A few things have come together in the last few days to stir me from my sloth (I have, after all, been thinking about penning this for some time). More on what those things are below. First things first.

When Thomas Paine wrote the Age of Reason some 230 years ago, it represented both an attack on traditional religion and a call for reason and rationality to come to the fore when debating. Following what is sometimes known as the Age of Enlightenment, humanity was moving towards an era of increasing scientific knowledge and greater questioning of all that was taken for granted. Scientific knowledge improved because it was never still, the science was never settled, and logic and reason underpinned ongoing questioning and the search for better understanding. That was then. This is now.

What is the climate we “ought” to have – and why?

It’s widely known that our planet has been in existence for around 4.6 billion years. During some of that time, it has been speculated, the planet was frozen solid for what (to humankind) are periods of such length as to be beyond all conceivable timescales. At such times, we are told, the equator was as cold as the poles are today. At other times the earth’s currently icy poles have been rather warm and covered in lush vegetation and forests. According to this study which I discussed here “[l]ate Pliocene and Early Pleistocene epochs 3.6 to 0.8 million years ago had…mean annual temperatures of 11–19 °C above contemporary values…”. So our planet has (many times) been much hotter than it is today and much colder than it is today, and no doubt has experienced every conceivable climate in-between. As it happens, humanity today possibly lives in something of a “Goldilocks” period, but today’s climate is probably (for some of humanity at least) rather pleasanter and more fruitful than the climate as recently as 250 years ago. In A Yeoman’s Diary I discussed the detailed record left to us by the daily diary of Cumbrian resident Isaac Fletcher. Of course, life was harder then, simply because society lacked so many of the luxuries which we take for granted – double glazing, central heating, motor and air transport and much, much more. However, leaving that to one side, it is quite apparent from reading Isaac Fletcher’s diary that the climate was worse then than now. Floods and storms were regular occurrences, and by and large it was much colder then than currently – so cold that on at least one occasion “the frost got into the houses. Froze the piss in the pots under the beds.” I summarised it thus:

Isaac Fletcher’s wonderful diaries demonstrate very clearly that if the climate has changed since the late 18^th century, then in the part of Cumberland where Isaac lived then (and where I live now), it has probably changed for the better. If anything, judging by his diaries, it’s not so unpleasantly cold now as then, and winters are no longer so dreadfully prolonged. For every “extreme weather event” Cumbria sees today, Isaac’s Cumberland probably saw several. His diaries reveal long cold winters with spring delayed until late May; they show one spring that came earlier than anyone could remember; there were wet and miserable summers, there were hot summers and there were droughts; there were numerous damaging floods and there were dangerous storms. Some years saw a quite astonishing variety of extreme weather. Nothing was predictable. A glorious early spring morphed into a bitterly cold late spring, followed by a hot summer.

And yet we are constantly told (here, for example) that it’s imperative that we keep temperatures to within 1.5C of the pre-industrial average. Why that blink of an eye in the life of the planet represents the paradigm that must be preserved at all costs is never explained – or, rather, it has not been explained to my satisfaction. The reality, it seems to me, is that many people can think only in human time-scales, despite the fact that self-evidently the planet’s climate doesn’t operate in that way. I don’t think it requires much thought to understand that sitting Canute-like in front of a changing climate that has always changed and always will, isn’t remotely realistic. However, what if I am wrong?

Should we try to prevent the climate from changing?

Reading the transcript of a discussion on the BBC, supplied by John Ridgway in his latest piece I was struck by the fatuous and evidence-free nature of some of the comments, such as “You can’t compare a milder temperature in Scotland as a benefit when the trade-off is billions of people dying”and “We are seeing the number of people who are suffering malnutrition and starving already increase by more than 300 million as a direct effect of the climate crisis.”

The truth is that far more people (in every continent, and across the whole planet generally) die from extreme cold than from extreme heat, and humankind has never before produced so much food – as it needs to if it’s to sustain a global human population of around 8.2 billion (four times the number of people on the planet just a century ago). If Isaac Fletcher’s Diaries (from the mid- to late-eighteenth century) are anything to go by, many more people would have died from extreme temperatures (cold, overwhelmingly), from starvation and from extreme weather (floods, mostly) a few hundred years ago if there had then been 8.2 billion people on the planet than do so now. In reality, due both to the fact that agricultural and scientific advances hadn’t yet been made then, but also due to what was arguably a worse climate then, this planet almost certainly could not have sustained so many people as it does now.

But let’s assume that we have reached an optimal climate, and that we should and can – by controlling greenhouse gas emissions – seek to maintain it. How can that be done? Well, as the whole COP process suggests, it will need:

Global Co-operation

Back to the debate transcribed by John Ridgway. It included this pearl of wisdom:

Well first of all, we can’t do this alone, and therefore we don’t just want the UK going off on its own doing this. Just Stop Oil is saying that the UK needs to sign up to a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty saying that… Agreeing with the leading countries around the world that we need to have a clear plan to get everybody off oil and gas.

