A World Turned Upside Down  

George Monbiot takes a look at the latest twist in global warming politics (along with the unfortunate developments in global warming itself) - corporations trying to get governments to do something about the problem, reversing the usual situation where the likes of Exxon try very hard to achieve the opposite effect.

The insurance industry is one that has a lot of incentive to do something about the problem, and to a certain extent they have been fairly vocal about this (Insurance Australia Group's support with the WWF to produce a report on how to reduce the effects of global warming on Australia being one example). They will inevitably begin to make other businesses aware of the problem, as they start to incorporate future damage costs into premiums.

I do sometimes wonder "what if" the risk management industry (Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway for example) had achieved the ultimate form of regulatory capture instead of the oil and military-industrial complex industries ? Maybe we'd be paying carbon taxes instead of occupying Iraq.

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 it was a good thing: we could grow wine in the Pennines and take Mediterranean holidays in Skegness. Then they admitted that the bad effects outweighed the good ones, but claimed that it would cost more to tackle than to tolerate. Now they have reached stage 4. They concede that it would be cheaper to address than to neglect, but maintain that it’s now too late. This is their most persuasive argument.

Today the climatologists at the Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado will publish 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 UK have been losing the carbon they contain: as temperatures rise, the decomposition of organic matter accelarates, which causes more warming, which causes more decomposition. Already the soil in this country has released enough carbon dioxide to counteract the emissions cuts we have made since 1990.

These are examples of positive feedback: self-reinforcing effects which, once started, are hard to stop. They are kicking in long before they were supposed to.

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So why won’t the government act? Because it is siding with the dirty companies against the clean ones. Deregulation has become the test of its manhood: the sign that it has put the bad old days of economic planning behind it. Sir David Arculus, the man appointed by Blair to run the government’s Better Regulation Task Force, is also deputy chairman of the Confederation of British Industry, the shrillest exponents of the need to put the market ahead of society. It is hard to think of a more blatant conflict of interest.

I don’t believe it is yet too late to minimise climate change. Most of the evidence suggests we could still stop the ecosystem from melting down, but only by cutting greenhouse gases by around 80% by 2030. I’m working on a book showing how this can be done, technically and politically. But it has now become clear to me that the obstacle is not the market but the government, waving a dog-eared treatise which proves some point in a debate the rest of the world has forgotten.