20130226_LD

Source: University of Oxford (ECI)

URL: http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/news/articles/LordDebenLecture.php

Date: 26/02/2013

Event: Lord Deben: Lecture: "Even Ostriches Need Third Party Insurance"

Credit: University of Oxford (ECI), also thanks to Geoff Chambers for transcribing this

People:

• Lord Deben: Chairman, Committee on Climate Change (UK)

Lord Deben: I'm not going to talk about the science. I think that one of our problems is that we don't just say to people "The science is as certain as anything can be. And we're not going to argue abut it." Because that's what they want us to do. They want us constantly to pick away at this or that or the other.

I want to talk about the whole issue of how we deal with climate change in the world in which we live, and I use the ostrich, as a matter of fact of course ostriches don't hide their head in the sand, they just look as if they do, and they do that when they're asleep. But the fabled characteristic is precisely what the climate change deniers invite us to do.

Their proposition is simple: "Man-made climate change is not yet certain. While there is doubt, it's better not to act, because we may not need to act at all. To act now will be expensive and inconvenient. Our readers or our voters won't like it, and other people and other countries aren't doing it anyway, so why should we? Better to wait until we are sure, and then of course the market will do everything we need cheaper and more effectively. Besides, these wonderful people the scientists will invent something which we haven't thought of now, it'll all turn up, and it'll be much more painless, and we can get on with our life as it is".

That's roughly speaking what they say.

It is in fact procrastination erected into a political philosophy, and as such it has a dark side too, because these merchants of doubt peddle a philosophy underpinned by much darker forces, political and financial interests whose private wealth or cherished beliefs are threatened by action on climate change. Their use of money and campaigning techniques mirror those of the tobacco industry in fighting action on smoking and health. The parallels are absolute and continuous. They use their resources to spread uncertainty in order to delay action and to debilitate activists. It isn't an argument, it is merely a question. "I just want to be sure about this", or "I wonder how you'd deal with that?" Because if they can sow doubt, then they can determine that there shall be no action.

And I want to suggest today that to call their stance "sceptical" is to slander science and give the deniers credit they do not deserve. For as Lord May has recently reminded us in his native Australia, scepticism is the staff of science. It is the progenitor of the scientific method.

I thought I'd have fun and look up what Wikipedia says about sceptics, and it says this: "Scientific sceptics believe that empirical investigation of reality leads to the truth, and that the scientific method is best suited to this purpose. Considering the rigour of the scientific method, science itself may simply be thought of as an organised form of scepticism. The sceptic generally accepts claims that are in his or her view likely to be true based on feasible testable hypotheses and critical thinking. Scientific sceptics attempt to evaluate claims based on verifiability and falsifiability and discourage accepting claims on faith or anecdotal evidence. Sceptics often focus their criticism on claims they consider to be implausible, dubious, or clearly contradictory to generally accepted science. Scientific sceptics do not assert that unusual claims should be automatically rejected out of hand on a priori grounds. Rather, they argue that extraordinary claims would require extraordinary evidence in their favour before they could be accepted as having validity.

So most of us in this audience, I hope all of us, are sceptics as defined there.

Well, it's a pretty extraordinary claim which is put to us by the deniers. They claim that the whole scientific consensus is wrong, and that a small contrary cabal of scientists and campaigners is right. Indeed, that is not the claim of the sceptic. That is a claim of a denier. That I define as a person who chooses to believe things that seem to support his contention, while casting doubt upon anything that adds weight to the views of his opponents. That is an a priori attitude.

As in this case his opponents are the overwhelming majority of experts in the field, his contention is not properly characterised by scepticism, but by denial. After all, every scientist is a sceptic, challenging evidence to ensure it stands up. He becomes a denier when he challenges only the evidence which is inconvenient, and accepts uncritically that which supports his thesis. I can think of no better definition of the so-called science of the deniers than that. Challenging only the inconvenient evidence, and accepting uncritically anything that seems to support his thesis.

