back in September I wrote that I thought Copenhagen was in trouble.

It was obvious that the "COP-15" summit was becoming the COP-OUT summit weeks ago; arguably months and years ago. And it was because of mistakes by those evangelising on climate change that have been repeated and compounded.

Talking up the challenges, the costs and the sacrifices doesn't make most people want to buy-in to a solution. And getting the public to recognise the problem and buy-in to the solution isn't some irritating optional extra we can pick and choose whether to bother with. It's inseparable from dealing effectively with the problem.

It has been treating the public this way that's caused the problem. It prompted scientists to foolishly fiddle the facts, conceal information and treat us as too stupid to be able to understand the very thing scientists are supposed to do: challenge orthodoxy.

It prompted politicians to offload difficult, expensive decisions onto unelected bureaucrats who were never going to be able to deliver the answers - because the answers demand the accountability they lack.

It prompted middle-class, affluent environmental activists for whom fixing a wind turbine on their roof or paying a carbon offset after a quick holiday jaunt to the carribbean is pocket-change, to lecture families on fixed incomes about what they will have to sacrifice. And each of these groups got exactly what they deserved at Copenhagen.

How about going down a different path now?

Here are the four ways I think a substantive deal on climate change could be rescued, which can resonate with the public and which doesn?t require us to retreat into caves to bring about.

First, let?s learn from history. When I was growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the big environmental threat was something called Acid Rain. It?s not talked about very much in the West now (although it's a growing problem in China, India and Brazil) because action was taken to combat it, raise environmental standards and improve technology to tackle the problem. In the 1990s the problem was the hole in the ozone layer ? again a problem caused by the emission of damaging gasses and chemicals. It?s not talked about much because action was taken to combat it, raise environmental standards, ban CFCs ? Chlorofluorocarbons ? in fridges and technology tackled the problem.

I know that climate change is an immensely bigger problem, but in these two examples we can see that huge amounts of change can be made without scaring people that their world is going to end. And by putting investment in technology at the forefront of the battle we'll be creating new, long-term jobs in manufacturing and research, which will help our economy as we seek to come out of recession.

Second, we need to seriously challenge the way we have until now gone about tackling climate change to date. The carbon ?cap and trade? system doesn?t provide a single incentive to reduce dependence on carbon-based fuels, which remain the cheapest available. We should look instead at a means of fees and dividends: fees for those choosing to stick with carbon-based fuels; dividends to those who switch.

And when I talk about dividends, I?m not talking about rewarding everyone who consumes energy - this won't be an impenetrable scheme like cap-and-trade that only multinationals dabble in above the heads of the rest of us: it will pay cash into your bank account if you go green. Click here to read an eloquent explanation by James Hansen, Adjunct Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. As I've written about before, incentives are far more effective than taxes in producing change - and one of the reasons Britain is so tired of green issues is because green taxes have been abused by politicians.

Third, instead of just writing developing nations blank cheques to insure them against climate change, let?s make sure that a large part of the developed world?s response is the establishment of an international trust to safeguard the world?s forests and reverse deforestation. While one half of the climate change threat has been the increase carbon emissions since the industrial revolution, the other half has been massive deforestation, and as we know forests are critical carbon absorbers.

And finally, let's put an end to top-down lecturing by government and do-gooders. Back at the time of the first Earth Summit, a project called Local Agenda 21 was set up. It was supposed to enable individuals, communities and groups to make their own contribution on the environment. It never worked: councils half-heartedly seized responsibility for LA21 and whereas these groups were supposed to be about people telling their representatives what to do, the reverse happened.

But the principle of LA21 is sound. Understanding and explaining the science of climate change needs to start at the bottom - with small groups being shown in clear and unequivocal ways what greenhouse gases do to temperature; the consequence that has on polar ice and the consequences that will have on water levels, currents and weather. Just like Newsnight did fantastically well in December, in fact.

Talk about what we can do together, not what sacrifices must be imposed upon us from on high. Give us some confidence that what we?re being asked to do will address the concerns ? that the goalposts won?t suddenly be moved once those targets are met. Invest much more in stuff that works and produces clear, visible achievements. And who knows, we might actually get not only a deal to reduce temperatures by 2 degrees or more - but a deal that governments can actually deliver because they will have the buy-in of their citizens.

From bangers to boilers

Well, maybe not boilers as antiquated as this one, but following the success last year of the government's car scrappage scheme, focus is turning to replacing old, fuel-inefficient, polluting and in some cases dangerous boilers.

Each inefficient boiler adds over £200 to household bills and one tonne of carbon to the atmosphere. Household carbon emissions dwarf some of the polluters some in the environmental lobby obsess about, like aircraft. 90% of these household emissions come from boilers.

Those modernising and upgrading their boiler through this Labour initiative will get £400 towards the cost of the new one. Money is available for up to 125,000 households to change initially - but with the car scrappage scheme, demand was so high that we extended it back in October.

In the pre-budget statement at the end of last year the government also announced that anyone who's gone to the trouble of generating their own energy - through solar panels, principally - and who channel surplus energy back into the national grid will from April get on average £900, which, with Labour, will be tax-free.

We're serious about tackling both our environmental and energy challenges; and saving you money in the process. Something which, during this cold spell, I suspect looks particularly appealing to many right now!

Who's really in denial on climate change?

A poll in Saturday's Times found that only 41% of voters believe that climate change has been caused by the human race.

This poll is already causing huge shock among the political classes who arrogantly assume that because they accept the science of climate change, automatically everyone else must follow suit. But I've warned about this arrogance consistently: about over-claiming and exaggerating the risks; about claiming summits are the be-all and end-all when everyone knows that another summit is just around the corner; about championing supposedly green products that actually cause more environmental damage, and about exploiting green taxes for other political ends.

