Holy Solar

Currently the Pope is visiting the UK. Speaking on BCC news after her brief meeting with him in Edinburgh today was Stephanie Hilborne who is the CEO of 47 Wildlife Trusts. She spoke about the importance of the influential catholic church supporting our pressing need to combat climate change whether it be by getting people, businesses, governments to act on reducing carbon emissions or preparing people to accept and adapt to the inevitable changes that lie ahead. Apparently the Vatican has now solar panels on the roof which is indicative of their commitment to fighting global warming and to recognising their role in our plight. Wildlife trusts are particularly concerned about our warming planet and the growing dislocation between people and their environment. For this reason I am delighted to be connected with Wildlife Trusts via Kindnessday UK – a project I founded with David Jamilly to raise awareness of the importance of consideration to others. Of course this begins with taking essential care of the very planet we inhabit and the air that we breath.

There are a million benefits to developing our world materially whether they be greater comforts, life saving medical facilities or increased knowledge of the universe. But one of the downsides would have to be that we have lost touch with essential benefit often by the natural world. Our very existence on earth.

Flash Floods and Hot Cities

A couple of weeks ago I was in sunny La Napoule in France with my husband. Four days later, just up the road, 20 people were killed in the most extreme weather conditions the region has seen for twenty years.

Is this a side effect of global warming? And if it is, what can we do to prepare as it seems that nature has a way of selecting new and unexpected destinations to act out her wrath. Right across the world violent storms claim lives on an almost weekly basis. How many depends on the population.

No surprise city mayors in particular are concerned because of the vast numbers of people living in cities. A couple of years ago at the Institute of Physics we alerted London councillors to the possibility of an extra tropic cyclone hitting our city and the devastation that would cause.

New York has already had experience. In 2007 the Subway was paralysed during morning rush hour when flash floods deposited debris on the tracks; the same thing as happened in 1992.

Our problem? You can't climate-proof anywhere, no campsite, no village, no city.

But what you can do is continue to counter what we believe are the causes of many of these extreme weather incidents. And that’s global warming. Like reducing CO2.And you can also turn a disadvantage into a plus. Take city buildings. Buildings account for 75 % of city emissions. But much of the 150 million square meters of rooftop in New York is black tar. In the summer it bakes under the sun and compounds the heat warming of climate change. Then it the winter it cracks when it freezes. But it is also the perfect landscape for photovoltaic panels which produce clean, much needed city energy. So just one example of a win-win. Let’s hope we can find some more.

Bjorn Lomborg at the RSA

If you want to influence people around to your way of thinking then firstly you have to make some sort of empathetic connection with them. Bjorn Lomberg knows that. He also knows if he talks common sense he will get a favourable response.

For example ask an impoverished mother struggling to survive whether she would rather have food for her children this week or go without for the sake of climate change the answer is obvious. Bjorn Lomberg is right, our current needs take preference over the future.

Talk about how no one wants to give up creature comforts like heated houses, cars and air travel if they can help it and you’ll them nodding their heads. Again Lomberg is right.

But tell a room of environmentalists and activists that you believe like they do that we are responsible however for global warming and we should be investing full speed ahead in sustainable energy like geo-engineering – in fact anything effective and that’s when people get very angry with him. In fact walk out of meetings as they did last night at the RSA event chaired by the Duke of Edinburgh – stormed out without even a backward glance at the Prince.

Why? Because he causes the same sort of irritation as someone who damns with faint praise. 'Global warming is a problem but it is not that much of an issue,' is his view. There, there. Which is probably worse than the declaring himself a global warming sceptic. He sounds so plausible he can actually upset people more.

For example, how their hard earned taxes are being squandered on inefficiencies and green schemes that are useless. And how they are being manipulated and duped into thinking they are doing the right thing.

There is even some common sense in his vision that if people want to do ‘the right thing’ more people in the developing countries could be helped today by doing the opposite to what everyone is banging on about; reducing emissions. Maybe, just maybe he is right and that we are obsessed with this one panacea. Cut carbon, save the world. As he says quite correctly more people may die from heat as a result of global warming, but less perish from cold. So there could be some positive spin to our warming planet. All stuff which is perfectly plausible.

However, it is at that point where he becomes offensive by suggesting that all efforts on carbon reduction are futile and that public relations movements like Kyoto agreements are no more than hypocritical and costly gestures. As he goes on to elaborate, if we were interested in saving mankind then we would do so the way he suggests. If we want to stop people dying from heat, we can give them air conditioning. Concerned about malaria, pay for drugs.

But the problem is that he avoids the central issue. That empathising with people’s immediate concerns will only work so far. How no one can accurately foretell the tipping point, when our greed for natural resources drives us too far. How none of us will ultimately benefit from our continued use of irreplaceable natural resources. And if it hadn’t been for these dramatic scenarios – possibly a little overdone - we would not have begun the good trend of environmental concern that is genuinely underway. People the world over are now are aware that we need energy sources other than fossil fuels. The world population is aware that our rainforests are precious, that our coral reefs are poisoned and that sea levels will rise as glaciers melt.

And whatever personal preferences we hold for helping out those in need it should not veer from our focus of stemming climate change.

