Climate change : the global challenge

In the last 18 months climate change and its implications have risen to the top of the global agenda. Last year the British Government's Chief Scientific Adviser said that it was the biggest threat we faced, bigger than terrorism; and last week the Prime Minister said that "in terms of the long-term future there is no issue that is more important than climate change", and that in tackling it we had to act quickly and go beyond the Kyoto Protocol.

The only serious question is how long is the long term, how much time have we got, and what should now be done before more damage is done to the global atmosphere and the society we have built on the surface of the Earth. These sentiments have been widely echoed in at least the British press, including the Economist, the Financial Times, the Independent, the Times and the Guardian.

In the meantime the underlying science has become steadily clearer and more precise, particularly in its modelling of our likely future. It relates primarily to the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, now at their highest levels for 650,000 years. We are heading back to the conditions of around 125,000 years ago, when air, land and sea were very different. All this will be brought together in next year's 4th Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. You will be hearing more about this from Dr Pachauri in a moment.

We have had a series of reports, including those from the Exeter conference in February 2005 and its aftermath, the Statement by the National Academies of Science last June, the Declaration by the G8 leaders at Gleneagles last July, the Berlin meeting on tipping points of change last October, the Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol in Montreal last December, and the publication of the Climate Change Review in Britain last week.

Particularly interesting is the edition of Science magazine of 24 March about current rates of melting of the Arctic and Antarctic icecaps, and their effect on sea levels worldwide which in the next 100 years could rise by several metres.

Interlinked problems

Climate change has to be seen as only one of a series of inter-linked problems relating to the condition of the surface of the Earth. Since the start of the industrial revolution around 250 years ago, our little animal species has been having an increasing impact. The main changes, most of them accelerating, have been

• increasing variations in hot and cold, rain and drought, with more extreme events all over the world, and a steady rise in sea levels;
• human multiplication at an extraordinary rate: when I was born, there were around 2 billion people, but now there are more like 6.5 billion, and the number if still rising, possibly to between 8 and 9 billion by mid-century;
• there has been extensive land degradation through deforestation and over cultivation;
• we have depleted mineral and other resources;
• and we have accumulated a rising volume of wastes;
• water, both fresh and salt, has been polluted worldwide, and there are mounting fresh water shortages;
• there has been a reduction in the diversity of living organisms, on which we wholly depend every day of our lives;
• new risks arise from development of science and technology, whether in the nuclear or chemical fields, or in nano-technology and elsewhere.

In summary there is, in the words of a recent book, Something New Under the Sun. [Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the World in the 20th Century (Global Century) J. R. McNeill, John Robert McNeill & Paul Kennedy.]

Cities

Nowhere is the impact of these changes more evident than in cities where more than half the human population now lives. Cities are creatures of their environment. Like living organisms, they absorb food, water and materials, and emit a wide variety of wastes. The bigger and more complex they become, the more vulnerable they are to bad management and such external factors as climate change.

They have sometimes been compared to spinifex grass that grows ever outwards from a dying centre. With continuing population growth, cities exert powerful attraction on the rural population and the landless poor, to whom from a distance the streets look paved with gold, or at least lined with jobs. Because cities are more manageable than the countryside, the problem is made worse when governments respond by subsidizing transport, water and essential foodstuffs. This increases the difference between the relatively rich in cities and the relatively poor outside them.

In reflecting on the future of cities, we need to remember how often climate change has contributed to the collapse of cities in the past. Anyone who has seen the remains of some of the first civilizations in the Indus Valley, Timbuktu on the margins of the Saharan desert, Chichen Itza and the other Maya cities of Central America, and Angkor Wat in Cambodia, is forcibly reminded of the vulnerability of all cities to both natural and human-induced change.

Such change can be slow or fast. In the past we have assumed that it could be slow; but with the current acceleration of climate change, it could be uncomfortably fast. Even a small rise in sea levels would affect cities worldwide. Variations in rainfall and drought directly affect urban viability. Our present infrastructure, sewage systems, reservoirs, buildings, and public services of all kinds may become unstable. Business, industry, transport, insurance, banking and planning are all vulnerable to change. The same goes for human health, and the supply of goods, in particular food and materials, on which cities depend.

In Britain efforts have already been made to assess some of the possible consequences. We all should have been encouraged by what we heard earlier today from Mr Elliot Morley. We wish him well in his current struggles in the Whitehall jungle. An example of forward thinking over the next 20 years is in the South-East England Climate Change Partnership whose work goes to the roots of social and economic viability at local as well as national level. There is also the Woking experiment, which has led to a reduction of over 60 percent in carbon emissions in one small town since 1992. It is no wonder that the team concerned has been hired by the Greater London Authority to see what can be done on a larger scale in London itself. You will be hearing more about this later from the Deputy Mayor.

In conclusion ...

In conclusion let us look briefly at what has been done and what has not been done. The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 was a brave but modest start to the process of reducing carbon emissions in line with the Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992. Some progress has been made somewhere, but so far there has been much more rhetoric than action, including from governments which have ratified and now apply the Kyoto Protocol. The Gleneagles Declaration to which even President Bush subscribed, said:

"While uncertainties remain in our understanding of climate science, we know enough now to put ourselves on a path to slow and, as the science justifies, stop and then reverse the growth of greenhouse gases."

As has been well brought out in the last few days, the British Government has scarcely distinguished itself by its practical actions. The use of fiscal instruments in the last budget was disappointing; even if the Kyoto obligation will be met, other targets will be missed (indeed if aviation and shipping are included, total emissions will have actually have risen between 1990 and 2005); squabbling between government departments has continued (the DTI, DEFRA, the Treasury, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and No. 10 itself), and there is continued bleating about finding technological solutions (for example in developing biofuels which create problems of their own).

The problem is not only about how to educate the public: it is about how to get governments to recognize their responsibilities, as business and industry are already recognizing theirs, and to take the necessary actions.

There are two fundamental requirements as clear in urban management as in everything else: first is the need for new energy policies which must include an early and major shift from dependence on fossil fuels. We are never going to run short of energy. The source of all energy is the sun whose radiance is the reason for this conference. We look forward keenly to the results of the Government's current Energy Review.

The second is the need for us to assess true costs and measure human welfare, including that of future generations, outside the current constraints of conventional economics. If ever you hear an economist, or more likely a politician, talk about growth, just ask what he or she means in terms of human wellbeing. This conference is an opportunity for discussion about how these requirements can be met.