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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 88-iii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
CLIMATE CHANGE: THE CITIZEN'S AGENDA
Wednesday 13 December 2006 DR DAVE REAY Evidence heard in Public Questions 442 - 525
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on Wednesday 13 December 2006 Members present Mr Michael Jack, in the Chair Mr David Drew James Duddridge Lynne Jones Daniel Kawczynski David Lepper Mrs Madeleine Moon Sir Peter Soulsby David Taylor Mr Roger Williams ________________ Memorandum submitted by Dr Dave Reay
Examination of Witness
Witness: Dr Dave Reay, University of Edinburgh, gave evidence. Q442 Chairman: The witching hour of half past three has now come round and so we can formally begin this evidence session of the Committee's inquiry, Climate Change: The "Citizen's Agenda", and our first witness this afternoon is Dr Dave Reay from the University of Edinburgh. Dr Reay you are most welcome. It sounds from the introduction that you are on Mastermind. Dr Reay: I know. Q443 Chairman: We know you are going to be answering questions in some detail on climate change issues on which you have a very considerable expertise. Can I congratulate you on your website, which is a mine of useful information. I could have spent many hours going through all the presentations, but sadly did not have it. Nonetheless, I salute the content of it, it is very helpful indeed. One of the main objectives of this inquiry is to look at how the citizen and the small, medium sized enterprises, for example, that they are involved in can engage in the whole climate change debate. Sometimes the discussions are at a very high level, and citizens will observe this by reports in the media but may not immediately connect that they have a role to play in addressing the outcomes of those sometimes quite high level, and, at times, very sophisticated, discussions about climate change. What would your advice be, as the author of a book who has addressed this subject, in terms of how we get the citizens certainly of this country and, indeed, of other jurisdictions involved in a practical way to address the climate change agenda? Dr Reay: What has not worked, in my experience, is probably the place to start. What has not worked is scaring people. As a climate change scientist trying to convey the problem to the public, we, or certainly I, started off on the basis that it is very worrying, it is catastrophic, climate change is a possibility, and bringing in the impact of climate change as far as the developing world; and the figures are scary, and you can scare people, but the feedback I got, and the more I talked to the public about climate change, the more I realised that you can scare people and they will recognise climate change as an issue but that will not feed into action on the ground. What seems to have been much more effective, certainly recently, has been making it personal. So, for whichever user-group community you are talking to, whether it be schools, or taxi drivers, or university academics, you make it personal to them as far as climate change impacts in their area and the solutions which apply to their lifestyle. If they are someone who drives a lot, then the impacts on their driving, but also how they can make a difference through changing the engine size of their car; whereas for other people the major climate impact may be flying, and there, obviously, you can give them information which is directly applicable to them. Making the message more personal, I think, is the key, and that is something which I have failed to do in the past. Q444 Chairman: Can you develop that thought process a little bit for us? I recently, for example, rang up my electricity company and said, "Can I have this year's and last year's consumption data?" They said, "Yes, you can have that." Then I said, "Can you convert it into carbon dioxide and carbon emissions?", and they said, "No, you will have to go away and look up this website and find out what your carbon footprint is", and all of a sudden that simple connection to me, the "what am I doing" process, meant I then had to go off and do something else. What works to make it personal in your experience? Dr Reay: If you take the point of view of your energy provider, if you have got through their energy efficiency commitment, instead of it simply being, "We are providing you low-energy light-bulbs", for instance, "at no cost or low cost", if you can have information based on, "This is what the impact of climate change is going to be in your area and this is what you can do about it. This is the saving you will make by using our low energy light-bulbs. This is how it will benefit your borough or your community as far as the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and the warming impacts." It is a huge challenge to do, because you are talking about so many different levels of society and so many different areas. You can imagine a community in Dover, you could highlight climate change through the impacts of increased immigration, the immigration figure is going to go up. Q445 Chairman: When you are talking about how you get this through to the individual, the citizen, who do you think should be responsible for making the connection between the big, high level issue, the global issue and what happens in Dover, for example? Dr Reay: Basically, if you take the science, you take the climate impact projection, so the UK Climate Impacts Programme, the information they are providing, and the information the Energy Savings Trust provide, you put those together for user groups, for