I am not sure what the doctor who spoke those words thinks has been going on for the last thirty or so years at all those “Conference of the Parties” jamborees, known as COPs, that have singularly failed to achieve the “non-proliferation treaty” which he seeks. It ought to have been apparent at least since COP 15 in Copenhagen in 2009 that China (responsible on an ongoing basis for around 30% of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions) has no intention of signing any such treaty. Nor do lots of other developing countries, whose understandable priority (given their levels of poverty) is to develop, thereby improving the lot of their impoverished masses, not to “save the planet”. As Wikipedia puts it:

The Copenhagen Accord was drafted by the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa on 18 December, and judged a “meaningful agreement” by the United States government. It was “taken note of”, but not “adopted”, in a debate of all the participating countries the next day, and it was not passed unanimously. The document recognised that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of the present day and that actions should be taken to keep any temperature increases to below 2°C. The document is not legally binding and does not contain any legally binding commitments for reducing CO2 emissions.

Interestingly, the Wikipedia page on COP15 goes on to say:

UK Climate Change secretary Ed Miliband accused China specifically of sinking an agreement, provoking a counter response from China that British politicians were engaging in a political scheme.

Has he learned anything from that? See below.

China, of course, has determinedly insisted, throughout the COP process, that it be defined as a developing country, thereby ensuring that even with the non-binding nature of such treaties as have been signed, it receives generous treatment allowing it to shirk its “responsibilities”. Bizarrely, advanced nations such as South Korea have also clung on to this privileged status.

The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (“EDGAR”) has just been updated, and it provides fascinating reading for those who wish to understand the geopolitical reality surrounding greenhouse gas emissions. The detail is well worth exploring, but the introduction is telling enough:

Since the beginning of 21st century, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions had followed an increasing trend mainly due to the increase in emissions from China and the other emerging economies. As a result, the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases substantially increased…

…in 2023 China, India, Russia and Brazil increased their emissions compared to 2022, with India having the largest increase in relative terms (+ 6.1%) and China the largest absolute increase by 784 Mt CO2eq. With only two exceptions, 2009 (global financial crisis) and 2020 (COVID-19), global GHG emissions have grown steadily since the beginning of the 21st century, mainly due to the increase in fossil CO2 emissions by China, India, and other emerging economies. Based on the emission estimates for 2023 provided by EDGAR, global GHG emissions increased by 1.9% compared to 2022, reaching 53.0 Gt CO2eq….

An analysis by sector (power industry; industrial combustion and processes; buildings; transport; fuel exploitation; agriculture; and waste) shows that emissions have grown globally in all of them over time frames analysed (starting in 1990). Globally, overall emissions have grown by 2% between 2022 and 2023; by 28% between 2005 and 2023; and by 62% between 1990 and 2023.

Between 1990 and 2023 China’s emissions have more than quadrupled. India’s have more than trebled, as have Indonesia’s. Brazil’s have almost doubled, and Bangladesh’s have more than doubled. Pakistan’s have increased by over 250%. Saudi Arabia’s have more than trebled. South Korea’s have more than doubled (it’s handy being defined as a “developing” country). The emissions of the United Arab Emirates have more than trebled. And so on.

Global Leadership?

Meanwhile the UK’s emissions over the same timescale have almost halved. Sceptics have long been used to pointing out that UK emissions are around 1% of the global total, but EDGAR’s update tells us that in fact that proportion has reduced to 0.72%. Over the same timescale (1990-2023) John Kerry’s USA has reduced its emissions by all of 4% (physician, heal thyself).

It really ought to be apparent by now to anyone with the slightest ability to parse geopolitical reality that – with the exception of the EU and one or two states whose emissions are so small as to be borderline insignificant – the rest of the world isn’t interested in following the UK’s “leadership”. Yet our political leaders seem to be incapable of understanding that incredibly simple truth. The Guardian reported last month that the UK’s new Foreign Secretary “seeks to put UK at centre of a reinvigorated climate fight”, while Mr Miliband recently made a speech to the United Nations in which he told it “that in the new United Kingdom government, you have a partner that wants to show global leadership on these critical issues around the climate crisis…The world has been waiting for too long. [Oh, so you have noticed that the rest of the world is waiting, not doing] Now is not simply the time for bold words, it is the time for bold action. And in the new United Kingdom government, you have a government committed to take that action in partnership with states around the world, particularly those states threatened by sea-level rise.”

But the whole point, Messrs Lammy and Miliband, as anyone can see by looking at the data, is that most of the countries in the rest of the world aren’t following your “lead”. Why would they? It was reported not so long ago that for the first time since anyone took note of such things (probably for the first time in a quarter of a millennium) the UK has slipped out of the top ten global rankings with regard to manufacturing, slipping from 8^th to 12^th. Why might that be?

Energy Prices

It has just been reported that according to the UK government’s own data, the UK now has the highest electricity prices globally, significantly exceeding those in various European countries. Given the extent that the UK has ploughed ahead with renewable energy in the mix, one might have thought that this would give pause for thought to anyone claiming (as UK government ministers do ad nauseam) that adding more renewables to the UK energy system will drive down electricity prices.