It is this arrogance that goes to the heart of the political failure on climate change. No wonder the overwhelming evidence of global warming is ignored or disbelieved by huge swathes of the public.

Here's one local example. When I led the Labour Opposition in Wandsworth in 2006, I proposed that residential parking charges in the borough be abolished - paid for, principally, through higher charges on second and subsequent vehicles in each household.

For what reason do controlled parking zones exist? They are introduced because parking stress: the number of cars fighting for each parking space on a street - is a particular problem in certain areas. By giving residents permits, and charging visitors significant amounts to "pay and display", parking space is freed up and local people can usually park close to their homes. In other words, controlled parking charges are a tax on commodity: parking space.

They were not set up as a crusade for the environment: their point was never to banish cars from our roads, punish gas guzzlers, encourage energy efficient vehicles or incentivise motorbikes or cycling. Their purpose was simply to free up parking space. And they've been remarkably effective at doing that.

My policy was criticised by green groups, who see parking as a way to moralise on the environment: parking space, should be warped into some sort of green tax to punish anyone who drives. Since then, we've seen wrong-headed, cynical councillors in next-door Richmond start charging more for parking permits for polluting vehicles.

Do I believe that polluting vehicles are a bigger threat to our environment than cleaner ones? Yes - and if someone was to put forward and argue for a local pollution tax (something the Labour government has already introduced by raising Vehicle Excise Duty on older, more polluting vehicles anyway) in exchange for lower council tax, I might well support that idea.

The public aren't stupid - they know full well when stealth taxes are being piled on them - they knew it when Tories here ratcheted up parking charges by 27% a year ago too.

So when politicians can't be honest about something as straightforward as parking charges, why on earth should anyone believe them when they talk about climate change and the consequential need for more taxes, or ever higher energy bills? Especially when we then see these ever-higher taxes just being hoovered up by the Treasury or the energy companies' shareholders rather than being used to persuade people to try greener, cleaner, more sustainable products.

Yet there is plenty of evidence that the public is receptive to genuine green initiatives. Labour's car scrappage scheme has been the massive success it has because it provided a typical £2,000 incentive to trade up to a cleaner model. People still have to pay for the majority of their new car themselves but they have done so - in huge numbers. Had the Government brought this scheme in when revising Vehicle Excise Duty months ago then an unpopular move seen by many as just another money grab would have gone down far better.

Politicians keep digging these massive holes, then burying their heads in them. Whether it's their outrageous expenses greed, or their misapplication of taxes, or an over-reach on issues like climate change: these are all symptoms of the same hubris that results in the sort of views the Times found at the weekend.

And that's a real problem for those of us who recognise the urgency of the problem. We need to stop trying to drag a public kicking and screaming behind us as we impose ridiculously punitive measures upon them. Instead, we need to bring them with us: yes by charging more for pollution and carbon-generation; but by cutting energy bills for those using green fuels; minimising their carbon footprint, recycling more and reducing their household waste.

This isn't rocket science. It certainly isn't climate science. It's just good old common sense. The Times poll wasn't a denial of climate change. It was just another denial of trust in politicians.

Labour: making Britain a low carbon world leader

Vote Cruelty Free - vote Labour

As a candidate to be your next MP, interest groups are beginning to get in touch asking me to support their manifestos, or answer their surveys to give those of you who have a specific interest in the issues they advocate a way of finding out which candidates will best represent their concerns.

You'll have seen a few days ago that I was more than happy to sign up to support the Royal British Legion's manifesto, and I've now also signed up to support the "Vote Cruelty Free" campaign. Vote Cruelty Free comprises the BUAV, Compassion in World Farming, International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), League Against Cruel Sports and Respect for Animals. It covers a broad range of animal welfare issues including wild and marine animals, animal experimentation, cruel sports, the fur trade and farming.

The alliance has sent its manifesto to all candidates announced for the next General Election and asked them to show their support for the issues raised.

A Vote Cruelty Free spokesperson said, ?Animal protection is an issue close to the UK public?s heart but this is often not reflected in current political debate. It is fantastic that Stuart King has shown he believes in animal protection issues as much as his potential future constituents in Putney; we are calling on all candidates to follow his lead by pledging their support for Vote Cruelty Free.?

Vote Cruelty Free is urging all candidates to pledge their support for the initiative. Voters can track candidates who have signed up by visiting the website at http://www.votecrueltyfree.org/.

Given the Conservative Party is committed to making foxhunting legal, this will be yet another issue on which there is clear blue water between Putney's Tory MP and me. The day after the election you'll wake up with her or me as your MP: there are no other credible options here in Putney. So if these are issues that concern you then vote for me - vote Labour.

Car scrappage scheme continuing

We've just announced at our Conference that we're going to extend the car scrappage scheme, where you can trade an old, polluting car in and get at least £2,000 on a newer, less polluting, more fuel efficient model.

When we first announced the scheme, the government set aside £300 million to fund it: expecting that to be enough to last until February next year. But the initiative has proved so popular that £227 million has been spent. So we've added another £100 million to the pot to guarantee that all who want to participate in the scheme can do so.

I've written before about the massive impact this Labour initiative has had: the car industry itself said that it's been responsible for growing our car market over the summer. Had the Conservatives been in power, they've said they wouldn't have tried the scheme: and without it the car industry would have shrunk. So with Labour we've kept the car industry going; kept car workers in jobss and improved the environment by getting thousands of more polluting cars off the roads. With the Tories, more unemployment.

