Source: BBC TV: Newsnight
URL: N/A
Date: 08/10/2018
Event: Evan Davis: "is it possible to get the planet to align around the latest science?"
Credit: BBC TV
People:
Evan Davis: The maths of climate change - 2 minus 1.5 equals 0.5. It doesn't sound much, but when it comes to capping global temperature rise, it could make a huge difference. The scientists' most fearful warning yet - limiting temperature rises to 2 degrees is not ambitious enough. We can't afford to delay, but it's not exactly the message that everyone in the world wants to hear. We'll get a reaction from someone who's advised President Trump on environmental policy and ask if human politics is up to the task of dealing with the problem.
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Evan Davis: Hello there. It is scary stuff, to be honest. According to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we have now probably reached 1 degree of global warming, compared to pre-industrial times, which they take as 1850-1900. The land has warmed by more than the sea, and will go on doing so. Average temperatures are thought to be rising 0.2 degrees a decade. Can we stop the overall rise of 1.5 degrees? It is geophysically possible, they say, but would require huge reductions in carbon fuel use between now and 2050 - unprecedented ones. Even if we limit the rise to 1.5 degrees, sea level rises by maybe half a metre, plus or minus a quarter of a metre. Is the world geared up to tackle this kind of global problem? We'll be looking at the politics and policy aspects, soon. First, though, here is Chris Cook on what the scientists are saying.
Chris Cook: Some of the official predictions made about climate change sound biblical in scale. More drought, more famine, more flooding, more of the most powerful tropical cyclones - and of course, the seas rising. A familiar litany, and one, they say, we need to do more to fight. Something that will need rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society. Our current no-action path is like this - rising carbon emissions. And that would take us to a more than 4-degree rise by 2100.
But there is policy in place that should restrain carbon growth onto this path - that probably means about a 3-degree rise. And - if countries make good on some of their promises - it should be a touch lower than that. Scientists, though, have been hoping for this path, which would mean about a 2-degree rise. Now, though, they say we should aim for under 1 and a half degrees.
Now that half-a-degree change may not sound like much. But scientists think it could radically reduce the harm done to our world by climate change. The thing is, though, to get there we have to reduce our net carbon emissions to zero by the year 2050. And that means huge changes to the way that we live. To how we get around, to how we generate electricity, to how we arrange our cities, to what we wear - even to what we eat.
You can see why zero emissions is so radical if you look at carbon emissions in historical context. Hitting zero by 2050 would need a very sudden shift in direction. It's about making the Chinese leadership, the Indian leadership, many of the African leaders decide to move away from coal. And unfortunately, that's quite expensive for these countries. And the real issue is whether - and who - is prepared to pay the substantive costs of a fast switch out of this most pernicious form of fossil fuels.
Now individual countries make their own climate plans. Getting them to follow through, though, is hard. For one thing, getting to 1.5 degrees would mean investing 2.5% of the world economy every year from now until 2035 into energy infrastructure. According to Bloomberg, that's a sevenfold increase. 2.5 % of our economy would be about £50 billion - more than we spend on defence.
Dieter Helm: We cannot hold to the current standard of living and really, radically decarbonise. This has costs to us. We are - to be blunt - living beyond our means, and no politician wants to tell us that.
Chris Cook: The fact of climate change is no longer in dispute. How we respond to it, however, is a political challenge that will only become more acute in the coming decades. And the price tag is rising.
Evan Davis: Chris Cook reporting. So is it possible to get the planet to align around the latest science? In a moment we'll take to Simon Beard, who studies Existential Risk at Cambridge University, and to Baroness Worthington, who's drafted the UK's Climate Change Act ten years ago. But are the chances of a global response weakened when the leader of the world's second largest polluter is sceptical? In the US, polls show that Americans' views on climate change are increasingly polarised - Republicans and independent voters are increasingly likely to think the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated, whereas Democrats are more worried about it than before.
So let's try to peek into the mindset of the administration, there - I'm joined now from Washington by Myron Ebell, who was Donald Trump's environmental advisor during the Presidential transition period before the inauguration. He's Director of the CIA [sic] think tank that campaigns on behalf of the US energy industry, and deemed the Paris Climate Agreement an unprecedented power-grab on America's consumers and economy. A very good evening to you, Mr. Ebell. Um, do you think this report, this latest one, will change the administration's views on climate change at all?
Myron Ebell: No, I don't. I think the United States is divided, as you said. I think some states, like California, New York and some of the New England states, are pursuing the European Union plan to make energy more expensive, but I think President Trump and the heartland states that elected him are on a very different, very pro-energy path.
Evan Davis: I mean, is the problem here that effectively, belief in the United States has just gone completely political? It's almost identity politics - to show you're a proper hard Republican you just adhere to the view that climate change is a global plot, that the UN is trying to take over the US [laughs]... Is that what's really going on, here?
