The Climate for Change Climate change … is an urgent threat to

							The Climate for Change

                         It is not long since issues such as climate change, global warming
                         and loss of biodiversity could be seen as soft, aesthetic ones:
                         matters for ageing hippies and Environmental Departments. With Jim
                         Morrison, we might deplore what mankind was doing to the earth:
                                         Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
                                        And tied her with fences and dragged her down
 Anthony Cary has been the     But this was mere self-indulgence: a longing for Arcadia and lost
  UK’s High Commissioner       innocence. Such sentimental reflections did not drive policy.
  (Ambassador) to Canada
    since February 2007.
 Previous posts include the
                             That perception has changed utterly – certainly in Europe, and
EU, Kuala Lumpur, Berlin and increasingly in North America too. The issue is coming to be
      Washington, DC.        understood for what it is: an urgent threat to global security and
                             prosperity. Climate change is likely to turn things that we have taken
for granted into potential sources of conflict. Competition for scarce resources including energy
and clean water is a huge potential source of future political instability both within countries and
between them. And climatic changes are likely to drive people to migrate. When such changes
occurred thousands of years ago peoples could move without displacing settled populations. No
longer. On our crowded planet, mass migrations imply disruption. Climate change, in short, can
be seen as a ‘threat multiplier’ exacerbating existing weaknesses and tensions around the world.

It is this sort of analysis that has            Climate change … is an urgent threat to
propelled the stabilisation of
greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the
                                                     global security and prosperity …
atmosphere to the very centre of               stabilisation of GHGs is at the very centre
Britain’s National Security Strategy. We          of Britain’s National Security Stategy.
have created a single Department – i.e.,
a Ministry – of Energy and Climate Change to try to integrate policies that are now recognised as
being fundamentally linked. The transition to low carbon is understood not just as an
environmental concern: it is central to the preoccupations of the Foreign Office, the Treasury,
Ministries of Defence, International Development, Health, Transport, and indeed across the whole
of Government. Britain has undertaken to bring its GHG emissions at least 26% below 1990
levels by 2020, and at least 80% by 2050 – and these commitments have been made binding in
law. With our EU partners, we are trying to show leadership in achieving consensus over the
“shared but differentiated responsibilities” that need to be defined urgently at an international
level.

I understand why this agenda arouses so much resentment in some quarters:

•     Many of those, like me, who pontificate about these issues are themselves profligate carbon-
      emitters. There is a tiresome, sanctimonious tone to much green rhetoric, as if those most
      concerned about the implications of GHG emissions did not themselves drive cars or heat
      their homes.

                                    •    I am the first to admit that there are still important gaps in
                                         our knowledge of what is really going on. The science is still
                                         evolving. The various climate models are barely predictive,
                                         which is the only basis upon which they can be judged.
                                         There are many variables, positive and negative feedback
                                         loops, and cycles within cycles – some of which are very
                                         long, including the so-called Milankovich orbital cycles and
                                         variations in solar activity.
•    The climate agenda is a perfect vehicle for those whose real quarrel is with individual
     freedom. This is because it implies such heavy regulation to overcome what Lord Stern
     identified in 2006 as the greatest single market failure in history: the failure to price carbon
     into the world economy. The consequence has been that GHGs have been released into our
     atmosphere – and continue to be dumped – at zero cost.

•    A lot of nonsense is talked about ‘stabilising the climate’, which is absurd. We can – indeed
     we must – try to stabilise levels of GHGs in our atmosphere, but that is a quite different
     proposition.

So I have little time for those who attribute every unusual weather event or climatic change to
human activity and wickedness. But I have still less patience with those who dogmatically reject
the possibility of significant human causation. In this fantastically complex field, only fools or
rogues pretend certainty.

The good news is that making the transition to low carbon
makes sound economic as well as environmental sense.
The Economist famously signed off a 1991 editorial with
the words “Bye bye greens. See you in the next boom.”
That is no longer the business consensus, which is why
the Confederation of British Industry has been a leading
voice in urging the British Government to price carbon into
the economy as rapidly as possible, even in the midst of
recession. It is not just that a responsible approach need
not hold back recovery: it can be a positive spur to growth.
Governments everywhere see this, and there is unprecedented investment being directed
towards a low carbon recovery. The Obama Administration has pledged to create 5m jobs in low
carbon sectors. France will begin construction of four high-speed rail networks simultaneously.
China is investing $70bn for new electricity grid infrastructure. There is growing recognition of the
importance of aligning economic security, energy security and climate security.

Companies, for their part, recognise that increasing energy efficiency and less wasteful use of
resources feeds through directly to the bottom line, while early investors in the new clean
technologies are likely to reap a ‘first mover’ advantage. The huge investments going into
research and development – where Canada is a world leader – are likely to yield high returns as
new technologies from carbon capture and storage (CCS) to biochar and cellulosic ethanol are
deployed world-wide.

                                           But the strongest economic argument of all is that
The question is not whether we             developed in the 2006 Stern Report. If human activity is
                                           indeed a significant driver of climate change, then the
   can afford to take on this              cost of tackling the problem rises exponentially the
challenge, but how much longer             longer our response is delayed. The question is not
     we can afford to delay.               whether we can afford to take on this challenge, but
                                           how much longer we can afford to delay.

So the stakes in the current UN negotiation could hardly be higher. If it is to succeed, we need to
work with the grain of the market, seeking not to obstruct business, but to harness it to the
transition to low carbon. Changed incentive structures must encourage sensible long-term
choices and investments so that Governments are not eventually forced to intervene in
oppressive ways. The British Foreign Office has set “low carbon: high growth” as its objective. It
is not a matter of finding a balance between economic growth and environmental responsibility,
but of recognising that only a low carbon recovery will be sustainable.