Norman Borlaug

What an amazing epitaph: "saving more lives than anyone in human history". That is how Professor Norman Borlaug, who died on Saturday, has been described: and it's not the usual hyperbole that comes at such times: conservatively he is estimated to have saved a billion lives through his agricultural advances.

Borlaug created Dwarf Wheat, which dramatically increased crop yields of cereals in the developing world. He spent his life helping peasant farmers in Mexico, Pakistan and India, not only saving countless individual lives but bringing much greater food security to these countries. It was work that won him the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal: the only person in history to win all three prizes.

I'm writing about Norman Borlaug to ponder this question: if he had attempted to undertake his vital work today, would he have been able to complete it, or would the so-called environmental lobby - that misguidedly campaigns against genetic modification research - have drummed up more "Frankenstein Food" scare-stories to stop him?

Because spot the difference between Borlaug's work and GM foods today: Dwarf Wheat is, after all, nothing more than genetically modified wheat. Borlaug's life's work was about producing more bountiful, more robust harvests in less hospitable climes - and that's exactly the same potential GM foods have, if only they could be properly developed without eco campaigners raiding fields to destroy them or terrifying consumers with distortions and often blatant lies about the safety of GM products.

Borlaug was not immune from attack by GM activists, about which he said this:

"Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things"

If Labour is on the lookout for bold radical policies for a fourth term of government let me suggest one right now: make the case for GM food boldly and bravely, and in so doing we will be following in the great footsteps of Norman Borlaug.

If that's not a worthy aspiration, I don't know what is.

What if Copenhagen fails?

The Copenhagen summit this Autumn is hugely important. It will, it is to be hoped, create a new climate change treaty to replace Kyoto.

The summit represents the culmination of months of negotiations - negotiations that are taking place right now between civil servants of the world's leading and emerging powers. We have some inkling of how those negotiations are going.

Not very well.

But even if the negotiations were going perfectly and in December the world signs up to the Copenhagen Treaty, it might not be enough to deliver the massive cuts in carbon emissions scientists say are needed to avert catastrophic climate change. After all, Kyoto promised much and delivered not enough.

It would be negligent beyond words for the world's leaders to put all their eggs in the basket of a Copenhagen deal. And it would be unrealistic to believe that a deal of the extent needed is deliverable. Not because politicians are weak, or short-sighted, or fail to grasp the scale of the problem - though some are, some will be and some do. No; simply because the scale of the action - and the amount it will cost, is probably going to be too great for their - and our - electorates to swallow.

As much as politicians need to recognise the catastrophe of climate change, so too must the most fervent environmentalists recognise that politics is about the art of the possible (and I mean possible in a democracy); and what's possible is - I suspect - less than what is actually needed. The full extent of the sacrifice required of the developed world is not likely to be tolerated by its voters. And the developing world, where carbon emissions are rising exponentially, will not tolerate a curtailment of their massive growth. On that basis the most likely outcome of Copenhagen is failure - albeit that it will be presented as a success.

So what happens next? This doesn't necessarily have to be the end of the world as we know it, though many will claim it to be and if nothing else is done, that will be the consequence.

The Royal Society - Britain's UK Academy of Science - published a report recently looking at what they call geo-engineering - using science to combat climate change. One option being investigated isn't as speculative as some other options that have been considered and is relatively low risk. We know this because it has already worked. It's called "stratospheric aerosols".

You may remember the eruption of the Philippine volcano Pinatubo in 1991. It was by all accounts a remarkable sight - the second largest eruption of the 20th century. It lasted several weeks and in the process it pumped millions of tonnes of dust and ash high into the atmosphere. These were stratospheric aerosols: a giant spraycan clouding the outer atmosphere in dust fine enough so as not to obscure the sun but substantial enough to act as a block to a proportion of its rays.

In the year immediately following that eruption, the world's climate cooled by half a degree centigrade because of that one event. Because remember: greenhouse gases in themselves do not cause global warming - the damage they do is in trapping heat; preventing it from rebounding back out into space. And that's why the world is gradually warming.

We know that injecting particles of ash high into our atmosphere works in cooling global temperatures. Second, its subsidiary impact on our climate systems is short-term and minor if it exists at all. Third, it's viable to replicate that volcano effect without the mass destruction that accompanies natural eruptions. And finally, it's possible to do it without blowing the bank.

We should continue reducing carbon emissions radically - if for no other reasons than carbon-based fuels are finite, are concentrated in unstable regions governed by hostile, erratic regimes, and are damaging in all sorts of ways, not just climactically.

But isn't there a better way than simply insisting that the only way we can combat climate is by vast sacrifices that will dramatically curtail the quality of life the developed world has come to enjoy and the developing world is growing to expect? Wouldn't a far better way be to make carbon reductions part of a package that includes safe geo-engineering?

And even if you think we should continue to meet the climate change targets the world has set solely by carbon reduction, wouldn't it be wise to have a fall-back in case the scientists' forecasts are wrong and we need to go even further - a far from implausible scenario?

I can't see a downside to investing in this option. If you're cynical about politics and politicians it deserves backing. If you're a climate change sceptic it deserves backing. If you baulk at the vast costs of climate change it deserves backing. And most importantly, if you want to save the planet it deserves backing.

More on what the Tories really think on Heathrow

Following yesterday's Evening Standard revelations about the deep divide in Conservative ranks over supporting a third runway at Heathrow, I thought I'd republish a story that appeared in The Putney Paper in Spring 2008.

The article below exposed some of the splits in Tory policy at the time: led by former Conservative leadership challenger John Redwood, responsible for producing an "Economic Competitiveness" manifesto for David Cameron less than two years ago.

