by Alex Evans | Jan 22, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Influence and networks
When David and I wrote our Guardian piece in defence of climate sceptics a couple of weeks ago, we included a story from Stephen Sackur, host of BBC’s Hard Talk, which went like this:
The former vice president harrumphed when I cited a British high court judge who had concluded that the Gore epic An Inconvenient Truth contained a valuable message, but was marred by several exaggerations and distortions. His pallid complexion darkened even more when I mentioned the name of his long-time political foe Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician, who claims that the resources spent on curbing global emissions would be better spent on adaptation and mitigation strategies.
The rest of our encounter was marked by Mr Gore’s heavy sighs and deep frowns … But when the cameras stopped rolling the peace prize winner from Tennessee let me have it with both barrels. I’d compromised my journalistic integrity. The BBC had lost its nerve.
Since then, other victims of Al Gore’s temper have been coming out of the woodwork. One senior private sector climate change expert commented,
I meant to mention to you both that when reading your article I was struck that I had the same experience with Al Gore that Stephen Sackur did. I’d thought I was alone.
Far from it! Earlier that week, an environment correspondent at a UK broadsheet newspaper had been in touch to say that he too had “had a similar experience with Gore” – as had a friend of his in broadcast news.
It’s clearly time to inaugurate a survivors’ group for victims of Al’s temper. Help is here. Reach out.
by Alex Evans | Jan 18, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security
Krishna Kumar at Foreign Policy has the details:
On December 10, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced his top-secret plan for saving the planet from global warming. Debuting at Washington’s Dulles Airport, and then being rolled out to all ports of entry to the United States in 2008, all incoming aliens between 14 and 79 must now have all 10 of their fingerprints electronically scanned and recorded.
Now you might think that this was all about spotting false identities – but only if you’re an idiot, as Kumar explains:
When you look at what’s actually been accomplished by fingerprinting aliens, it’s clear that mistaken identity can’t be the real purpose. Since 2000, according to Secretary Chertoff, the U.S. government has stopped nearly 2,000 people from entering the country because their fingerprints didn’t match. But the United States has more than 400 million visitors a year, including returning Americans—or roughly 2.8 billion visitors since starting the program. That translates to a success rate of well over one in a million.
So what can be the real reason? Well, this is where Chertoff’s genius starts to shine through. Already, the scheme has notched up one major success:
It has gotten the Europeans in a hissy fit. With the recent decline in the dollar, Americans ought to be seeing hordes of Europeans flying west to take advantage of the bargains. But while the number of international visitors is starting to recover from its 2001 low point, travelers from Europe are not returning in the same numbers. Many whine about “Soviet-style” border-control officials and say they’re being treated like criminals.
And thank goodness for that:
Europeans are so cheap they have entire countries, such as Luxembourg and Andorra, that exist only to sell discounted products to their neighbors. Imagine what would happen if they realized that the world’s largest consumer economy is having a 50-percent-off sale. Imagine the chaos in malls across the United States as non-English speaking Europeans tried to navigate parking spaces and checkout lines and buy what should rightfully be Americans’ post-Christmas discounts. And imagine if German- and French-speaking entrepreneurs had more opportunities to invest in U.S. assets, pushing up stock prices for the rest of us. Without the fingerprints in place, the prospect of Europeans streaming across our borders, armed with cash, could be a lot more alarming.
But even this can’t be the whole reason, given that today’s global economy still hampers Homeland Security’s valiants efforts to “keep unwanted euros out of the US economy”. And that’s where climate change comes in.
If DHS can reduce demand on those flights by scaring away Europeans (and hey, why not include the Japanese in this, too?), the department can help drive struggling U.S. airlines into further financial distress by eliminating their most profitable routes. And fewer flights means fewer emissions. Zero trans-oceanic flights would be the ultimate goal.
What kind of effect might even partial success have on carbon emissions? Here’s a back-of-the napkin estimate. Since 2000, there’s been a dramatic decline in visitors from the 27 (mostly European) countries that participate in the Visa Waiver Program. Using 2000 as a baseline, there are more than 22 million missing visitors. By not taking trans-Atlantic flights (and flights from Australia and Japan), they have saved more than 60 million tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted by airplanes. By comparison, in 2006, we saved just 45 million tons of CO2 by installing windmills worldwide.
What’s even better is that this brilliant climate-change plan is being adopted globally. Japan has announced it is starting to fingerprint all visitors, and even the Europeans are getting into the act. If other countries begin to scare away the millions of Americans who travel abroad by fingerprinting them, too, a more carbon-free future surely awaits.
