20041231_R4

Source: BBC Radio 4

URL: N/A

Date: 31/12/2004

Event: Sir David King: Boxing Day tsunami "underlines the importance of the Earth system"

Credit: BBC Radio 4

People:

Tony Blair: Prime Minister of the UK, 1997 - 2007
Myron Ebell: Director of Global Warming and International Environmental Policy, CEI
Tom Feilden: BBC science correspondent
Sir David King: UK government Chief Scientific Adviser, 2000 - 2007
Sarah Montague: Presenter, BBC Radio 4 Today programme
William O'Keefe: CEO, George C. Marshall Institute
Stephen Tindale: Director of Greenpeace UK, 2000 - 2005

Sarah Montague: The Prime Minister has acknowledged that America will not sign up to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. In an article in the latest issue of The Economist, Tony Blair says that as Britain takes on the Presidency of the G8 this week, he wants to use the position to deal with two main issues - Africa and climate change. Russia's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol means that the targets it sets on carbon emissions wil finally come into force this year. But America is the world's biggest polluter, and it still refuses to sign. In a moment, we'll hear from the government's Chief Scientist, Sir David King. But first, our science correspondent Tom Feilden looks back at a year that began in open confrontation.

Sir David King: There is now a convergence of scientific opinion - global warming is now clearly related to our use of fossil fuels and to deforestation...

Tom Feilden: Almost exactly a year ago, and on the eve of a visit to Washington, the government's Chief Scientist Sir David King launches a stinging attack on the Bush administration's attitude to global warming, warning that climate change poses a more serious threat to the world than international terrorism.

Sir David King: ... and it poses the biggest challenge to governments for this century.

Tom Feilden: But if the tough talking was intended to restore Britain's tarnished reputation for independence, in the wake of the Iraq War, or to position Tony Blair as honest broker, able to bridge the gap between the United States and Europe, it backfired. Sir David's comments were greeted by deafening silence from the White House, and he was given the diplomatic cold shoulder on subsequent visits to Washington and Seattle.

Myron Ebell: We have people who know nothing about climate science, like Sir David King, continually promote this just ridiculous claim...

Tom Feilden: It was left to right-wing pundits like Myron Ebell, the director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, to fill in the blanks.

Myron Ebell: There is something about people who are great experts in one field - it doesn't necessarily transfer to judgement over issues that they really don't know anything about.

Tom Feilden: Myron Ebell's assertion, that the whole global warming bandwagon is little more than a thinly-veiled attempt to hamstring the American economy, effectively got up by environmental doom-mongers and opportunistic European politicians, may stretch credulity, but it serves to illustrate the gulf in understanding that's opened up between Europe and America.

William O'Keefe: The difference is that the EU and the UK strongly support the Kyoto Protocol...

Tom Feilden: A more realistic impression of the Bush administration's perspective comes from William O'Keefe of the George C. Marshall Institute.

William O'Keefe: The United States does not believe in a mandatory approach to produce reductions in emissions or to address the climate risk.

Tom Feilden: The US, he argues, does not deny that climate is changing or that mankind has played a role in increasing greenhouse gas emissions. But it does question the science behind many of the worst-case scenarios and argues for a technological fix rather than punitive sanctions.

William O'Keefe: The United States, next year, will spend $5.8 billion on climate-related matters - that is more money than all of the EU and Japan combined. And in the long term, if there's a serious problem, it's going to be solved by technology.

[Sound of BBC radio news pips.]

James Naughtie: The environment is back on the political agenda. The Prime Minister says he has been shocked by -

Tom Feilden: Until recently, that would have been about as far as it was possible to get, on the British government's position.

Tony Blair: - to the basic science on climate change and the threat it poses -

Tom Feilden: Just last September, the Prime Minister warned again of the catastrophic consequences of climate change. And, speaking at the launch of the Climate Group in April, he reiterated his commitment to the Kyoto Protocol. But the rhetoric of global leadership is beginning to ring a little hollow, to Greenpeace's Stephen Tindale.

Stephen Tindale: If the government was serious about tackling climate change, it would have made progress on transport, we'd have made progress on energy efficiency, it would have made progress on reducing emissions of carbon from industry and it would have made progress on renewable energy. Time and again, the government has either failed to face up to vested interests or has simply had a failure of imagination and any forward-looking policy.