Can you really trust the Tories? On Heathrow? On anything else? David Cameron's just one man. Behind and beneath him how much have the Conservatives really changed? The honest answer is "not much at all".

This is one of the big questions everyone is going to have to grapple with at the next election. That's why Tory shadow minister Geoffrey Clifton-Brown's gaffe is so enlightening: it tells us that the Conservatives will say what they think you want to hear before the election, and then do what they want to after it.

You can't trust the Tories on Heathrow

Tonight's Evening Standard reports that the Conservative Party is deeply split over whether to break their promise to scrap Heathrow expansion if they're elected.

Conservative shadow minister (and Putney resident) Geoffrey Clifton Brown MP commented: "This is a very difficult and controversial issue...so I expect this is an issue that will be revisited after the election."

Although the Tory transport team rushed to deny that they intend to u-turn, as the Standard notes, Mr Clifton-Brown's views "are shared by a number of Mr Cameron's shadow ministers."

This isn't a question about whether local Conservatives oppose Heathrow. It's simply whether or not the Conservative Party: the party that pushed the creation of Terminal 5 as well as building terminals 2, 3 and 4 - and that argued in its own economic competitiveness manifeso only a few months ago that "an incoming Conservative government's priority should be the strengthening of London's and Britain's major transport hub at Heathrow" can really be trusted on this issue.

Some of the comments left by members of the public to the Standard article online are, on this question, quite revealing - especially considering the by-and-large right-wing stance of those who usually comment on the Standard website:

"I voted Tory last time partly because I thought they had better policies and partly because their local MPs made lots of comments against the third runway. If this wobble is confirmed it will have damaged my trust far more than any expense claims."


"Yet another example of the apparent Tory tactic of making out they will change things, winning the favourable publicity, and then back tracking. When are the Tories going to commit themselves to doing anything at all and then sticking to it?"


"What a surprise. As I have said on this site a few times, when the Tories are honest and have strength behind their own convictions I may vote for them. Until I know what they are planning, stick by their promises, and intend improving our lives, they can sling their hooks. Even before they are possibly elected, they are changing their minds."


"The other interpretation is that the current policy position of opposing the 3rd runway was adopted for populist reasons and without thinking the issue through. Now the conservatives have started actually to look at the facts, they are realising that they have got it wrong."

Yes to less stacking - no to a third runway

MPs on the Transport Select Committee published a report on Friday calling for a reduction in the number of planes being stacked by air traffic control over London - but only if Heathrow's third runway goes ahead.

This is one of those exasperating reports, because I agree with the MPs that stacking should be cut; but not conditional on a third runway. Likewise, MPs also called for a cap on the number of flights coming into land over "beauty spots" - like Windsor Great Park because of the environmental damage the noise, pollution and unsettlement this causes. Again, how can anyone be against that - until the alternative; that it means more flights coming in over densely populated areas, is considered.

There is an answer to both these problems - and it isn't to curtail air travel. It is to expand capacity at London's other airports - especially Gatwick. Continual expansion of Heathrow is the wrong answer to the South East's aviation needs. We need a very much larger Gatwick, a larger Stansted and a larger Luton - all with far better transport links straight into London.

That way we can reduce stacking over London, the number of flights brought in over Windsor and those brought in over our homes. It's safer. It's cleaner. And it's fairer.

Join me in calling for a radical new deal on climate change

In five months' time the world will come together in Copenhagen to agree a new treaty on climate change. The treaty will take over from the Kyoto agreement, the landmark climate change treaty that has introduced such terms as "carbon trading" and "emission caps" into our dictionaries.

It may be of surprise to those who have become aware of the issue of climate change in the past couple of years, but the political path to Copenhagen stretches back to 1992 and the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. That was the first global summit that recognised that our planet's climate was changing. It's been a grindingly - and for environmentalists frustratingly - slow process since then.

Half of the time since Rio has been taken up in a debate with climate change deniers that such a phenomenon was even occurring - and if it was, whether it was an entirely natural, or human-made event. The remainder has been squandered as countries; especially the US, put their short-term interests ahead of the hard, unpopular long-term decisions needed to stabilise our climate.

Fortunately, in Barack Obama, we have not just a recognition of the problem but leadership from the US now. Let's be under no illusions: the US is key to a successful climate change deal, because until the western world, united and willing to curb our own emissions came together, we had no authority - moral or otherwise, to tell developing nations that their massively expanding carbon-driven economies needed to be curtailed.

The G8 group of the World's largest economies, met yesterday in Italy and finally agreed to "cap" global temperature increases to no more than 2 degrees warmer than "pre-industrial levels" by 2050. Not sure what that means? Well neither is the G8 - some believe the benchmark is this year; some that it is 1992 - a more difficult comparison year as our greenhouse gas emissions were much lower then.

The Labour Government has set out what we want from the summit early next year. And we want as many UK citizens to sign up to our pledge too - because in so doing, it gives us a stronger mandate to fight for those tougher targets. You can read more and sign up yourself at:

http://www.actoncopenhagen.decc.gov.uk/

Government right on clean coal

If both electricity generating company E-On and the green lobby are cheering a Government announcement, it suggests that we might have got it right.

That's what's happened over the announcement that the Kingsnorth power station in Kent will only be upgraded as and when it is capable of carbon reclamation, something I argued for here a few weeks ago.

The argument now moves on to what minimum proportion of carbon should be extracted from the coal before burning; because the risk is that it will be too low - and the less that is extracted the harder it will be to reach our carbon targets.

The UK was - thanks to Labour - the first country in the world to set legally binding carbon emissions targets and now we are first at making the building of new coal-powered stations conditional upon their ability to extract carbon and, in our case, bury it deep under the North Sea.