Myron Ebell: From my perspective, it's become identity politics for the left, to claim that there's an immanent crisis. The problem with this report is: it foreshortens the problem. The rate of warming according to the data is much slower than the models used by the IPCC. They also don't consider the fact that we've already had 1 degree of warming, they - they estimate [?] -
Evan Davis [interrupting]: Let me interrupt you, because - let me interrupt, because I think what you're trying to do is to sort of show that you know more about the science than the scientists, which is, sort of, not the case, 'cause they're the scientists. What you have to do is show, not that you're cleverer than the scientists - and there are a lot of them involved in this - but that the scientists have somehow been taken over by a plot or been infected by corruption or payments or politics. Now, have you any evidence that the science - not - I don't want to hear your argument that the science is wrong, because you don't know anything about it - have you any evidence that the science has been corrupted in some way?
Myron Ebell: The United Nations, when it created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, charged it with supporting the climate agenda of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. It's meant to be a promotional body, it's not meant to be an objective scientific advisor - if you go back and look from Day 1, it has been a promoter, not a neutral scientific body -
Evan Davis: Whoah, whoah, whoah. Let me pick you up on that. So - do you think the scientists, who reviewed these 6,000 papers to produce this latest publication - 86 lead writers - do you literally think they don't believe what they have said? Is that your contention?
Myron Ebell: They're climate campaigners first, at the highest level, rather -
Evan Davis [interrupting]: Wow! -
Myron Ebell: - than objective scientists -
Evan Davis [interrupting]: But you're a climate campaigner more than they are. They're not even paid, these guys. You're paid. They're not paid. It's absolutely... Go on.
Myron Ebell: Look, look...The study says that we've had about one degree of warming already. They don't consider the tremendous benefits that have flowed to humanity -
Evan Davis [interrupting]: But again - sorry! Again, you're trying to show you know more about the science than the scientists! And you don't, so... I come back to - do you - 'cause I'm fascinated in this sort of personally, as denial as a sort of human phenomenon. Do you ever think there may be a small chance that the scientists have simply done the work, straightforwardly looked at their results, published their results in an open-minded and unbiased way, and presented their conclusions? 'Cause really you're just saying either you know more or that they are somehow lying to us about what they really have found and what they believe.
Myron Ebell: I've investigated the claims and I find them wanting, from multiple viewpoints. One of them is that what they are proposing needs to be done will have much more deleterious effects on the planet and on humanity than the problem that they have identified. I have also tried to show you that the problem is in slow motion compared to what they're claiming it is, and I believe that they're claiming that it's an immanent crisis because that's their charge from the United Nations, at the highest level.
Evan Davis: Do - can you imagine... But I mean... Okay, so you're saying that they've been instructed to say what they're saying. Do you imagine anything that the scientists could say that would persuade the administration that it needs to take this more seriously?
Myron Ebell: Uh, no, I can't. I think that the administration and the American people are pretty convinced that a pro-energy agenda is much more viable and will have much better results than an energy-rationing agenda.
Evan Davis: Myron Ebell, thanks very much for joining us, thank you very much.
Myron Ebell: Thank you.
Evan Davis: Well as I say, joining us here in the studio are Baroness Bryony Worthington, lead author on the UK's 2008 Climate Change Act, and Simon Beard from the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University - good evening to you both. Simon Beard, do you think human beings are capable of dealing with a problem like this?
Simon Beard: Yes we are, and the good news is: climate change is anthropogenic. Human activity is causing it. And that means we have the capability to stop it. You know, this isn't sunspots, it isn't some global conspiracy - this is something that we're doing and we can undo. We have a bright future ahead of us, and we have the capability to bring that about. And it would be an incredibly good deal to do that -
Evan Davis: So you'd much rather we were causing it than there was something else, 'cause that means we have agency in this and we - we can do something about it.
Simon Beard: When you study human extinction, the thing you really look for is an extinction that people are causing and that they know what they're doing. The things that we worry about are the things that - like with technological development where there's a risk but we really don't understand it or where something might happen and you have no control over it - space weather, asteroids and so on. Those are much scarier. Climate change is just a question of: what do you think is going to be the best investment for the future? And, you know, it's becoming increasingly apparent that actually climate mitigation is going to achieve a great deal for us and our children.
Evan Davis: Okay, um... Baroness Worthington, I'm sure you disagreed with everything you heard from Myron Ebell, there, I'm just guessing, correct?
Bryony Worthington: Yeah...
Evan Davis: Yes, right, so we can sit blaming the Americans for being sort of deniers. However, is it not the case that political realism, in Europe as well, is an obstacle, too? Because actually the US may well meet its Paris climate change commitments, despite the Myron Ebells.
