6 March 2005
Worried about global warming, but not too worried? Quietly sceptical about the scientists' most apocalyptic claims? Then you've been duped, say environmentalists and political campaigners.
Keeping you in doubt has become an international, multimillion-dollar industry, they claim - and now that industry is focusing its efforts on the UK.
The 'denial lobby' may have already notched up some victories here. Tony Blair has called climate change the greatest threat to civilisation, but his government's much-trumpeted efforts to curb Britain's greenhouse gas emissions have virtually collapsed. Under industry pressure, Blair recently raised the limit on how much carbon dioxide companies can emit over the next three years.
The climbdown jeopardises Labour's stated target of a 20 per cent cut in total emissions by 2010, and has enraged green activists. But it coincides with a chorus of comment in the media from those who believe that visions of melting ice caps, changing ocean currents, droughts and flooded cities are either wildly exaggerated or cannot be attributed to human causes.
David Bellamy, the celebrity botanist, has been prominent in rejecting the prophecies of catastrophic climate change put about by most scientific experts. Those same experts came from across the globe to Exeter last month for a high-level forum hosted by the Met Office. They renewed their warnings of catastrophic weather changes, but once again had to share headlines with the sceptics, who held their own UK conference at almost the same time.
Meanwhile, Downing Street and other government departments have been vigorously lobbied by captains of industry from the energy, airline, construction, manufacturing and chemical sectors. Before the government's last-minute concessions on carbon emissions, there was also a barrage of complaint from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) about the costs of the proposed caps.
The CBI doesn't reject arguments about the potential damage caused by greenhouse gases, but has pleaded for more time to adapt, especially while fuel costs are high and the manufacturing recovery is fragile. Extra red tape means extra expense. Digby Jones, the CBI's director-general, has warned that companies could decamp to less heavily-regulated jurisdictions, taking jobs with them. Critics say he has exaggerated the cost of controlling emissions. But the government - apparently more fearful of job losses than of environmental destruction - seems to be persuaded.
The affair is faintly reminiscent of what happened when US President George Bush pulled America, the world's biggest polluter, out of the Kyoto protocol on climate change. That decision was encouraged by lobbying and PR campaigns financed by the polluting industries, which made large donations to Senators and Congressmen and sponsored neoliberal think tanks and contrarian scientific research. ExxonMobil, the oil major, has been accused by Friends of the Earth and others of giving millions of dollars to a long list of think-tanks and lobbyists opposed to Kyoto.
Nothing on that scale has happened in Britain. For one thing, BP and Shell, the UK's two oil giants, have been quicker than their US counterparts to accept that greenhouse gases come from burning fossil fuels. Nor is there evidence of improper influence here - although it would be difficult to uncover if it existed. Compared with America, less is generally made public in Britain about corporate donations, the funding of academic and quasi-academic research, and meetings between politicians and businessmen.
Climate change sceptics now have cause to worry about what is happening in Britain. Blair, despite failing to reduce carbon emissions at home, has placed the problems of climate change at the top of the agenda during his presidency of the G8. He is also putting diplomatic pressure on Bush to improve America's environmental performance.
Robert May, president of the Royal Society, has warned that the UK will be the next ideological battleground for the doomsayers and the gainsayers. Connections have already been established between some British sceptical organisations and their US cousins. The UK-based Scientific Alliance, which organised the meeting of sceptics in London last month, recently published a joint report with America's George C Marshall Institute, a think-tank which has received donations from Exxon.
The report claimed to undermine the ories of climate change. Exxon has also contributed $50,000 to the International Policy Network (IPN), headquartered in London. Key personnel at the IPN have connections with the Institute of Economic Affairs, Britain's leading conservative think-tank, as well as the Competitive Enterprise Institute in the US, whose global warming expert is Myron Ebell, President Bush's climate adviser. The IPN gets much of its funding from America. Last year, it released a report claiming that climate change was 'a myth'. All the think-tanks strongly deny that their research findings are influenced by corporate donors.
The sceptics' message is a reassuring one, and they have had no problem putting their case in the media. That should not, however, give the impression that they repre sent a sizable body of scientific opinion. They include a handful of professors at major universities in the US and Europe, but are still a tiny minority.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, highly respected and using research from 2,000 climate experts, has predicted rising sea levels and threats to human health. Most of the world's other major scientific bodies broadly agree about the dangers of global warming. David King, the UK government's chief scientific adviser, has called it a bigger threat than terrorism.
Yet as well as raising the limits on CO2 emissions, the government declined to tighten energy efficiency requirements for new buildings, and commissioned new runways to help the airline industry, a major polluter. In the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, UK plc seems to have argued its case rather well.
Not that the CBI sees it that way. It points out that while business has been forced to shoulder the expense of new environmental regulations under Labour, no such sanctions have been imposed on consumers. The CBI takes the credit for pioneering the EU emissions trading scheme, and claims that market-oriented businesses can be relied upon to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and bring environment-friendly technologies into use.
Jones fumes when environmentalists attack the CBI. 'Business is busting a gut to keep up and these people seem completely oblivious to the whole thing,' he said recently. For all our sakes, let's hope he's right.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5141520-107983,00.html