But our long-term energy situation remains critical. We have to reduce dependence on Russian Gas and Saudi Oil. And just as we cannot meet our energy needs just by renewable energy, we can't do it just by clean coal power-plants either. We need a basket of energy sources: clean coal, renewable and nuclear - all three of which will enable the UK to meet the targets we have set ourselves on climate change by 2020.

Why I won't be sitting in darkness tomorrow night

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. So it is with the planned "Earth Hour" by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) who want us all to turn off our lights for one hour on Saturday evening from 8.30pm.

This stunt underlines my concern about the disconnect between those who are so absolutely driven by the cause they believe in - climate change - to the point where their judgement is clouded and they actually damage themselves and their cause.

Let's be clear: sitting in the dark on Saturday night, waiting for the clocks to go forward is not going to save our planet. Nor is the attitude implicit in the thinking behind such a gimmick: that the only way to avert catastrophic climate change is for us, essentially, to return to the caves.

WWF is well intentioned but gimmicks like these fundamentally undermine their important cause because they associate it with unpopular, unpleasant and self-denying measures that people simply won't sign up to en masse.

Far more productive - because it's something that might prompt people to make changes for life, would be a campaign to turn off all equipment that's normally on standby that entire night.

If WWF can get business to turn off their lights on a Saturday evening - great - though surely business in the city could and should turn their lights off for more than an hour when they're closed? But those of us who are committed to tackling climate change seriously need to use better judgement about how to persuade people to engage with the issue in future.

If you want to find out more about WWF's earth hour, however, click here.

Arctic expedition sets off

In January I wrote about the really important Catlin Arctic Survey, which is going to provide, for the first time, detailed evidence of the extent of climate change on the Arctic.

The survey group set off today on its way to the North Pole.

According to the survey website, temperatures at the top of the world are a balmy minus-40 centigrade at the moment, and whenever the team want some exercise (and even when they don't) they'll have the opportunity of bathing in the idyllic Arctic Ocean whenever the glaciers they are walking across have separated from the land mass they're trying to reach.

Rather them than me!

But joking aside, this is a really serious job the three Arctic explorers are undertaking because of the triple-whammy losing Arctic (and Antarctic) ice will mean for climate change:

1. The loss of a "mirror" reflecting solar heat back out to space;
2. The amount of greenhouses gases captured in the frozen tundra of the north that will be released if the planet warms, so accelerating change;
3. The huge rise in sea levels melted ice will bring about

This expedition is really important.

You can follow the team on their website; via Twitter, or their facebook group.

No to coal at Kingsnorth

The Government should reject plans to build a coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent later this week.

The case against conventional coal-power is overwhelming: it is the principal generator of greenhouse gas emissions. But it is not just the global environment that suffers: locally, coal production pollutes the environment because of associated hazardous chemicals like strychnine which so easily contaminate ground water.

It is worth trying to sort out some of the myths about Kingsnorth before developing this argument. First the Kingsnorth plan won't build an additional power station - it will replace an existing one. To present both sides of the argument, here's what EOn - its owner - argues; and here's the anti-Kingsnorth website. And if you want - in my opinion - a balanced briefing on the pros and cons of this energy debate, click here for an article in The Observer.

I accept E-On's claim that the new Kingsnorth will be cleaner than the old. It just isn't going to be clean enough.

So called "clean coal" technology - that is, a process which extracts the carbon from coal before or during its burning and then injects it deep into the earth, is positive, although it's vastly expensive and needs three separate processes to make the coal clean enough to be useful.

At the weekend, one of the leading climate-change environmentalists, Professor Chris Field, said that the models he himself had been part of creating for the UN panel were looking wrong principally because his panel under-estimated the impact the massive increase in coal-burning power stations in India and China (where one new coal-fired generator is being opened each week) has had.

I wrote recently about the problems with these models - the arctic expedition setting off in just a few days' time is about making cliamte change modelling much more accurate - and this is just another example of why environmentalists need to be so much more careful about the way they use and present their statistics.

Because if they happen to be right and climate change is accelerating, we are getting so close to fatigue among the general public about these issues we could be faced with a "cry wolf" situation where no credibility is left among those who don't care as much as they need to about the environment.

We in the already industrialised West have a very difficult case to make to the still-developing world about halting their use of coal. From their perspective such arguments are very much about kicking away the ladder we have already climbed to wealth and prosperity. Instead, we should be working with these countries to build and subsidise clean coal plants rather than trying to impose limits and targets they won't sign up to.

We should say no to coal at Kingsnorth - because it isn't clean enough coal - but that does mean saying yes in a big way to nuclear energy. And now.

Arctic Survey

In less than a month's time, a really important expedition to the Arctic will begin, to survey the ice there to try to work out how long we have before it melts away entirely.

This is possibly the most important survey on climate change ever and not just for the information it will produce, but because of the credibility it will finally give to climate change models.

No one but those on the extreme fringes now denies climate change. But on the other extreme, the somewhat hysterical warnings by the Green movement and even some scientists who should know better have lacked credibility and alienated people. That's because, for all the academic research they've produced, it's all been based on models, and models require subjective hypotheses to produce results. Those hypotheses are well-intentioned but unreliable because we have very little information upon what will be the critical driver of extreme climate change: the melting of polar ice.

Why is the Arctic so important? Four reasons. First of all, because it is the largest mass of ice on the planet - and ice acts as a mirror, bouncing solar rays back into space rather than heating the planet. As this mass gets smaller, less will be bounced back. And that will speed up climate change.

