In recent months scientists across the world have reported compelling evidence that we face runaway melting of Arctic sea ice, a shutdown of global ocean circulation systems in the north Atlantic, massive methane releases from melting permafrost in Siberia and Alaska, more violent hurricanes everywhere, and ‘mega-droughts’ from northern China to the American west.  Already the World Health Organisation (WHO) reckons that 160,000 people die each year worldwide from the impacts of climate change, notably malaria, dysentery and malnutrition.  That is fifty times the number who died in the Twin Towers.

Some may dismiss this as remote from Britain, unlikely to affect us, and anyway a risk only in the distant future.  They are wrong.  I call in evidence a rather unlikely witness, George Bush’s top climate modeller, Jim Hansen, who said recently that we have “at most 10 years” to make the drastic cuts in emissions that might head off climate catastrophe.

Nor, in one single highly inter-connected world, are these convulsions everywhere else irrelevant too us.  A recent UN report has warned that rising sea levels, desertification and shrinking freshwater supplies will create up to 50 million environmental refugees by the end of this decade.  They will head to the prosperous industrial countries of the north – here!  If the ocean pumps around Greenland falter, northern European temperatures would plummet to those of Siberia.  The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimates that of 10 of the world’s most dangerous vector-borne diseases, 9 will increase their coverage across the world because of climate change.  As the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets melt,  rising sea levels will threaten coastal cities worldwide, including London, as well as nuclear power stations and chemical waste dumps sited in coastal areas.  Food supplies worldwide will be disrupted by intensifying droughts, and industrial agriculture will be particularly vulnerable to a surge in pathogens and pests from warmer temperatures.

But what is really worrying is that climate disaster is still only in its very early stages and that it is not a linear, but a dynamic, process of intensification.  The very real risk is that a certain ‘tipping points’ dangerous runaway feedbacks could abruptly generate a truly massive surge in carbon release, and ratchet up climate convulsion unpredictably.  The impact of this on human civilisation is at this stage unknowable.

Let me just mention one sudden shock where the climate could flip in a dangerously unforeseeable manner.  Methane hydrates are crystal structures on the edge of continental shelves which, according to the US Geological Survey, contain 10,000 billion tons of carbon (that is over 1,000 times more than we currently pump into the atmosphere each year) in the form of methane which is 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2.  This is one of the largest reservoirs of fossil fuels in the world.

If the temperature in the surrounding water or sediment is increased to the point where a methane hydrate becomes unstable, methane gas is released instantly.  Hence, where water is relatively shallow and consequently easier to heat, as in the Arctic (which is already heating two to three times faster than the global average), tens, if not hundreds, of billions of tons of methane could be released.  The resulting boost to the greenhouse effect would be cataclysmic.

So, is all this inevitable and irreversible?  Some is, but far the greater part is still to come and can still be slowed and over time halted.  But it requires much more urgent and radical change in our transportation, economic systems and lifestyles than governments or industries anywhere have yet seriously contemplated.

If climate change is driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, the most essential requirement is that the world diversifies as fast as practicable out of oil, coal and gas into renewable sources of energy – wind-power, biomass, wave and tidal power, and solar energy.  I accept that carbon capture and storage may be an option too, but no clean coal technology prototype has yet been built. 

But are renewables a feasible option?  The answer is yes.  It is true that solar energy and wind power so far provide less than 1% of world energy in total, and still have large hurdles to overcome.  But their potential is enormous.  It has been estimated that Europe’s off-shore wind potential in waters up to 30 metres depth could supply all of the continent’s power.  China has so much wind energy it could double its electricity generation by harnessing it.  The US Department of Energy estimates that just three States – North Dakota, South Dakota and (please note, President Bush) Texas – have enough harnessable wind energy to meet America’s entire electricity requirements.  But that’s all very well for electricity generation, what about our transport systems?  Well, if the aim is to switch from petrol-driven cars to hybrid or fuel cell-driven cars, gas may provide a transitional feedstock to make hydrogen for fuel cell-driven vehicles, and a cost-competitive technology should be developed as rapidly as possible to make hydrogen from renewables.