Bryony Worthington: Yeah, they may well.
Evan Davis: And there may well be European countries that don't.
Bryony Worthington: Well, Europe as a whole will, I'm pretty certain, because we're already overshooting our targets. And in fact we could go further, in Europe. That's largely because we've got some quite sensible policies - we've introduced prices on pollution, because at the moment we're just emitting all this greenhouse gas into the atmosphere for free and we know it's causing a problem. And, you know, Myron likes to point to the European Union as being anti-energy, or some such statement, that's - nothing could be further than the truth, we're unlocking new sources of energy and we're buying down the costs of that energy so that other countries can use it.
Evan Davis: It is interesting, isn't it, there aren't politicians who are going to say - I mean, there are politicians who are struggling to find 3 billion, 4 billion for social care, let alone 50 billion to spend into energy, so we can have the same energy we have now except cleaner, um -
Bryony Worthington: But the "except cleaner" is quite important, because there are co-benefits to us doing this, so cleaner air in cities is going to reduce the National Health Service bill because we'll have fewer people suffering from all the related health impacts of the diesel fumes that are currently choking our cities. So there are lots of cost savings -
Evan Davis: But we did - you ask a government "Hey, let's put up petrol tax" - how many years is it now in a row that we've frozen petrol tax, rather than put it up, fuel duty?
Bryony Worthington: Well, I - yeah, there's a bit of controversy about the fuel duty price, but actually if you look at other policies that we've seen in the power sector, just putting a price alone isn't actually the important thing. The important thing is to recycle funds to provide deployment support for new technology. So the new wave of electric vehicles that are coming - they've been really pushed forward by policy, and policy in China, most interestingly, so, you know, Europe's got a bit of way to catch up on transport, but I'm sure we will do so.
Evan Davis: Simon, if the problem here - basically, there are huge time lags in everything we do, so there's always a kind of "Let's do it tomorrow, rather than today". And the effects are not always felt by the same people who have to take the mitigating actions, so... My actions don't come back and thwack me in the face, do they - I mean, my actions are affecting other people. Those are precisely the problems which lead to, sort of, selfish behaviour round there [?] and stop people solving things.
Simon Beard: Absolutely. And if we'd been doing this when we first discovered how, you know, catastrophic climate change could be - you know, actually in the 1960s and the 1970s, we'd be having to do an awful lot less. It would be a lot easier. But at the end of the day, it's still a really good deal. It's still going to benefit many people who, you know, are currently living - it's not just the very young, it's not just our children or our grandchildren. All sorts of people are going to be benefitted by not having to go through the terrible risks, the terrible catastrophes that climate change could be. And, you know, climate change has been a big controversy for a long time. When I was young - I'm a millennial - when I was young, it was about "if", then it was about "when". Actually, in the last year, you know, it's about "how". And that's what this report's about -
Evan Davis [interrupting]: Yeah, but you can [inaudible] -
Simon Beard: And that's what gives me hope.
Bryony Worthington: But there - there are three tragedies of climate change. The first, the tragedy of the commons, which is what you're describing - we've all got to act together. And that will have to be solved by multilateralism - we'll have to reinvent that - and I mean, the IPCC is - [Evan Davis is trying to interrupt] - but there's another important tragedy which is the tragedy of incumbents, and what Myron represents is that, is that representing of the powers that have benefitting from the status quo. And what we've got to do, collectively, as citizens, is say "You know what, actually, the time of fossil fuel energy is coming to an end, if it's not dealing with its pollution". There are many other ways of doing this, and the human brain is very good at solving these challenges. We've got capital waiting to be put into projects - we just need to now work out how to get that money flowing into the solutions, and the costs coming down.
Evan Davis: Plenty of societies - you know, quite civilised societies - have collapsed, haven't they Myron [sic], I mean, you know... You can read Jared Diamond's book called Collapse, about civilisations that have [inaudible] -
Simon Beard: Either they weren't collapsing from something anthropogenic or they weren't collapsing from something they understood. There aren't examples of people who have known the risks, they've known the challenges, they've known how to solve the problem, and they've just walked into the dark.
Evan Davis: But there are people who deny the problem, right? And there will always be, right?
Simon Beard: There will always be people who deny the problem. There are people who think the Earth is flat.
Bryony Worthington: Yeah...
Simon Beard: We have to... get over them.
Bryony Worthington: Exactly. And they're in the minority. When we - when I started on this, 20 years ago, it was just a small group of NGOs sounding the alarm with a few scientists. Now all the scientists are freaked out. And the message is coming across loud and clear. Your article today is just an example of that - we've got the lead story and that's where it should stay until we really make progress.
Evan Davis: Thank you, both, very much indeed.