So, faced with this proper challenge, of course the scientific deniers and their fellow travellers descend, take refuge, in what one might call the Galileo defence, that is so brilliantly exposed by the novelist Jay Griffiths. Their argument is that scientific consensus is not always right. The contrarian can triumph. And their position is therefore justified by history. Griffiths very simply replies: "This is to fall victim to the Galileo fallacy. Just because Galileo was a heretic doesn't make every heretic a Galileo."

And that is the issue. I am by training not a scientist but a historian and by choice I have studied the alternative science and religion, particularly in the nineteenth century. I can't tell you the parallels with the nineteenth century pseudo-science and the people who don't believe in climate change today. The history of contrarian science has few Galileos, but many many mistaken theorists who attracted a serious following and were believed by a certain group. Because their ideas have been so long discredited we find it very hard now to recognise them for what they were at the time, people taken seriously by a particular section, people who claimed that what science was generally saying was wrong. We don't recognise them for that because they are now so clearly wrong that we can't take them seriously in the way in which they were taken seriously by their own contemporaries. In their day they were hailed by well-respected scientists, politicians and literary men who gave them that popular credence that enabled them to spread their theories throughout the world.

Now it may be very painful to the climate change deniers if I give two examples of this. First of all they should be reminded of Franz Josef Gall, the Viennese physician who propounded phrenology and whose views were taken so seriously by a surprising - we all think it's mad now - but at the time, at the time, people like Thomas Edison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great publisher Robert Chambers, the astronomer John Pringle Nichol, and the revolutionary evolutionary environmentalist Hewett Cottrell Watson all of them respected people believed it, and complained about the way in which most scientists denied it. Indeed, even Queen Victoria and Prince Albert accepted the science and had their children's heads read.

Even more recently, there was Lysenko who took on much of the scientific world. He was thinking himself a Galileo and claimed to have shown Mendelian theories to be wrong. In fact, his false understanding undermined Soviet science for decades. So don't let people get away with the Galileo thesis. Because of course it leads you to an impossible position. It leads you to the position in which you say it is better to follow that which is least likely than to do things on the basis of the most likely. That is not a sensible way to proceed.

Now that doesn't mean to say that we should not consider the Lindzens and the Stotts of this world seriously. What it suggests is that it's no bad thing to assume that in general the corpus of scientific evidence is a better guide to action than particular detached theories held in isolation from the main body. I don't want to make a religious parallel but I think that there is a very clear one. Nonetheless, all evidence presented by those who have real expertise in climate science ought properly to be weighed and evaluated. We should not ignore it. We should take them seriously. Sceptical science takes nothing for granted, even the most generally held views. There are no absolutes, only probabilities.

But less valuable in their contribution are those toted as scientists but whose study has been in other fields. For them to deny the scientific method in approaching issues of which they are not expert is a particular betrayal of their academic claims. Those people who are expert in some field, but then think they can transfer that, without proper use of the scientific method to some other field which they know nothing about any more than anyone else knows is, it seems to me, to cloak, em, their attitudes in an unacceptable academic guard - garb.

I think the parallel is simply this. I'm sure that Cliff Richard is a very good singer. I don't take his religious views any more than I take anyone else's religious views. And yet, if you do the parallel with the climate change you put him on a platform with a bishop. On the basis that they're both experts. I find that unacceptable there, and I don't see why we should put up with it in the area we're talking about today. These people are campaigners clothed in academic guise. They are often given equal billing with the real expert. It is as if in discussing hip replacement a qualified optician were to be accorded the same respect as an experienced orthopaedic surgeon. And that's precisely the mechanism very often adopted by the popular press, and even by the BBC.

