What We Need To Do Now

Fact-packed, breezy, high-intensity, up-to-date and sane appraisal of what should be the political priorities and approaches of our day.

Reducing emissions to zero within thirty years should be the world’s most important objective. Even a 2 degree temperature rise will have very substantial effects around the world, including intense rainfall and flooding, rising sea levels and periods of searing drought.

an effective zero carbon strategy will provide multiple benefits to our fellow citizens, both economic and social.

We need to act now, in concert with Europe and the world. We can and should become leaders in zero emissions systems and technology.

Without an overwhelming commitment to greater social justice, a democratic society is unlikely to obtain consent for the painful, expensive and complex changes necessary to move us from a society entirely reliant on fossil fuels to one entirely free of them in just thirty years.

There is no inconsistency in aiming for lower emissions at the same time as improving living standards for the less well- off.

We have to assume aviation continues to use liquid hydrocarbons, but we can make its emissions nearly zero carbon by creating fuels synthetically from hydrogen and captured CO2.

In total, therefore, we will need about 1450 TWh for a fully electric system. At the moment, we generate about 80 TWh from wind, solar and other renewables, excluding biomass. So, to get to a 100 per cent renewable energy system we need to multiply our generation of zero carbon electricity by about twenty times. This sounds ambitious, and it is.

At the time of writing (late 2019), the UK has about 23 GW of wind (of which 9 GW is offshore) and 13 GW of solar PV.

Overbuilding of renewables, complemented by hydrogen from electrolysis, is now seen by some energy commentators as the most likely route to a low carbon energy system.

At today’s expected price levels, nuclear power would be at least twice the cost of offshore wind or solar.

This situation couldn’t be more different in the UK, where the small group of private distribution companies, many owned by private equity funds domiciled abroad, act to maximise profit rather than the public good.

Gas use had fallen by about a third from 2005 to 2014 as a result of better appliances and energy saving measures, but it has since increased across various types of housing. The only possible conclusion is that ad hoc individual energy saving measures, as promoted by recent government schemes, have reached the limit of their effectiveness. If we are to radically improve the energy consumption of British housing, another approach is necessary.

just 1 per cent of the UK population account for 20 per cent of flights.

Virtually no clothing is fully recyclable and very little is reused for a second time.

So with no immediate solution to the problem of fashion’s high carbon footprint, the best policy is simple: we need to buy fewer garments and keep them for longer.

3 kilos of the earth’s resources every day – almost half the average weight of a human body. About 5 kilos of this consumption consists of fossil fuels, and much of the rest is building materials. Metals make up the bulk of the remainder.

buying fewer things, and keeping them for much longer, is the only coherent response to the ecological challenge.

I think we need to set our carbon tax at a level that provides a strong incentive both to use low carbon alternatives and to capture CO2

The global climate costs of meat are not sustainable

The biggest difference we can make as individuals – and, collectively, to the carbon footprint of food – is to eat less meat. One UK study suggests that simply cutting out meat can reduce the footprint of a typical person’s diet by over a third.

A British family of three, each eating the average amount of beef (about 18 kilos a year each) would see a higher carbon footprint from the meat than from driving a car, or from the electricity used in their house.

inefficient in converting their food into meat. A cow uses 100 calories of food to make 3 calories of meat.

but the world as a whole manages to grow almost 6,000 calories per person a day, twice as much as we need to be well-fed and nourished. (Some 1,700 calories of this total are used to feed animals, of course; much food is wasted; and 800 calories are used, insanely, for biofuels for transport).

The role of food production in speeding environmental decay does not yet have the political importance of burning fossil fuels. This needs to change.

The proposal in this chapter is to turn the UK’s poor quality grazing lands, which cover about a sixth of the country, over to forestry. This is a radical suggestion, involving the conversion of 40–50,000 square kilometres of land. However the Forestry Commission says the land is available and in moving to 30 per cent woodland we would be doing no more than matching the land use of other large European countries, most of which are about one third forested.

for every kilowatt hour of heat produced by the coal, the wider atmosphere heats up, over the life of the CO2, by about 100,000 times as much.

The UK already operates what has probably has been the most effective carbon tax in the world, an underappreciated achievement and one which has helped reduce the country’s emissions from electricity generation faster than almost any other developed economy. In 2012, just before the country introduced a new levy on carbon emissions, coal was generating 40 per cent of all electricity and the UK was emitting 125 million tonnes of CO2 from burning coal in power stations. This fell over 80 per cent to 22 million tonnes in 2016 as an £18 per tonne levy caused the fuel to become uncompetitive with natural gas. The decline of coal has continued and weeks now pass without a lump of coal being burned to generate electricity. This very simple (and quite low) tax has pushed highly polluting coal off the UK network, almost certainly for ever. By 2021, almost no power stations using this fuel will remain open. Here on our doorstep we have seen the power of taxation to change the direction of an industry within a just a few years

The route to a zero carbon world will never be taken if it makes life more difficult for large numbers of ordinary families.