All countries have to be involved: a global problem requires a global solution.  The Kyoto Protocol aimed to get the 35 main industrialised countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 5% by 2010, compared to 1990.  If the world – 185 countries – is to achieve what the scientists say is necessary, a cut of 60% by 2050, it is imperative post-Montreal that China, India, and the other big developing countries sign up to significant action (even if not immediately to Kyoto targets) to reduce their carbon emissions within limited timescales.  Of course the US, the biggest polluter, must also be brought in at the earliest time, and unquestionably industrial and political opinion there is changing, though not at the level of the Administration.

So what set of policies is now needed which can guarantee to bring climate change under control?  I believe there are three – a programme of contraction and convergence to force the steady phase-out of fossil fuels, a decisive switch towards renewable sources of energy (notably wind, biomass and solar), and a huge boost for enhanced energy efficiency and conservation.  These are not mutually exclusive – in fact we need the all.

First, contraction and convergence.  Fossil fuels are already beginning to run out, but likely in a haphazard and increasingly abrupt manner so that market forces cannot be relied on to deliver the global cap on CO2 emissions required.  Oil now provides 40% of the world energy market.  By 2035 it is estimated the world will require more than twice as much energy as it does today.  Demand for oil will nearly double.  The demand for natural gas, it is widely predicted, will more than double.  These are staggering requirements: so where will all this extra hydrocarbon energy come from?

The answer is – it isn’t there.  For the last decade the world has used some 25 billion barrels of oil a year, but has found on average less than 10 billion barrels of new oil annually.  In other words, demand for oil is soaring, especially from the rapid industrialisation of China and India, while new capacity and reserves are shrinking.  That cannot last for long – at most, 20 – 30 years.  Moreover, the political instability of the world energy market is also growing apace.  By the end of this current decade OPEC will be supplying 40% of the world’s oil, well up from 28% today, and by 2025 90% of global oil exports will come from the Middle East.

If a violent policy of beggar-my-neighbour to extract the lion’s share of the remaining oilfields is to be avoided (and Iraq is not a happy precedent for the American imperium), the a more rational framework is needed to share out the total level of global carbon emissions that can be absorbed in the atmosphere without putting at risk the future life of the planet.  What is that global capacity that the biosphere can tolerate?  That level is generally reckoned by the world’s scientists to be around 550 ppm, twice the level before the Industrial Revolution and roughly 50% higher than today’s level.  To keep within that level, a programme of contraction and convergence is needed.  What that means is that each country would receive an emission quota at its current emissions level.   The quotas of developed nations would then be gradually reduced, and those of developing countries increased to allow them to industrialise, until they converged at a uniform per capita global figure.  For industrialised countries, it means a reduction in our level of carbon emissions, not of 5% as required under the Kyoto Protocol, but of 60% - mind blowing!

The problem of course is now to gain universal political consent to such a framework which is probably the only equitable and long-term feasible allocation.  What are the chances of this becoming the driving force of a new global energy order?  At the moment, not yet in sight.  The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were primarily about oil.  The US is now building up a military presence in West Africa, why?  Because it has known oil reserves of 66 billion barrels – at least a tenth of those in the Arab Middle East.  Significantly, the US showed no interest in sending troops to Liberia, which happens to be oil-less.  And US domestic investment in hydrocarbons continues to rise, with US coal consumption (and CO2 emissions) expected to increase by a further 25% by 2020 when nearly half of its power will come from the coal-fired sector – which, given the jobs and votes attached to that sector, goes a long way to explain US resistance to the Kyoto Protocol.
 
So is contraction and convergence doomed?  I think not.  If the West does not give a lead in seeking to meet the Kyoto targets, when we are the biggest offenders, countries like India and China, with nearly two-fifths of the world’s population, will not follow suit, and a global solution to what is patently a global problem will be out of reach.  The utterly devastating consequences of global warming will then simply be visited on the whole world, including us, all the quicker.  If we delay until climactic disaster is so intense that we are forced to take action to survive, it will be too late because scientists believe there is at least a 200-year lead time before measures taken now will begin to cut CO2 levels in the atmosphere.  But it does mean standing up to the vested interests – primarily the oil and coal lobbies, and the motor vehicle and airline industries.

The second fundamental policy needed is this.  Because the end of Big Oil is now in sight and steadily increasing demand for oil will overtake supply by 2010-15, pushing up the price of oil inexorably, a sustained multi-billion pound investment in renewable sources of energy is now imperative.  The eclipse of oil, the gradual rundown of coal, and the phase-out of nuclear power which should be the policy and was heralded in the UK Government’s Energy White Paper of 2003, now needs to be followed through as the highest priority.

