Using Climate Change to Justify Bad Policies

By Daniel Nelson

OneWorld UK - Mon., Jan. 7, 2008

The controversy over the possible health hazards arising from Britain’s switch from traditional light-bulbs to low-energy lighting is a small example of the way that the need to tackle climate change is being seized on by snake-oil salesmen around the world to push their products.

Take biofuels. Oil is a major contributor to global warming, they say - so let’s run cars, trucks and buses on fuel derived from crops.

Lured by the possibility of profits and quick-fixes to a complicated problem, the world moves into action. The European Union sets targets for biofuel production, Brazil sees a way of cashing in on its years of research into sugar cane-based fuel, North American farmers look to an exciting new global market, various African leaders envisage an agricultural revolution.

Only afterwards do the voices of caution sound. Nobel Prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen warns that switching from fossil fuels to biofuels might do more harm than good because the nitrogen in fertiliser is converted into nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. Jean Ziegler, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, describes biofuels as a "crime against humanity" because of the way they will probably push up food prices. Another scientist raises the issue of water: will the millions of people who lack access to clean water be joined by millions of others in the wake of a massive switch to thirsty agrofuels?

Uncertainty dogs the debate. Research is needed to settle the questions before we hurtle headlong down another dead-end development path. But the vested interests pushing biofuels don’t care – whether the prize is sugar cane in Brazil or jatropha in India, whether the profits are for corporations selling inputs and equipment in North America, forest colonisers in the Amazon or Northern farmers’ representatives hoping for subsidies.

Or take nuclear power. The nuclear industry has leapt aboard the global warming bandwagon in the hope that nuclear’s many unresolved problems will be pushed aside if it shouts “climate change” sufficiently loudly and frequently. Unfortunately, the industry’s siren call is backed by politicians such as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who talk about reducing harmful climate emissions but remain wedded to economic thinking that guarantees their increase. Brown and the nuclear lobby want nuclear power for reasons other than helping tackle climate change: climate change gives them respectable cover.

A new example of climate change double-speak came last week when a spokesman for a proposed new coal-fired power plant in southern England justified the project that will pump out 8.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year on the grounds that it would ultimately use climate-friendly “carbon capture and storage” techniques - an unproven technology that may or may not become viable.

It’s like the response to terrorism: terrorist attacks are a real problem but are used by police and officials to secure powers that they want for other reasons, supported by governments who want to be seen to be acting. The result is new laws and curbs on freedom that are often worse than the threat they are supposedly tackling.

The new light bulbs with their small mercury content are not in the same league of seriousness as the biofuels bonanza, the nuclear nostrum or clean coal claims. But some of the assumptions behind the way they were introduced betray the same sort of thinking: ‘Oh, yes, now you mention it, there are small potential health threats that we didn’t bother to inform customers about – or eliminate – because it’s part of the effort to combat climate change and therefore is justified.’

No, it’s not automatically justified. Companies and governments are already adept at “greenwash” (misleading consumers over environmental practices or the environmental benefits of a product or service): now we need to beware “climate wash”. We have to guard against policies and products pushed in the name of curbing global warming. Do they really work, not just today but over the full lifecycle? What are disadvantages – and who will suffer the consequences?

Read more... Sphere: Related Content