As our very own Jit has shown “the more of your electricity you obtain by harvesting wind, the more expensive it gets.” The empirical data support that conclusion, and yet we still had Carbon Brief touting the claim that renewables are nine times cheaper than gas (they aren’t). It is my belief that anyone with an ounce of understanding of the basis on which that claim was made would not have repeated it, yet not only Caroline Lucas of the Green Party, but our new Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero have all done so. Have they any knowledge regarding the cost calculations? Do they understand the Levelised Cost of Electricity?

Tackling Climate Change?

From local authorities to Welsh pressure groups there seems to be an obsession with “tackling climate change”, yet given the UK’s emissions (now 0.72% of the global total, and falling, remember) the application of a little thought should facilitate understanding that nothing the UK does about its emissions can make the slightest difference to the global climate, let alone “tackle” climate change. But logic, it seems, never enters into this.

And so we see the BBC reporting on the government’s announcement that it is going to waste up to £22 billion of UK taxpayer’s money pushing carbon capture and storage, with the headline “Will carbon capture help the UK tackle climate change?” Inevitably there is no suggestion that it won’t. Nor is there much, if any, recognition, that even in the unlikely event that a technology that hasn’t been proved to work at scale does get off the ground, it isn’t going to make much difference to the UK’s total emissions:

The aim is for these initial projects to start capturing and storing CO2 from 2028, with a capacity to take up 8.5 million tonnes per year.

This would still be a small fraction of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, which in 2023 were 384 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent, according to provisional figures.

We sceptics find ourselves with strange bedfellows opposing carbon capture and storage. We think it’s pointless, unproven, absurdly expensive, and likely to remove at best minuscule volumes of CO2 (which seem to me to be rational grounds for opposing it). Others oppose it because of safety fears. If those fears have validity, then that would certainly be a rational reason for opposition too. But many green groups oppose it, not for rational reasons relating to its ineffectiveness or potential danger, but in case it does work. Their concern is that successful carbon capture technology would allow us to continue burning fossil fuels. However, as fossil fuels are generally cheaper than the alternatives and as opposition to their use from “green” groups is generally because of the putative effect on the climate of the greenhouse gases they emit, any such opposition is not remotely rational. But as we have seen, when it comes to climate change and net zero, reason doesn’t get much of a look-in these days.

For instance, here is Ed Miliband, speaking in Parliament:

This investment is the right thing to do for Britain. CCUS will unlock the decarbonisation of hard-to-abate sectors, from chemicals to cement; enable the production of low-carbon hydrogen; and, by capturing emissions from gas-fired power stations, play an important role, alongside renewables and nuclear, in delivering clean power by 2030 and beyond. That is why experts in bodies ranging from the Climate Change Committee to the International Energy Agency are clear that carbon capture is critical to our meeting our climate commitments. There are those who doubt that. To them I quote James Richardson, the acting chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, who said on Friday quite simply:

“We can’t hit the country’s targets without CCUS”.

Yet, as we have seen, this “investment” (remember, where net zero is concerned, it’s always an investment, never a cost), will result in minimal storage of CO2 as a percentage of the UK’s total emissions. So the Ministerial statement amounts to an admission that we can’t hit the country’s net zero targets. Claire Coutinho responded on behalf of the Opposition, and while in my opinion she remains confused regarding net zero (she certainly creates the impression of fully supporting carbon capture and storage) she did manage to display some reasoning capacity that is lacking on the government benches:

The Secretary of State has talked about the importance of UK decarbonisation in tackling climate change, but will he acknowledge that his plans to target UK production will not mean that we use less? They will just leave us importing more from abroad—importing more oil and gas from the United States and the middle east, and importing more steel from China, which is still 60% powered by coal. Will he acknowledge that both those developments will actually increase global emissions? It would be carbon accounting gone mad. It might leave some in the green lobby cheering at our reduced emissions, but overall there would be more carbon in the atmosphere and fewer jobs here in Britain. Is the Labour party seriously going to be responsible for the end of steelmaking in the UK, with the added cost of the loss of more than 10,000 jobs in our most left-behind communities?

Needless to say, the answer is “yes”, not that Mr Miliband conceded the point, engaging instead in what I regard as knockabout politics of the sort that is all too prevalent in Parliament when politicians don’t want to answer a simple question.

Conclusion

My old inner city comprehensive school was – before I arrived there – a grammar school, and it had a motto. Although it was no longer a grammar school in my time, nobody thought to suggest that the motto should be in anything other than Latin. Post tenebras lux – after darkness, light. It was a good motto, implying that we pupils arrived wrapped in the darkness of ignorance, but education would bring forth the light of knowledge and understanding. How times have changed. The light is fading now. If it was appropriate for a country to have a motto, then I think the UK’s might be post lux tenebras. The metaphorical darkness of ignorance, and the very real darkness created by power cuts are now nearer than ever. The last person to leave won’t need to put the lights out – they will already be off.