You know, a lot of people knocked the Department for Homeland Security when they started out. But you gotta hand it to them: they’ve become a veritable turbo engine for joined-up government…
by Alex Evans | Jan 17, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity
Chris Haskins knows a bit about food. He’s the former chairman of Northern Foods and Express Dairies, acted as Tony Blair’s ‘rural tsar’, and he used to run the government’s Better Regulation Task Force. So it’s rather arresting to find him in the pages of this month’s edition of Prospect asking if we’re seeing the return of Malthus (full article only available to subscribers, unfortunately):
Over 200 years ago, Thomas Malthus argued that population would outrun food supply, and that without stern limits on reproduction the world was heading for disaster. So far, he has proved utterly mistaken; the world’s population has increased tenfold and there is less starvation than in his day. But the global population will probably rise from 6.5bn to 9bn by 2050, which will require the world’s farmers to produce more food in the next 40 years than in the past 200. The Malthusian predictions were wrong for 200 years, but might prove right in the next 50.
So what, Haskins goes on, must be done to avoid a “Malthusian catastrophe”? Three things. First, science and technology must be harnessed to improve the output of existing land – and yes, that includes GM crops. Second, we should take a long hard look at policies designed to promote biofuels. And third,
…we, as individuals, must stop using energy at the rate we do, and wasting food to the extent that we do. At present we waste nearly half of the food we produce, throwing perfectly good food away in our kitchens, restaurants and shops. The most virtuous and responsible step of all would be to become vegetarian. About three quarters of the world’s wheat, maize and soya is fed to animals who then convert this, very inefficiently, into meat for us to eat. Something else to bear in mind is that our consumption of milk products maintains demand for millions of cows, each of which, through its burping and farting, does more environmental damage than the average family car.
Just as with climate change, where there’s a heated debate about the difference between ‘luxury’ emissions (trips to St Lucia) versus ‘essential’ emissions (methane from rice paddies), the issue of equity is starting to emerge with food. Water will be next, as scarcity worsens and the concept of virtual water becomes more widely understood. It’s about fair shares, stupid.
by Alex Evans | Jan 9, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Influence and networks
David and I have an article on the Guardian’s Comment is Free site this morning. Here’s a taster:
As we move from discussing the problem of climate change to discussing the solution to it, new sceptics are going to start coming out of the woodwork. Some of them may even be morons or Exxon lobbyists. But the majority will be people who are simply coming to the issue afresh, have some doubts, and need to be won over.
Treating these people as heretics is a monumental free gift to insurgents in the climate debate who really do want to block any serious action on the issue – because it allows them to portray themselves as David, and the Climate Establishment as Goliath.
Being cast as Goliath is fine if your strategy is based on demonstrating that you have overwhelming force and that you can force your audience to do what you want if they don’t play ball. But it is a very bad position to be in when – as with climate change – success depends on winning hearts and minds.
by Alex Evans | Jan 7, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, East Asia and Pacific
This year’s G8 summit is brought to you by Japan, who as David Pilling reports have decided to hold the event in a uniquely Japanese-sounding venue: the Windsor Hotel on Hokkaido.
As with the Germany G8 at Heiligendamm last year, Japan plans to put climate change front and centre – an issue on which, Pilling reports, “Japan likes to feel it has strong leadership credentials”.
Japan has among the world’s most advanced energy-saving technology and lent its name to the Kyoto Protocol, a breakthrough agreement, albeit a flawed one. That gives it the moral authority, officials say, to act as a bridge between the far-flung positions of the US, Europe, China and India.
But, he goes on, that strategy is not without challenges:
Japanese officials admit that their “bridging” strategy is fraught with difficulties. At home, the government is handcuffed by the intransigent attitude of business, which insists on voluntary cuts rather than mandatory targets reinforced by a carbon tax. Partly as a result, Japan is far from achieving its Kyoto targets and is likely to make up much of the difference by buying emission rights.
The debate is also moving very quickly, say officials. The growing scientific and political consensus on the urgency of tackling global warming could rapidly make Tokyo’s emphasis on technology and voluntary national targets out of date. Some Japanese officials say that, by July, serious discussion may well have shifted to the cap-and-trade mechanisms favoured by Europe.
International development, too, figures heavily among Japanese priorities. Fletcher Tembo has a good discussion of this on the Overseas Development Institute’s blog, where he observes that while the midpoint for the Millennium Development Goals has just passed, levels of aid to developing countries still haven’t increased significantly – at least, not after debt relief (supposed in theory to be additional to aid) and aid to Afghanistan and Iraq have been taken off the balance sheet.
But in practice, there’s every chance that events will buffet the Japanese agenda – especially if oil prices continue their upward march and the solvency crunch continues to worsen. Meantime, the elephant in the room continues to be: how substantive a discussion of climate and energy is it actually possible to have without China and India as full participants (rather than guests invited for canapes)? Quite a challenge for Yasuo Fukuda, the new PM – Japan’s third in a year…
PS. As preparations for the summit (to be held from 7 – 9 July) get going in earnest, the best website to watch will – as ever – be that of the G8 Information Centre at the University of Toronto. Meanwhile, here’s the official Japanese website too, where the ‘What’s New’ section today helpfully informs us that the domain name has been renewed for 2008. Lucky, that.
