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Is the U.K. Government the obstacle?

George Monbiot

Corporations are ready to act on global warming but are thwarted by Ministers who resist regulation in the name of the market.

CLIMATE-CHANGE DENIAL has gone through four stages. First, the fossil-fuel lobbyists told us that global warming was a myth. Then they agreed that it was happening, but insisted that it was a good thing: we could grow wine in the Pennines and take Mediterranean holidays in northern England. Then they admitted that the bad effects outweighed the good ones, but claimed that climate change would cost more to tackle than to tolerate. Now they have reached stage four. They concede that climate change would be cheaper to address than to neglect, but maintain that it is now too late.

Climatologists at the Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado have published the results of the latest satellite survey of Arctic sea ice. It looks as if this month's coverage will be the lowest ever recorded. The Arctic, they warn, could already have reached tipping point — the moment beyond which the warming becomes irreversible. As ice disappears, the surface of the sea becomes darker, absorbing more heat. Less ice forms, so the sea becomes darker still, and so it goes on.

Last month, New Scientist reported that something similar is happening in Siberia. For the first time on record, the permafrost of western Siberia is melting. As it does so, it releases the methane stored in the peat. Methane has 20 times the greenhouse warming effect of carbon dioxide. The more gas the peat releases, the warmer the world becomes, and the more the permafrost melts.

Two weeks ago, scientists at Cranfield University discovered that the soils in the U.K. have been losing the carbon they contain; as temperatures rise, the decomposition of organic matter accelerates, which causes more warming, which causes more decomposition. Already the soil in the United Kingdom has released enough carbon dioxide to counteract the emissions cuts made since 1990.

Extraordinary change

A week ago, I would have said that if it is too late, then one factor above all others is to blame: the chokehold that big business has on economic policy. By forbidding governments to intervene effectively in the market, the corporations oblige us to do nothing but stand by and watch as the planet cooks. But last Wednesday I discovered that it is not quite that simple. At a conference organised by the Building Research Establishment, I witnessed an extraordinary thing: companies demanding tougher regulations — and the government refusing to grant them.

Environmental managers from British Telecom and John Lewis department stores (which owns Waitrose supermarkets) complained that, without tighter standards that everyone has to conform to, their companies put themselves at a disadvantage if they try to go green. "All that counts," the man from John Lewis said, "is cost, cost and cost." If he's buying eco-friendly lighting and his competitors are not, he loses. As a result, he said, "I welcome the EU's energy performance of buildings directive, as it will force retailers to take these issues seriously."

And from the U.K. Government? Nothing. Elliot Morley, the Minister for Climate Change, proposed to do as little as he could get away with. The officials from the Department of Trade and Industry, to a collective groan from the men in suits, insisted that the measures some of the companies wanted would be "an unwarranted intervention in the market."

It was unspeakably frustrating. The men in suits had come to unveil technologies that really could save the planet. The architects Atelier Ten had designed a cooling system based on the galleries of a termite mound. By installing a concrete labyrinth in the foundations, they could keep even a large building in a hot place at a constant temperature without air conditioning. The only power they needed was to drive the fans pushing the cold air upwards, using 10 per cent of the electricity required for normal cooling systems.

The man from a company called PB Power explained how the four megawatts of waste heat poured into the Thames by the gas-fired power station at Barking in east London could be used to warm the surrounding homes. A firm called XCO2 has designed a virtually silent wind turbine, which hangs, like a clothes hoist, from a vertical axis. It can be installed in the middle of a city without upsetting anyone.

These three technologies alone could cut millions of tonnes of emissions without causing any decline in our quality of life. Like hundreds of others, they are ready to be deployed immediately and almost universally. But they won't be widely used until the Government acts. And the Government won't act, because to do so would be "an unwarranted intervention in the market."

I don't believe it is yet too late to minimise climate change. Most of the evidence suggests we could still stop the ecosystem melting down, but only by cutting greenhouse gases by about 80 per cent before 2030. It has now become clear to me that the obstacle is not the market but the government, waving a dog-eared treatise that proves some point in a debate the rest of the world has forgotten. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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