Out of the Frying Pan,
into the Flood:
Global
Warming and Weather Disruption
CONTENTS:
1. Introduction: the links between environmental
disasters, climate change and government policies on fossil fuels
2. The effects of climate change on the United Kingdom
3. The effects of climate change on developing countries
4. Climate change: the political problem in the UK
5. Policies for stopping climate change: a brief summary
6. Conclusion
7. References
1. Introduction
The links between
environmental disasters, climate change and government policies on fossil fuels
1.1 Scientists and Greens have
been predicting for many years that the process of climate change, caused by
the burning of fossil fuels, would cause severe weather disruption around the
world. In Britain, the last few years have seen the first major evidence of
this, and autumn 2000 has been particularly significant. Bad storms and
flooding have been followed closely by worse storms and worse flooding, including
weather events in late October which killed five people, caused a billion
pounds' worth of damage, and left large areas of the country under water.
1.2 Natural disasters will
always happen, and it's impossible to blame any particular weather event on
climate change. However, scientists agree that the overall frequency and
average intensity of such events are increasing, and will continue to increase,
as a result of climate change. Scientists also agree that the worst effects of
climate change could be averted through changes in government policies around
the world - towards policies which replace the burning of fossil fuels with
alternatives which don't disrupt the climate.
1.3 Autumn 2000 saw the New
Labour government jump from one crisis to another - and fail to make the links
between the inadequacy of its policy on fossil fuels, and the consequences of
climate change. In September, severe fuel shortages demonstrated our
over-dependency on oil - the third oil crisis in as many decades. The fuel crisis
also saw the UK government completely fail to make the social, economic and
environmental case for higher taxes on fuel - taxes necessary to reduce traffic
as a major part of our strategy to tackle climate change. The government was
also failing to invest the proceeds of its fuel tax in sustainable transport
alternatives. Then during the weather catastrophes of October - which the
environment minister acknowledged were attributable to climate change - again
the government failed to draw attention to the links between its policies, its
feeble targets for CO2 reductions, and the consequences of changing the
climate.
1.4 Between these two national
crises, prime minister Tony Blair made his first major speech on the
environment. It had taken him four years to make such a speech, and in it, he
demonstrated that his environmental thinking was twenty years behind the times.
No wonder his government lacks the policies to tackle climate change and other
environmental problems. No wonder his fuel tax policy impacted most on the
people who could least afford it, while failing to significantly reduce traffic
and thus help tackle climate change. No wonder he stumbled from a fuel crisis
to a weather crisis - out of the frying pan, into the floods.
1.5 This briefing highlights
the extent of the climate crisis, and outlines the policies necessary to deal
with it in a socially equitable and economically advantageous manner.
2. The
effects of climate change on the United Kingdom
2.1 The Environment Agency has
warned that Britain could become "a flood hot-spot." Climate change
has caused a 10% increase in Britain's rainfall. This has contributed to an
increase in flooding, with some 30 significant floods in England and Wales in
the 30 months to September 2000. On average, each flood has killed someone.
Some 2 million homes and businesses in England and Wales are now at risk of
flooding, and 5 million people live in flood-prone areas. The property, land
and other assets in these areas have been estimated at £214 billion. That's the
extent of the economic risk to England and Wales from climate change [1].
2.2 The Environment Agency is
currently spending about £130 million a year on flood defences in England and
Wales. Even so, total losses - insured and uninsured - from flooding amount to
£600 million a year. In 1999 insurers paid out some £49 million in domestic
flood claims, and paid out a further £17 million during the first quarter of
2000. Floods in Yorkshire and County Durham in June 2000 alone led to insurance
claims of £12 million [2]. The average household claim after flooding exceeds
£6000 [3] - so that if each home and business in flood-prone areas were to
suffer one flood, the overall cost would exceed £12 billion. The weather events
which killed five people in late October 2000 alone caused damage estimated at
£1 billion [4].
2.3 The indirect dangers posed
by climate change include the threat to nuclear power stations. Scientists have
predicted that some of Britain's key nuclear installations are at risk,
including Hinckley Point, Dungeness, Sizewell and Sellafield [5].
2.4 The above figures only
concern direct collateral damage. They don't include the indirect economic
costs of disruption - loss of earnings, loss of productivity etc. Nor do they
include the incalculable burden on individual lives - the human costs of
bereavement, injury, distress, of losing irreplaceable personal property, and
of having homes wrecked. Nor does the above take into account other potential
consequences of climate change, such as the migration of tropical diseases into
Europe.
