The Climate Change Committee was set up by Part 2 of the Climate Change Act 2008, specifically section 32, with additional provisions in Schedule 1. Section 38(1)(c) provides for it to “at the request of a national authority, provide advice, analysis, information or other assistance to the authority in connection with…adaptation to climate change…”. This is in addition to its duties to advise with regard to carbon budgets, aviation, shipping etc. Its latest adaptation report has recently been published, and noticed by the BBC and the Guardian with rather less enthusiasm, it seemed to me, than is the case with regard to its shouting about carbon targets and the like.
As a brief digression, who knew that section 39(2)(d) empowers the Committee to accept gifts? I wonder if they have done so, and if they have, who the donors were and why the gifts were made?
But back to the latest adaptation report. The BBC’s take on it is neatly summed up in its headline: “Government not taking climate seriously – advisers”. The article is worth a read, but for me the critical section comes at the end:
At the heart of these discussions is the question of cost.
But putting off efforts to prepare the UK for the changing climate in an attempt to save cash would be “a huge mistake” and could increase economic damage in the long run, Baroness Brown said.
“We are very worried about their spending review,” she added, in an unusually strong plea from the Committee.
“This is not a tomorrow problem; it’s a today problem. If we don’t address it today, it becomes a disaster tomorrow.”
A freedom of information request submitted by the BBC found there are just 18 members of staff working fully on climate adaptation at the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra).
That’s just 0.3% of Defra’s nearly 6,600 full-time-equivalent core staff.
Defra said some of these employees also worked on climate adaptation part-time, and the figures don’t include those working in other parts of government.
The Guardian report is in similar vein, with its headline: “Labour not protecting people, economy and homes from climate crisis, watchdog says – Plans to protect UK from extreme weather are inadequate, Climate Change Committee says in scathing assessment”. Needless to say the Guardian article was probably less analytical and chose to conclude with quotes from Greenpeace and from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.
The Report itself is huge, and although I always urge readers to consult the original material rather than rely on summaries prepared by others, it would be a brave person (or one with time on their hands) who decides to read it from start to finish. I confess that on this occasion I haven’t done so either, but one paragraph did resonate deeply with me:
Continued climate change is inevitable. Current projections for global greenhouse gas emissions indicate that warming is expected to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in the early 2030s. Global warming is currently on track for around 2°C by the 2050s with the possibility of significant further warming by the end of the century. However, the potential for strengthened global mitigation ambition means that maintaining warming to well-below 2°C remains plausible. In the UK, further global warming is expected to bring rising sea-levels, warmer and wetter winters, and drier and hotter summers with more intense heatwaves and localised extreme rainfall.
Why am I highlighting this? Because, being a creature of the Climate Change Act, one assumes that the Committee is aware of the content of the Impact Assessment that was produced when the Act when through Parliament. And, as I pointed out in Read it and Weep on page 7 (of 126), that impact assessment includes this:
It should be noted that the benefits of reduced carbon emissions have been valued using the social cost of carbon which estimates the avoided global damages from reduced UK emissions. The benefits of UK action will be distributed across the globe. In the case where the UK acts in concert with other countries then the UK will benefit from other nations reduced emissions and would be expected to experience a large net benefit. Where the UK acts alone, though there would be a net benefit for the world as a whole the UK would bear all the cost of the action and would not experience any benefit from reciprocal reductions elsewhere. The economic case for the UK continuing to act alone where global action cannot be achieved would be weak.
And yet in the UK we have a government ever more determined to plough on with its net zero agenda and rapid decarbonisation of the grid at massive expense regardless of the fact that the rest of the world isn’t following its “leadership”.
Surely, then, the responsibility of the Climate Change Committee is to draw to the attention of the relevant Secretary of State (one Mr Miliband) the fact that the impact assessment (which he signed at the time) demonstrates quite clearly that pressing on with unilateral greenhouse gas emissions reduction is a seriously flawed strategy, one where the economic case is weak. Given the costs of a flawed climate change mitigation strategy, with a weak economic underpinning, it would be better to stop wasting that money and to spend some or all of it on adaptation, where the economic case would be much greater and the benefits to UK citizens would be obvious rather than speculative. This is what we sceptics have said all along. It would be nice if the Climate Change Committee did its job and pointed this out. It would be nicer still if Mr Miliband remembered what he put his name to in 2008.
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