Second, because the floating ice represents millions of tonnes of water that, when melted, will raise sea-levels catastrophically. That will have a critical impact on islands like ours, as well as millions of people in low-lying countries like Bangladesh and throughout the Pacific.

Third, the Arctic acts as a tidal pump for the world's seas: warm water from the mid Atlantic pushes north, hits the colder and saline-heavy Arctic water and is pushed below it where it too cools. This phenomenon is why Britain benefits from warmer weather than our geographic position merits - we are on the same line of latitude as Montreal and Moscow, yet never get the same severity of weather. That's due to the Gulf Stream, and the Gulf Stream is channelled towards us by this pump mechanism. In short, no Arctic will probably mean the gulf stream channelling far further south, and instead of warming, Britain will freeze.

And fourth, the Arctic is the catalyst for the massive acceleration in global warming. I've already mentioned that without the ice, less solar rays will be bounced back into space. That will increase global warming. In turn, there are huge frozen reserves of greenhouse gasses trapped in frozen peat around the northern rim of the world: throughtout Siberia and Alaska in particular. When these thaw, amounts of these gasses that will dwarf any carbon reductions we can make in our own ways of life, will escape.

So let's be clear: there is a genuine urgency to climate change. What people like me want from climate change experts is not model-driven hypothesis, but fact-based honesty. And that's why this expedition is so important.

So good luck to Pen Hadow, Ann Daniels and Martin Hartley who'll be braving the sub-zero temperatures (including actually having to swim in the Arctic Ocean carrying equipment-laden sleds), alien environments and the occasional Polar Bear, to obtain the most comprehensive data ever compiled on the depth of Arctic ice and how the Arctic Ocean is being affected by climate change.

You can find out more about the survey and keep track of the expedition's progress at http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/ (I recommend watching the short video on the site). It sets off in 21 days.

Is FairTrade really immoral? Tories say "yes"

During an extraordinary debate a couple of weeks ago, Conservative Councillors removed any reference to teaching children about what Fairtrade is, why it exists or why it is a good thing. They also struck from their Children & Young People's Plan the need to teach local kids about the importance of reducing our carbon footprint. The suggestion to include these two important issues came from members of the public during a consultation on what should be included in the plan.

In the midst of it, one of their supposedly "rising stars", Russell King (no relation!) apparently described Fairtrade, which ensures some of the poorest farmers in the world get a fair price for their goods and access to international markets, as "immoral".

I don't know why it is that a fairly large part of those on the right-wing of politics have difficulty with common sense ideas like Fairtrade, or reducing carbon emissions; or even recognising that human-accelerated climate change is a reality. Scarily, such people are heavily represented among Putney and Wandsworth Conservatives.

Wasting less food

Gordon Brown was right yesterday to talk about the amount of food wasted in Britain, especially at a summit where the western world is again being shamed by its lack of progress in honouring promises to the developing world. The amount of perfectly good food we waste is shameful given the starvation and drought that still plagues so much of Africa in particular.

We throw away over 400 million tonnes of food every year - apparently the equivalent of £420 on every household's annual shopping bill (though how they know this without knowing exactly which food we throw out, and where we got it from escapes me!).

But it's politicians, not the public who must take a lead in reducing food waste, because while most of us could probably buy more sensibly there are two big wasters that need national or international action to rectify.

The first is to scrap the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP): the biggest waster of food there is in Europe. Not only does the CAP encourage - actually demand - inefficient farming practices and scandalous food mountains but it is one of the biggest barriers against free and fair trade in the world. It actively prevents African farmers from competing with their EU counterparts by subsidising inefficient farming methods in the EU at the expense of far cheaper goods from developing nations.

The CAP is unjustifiable, and rather than French President Nicholas Sarkozy spending his time trying to bully Ireland into reversing its referendum vote against the Lisbon Treaty of a few weeks ago, he really should be telling his countrymen straight that there can be no such thing as a free lunch anymore.

The second initiative we need is to persuade the huge supermarket chains to end their "buy one get one free" deals and instead cut the item cost of goods, especially food staples. It's good that some supermarkets are already focussing more on discounting these key items but they can do far more.

Buy one get one free deals (or BOGOFs!) are one of the main reasons why food waste is increasing; they also don't help with Britain's obesity problem as we try to consume the extra freebies we get in our shopping trolley to avoid throwing this unneeded food away.

The more significant figure that emerged from the government's food waste report today was not the tonnage thrown away, or some notional estimate of how much that adds to our weekly shop - it's this: that the wealthiest families spend 7% of their (far larger) household income on food, whereas it consumes more than twice that - 15% - of the poorest.

It isn't, predominantly, the poorest households that waste food: they don't have that luxury and they also shop more carefully. But it is they who will benefit most from a switch to cheaper overall prices away from two-for-one deals, and the cheaper produce we would be able to buy were Europe to scrap the CAP.

Biofueling the food shortage

After writing about my concerns about Biofuels here back in February, the issue is now beginning to get some serious coverage (you may have seen the feature on BBC Newsnight on Monday).

Biofuels are causing catastrophic environmental damage: because they're one of the main reasons tropical rainforests are being cleared (in order for farmers to produce crops used to make biofuels) - thereby worsening climate change; and because hundreds of thousands of acres of arable farmland that was once used to produce staple crops like corn, rice and wheat have now also been turned over to the biofuels industry.

This in turn is causing food shortages around the world; in turn pushing up food prices and in turn again making it harder and harder for the very poorest to afford these staple crops. Far from being the environmental godsend, biofuels are actually worsening international environmental and humanitarian problems.

