Climate change: sailing through the perfect storm

Tomorrow is the deadline for countries to sign up to the Copenhagen Accord, says Geoffrey Lean

By Geoffrey Lean Published: 8:49PM GMT 29 Jan 2010

Yes, I know it has become a cliché, rightly discouraged by newspaper editors, but it seems so apposite that I am going to inflict it on you anyway. Climate change seems to have been hit by a perfect storm in the past two and a half months. And tomorrow we will get a first indication of how much damage has been done.
It came out of a relatively blue sky. Back in November, environmentalists could look forward to a forecast of increasing sun and favourable breezes. The science of global warming was not seriously challenged, though public concern had been falling off with the recession. Prospects for the Copenhagen climate summit looked bright: country after top polluting country was making pledges to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases". And there even seemed to be a reasonable prospect that the US Congress would pass a climate Bill.

That forecast proved to be as spot-on as the Met Office's recent predictions. First, the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia caused unprecedented public doubts about the climate science, which were later compounded by the discovery that the latest report of the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contained the wildly inaccurate prediction that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. Copenhagen fell apart, only rescued from complete collapse by a hastily negotiated "accord" between key world leaders. And finally US legislation became hopelessly bogged down in the Senate – even before Barack Obama lost the majority needed to pass it in the snows of Massachusetts.
Tomorrow, however, marks a key moment, for it is the deadline for countries to sign up to the Copenhagen Accord and make their pledges official. So this may be a good time to assess the effects of the storm. And peering through the fog of hype and misinformation from parts of both sides of the debate suggests a surprising conclusion; so far, much less damage than might be expected has actually been done.
Despite the sceptics' best efforts, for example, the basic edifice of global- warming science remains intact. Nothing in the so-called Climategate emails damages it. The most quoted one – about using a "trick" to "hide the decline" – has been widely, but inaccurately, taken to refer to trying to cover up a supposed drop in temperatures since the anomalously hot year of 1998: in fact, it refers to a relatively technical issue over tree-ring measurements from Siberia in the 1960s which suggested the thermometer was falling when it was in fact going the other way.
The scientists' disgraceful failure to comply with the Freedom of Information Act and the Himalayan glacier debacle are much more serious. One was rightly condemned by the Information Commissioner last week; the other reveals sloppiness at the IPCC. But again, neither touches the basic science; the Himalayan howler concerns a predicted effect of global warming, rather than the climate change itself. The obituaries of the science proclaimed daily by sceptics so far are not even premature.
Tomorrow, furthermore, is likely to reveal remarkably little damage to international structures. The UN says it will not announce who has endorsed the Accord for some days, but all the main polluting countries – accounting for 80 per cent of emissions worldwide – are expected to do so. This is a surprise. Western governments thought that the big, rapidly industrialising countries would refuse to join, but they have.
The prospects for a new treaty are dimmer than before the storm broke: despite official optimism, there is little chance of one even by the end of this year. But action to reduce emissions – in the main developing countries, at least – is actually occurring faster than expected. In the few weeks since Copenhagen, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia have all taken important steps.
Even in the United States, more remains standing than at first appears. Obama's State of the Union speech actually elevated climate above health- care in his priorities, largely because of the job-creating potential of measures to improve energy efficiency and boost reneweable sources of power. He also promised to include an expansion of nuclear energy, which has infuriated environmentalists but increases the chances of some Republican support for a bill. True, any legislation is unlikely to contain its hitherto core measures for capping and trading emissions, but many environmentalists believe that more could be done by using existing powers under the US Clean Air Act.
So perhaps it wasn't a perfect storm after all. Or not yet. Either way, I promise, I won't inflict the phrase on you again.
Miliband must empower us all
Boy wonder Ed Miliband has attracted plaudits for saving the Copenhagen climate summit from total disaster (he got an adjournment just as the hopeless chairman – Danish prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen – appeared to be about to concede failure, and when the proceedings restarted someone else had mysteriously been put in charge). This week will show whether he can do proactive as well as pre-emptive.
He is to announce details of schemes to allow householders and communities to generate their own electricity and heat from renewable energy. This has huge potential; one government report says a third of Britain’s electricity could be provided this way by 2020, giving families and the country energy security. But Mr Miliband’s plans so far aim for just two per cent and are correspondingly mean with the incentives to encourage it.
Britain has an appalling record on renewables, despite having Europe’s best resources. Only Malta produces a smaller proportion of its energy from them – zero.
And for decades,
officials have especially resisted encouraging families to install renewables, such as solar panels, preferring to control things themselves.
A YouGov poll now shows that two thirds of Britons think Mr Miliband’s plans are not ambitious enough, and that even more are ready to pay bigger power bills to improve them.
The Tories understand this, and promise to do better. Here’s hoping.
Will rhinos heed the call of the wild?
Conservationists will fight over just about anything, and lately a row has been rocking the small world of the northern white rhinoceros. It’s small because there are precious few of this
sub-species, the world’s most endangered mammal. They are thought to be extinct in the wild, with just eight in captivity: two in San Diego, California, and six in the Czech Republic’s Dvur Králové Zoo.
Or there were. Four of the European ones – two males and two females – have just been shipped back to Africa in the hope that a touch of the sun will stimulate their sex drives, and save the species. Their attempts at mating have been “abysmal”, according to experts, possibly because they were always being watched.
The “Last Chance to Survive” project – costing $300,000 – was mainly put up by the charities Flora and Fauna International and Back to Africa.
The animals are now settling in at the Ol Pejeta private reserve in the shadow of Mt Kenya, where it is hoped they will feel horny despite their prized appendages being removed to deter poachers.
Czech activists and the European Association of Zoos protested that the transfer endangered the rhinos by exposing them to the wild, but the Czech zoo said: “We must offer them the last chance.”
In addition, our own Prince William has lent his support to the project. As the product of centuries of arranged partnerings, he is presumably well qualified to pass an opinion.