3. The
effects of climate change on developing countries
3.1 Devastating as the
consequences of climate change are on a country like the UK, by far the worst
effects of climate change will occur in the developing world - which has been
feeling these effects for some years already. The flooding which hit the UK in
October 2000 was far less severe than that which made 15 million Bangladeshis
homeless shortly before [6]. Other countries may be primarily affected by life-threatening
drought. Those whose water supplies depend on the preservation of glaciers -
glaciers which are melting faster than they are being replenished by new
ice-formation - suffer the short-term problem of immense riverine flooding, and
the longer-term prospect dwindling water supplies.
3.2 Summer 2000 alone
witnessed storms in Taiwan, Brazil and Canada; floods in Bangladesh, Japan,
Vietnam and India; fires in the USA, Italy and the Balkans; and droughts in
Burundi, Croatia, Kenya and Iran [7].
3.3 Some 96% of deaths from
natural disasters occur in developing countries. The number of people needing
assistance from aid agencies multiplied tenfold in the six years to 1999. Aid
agencies are expecting a "decade of super-disasters." [8]
3.4 Christian Aid has accused
wealthy countries of causing most of the pollution which impacts most heavily
on poorer countries. Its report Unnatural Disasters attacks countries
like the UK for causing developing countries to experience "an ever
increasing number of overwhelming humanitarian catastrophes."
Environmental disasters created 25 million refugees in 1998, more than the
number affected by wars. That year, some 300 million people were affected by
storms, torrential rain, landslides and tidal waves, and forty-five countries
were stricken by drought. According to Christian Aid, the next 20 years could
see as many as 245 climate-related disasters. And by 2020, 75% of the world's
population will be at risk from droughts or floods [9].
3.5 Estimates of the economic
costs of climate change vary considerably, according to the assumptions of
different studies. The Global Commons Institute has shown that the bill for
climate change could be 0.5% of global gross domestic product, or as much as
200% [10]. According to existing insurance industry figures, the cost of
environmental disasters has doubled every decade from $50 billion in the 1960s
to nearly $400 billion in the past 10 years [11].
3.6 The situation will
continue to get worse as long as governments fail to implement the policies
necessary to stopping climate change. The 1990s were the warmest decade on
record, and the earth's ice cover is melting in more places and at higher rates
than at any time since record keeping began. Large-scale ice-melts may give
global warming an unstoppable momentum of its own, as the ice serves to cool
the planet by reflecting some of the sun's warmth. The melting of both
Antarctic ice sheets would raise sea levels nearly 70 metres [12].
4. Climate change: the political problem in the UK
4.1 The UK government admitted
in its 2000 Annual Report that: "Already the effects of climate change are
showing. More violent tropical storms, more droughts and more flooding, in
Europe and around the world. The cost in lives and in damage to crops and buildings
is huge." [13] However, even after decades of lobbying by Greens, it still
lacks the essential targets, and doesn't have the policies necessary to meeting
even those inadequate targets.
4.2 The Royal Commission on
Environmental Pollution has acknowledged that the world must reduce CO2
emissions by 60% from 1990 levels by 2050 in order to avert the worst
consequences of global warming. It regarded the New Labour government's target
of 20% emissions by 2010 as merely a step in the right direction - and
expressed doubt that the government's existing policies could achieve that
target, let alone sustain further reductions beyond that date [14]. New Labour
has proclaimed its leading role in achieving the international agreement on CO2
reductions in Kyoto in 1997 - but as this committed the world to the laughable
target of just 5.2% reductions by 2012, [15] this doesn't say a great deal
about New Labour's understanding of the problem, let alone its
"leadership."
4.3 Moreover, for the world to
achieve 60% reductions in an equitable manner, those countries which have
caused most of the pollution, and are the worst polluters still, must reduce
emissions by 80-90%. The UK government and the biggest opposition parties have
yet to even recognise this. Their policies, therefore, don't even start from
the necessary understanding, let alone face up to the requisite targets. No
wonder they lack the policies to deal with climate change - indeed, in certain
key areas, the policies of all three big British political parties are still
going in the wrong direction. For example, the New Labour government abandoned
its repeated general election promise of traffic reduction, and now has
policies geared to continuing traffic growth - which has included a regression
to Conservative policies of more roadbuilding. Having abandoned
"reductions in traffic" in favour of "reductions in traffic growth"
- the Labour spindoctors' way of making more traffic sound like less - the
government hasn't even made much progress on reducing traffic growth. The Royal
Commission on Environmental Pollution said it was "disappointed at slow
progress in implementing the measures required to curb traffic growth and
regrets that successive governments have not devoted more of the revenues from
the fuel duty escalator to developing alternatives to car use." [16]
4.4 New Labour and the Liberal
Democrats may currently be falling over each other in the quest to be seen as
'Green', but they are both fundamentally committed to policies which are
exacerbating climate change. Apart from their transport policies - including
their enthusiasm to expand the aviation industry, which is already the
fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions - the most significant
example is their trade policy, which is contributing to the ever-increasing
distances which goods travel, leading to a worsening of the overall effects of
transport all over the world, not least its contribution to global warming.