Let's be clear: biofuels are not clean and they are not that green. The energy needed to process this fuel negates its benefits from the outset. They are not economical - or they wouldn't receive the vast and unsustainable subsidies governments pass on to ethanol producers. And any environmental good they (questionably) bring through reduced reliance on carbon-based fuels is eradicated by the loss of rainforests (which greatly reduces the planet's capacity for converting carbon dioxide into oxygen) they have been directly responsible for.

However, it is a fair question to ask - as Jeremy Paxman did on Newsnight - what's the alternative? We do, after all, need to find a sustainable fuel source to drive our vehicles. I think the answer is twofold.

First, we need to use electric, gas and hydrogen powered vehicles far more: they're not sexy, they're not especially fast, but there's no reason that for business use and urban travel they cannot be used. The Prius (featured in the photo above) is not a particularly beautiful car - it's popularity has simply been sourced from its claim to be a "green" car.

And second, we need to stop paying lip-service to the need for better public transport and rail freight. We can get so much of our transit off the roads and onto rail - reducing congestion for those who have no choice but to drive, improving the cost-effectiveness of public transport services, giving people a clean, safe, reliable and efficient service.

Although there's a limit to how convenient public transport can be - because it will never be more convenient than our own private, comfy, car - there's also a reason why London is the only major capital city where public transport use is rising: and that's because our Mayor, Ken Livingstone, has spent the last eight years investing in public transport.

There's one further, deeply ironic consequence of those environmentalists still championing biofuels despite the damage they're doing. This is that they are pushing the need for genetically modified crops - which can be grown in less favourable environments, in larger numbers, yielding larger harvests - higher up the political agenda.

Biofuels

I wrote last week about rising food prices and their impact on poorer households. In that post I criticised biofuels as creating more problems than they solve.

I'll talk a bit more about why biofuels aren't a green solution in a minute, but also last week - entirely coincidentally - the House of Commons Environment Select Committee came out in favour of axing EU biofuels targets; if for slightly different reasons.

Their concern is not only that the target can't be met, but also about land use - because utilising land for biofuel production is one of the main causes of deforestation (which I discussed here during the Bali Climate Change Summit last year); especially in rain-forest countries like Brazil.

The Environment Committee is also looking at how green bio-fuels really are. Whenever someone supporting nuclear power makes the point that nuclear emits no carbon dioxide the anti-nuclear lobby rushes counters that a substantial amount of carbon is emitted in the construction of nuclear power plants.

Fair point. But the same is true of biofuel - and unlike nuclear, it's an ongoing cost: because the energy output is in the actual production of the fuel as well as the construction of the processing plants. Almost as much fuel is used to create biofuel than is created.

How is that sustainable? And the only reason it is vaguely affordable is the vast, market-warping subsidies bunged to the bio-fuel industry. Without them, biofuel would be uneconomic, fields that have been dedicated to producing crops for fuel would be returned to use for food production and cereals and bread would begin falling in price again.

We need to remember the distinction between power and fuel, because power can run computers, light streets, boil kettles and cook meals, but it can't drive cars or operate central heating. For that we need liquid or gas fuels. One day, we may have nuclear-cell driven cars; we already have natural gas and hydrogen-fueled vehicles as well as those powered by batteries charged with green electricity, but bio-fuels aren't the solution - apologies to anyone who's just bought a Prius or other hybrid powered car!

Here's how the BBC reported the MPs' report calling for a scrapping of EU biofuels targets.

The cost of food

I wrote recently about the huge fuel price rises and the impact that is having on low income families in fuel poverty. But there are of course other demands on household budgets, the biggest being food. Like fuel, the price of groceries has been rising rapidly: food inflation rose by 6% last year, while overall inflation was just 2.1%. And the cost of food is, in all likelihood, going to keep rising, sharply.

There are four reasons for this. The cost of fuel is the first - because not only do crops have to be transported; they have to be planted, tended, fertilised and harvested. It is four times more expensive to farm now because of fuel rises.

Fuel is also the second reason: the huge growth of the bio-fuels market. Corn-based fuels like Ethanol are diverting a huge acreage of farmland away from producing food and towards producing fuel. This is why cereals are becoming so expensive - there is simply not enough arable production being used for food any more. This is a classic example of supposedly virtuous green alternatives creating far greater problems than they solve.

The third reason is the poor harvests we've had this year - the Summer floods in this country; the drought in Australia, the impact of El Nino on the caribbean and America to name a few. This was an unusually bad year, and things should get better in 2008.

The fourth is the growth of the Asian economies. As people grow richer, they eat more, and in particular they eat more meat. 1 kilo of beef requires 8 kilos of grain which requires up to 8 tonnes of water.

Fuel costs may fall and harvests will recover but the damaging drive for biofuels and the growth of China and India are not likely to disappear. It's why food prices are forecast to rise by up to 50% in the next ten years.

Some sanctimonious middle-class environmentalists who have never had to worry about choosing between keeping the family warm and feeding them say this is a good thing: that we have been spoilt and should pay the true cost of our food. While lots of food is wasted by British shoppers; it tends not to be those who have to budget tightly who end up throwing food out - but those for whom food costs aren't an issue.

Why am I blogging about this? Because government, sooner or later will have to intervene. The government measures inflation by including things like electrical goods that are, in fact, becoming signfiicantly cheaper. Because of this, the inflation measure - which in turn is the basis for pay settlements - is falling significantly behind the everyday costs ordinary people are experiencing. And that isn't sustainable. The government needs to start measuring real inflation accurately - not just so pay keeps pace, but also because a 6% inflation rate would demand action.

Many of us are either wealthy enough to not notice, or not care too much about this inflation. But the least affluent - especially those on fixed incomes - are being horribly squeezed and it's going unnoticed. They'll will be forced to buy even poorer quality, less nutritious food - or worse, be forced to go without.