Tom Feilden: And writing in this week's Economist, the Prime Minister simply acknowledges that the US will never sign up to Kyoto. That may be mere pragmatism but his claim that technological advance and economic development will provide realistic solutions to global warming seems more likely to please William O'Keefe than Stephen Tindale of Greenpeace, and perhaps even Sir David King.

Sarah Montague: Tom Feilden reporting. Well, the government Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, is on the line - good morning.

Sir David King: Good morning.

Sarah Montague: Tom Feilden quoted you there, from earlier this year - "Climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today". Would you still say that, when you see things like that which happened in the Indian Ocean?

Sir David King: Yes, I mean, I think what's happening in the Indian Ocean actually underlines the importance of the Earth system to our ability to live safely. And what we're talking about, in terms of climate change, is something that is really driven by our own use of fossil fuels, so this is something that we can manage.

Sarah Montague: You have painted pictures of, sort of, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, disruption to oceanic current systems - I mean, does it, when we see these tsunamis, does it remind you of the sort of thing that you are predicting?

Sir David King: Yes, I think that we have to understand that the issue of climate change is really two sides to one coin. The one side is the impacts of climate change, and when we look at the Greenland ice sheet melting, we're looking at potentially very major impacts - Greenland ice sheet melting would lead to a 6-7 metre rise in sea levels. That's going to take a long time, but there are another series of impacts, which is increased storms at sea, increased flooding of cities - these other impacts are already beginning to, er, impact on us, now. And so one side of this is: we need to prepare ourselves against these increased impacts. The other side, of course, is changing our energy industry, in other words to move away from fossil fuels.

Sarah Montague: Part of that preparation, of course, has been the Kyoto Protocol - America still refusing to sign up to that, and Tony Blair seeming to accept that, now, that there's nothing he can do about that. Does that depress you?

Sir David King: I think there are an number of things - I'm not one for depression, I'm a well-known optimist - and what we've got is, with Russian ratification, Kyoto Protocol coming in to play, which means that not only Britain, not only Europe but across the world, there's going to be carbon emissions trading. From February 16th this year we move into the Kyoto Protocol. This means that, given the strength of London as a financial centre, this new commodity, emissions trading, is going to become a major value commodity. Now, I think that in itself is going to have some pressure on those countries not within the Kyoto Protocol to join in. Um, so there's a momentum behind the Kyoto Protocol -

Sarah Montague: You don't hold out any hope that America will sign up, do you?

Sir David King: No, I don't - I think the Prime Minister's right, I don't think that America's going to sign. But what I am going to say is that I feel optimistic about the actions that I see being taken in the United States - the McCain-Liebermann Bill now going through Congress is a very positive sign in the right direction. California is now committing itself to generating 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2010. In fact, California's competing with the UK, and that's a large section of the United States. There's all sorts of signs within the United States that the seriousness of climate change is now recognised, even McKeefe is saying in that piece that you quoted from him, that this is a serious issue, um, and so there's no longer any argument about the science behind it.

Sarah Montague: But look at what Myron Ebell says, Bush's - one of Bush's main advisors on the environment, he says... he's been very rude about you and the comments you've made.

Sir David King: Yes, and from the White House came an immediate disclaimer, that Myron Ebell is not an advisor to the White House. He's a lobbyist, and I think we're fully aware of the role of lobbyists in the United States - Myron Ebell is not a scientist, and I think we can actually discount -

Sarah Montague: But the sounds from the White House, on climate change, are not good, are they. And many people would have thought: look, Tony Blair could have expected perhaps some - something from the White House, given his support of America over the past couple of years. Do you have any sense of frustration that he's not getting anything on climate change from Bush?

Sir David King: No, I don't want to put everything around Kyoto. In other words, I do believe that - our position is that Kyoto isn't enough anyway, and the British government is committed to going well beyond the Kyoto Protocol requirements. So we're looking for that situation where we go beyond Kyoto -

Sarah Montague: We're not going to, are we, we've had to scale back what we're likely to achieve.

Sir David King: Oh no, we are going to go beyond Kyoto. And when we say we're scaling back, these are very early days. It's only last year that that we passed the White Paper through Parliament on energy. I think things are moving all in the right direction in the UK, and our leadership role is not in question, abroad.

Sarah Montague: Sir David King, many thanks.

Sir David King: Thank you very much.