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Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Global warming is now a weapon of mass
destruction
Global warming is now a weapon of mass destruction
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1007042,00.html

It kills more people than terrorism, yet Blair and Bush do nothing

John Houghton
Monday July 28, 2003
The Guardian

If political leaders have one duty above all others, it is to protect the
security of their people. Thus it was, according to the prime minister, to
protect Britain's security against Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass
destruction that this country went to war in Iraq. And yet our long-term
security is threatened by a problem at least as dangerous as chemical,
nuclear or biological weapons, or indeed international terrorism:
human-induced climate change.
As a climate scientist who has worked on this issue for several decades,
first as head of the Met Office, and then as co-chair of scientific
assessment for the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change, the impacts
of global warming are such that I have no hesitation in describing it as a
"weapon of mass destruction".
Like terrorism, this weapon knows no boundaries. It can strike anywhere, in
any form - a heatwave in one place, a drought or a flood or a storm surge in
another. Nor is this just a problem for the future. The 1990s were probably
the warmest decade in the last 1,000 years, and 1998 the warmest year.
Global warming is already upon us.
The World Meteorological Organisation warned this month that extreme weather
events already seem to be becoming more frequent as a result. The US
mainland was struck by 562 tornados in May (which incidentally saw the
highest land temperatures globally since records began in 1880), killing 41
people. The developing world is the hardest hit: extremes of climate tend to
be more intense at low latitudes and poorer countries are less able to cope
with disasters. Pre-monsoon temperatures this year in India reached a
blistering 49C (120F) - 5C (9F) above normal.
Once this killer heatwave began to abate, 1,500 people lay dead - half the
number killed outright in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade
Centre. While no one can ascribe a single weather event to climate change
with any degree of scientific certainty, higher maximum temperatures are one
of the most predictable impacts of accelerated global warming, and the
parallels - between global climate change and global terrorism - are
becoming increasingly obvious.
To his credit, Tony Blair has - rhetorically, at least - begun to face up to
this. In a recent speech he stated clearly that "there can be no genuine
security if the planet is ravaged by climate change". But words are not
enough. They have to be matched with adequate action. The recent
announcement of a large-scale offshore wind generating programme was
welcome, but the UK still lags far behind other European countries in
developing renewables capacity.
The latest report on energy and climate change by the royal commission on
environmental pollution addressed the much more demanding global reductions
in greenhouse gas emissions that will be required over the next 50 years (in
addition to the Kyoto agreement) and how these could be achieved. Given that
the UK needs to take its share of the global burden the commission
recommended that we should aim for a cut in these emissions of 60% by 2050.
It also pointed out the urgent need for an adequate mechanism for
negotiating each country's emission target and advocated a globally
implemented plan known as "contraction and convergence". The energy white
paper published earlier this year accepted the royal commission's 60%
reduction target, but it is disturbing that it provided no clarity on UK
policy regarding the framework for international negotiation.
Any successful international negotiation for reducing emissions must be
based on four principles: the precautionary principle, the principle of
sustainable development, the polluter-pays principle and the principle of
equity. The strength of "contraction and convergence" is that it satisfies
all these principles. But it also means facing up to some difficult
questions.
First, world leaders have to agree on a target for the stabilisation of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a sufficiently low level to stave off
dangerous climate change. Second, this target, and the global greenhouse gas
budget it implies, has to form the framework for an equitable global
distribution of emissions permits, assigned to different countries on a
per-capita basis. Countries with the largest populations will therefore get
the most permits, but for the sake of efficiency and to achieve economic
convergence these permits will need to be internationally tradable.
This is the only solution likely to be acceptable to most of the developing
world, which unlike us has not had the benefit of over a century of fossil
fuel-driven economic prosperity. And it also meets one of the key demands of
the United States, that developing countries should not be excluded from
emissions targets, as they currently are under the Kyoto protocol.
Nowadays everyone knows that the US is the world's biggest polluter, and
that with only one 20th of the world's population it produces a quarter of
its greenhouse gas emissions. But the US government, in an abdication of
leadership of epic proportions, is refusing to take the problem seriously -
and Britain, presumably because Blair wishes not to offend George Bush - is
beginning to fall behind too. Emissions from the US are up 14% on those in
1990 and are projected to rise by a further 12% over the next decade.
It is vital that Russia now ratifies the Kyoto protocol so that it can at
last come into force. But while the US refuses to cooperate, it is difficult
to see how the rest of the world can make much progress on the much tougher
longer-term agreements that will be necessary after Kyoto's mandate runs out
in 2012.
Nor does the latest science provide any comfort. The intergovernmental panel
on climate change has warned of 1.4C to 5.8C (2.5F to 10.4F) temperature
rises by 2100. This already implies massive changes in climate, and yet the
current worst-case scenarios emerging from the Met Office's Hadley centre
envisage even greater rises than this - a degree and speed of global warming
the consequences of which are hard to quantify or even imagine.
So Blair has a challenge. The world needs leadership, and the British prime
minister is well placed to stand at the head of a new "coalition of the
willing" to tackle this urgent problem. He is also uniquely placed to
persuade Bush to join in this effort, given their joint commitment to making
the world safe from "weapons of mass destruction".
But even if he fails to persuade him, there are other allies who would still
respond to his leadership - even if this means opposing the US until such
time as it no longer has an oilman for president. If Blair were to assume
this mantle, history might not only forgive him, but will also endorse
Britain's contribution to long-term global security.

7 Sir John Houghton was formerly chief executive of the Meteorological
Office and co-chair of the scientific assessment working group of the
intergovernmental panel on climate change. He is the author of Global
Warming: the Complete Briefing.

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