Political Hot Air, part 2

Us British are a funny old bunch of people. To us, things like queuing, having half-hour long conversations about the weather and all rituals surrounding the art of making a cup of tea are part of the fabric of everyday normal life. To the rest of the world they are, at best, eccentricities, and at worst, something a lot ruder. A certain European friend of mine sometimes refers to Britain as “the Island”, and although she means this in the literal geographic sense, it strikes me that this description works on many, many more levels.

In 2008, as part of the Climate Change Act, our honourable government announced that it intended to cut the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions by 80% below 1990 levels. Most of the rest of the world is planning on maybe perhaps cutting their emissions by 50% by 2050 if everyone firstly agrees to do so and secondly if everyone actually looks like they might make a respectable attempt at doing so. In this context, the UK’s policy on climate change looks a tad over-ambitious, if not slightly schoolmarmish (you get the impression that the need to “take the lead on climate change”, i.e. boss the rest of the world around, was discussed at great length when the Climate Change Act was first thought up). Anyway, we’ve somehow managed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 21% below 1990 levels, so we’re on the right path. In The UK Low Carbon Transition plan, those ambitious fellows at the Department for Energy and Climate Change aim to have 40% of our electricity coming from “low carbon sources” by 2020. However, heed the wording of this because they plan to get only 30% of this 40% from renewable energy sources. There are plans afoot to install carbon-capture technology at coal-fired power stations, but there are also plans afoot to build new nuclear power stations.

Nuclear power is like marmite; you either love it or you hate it. It has to be said that in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, it is one of the cleanest, most economical ways of producing lots of electricity. The trouble is that, as a society, we have started to regard readily available electricity as a right, not a privilege. I am the last person on earth who would want to be thrown back into the dark ages (she says, whilst using her laptop to update her internet blog, sitting next to an electric lamp with a cup of tea made using an electric kettle). There are a lot of very negative aspects to nuclear power, such as toxic nuclear waste that hangs around for centuries, the possibility of leaks and accidents, not to mention what would happen if nuclear material fell into the wrong hands. Just this week, a scientist working at the Cern laboratory in Switzerland, which also houses the Large Hadron Collider (of Angels and Demons fame), was arrested for having links to al-Qaeda. But we can’t turn the clock back 500 years and start using fat lamps and wood fires again just to cut our greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, it seems logical that, for the time being at least, nuclear power may be one of the only ways we can quickly and drastically cut our greenhouse gas emissions whilst keeping the technological revolution going full steam ahead. The technology behind renewable energy needs much more development before it can be regarded as a practical alternative to anything which generates a large amount of toxic substance, be it greenhouse gas emissions or rocks that could give your unborn child nine fingers instead of ten. Currently, your average wind turbine can power about five houses (unless you’re the leader of the Conservative party, in which case it can power one house, one party manifesto and several right wing-ish newspapers for an infinite amount of time, it seems). But, here in windy, rainy Britain we are sitting on a veritable green goldmine of renewable energy sources, if only we had a way to tap them effectively. The development of renewable energy technology has the potential to create jobs in the short term, create UK investment and income in the long term and could potentially mean that one day we can proudly decommission our last toxic nuclear assets and run entirely off renewable energy. Nuclear energy may be the short-term answer, but renewable energy is still the long-term solution.

However, all this um-ing and ah-ing over where our future electricity will come from might well be in vain, because the government seems to be suffering from an extreme case of Iwanttohavemycakeandeatitisis. In other words, they seem convinced that we can have prosperity, rocketing growth and low carbon emissions. In particular, I’m thinking about the government’s policy on aviation. In 2003’s The Future of Air Transport, the Department for Transport infamously earmarked London Heathrow and London Stansted airports for expansion. Ever since, it seems they have been hell-bent on insisting that the Aviation industry must continue to grow. Predictions for London Stansted alone estimate that 68 million passengers will pass through its check-in desks every year by 2030 if BAA have their wicked way and build a second runway on prime Grade 2 arable farmland. Here’s the problem: Aeroplanes run on aviation gas, which is a fossil fuel. More growth in the aviation industry = more aeroplanes in the sky. More aeroplanes in the sky = more filthy greenhouse gases being guffed into the atmosphere by said aeroplanes. Not to mention the fact that scientists are still frowning and scratching their heads over the actual effect of emitting greenhouse gases at high atmospheric altitudes. As recently as September, the Climate Change Committee, who are the government’s climate advisors, warned that if aviation is to be allowed to grow at its forecast rate, the rest of the UK economy will have to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2050 instead of 80%. A 90% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050? Now you’re talking silly numbers.

Being an island has its advantages. We’re hard to invade; we, erm, have a historic navy, lots of weird fish dishes like jellied eels, and you’re never a million miles away from the coast, and the chance of a fun cheesy day out at a bucket-and-spade seaside town like Southend. But the effect of taking a lead, or, as others might see it, going it alone on such a crucial global issue such as Climate change might not be as positive as we hope. We might, maybe, succeed in our ambitious plans; we might, maybe, inspire other countries to take the initiative to cut their own greenhouse gas emissions by a similar amount. Or our government could simply end up looking like they’ve collectively got their heads in the clouds at the forthcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December. Stay tuned.

xx

p.s. Sorry, this one's far too long

p.p.s. In other news, Cadbury's Dairy Milk has gone fairtrade, yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!