I come back to my friend Jay Griffiths whose article on this particular subject I think is most remarkable. She points out: "The media accepts the idea of specialisations and accords greater respect to those with greater expertise with one exception - climate science." So one of the most quoted so-called scientific experts, Matt Ridley, actually holds a zeolo, zoological doctorate on sexual selection in pheasants. As Griffiths asserts, when he proffered his climate heretic views in a hugely popular book, the journal New Scientist gave his work to a handful of specialists. According to them the author "completely ignores the mainstream scientific literature" and "has a very poor understanding of the core issues", "compares apples and eggs", "introduces confusion", "he missed many of the important points and concepts" and "cherry-picked evidence to form opinions which are unsupported by the bulk of scientific evidence". His work was "an unfortunate misrepresentation" which was "misleading", "an unbalanced contribution" and "an ideological account".

Now this has a profound warning for politicians and policy makers. They should only properly proceed by relying on the best scientific evidence available. They cannot produce good and lasting policy based on imperfect evidence presented to achieve particular outcomes and effects.

Nor should politicians and policymakers forget the instincts of real life. You will notice that I have not so far talked about the scientific consensus in detail. I haven't done that because I'm not a scientist, and therefore I seek to concentrate on the way in which science should be used by those of us who are told, or who have to make decisions. And I want to suggest that in the normal run of people there are some very simple things which occur to them which sometimes scientists forget about because they are too high-flown, and sometimes politicians forget about because they read the wrong newspapers.

Three commonsense attitudes which really do resonate with the non-specialists: the first is to remind people that we should not allow us to have to prove that it's safe, that its unsafe - to pour vast quantities of alien gases into the air in quantities which we have never before seen. That's not what we do. You don't say to the committee on the safety of medicine, you don't say "I don't have to prove it's safe, you've got to prove it's unsafe." You don't say that at all. You, you, you have to prove that it's safe. Now why is it that we can't say to the climate deniers: "I think the first thing most people want to know: would you explain to us why it is safe and without any real effects, to do something we've never done before in quantities which have never been thought of before? You have got a duty to prove to us that that is a perfectly safe procedure."

Most people can recognise that as a sensible question. Second thing is that most people know enough about the history of the world that they know that it emerged from a situation in which it was too hot. And that gradually, as the emergence of plant life and the rest it drew out of the atmosphere carbon, and the world became a place which it was possible for us to live in. Quite a lot of people say if you reverse the process it might have exactly the opposite effect. Not surprising.

And the third thing is: there are quite a lot of people who would say, well, we've been looking at the planets a great deal. We've seen a huge amount about the heavens. We've worked on it for a very long time, and the one thing we can say is that this is rather an unusual one, so perhaps we ought to look after it rather carefully.

Nothing more than that, but three very simple concepts which most people hold in their minds and from which most people can deduce that this is not an area to be left to the careless or those who think that something will turn up.

Indeed, those are the lessons of real life, and so is the way in which we make our own decisions. We live our lives according to the best information available. My mother was wont to give you helpful advice. Most people as I look round have got mothers like that. Indeed one or two are mothers like that. And she used to say to me: "You can only do what seemed best at the time dear." And I don't think that's a bad phrase just to analyse for a moment. It contains two important truths. the first is that you have to act, you have to do something, and that not doing something is not an easy alternative, but is as much an active decision as any other. Not acting has consequences as often as acting. So the idea that by not doing things you're actually putting off a decision that you are actually not active is a very dangerous imagination which is very prevalent, particularly among the climate change deniers.