This is a serious problem that only a Labour government can be expected to address.

A billion trees planted in 2007

During the UN's Bali Conference on Climate Change late last year, I wrote here about the critical importance of halting deforestation as one of the main ways to reverse global warming.

As you may have picked-up from my posts on such matters, I'm someone who prefers talking about what we can achieve rather then bemoaning the hopelessness of the problem and then urging a draconian, unreasonable and unfair response - and here's a great example.

In the year 2007 alone, more than one and a half billion trees were planted around the world - and more importantly, areas which have suffered deforestation - usually developing nations - are leading the way.

700 million were planted in Ethiopia and 217 million in Mexico alone. Ethiopia's tree planting is particularly significant because trees will help prevent the horrific famines that have beset this country in the recent past - sheltering the land, binding soils to make them more fertile and sustainable and providing wood for homes and fuel. This country has experienced the percentage of its landmass covered by forest falling from 35% at the turn of the 20th century to just 4% by 2000.

Turkey has planted 150 million trees, Kenya 100 million, Cuba 97 million, Rwanda 50 million, South Korea 43 million, Tunisia 21 million, Morocco 20 million, Burma 20 million and Brazil 16 million. Other countries that have planted millions of trees include China, Guatemala and Spain.

UN Environment Programme Chief Achim Steiner has described this phenomenal success as "a further sign of the breathtaking momentum witnessed this year on the challenge for this generation - climate change" and in this case it's hard to dispute the magnitude of that statement.

The great thing about this programme is that tree planting is easy and affordable - and has a hugely disproportionate impact on climate change. On top of the 1.57 billion trees planted already, the UN has received pledges to plant over 2 billion trees.

It's good to be able to report an unqualified success for the UN and for the battle against climate change, as well as one that has such positive benefits in other aspects of sustainable development - especially in the developing world.

Halting deforestation

My post earlier this week on the UN Bali Conference on the next steps to tackle climate change proved popular, so I thought I'd talk about another subject that has been hotly debated at the Conference this week: deforestation.

Deforestation is the other side of the coin of increased carbon emissions - because at the same time as carbon emissions are increasing, the proportion of trees that can absorb the greenhouse gases is declining - in some cases, alarmingly. This again goes to my preference for initiatives that encourage, incentivise and innovate to tackle climate change: simply by reversing deforestation we can make a significant, and relatively affordable contribution to the fight.

On Thursday, Channel 4 News noted that Indonesia - with 10% of the world's rainforests - produces 25,000 cubic metres of wood pulp every single day at the loss of a staggering 2 million hectares of forest every year. Not that long ago an area of the Brazilian Rainforests the size of Wales was year-after-year being hacked down - a problem that has declined significantly under President Lula da Silva but remains a problem in part because of the world-wide demand for Soya.

The mooted solution to this is for wealthy countries to effectively pay these developing nations (and economies) to not cut down their forests. Indonesia's government is keen on this idea, perhaps unsurprisingly: it gets paid handsomely for doing not very much! The sticking points are many, however - not least how can donor nations be guaranteed that the forests won't be felled after the cash has been handed over: after all, 80% of the logging in that country is illegal.

I also personally feel slightly uneasy about rich countries effectively "buying up" swathes of the developing world - it has echoes of colonialism about it even if it is consensual.

My solution would be to create an International Trust, mirroring our own National Trust, which is of course the biggest landowner we have - and one of our most trusted institutions to boot.
The cash-for-land arrangement would still go ahead - albeit that rather than the government getting 100% of the money a share would go to the Trust for security and forestry management; but instead of the sovereign government being responsible for honoring and enforcing the preservation of forests they would have to covenant the land over to the Trust; so that there is a guarantee to the donor nations that our agreement will be honoured over the long term; not subject to the whim of changing governments, elected or otherwise.

If you're interested in reading more about the RED - Reducing Emissions from Deforestation programme, you can do so at the UN Environmental Programme website here. And a reminder that the UN Bali Conference site is http://unfccc.int/. The Conference runs until 14 December.

Bali must find practical ways to tackle climate change

One of the emerging divides in the debate about Climate Change is between those who believe that the problem should principally be addressed by draconian changes in the way we live, and those who believe incentives are far more likely to achieve the goals both sides seek.

Both sides are on display for all to see at this week's Bali Conference, which is the first step on a United Nations path to update the Kyoto Protocol.

I'm much more interested in practical ideas to tackle climate change than Domesday predictions from the fringe who only set back their own cause by overselling their case. So, for example, the news that the European Union is working on plans to provide billions of watts of solar power by building a string of solar "fields" in a ring across north Africa is exactly the sort of focus we should be providing.

Before anyone raises the spectre of EU Imperialism exploiting Africa, the plan is for two thirds of the electricity generated to be used in that continent with the added bonus that the process desalinates sea water. In other words, as well as power, Africa will also get clean drinking water. The solar fields will be in uninhabitable desert areas. And Europe will get something like 30 billion watts of power - for context Britain's entire electricity generating capacity today is 12 billion watts.

If all this sounds too good to be true, then the catch is that at the moment this clean, sustainable energy is hugely expensive - twice the cost of coal-power. It's no good for the Green movement to dismiss cost: most people are already stretched too thinly to be able to afford a doubling of their power bills, which will hit the poorest the most.

Nor should they have to - this isn't an insurmountable problem. Again, technology is the answer: more efficient means of storing and transporting the power and more powerful solar cells will bring the cost down and I'd far rather the government invest in and subsidise clean fuel than oil producers in order to level the playing field.

You can follow the Bali Conference via the UN's official website at www.unfcccbali.org.