That is not however happening either at global or national level.  Solar energy and wind power have huge potential, but are  not yet ready for prime time.  Together they provide less than half of 1% of the world energy total.  And they still have enormous hurdles to overcome.  The best PV cells still have efficiencies of only 10%, the costs of manufacturing the silicon-based PV cells remain incredibly high, and the power generated is intermittent depending on climactic conditions.

Britain has top ranking in the international wind index not only because of the large extent of unexploited wind resources, but also because of the attractive pricing under the Renewable Obligation Certificates system.  Despite that, still too little is being done to deal with the principal barriers in the form of planning blockages, aviation issues, grid network constraints (both in distribution and transmission), and financing.

Research however has been undertaken at the University of California which could transform the landscape for renewables.  It very revealingly measured the well-to-wheels hidden costs of the pollution each gallon of petrol accounts for, from when the oil is produced and refined to when it is burned in the engine, including air pollution, climate change and crucially military expenditures to protect oil supplies.  If all these externalities  are factored into the price of a car or the price of petrol, as they should be, the hydrogen fuel cell car becomes, dramatically, about 25% cheaper than today’s petrol-driven cars.

That of course needs the politicians to encapsulate environmental costs fully into the fiscal system.  For the moment however, renewables are set to make only a tiny contribution towards the Royal Commission’s demand for a 60% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.  That goal would require a reduction of the order of magnitude of eliminating all present emissions from both the transport and domestic sectors.  Is that remotely practicable?  Well, and here we come to the third arm of overarching policy needed, it is certainly true that the potential of conservation has hardly even begun to be realised.  The volume of energy we squander is prodigious.  US power plants, for example, discard more energy in waste heat than is needed to run the entire Japanese economy.  Only 15% of the energy in a gallon of petrol ever reaches the wheels of a car, and less than a quarter of the energy used in the standard oven reaches the food.  It has been calculated that a mere 2.7 miles-per-gallon improvement in the fuel economy of American cars and light vehicles would be enough to forego oil imports from the Gulf entirely – a rather better solution one would have thought than launching a war in Iraq.   Energy efficiency gains could save more oil than could be found in the ground, and at lower cost than the average market price for oil.  The implications of all this are stunning.  If we reduced energy intensity by just 3% a year, we could meet world demand in 2100 with only a quarter of energy used today.

There is, as always, a catch.  The trouble is that the ‘efficiency dividend’ has so often been misspent.  The fuel economy of cars has improved dramatically over the last decade, but consumers have responded by buying more cars or bigger cars, including the absurdly misnamed SUVs.  Today’s lighting systems are dramatically more efficient, but any potential energy savings are swallowed up by dozens more recessed or track lights.  Other energy savings are spent on more air conditioning systems, big-screen home-entertainment TV centres, and additional refrigerators.  The lesson of all this is the perversity of minimising cost, which is the goal of technology, rather than maximising conservation, which is the goal of the environment,  But it does open up a real prospect of a different energy future – not one based on carbon-free energy sources alone, such as hydrogen fuel cells, which are coming on stream too slowly, but based on these technologies plus huge gains in energy efficiency which could then power cars, houses and industry, requiring only a half or even a quarter of the energy.

But will this happen?  Above all, will the US ever shift its grossly energy-wasteful habits?  Not, I think, quickly or in one leap.  But it will happen.  First will come a ‘bridge economy’, the transitional phase to a new energy order for the US.  It will initially be fuelled by gas, much cleaner than oil or coal, so dramatically increasing the availability of gas should be a prime focus for the US.  Second, a carbon penalty needs to be introduced, perhaps a cap and trade system, but including also developing coal gasification and carbon sequestration as the essence of clean coal.  Third, a massive uplift in US car efficiency should be achieved by re-introducing the highly successful Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards which Reagan abolished in 1987.

Climate change is the biggest challenge mankind has ever faced.  No one policy is sufficient to confront it.  It requires the combination of Contraction and  Convergence to force down, equitably but effectively, the havoc caused by fossil fuels; a massive switch world-wide, led by Government policies and fiscal incentives, into renewable sources of energy; and a huge campaign to maximise conservation and relentlessly squeeze the colossal waste of energy which is endemic in today’s economies.  The political question however as always remains: are we yet ready to do it, when that is clearly where our future lies?  Or will we only be pushed into it by an unbearable accumulation of calamities?