Second, that statement says that you have to proceed with your judgement guided by the best information available. And in that sense all decisions, even the most important ones, are interim. I mean just take the biggest decision that most of us ever make in material world, which is buying a house. I buy a house on the expectation of keeping my job. I buy a house on the expectation that my children were able to go to a good school, and that the commuter train to my work is going to run. Before I buy the house, I establish all those essentials as likely - but not certain. After all, anyone can lose their job. The children's school could deteriorate badly. Virgin Rail could stop running the service upon which I depended. Do I then, because it is not absolutely certain that I shall keep my job, that the children's school will remain good, that the train will continue to operate, do I then say: "I shan't buy the house?" And would by so doing I make no decision? No, I'd make a decision. I don't buy it. Just as crucial a decision for my future as buying it. Sensible people make the biggest decisions of their lives on the basis of the best information they can get. What's more, they get that information from those most likely to know. They don't ask the train operator about the school, and they don't ask the headmaster about their job prospects. Now when they're researching, they sift out the oddballs. If the inspector's report, the parents they know and respect, and the examination results all suggest that the school will be good, they won't be swayed by the one contrarian down the road who fell out with the headmaster when his son didn't get a place. Yet when it comes to climate change, large numbers of people suggest we should proceed in an entirely different way, an absolutely abnormal and unnatural mechanism for making our decisions. They say, because we can't be absolutely certain that the science is right, we should do nothing until climate change overwhelms us. On that basis, none of us would ever buy a house, or even a car, let alone get married. We need to proceed by what one might call the economics of normality. We have to refute the concept that not making a decision is qualitatively different from making a decision. Not buying that house would have had consequences that can be of the same order as deciding to buy. But acting or not acting must be based on the best information you have, otherwise you decide randomly on information which is certainly less likely to be right and can easily be downright wrong.

To follow the siren calls of the climate change deniers would be unscientific behaviour, and it would be abnormal behaviour as well. The consequences could be dire, and they're best summed up in the words of a colleague of mine in the House of Lords Tristan Garel-Jones, a conservative, free market advocate, banker and businessman - this is no tree-hugging sentimentalist. I will tell it in his vernacular. I apologise in advance for the Anglo-Saxon language. He went up to Lord Lawson and he said; "Nigel, when I hear you speak, I think to myself: ‘You've got a point.' And then I hear people who are concerned about climate change speak, and I think to myself: ‘They've got a point.' And then I think to myself: ‘If you're right Nigel, we've wasted a certain amount of money. And if you're wrong, we've fucked up the planet'."

That is the fundamental question. And that's precisely the danger. As Sir Nicholas Stern put it: "This is not a small probability of a rather unattractive outcome. This is a big probability of a very bad outcome. That's the balance."

So what, in our normal lives, coming back to normality, instead of this high-flown stuff, what do we do when faced with such a probability? Human beings aren't ostriches. We don't, for the most part, stick our heads in the sand. Instead we ensure, if there's something whose impact would be so devastating to our lives that we could not accept the risk, we reach out to AXA. There are 26 million homes in the United Kingdom and most of them are insured against the risk of fire. Yet there are only 59,000 cases of fire a year. You have a 99.88% chance of not having a fire. It's not the scale of the risk that forces us to pay. it's the impact of the possible disaster. the burning down of our home is sufficiently horrific a possibility that we don't say: "Oh, we've got a 99.88% chance of getting away with it." We say: "We're not prepared to carry the .22% [sic] that might mean that what matters most to us in material terms might disappear. And yet the scale of climate change risk is far greater, both in likelihood and in size than that your home will be burnt down.

Look at the problem! Look at the cost we go to to make sure that this building - we've even got a notice out there saying that this building isn't up to modern standards. The fact of the matter is, buildings all over the country we've spent money to stop the danger of fire. We take it really seriously, and people would soon say: "Somebody somewhere ought to be blamed" if there were deaths from a fire which could have been prevented by having proper fire prevention. Nobody would take seriously a politician who got up and said: "Well, you hadn't got much chance of it. You'd got a 99% chance of getting away with it, so I don't think it's worth spending the money." Imagine how soon you'd be elected on that basis! Just apply that to any subject you like, and yet we are being invited by Lord Lawson that we should do precisely that. That we should say: "It's not all that bad, and if it is, something'll turn up. The fire engine will be there quickly enough to put the fire out before you're actually burnt." That's what he's asking us to do. That risk is far greater in scale and likelihood than anything that we talk now about things that we insure against. The likelihood is almost certain, the scale would certainly be enormous, the effect would be devastating, and the insurance is remarkably cheap.