Hopefully we can continue discussing the way forward with an open mind and an optimistic attitude.

Sea Change at Copenhagen

Anyone who has run a committee knows how difficult it is to get consensus on anything. And anyone who has been involved with the debate on global warming will know how particularly difficult it is to get consensus on reductions in CO emissions..

The reason for this is understandable. Whatever action we take will affect some people more than others. Plus there is no perfect action on the power point presentation yet. Some of the schemes over the past few years have been shown to be completely ineffectual— not stopped rising emissions anyway.

But when sixteen and half thousand people converge on the city of Copenhagen this week—sceptics, alarmists and fence sitters alike—they will all have something in common. And that is an unease for the welfare of the planet we inhabit.

Whatever your views on whether we’re responsible or not for disrupting the balance of atmospheric gases which has provided us to date with the necessary living conditions to survive and develop as a species, the fact is that something like a change in ocean current could reverse that irrevocably.

We do have access to technologies which can provide cleaner energy, we do have the will to replant and restore the rainforests and we can cut down drastically on unnecessary landfill waste with just small changes in our consumption.

Whether the US, China, India can yet agree to work together or not, I believe next week will mark the beginning of at least one welcome sea change. And that is the profound transformation of attitude towards the environment. We now know that we should be extremely grateful to be here at all.

Are you going to Copenhagen?

The trickiest issue to address in global warming is that of burden sharing. We know we all have to address our carbon emissions but which countries must make the biggest cuts is always the sticking point in all discussions. Who should it be? The already developed countries - the US being a prime example - who have profited by using up so much of the world's resources already or the new economies who are just getting going on a modernisation programme. What is fair? Who should cut back first? It's a toughie. And this is where Denmark comes in.

On the 6th December around 15,000 people are expected to arrive in Copenhagen for a climate conference In 2012 the Kyoto Protocol is set to expire and it is at this two week meeting in Denmark that some of the world's leading figures in climate change will get together to discuss just this sort of thing. Copenhagen 2009 is all about getting the momentum up - or keeping the momentum up - driving forward on this vital pact which we all hope can save the planet or rather save the planet from what we are doing to it.

So this lively city with its jazz bands and easy atmosphere has become the centre for anyone wanting to discuss Kyoto global warming and of course all it entails. As far as the Danes are concerned this meeting in December that they are hosting is all about our future.

A wind turbine will generate all the energy or the delegates. That will avoid some of the expected criticism about the large number of people flying in from all over the world to discuss this burning question. We are heating up and we are responsible. What are we going to do about it? And until we arrive at that decision even in Copenhagen it’s just business as usual!

Prince Charles and the Frog

If you are campaigning to the public to get them to help save the planet what are the best ways to do it?

Well there are several different approaches you can take. You can go the scary route like the Prince of Wales did in Brazil recently saying in a speech we only have 100 months left to change our ways or else! Then he went down the comic route....lashings of humour whether intentional or not with his You Tube 'Save the Forest' video featuring amongst other celebrities Prince William and Prince Harry and a digitalised South American frog.

Another completely different approach - an unusually positive one - has been taken by a rural campaigning group here in the UK ....they are showing pictures of beautiful countryside ....a bit like this one but nicer.... saying that this is how we will be in fifteen years time because we are going green and we all will have gone back to living how we used to do a hundred years or so ago as model citizens. A very different approach...

But with a survey by the US Pew Research conducted in 2006 showing how little we cared about global warming at all across the world - the Japanese came out on top of that with 66 per cent of them concerned; the Chinese scored 20 out of 100 and the US came out bottom with just 19 per cent of Americans giving any damn about it at all it is obvious that we desperately need our awareness raising campaigns to hit home.

Since then, however, attitudes have begun to change. Maybe the global recession does have something to do with the downturn in sales of luxury goods ..particularly gas guzzling items but just maybe - hopefully - it is also a growing awareness that whatever approach we have used on our campaigning the message is out there that we must act together to save our planet and we must do so quickly.

Black Carbon

Black carbon! It sounds like bad news...and it is and, as far as the Arctic is concerned..it is very bad news - probably responsible for half if not more of the increase in the warming in that region over the past 120 years.

Are we considering black carbon seriously enough? Well, what is it? It's a form of soot, a product of the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels or the burning of coal..wood..dung.. That sort of thing. The Arctic is particularly sensitive to it. It darkens the ice and the snow and this in turn affects the Arctic's ability to reflect light. Therefore the ice absorbs heat and this all has been contributing to the reduction in summer ice we are now seeing. As well as that black carbon in the atmosphere absorbs solar radiation and converts that to more heat. So it contributes to our changing climate in at least two ways. And it is no surprise that black carbon is the second leading cause of global warming after CO2.

Now ...unlike carbon dioxide .. black carbon remains in the atmosphere for days or weeks at the very most but with the melting of the Arctic ice much quicker than previously expected - and this melting of the ice being one of the climate "tipping points" ...and with black carbon known to be responsible for much of this damage some scientists are now suggesting that this problem should be addressed.

So… immediate reductions in black carbon could indeed be the white knight of climate change - even a rescue plan. Because...at least this would bring about a more immediate result in the Arctic . And quick responses are just what we need right now!