5. Policies for stopping climate change
5.1 The Green Party has
comprehensive policies for reducing CO2 emissions [17]. The following is a
brief indication of where the UK government must start, based on an
acknowledgement of the need to cut UK CO2 emissions by 80-90% from 1990 levels
by 2050. The key sectors are:
-
A strategy for major traffic reduction.
-
A strategy for sustainable development in the aviation
sector.
-
Massive investment in non-fuel-intensive transport
systems.
-
Economic development towards minimising routine
transportation of people and goods.
-
A tax regime which minimises pollution from transport.
-
(Additional benefits: better public transport, cleaner
air, better health, fewer road accidents, more jobs, major reduction in the
hidden economic costs of road and air transport.)
-
Massive investment in non-nuclear renewable energy
production.
-
Major investment in energy conservation measures, both
domestic and industrial.
-
A tax regime which minimises pollution from energy
production.
-
(Additional benefits: more jobs, better health, reduced
vulnerability to fuel shortages, an end to fuel poverty, lower domestic fuel
bills.)
-
Economic policies which deter avoidable long-distance
transportation of goods and promote local production for local need wherever
practicable.
-
Aid policies which foster economic self-reliance in
developing countries to the greatest possible extent - rather than increasing
developing countries' dependency on exports of raw materials and
cheaply-manufactured goods.
-
(Additional benefits: greater economic stability, fairer
global distribution of wealth.)
- Economic policies which promote the less fuel-intensive sectors and deter the more highly polluting sectors.
-
A tax regime which deters avoidable pollution.
-
(Additional benefits: more sustainable job-creation,
healthier food.)
6. Conclusion
6.1 Climate change poses what
is probably the greatest single threat to humanity. It's a problem of
increasing urgency requiring radical action. It's quite clear what needs to be
done, and what additional benefits will be gained from implementing a sound
climate policy.
6.2 As far as the UK is
concerned, probably the greatest problem is government policy. Whatever may be
achieved by individual action to reduce our own impacts, government policy can
be a major help or a major hindrance. None of the big three political parties
has even demonstrated a sound understanding of the problem, let alone developed
the policies necessary to deal with it.
6.3 The Green Party has the
policies. What we need in order to see those policies implemented is greater
support. Every Green politician elected is another voice for change. Every
increase in our vote, at any political level, forces the bigger parties to turn
their attention to what we are saying. Every new member, and every donation,
helps us campaign for a socially just and ecologically sustainable society. And
that's what we need to achieve if we are to halt the destructive process of
climate change.
7.
References
1. Environment Agency figures.
2. Environment Agency figures.
3. Insurance industry figure cited by Environment Agency.
4. The Times, 31.10.00.
5. Dr Edward Hill, Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, cit Martin Bright, Observer,
6.2.00.
6. Red Pepper, October 2000.
7. "Indications of climate change - recent extreme global weather
events", 5.10.00, Friends of the Earth International. See www.foeeurope.org/dike/avoid.htm
8. World Disasters Report 1999, International Federation of Red Cross
and Red Crescent Societies, Environmental News Network, 24.6.99.
9. Christian Aid's briefing paper and Policy Position Paper on global warming
can be found at: www.christian-aid.org.uk
10. See "defending the value of life," www.gci.org.uk/vol/vol.html
11. Munich Reinsurance, cit Paul Brown, The Guardian, 15.5.00.
12. Worldwatch News Brief 00-02, Worldwatch Institute, 2000. For
numerous examples of ice-melts - including the loss of 50% of the European
Alps' glacial volume in the last 150 years - see www.worldwatch.org/alerts/000306t.html
13. See www.annualreport.gov.uk
14. See Energy - The Changing Climate, RCEP, 2000.
15. See www.financialcrimes.com/pages/story9.htm
16. See Chapter 6 of Energy - The Changing Climate, paragraphs
6.107-6.128.
17. See the Green Party's Manifesto for a Sustainable Society.