At present, I am charging the average family about £60 a year on their fuel bills to pay for their insurance against climate change. It will ensure the decarbonation, decarbonisation of the electricity supply. Now that compares with £140 a year we pay today on insuring our house against fire. And the £500 on average we spend on insuring our car. So that's where it stands as an amount. Of course, it's only third party insurance because others besides ourselves are contributing to climate change. It therefore properly reflects our responsibility and our duty.

But it is also insurance which is not only concerned with the risk of global warming. And it's here that I want just to say: I really do wish that the Green movement would get out of its puritanical approach. Just in case anybody worries about it, I don't think people are better when they're cold. I don't believe there is any moral advantage in freezing. I don't think that we are happier because we have nothing. I think that we ought to recognise that most people would like to be comfortable, and there is no reason why we shouldn't accept that a lot of people who aren't comfortable ought to be comfortable. And as long as the Green movement gives the impression that it is puritanical it will not win the battle. Remember, Praisegod Barebones lost. In the end, the Puritan movement disappeared by popular demand because people like Christmas and want mincepies. And if we don't provide people with Christmas and mincepies we won't win the argument. Because then people will say: "It is better for us to eat and drink merry and drink, because tomorrow we die."

What we have to say to people is that we can eat, and drink, perhaps by changing on the edges, doing things in a better and more effective way, all sorts of things of that kind - we can do it - and then tomorrow we won't die. We've got to be able to explain that to people effectively, and the Misery Martins of this world will never win.

But our insurance is also addressing two other concerns, both of them extremely likely, and both capable of being extremely serious. By decarbonising our electricity supply we are introducing a portfolio of generating sources, and that in turn enables us to insure against high gas prices. The International Energy Agency forecasts ever higher gas prices. Even in America, with plentiful fracking - a word you have to say carefully - the price of gas is set to double in the next ten years.

Now these facts themselves aren't certain, but it's the best estimate we have, and with the world population growing to nine billion, and the world's middle classes with all their demands for consumer goods growing by a billion, it wouldn't surprise me that the demand for energy will be huge, and it's difficult to envisage in those circumstance falling gas prices.

But anyway, for that insurance, it's not much to pay to ensure that you are protected against something which could very well happen, be most likely to happen, and if you find that if you didn't need the insurance - well, I've insured my house all my married life, thirty-six years, against fire. We haven't had a fire, but I don't in any way begrudge my annual tally, because it's given me peace of mind.

But the insurance doesn't stop there. We have the issue of energy sovereignty. My job is to ensure that our children are not at the mercy of Mr Putin's children. A portfolio of energy sources insures not against climate change or high gas prices. It's insurance too against being held to ransom by régimes that are often less enlightened than we would wish.

So we're insuring against the biggest material risk that faces our world, against the power of the energy oligopolists, and against ever higher gas prices. And even those who refuse to accept the science, the deniers of the scientific system, and who believe that somehow or other it would be better to leave things to chance, might see the sense in a little insurance on the side.

So I end by returning to Tristan Garel-Jones and the stark choice with which he confronts us. And so let me ask the question again: "What if Lord Lawson is right, and the scientific consensus is wrong? Say he turns out to be right. We've paid the cost of insurance year after year. What would be the real outcome? Well, we will have moved more speedily than necessary to remove our dependence on fossil fuels. We will have paid today some costs that we might have put off till tomorrow. We will have made the world a cleaner, less polluted and more sustainable society. We will have protected Britain's energy sovereignty and insured against crippling gas prices.

But what if we risk it, ignore the science and follow Lord Lawson, and the science turns out to be right, and he is proved wrong? What then? We will have at best beggared future generations, and much more probably, we will have buggered the only planet we have.