local communities. You have community leaders, you maybe have religious leaders, church leaders, who actually know what is going to work for their communities, and you give them the information targeted at those communities and targeted in a way which will actually ring a bell. Q446 Chairman: I do not personally disagree with what you are saying, but there is a slight missing link in the logic. You say you should. Who is the "you"? Who should be the connector? Who should be the organisation that takes the information from the Energy Savings Trust, the Environment Agency and bring it down to the citizen? Who makes the connection? Dr Reay: I suppose, at the moment, we have got things like the Climate Change Initiative, which has worked really well at sending out these climate change champions and giving the information in that way, and they are taking the information via Defra but, obviously, there is input there from the Energy Savings Trust. I guess we have got the framework, we have got the bodies with the information. There is going to have to be work, and if you identified a thousand user groups and each of those had a community leader who could give you feedback on, "Yes, this is basically what will work for my community", and then you looked at the information we have got on climate change impacts and/or mitigations through the individual level and tailored a package for that group, you would end up with a lot of packages, maybe a thousand different packages, some of them overlapping a lot, some of them very different. It is not something which is already on the shelf which we can take off from the Energy Savings Trust or Defra, but the information is available in its raw form. Q447 Chairman: In our society we have got things like local authorities. I suppose you might consider them to be a suitable body to co-ordinate some of this information and disseminate it? Dr Reay: That would make absolute sense, yes. Q448 David Lepper: Can we just concentrate on individual households or households collectively, perhaps, because I think we have got a strange situation, have we not, where overall greenhouse gas emissions in this country have fallen over a period of time--- Dr Reay: Not in housing. Q449 David Lepper: ---but the use of energy by households has increased, and I think (and the figure I have seen here is for 2004) 85 per cent of our greenhouse gas emissions came from households. Dr Reay: That is direct and indirect. Q450 David Lepper: Direct and indirect, yes. You have said that significant reductions - that was the phrase you used, I think - in greenhouse gas emissions can be achieved through greater energy efficiency, reduced energy demand at the level of households and individuals. Can you quantify what you mean by "significant reductions"? Dr Reay: If you put it into terms of, say, the Energy Efficiency Commitment, basically that is aiming to reduce carbon emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, by, I think, point seven million tons of carbon per year going up to 2008. That is the beefed up version that we are in now. If you look at things like stand-by power wastage, that is the same number, or actually a bit more, as far as the amount of greenhouse gas emissions arising from energy wastage, stand-by power wastage, so the numbers are really significant. If you look at Northern Ireland, for instance, you have got really big direct emissions of greenhouse gases because of their reliance on coal and oil, as opposed to gas on the mainland. With a switch-over to increased gas use, so a more widely available gas supply, you would get the same kind of reduction, about three million tonnes of CO2, so point eight million tonnes of carbon a year reduction. So, they are big figures, and they are not changing radically the systems we have got in place as far as stand-by power. It is a case of we have the technology to reduce the stand-by drawdown for a lot of the appliances which we buy, but the incentive for manufacturers to, say, take their set-top box and, instead of it drawing ten watts all the time on stand-by, making it a one watt set-top box has not followed through, but the potential is significant. I really do think so. Q451 David Lepper: Does it actually need government to lay down the law to the manufacturers? Dr Reay: Absolutely. Q452 David Lepper: You are saying that cannot be done by voluntary measures, by persuasion? Dr Reay: I think for things like stand-by power, you can tell people about how it is costing them money and what a waste it is, but if you buy a set-top box, if you go down to the shop today and buy one, it will not have an off switch and you are relying on people reaching behind the TV and the table and trying to turn it off at the mains. Actually, we could address this at the root and have a one watt limit on stand-by drawdown for these appliances, and then you have got the saving, you are not relying on people doing a contortion act when trying to switch things off. Q453 David Lepper: Are you aware of discussions that have been going on with the manufacturers over this or not? Dr Reay: The one watt initiative I think was mentioned at the G8 at Gleneagles, it was one of the things which were brought up there, but on the ground it does not seem to have happened, as it were. Q454 David Lepper: We have gone beyond gentle persuasion? Dr Reay: Yes. Stand-by power is one of those ones where it is a big waste of energy (like I say, three million tonnes of CO2 as a result), but the benefit is to no-one. There is no sort of extra comfort at home, there is no higher standard of living, it is just an absolute waste of energy and emission of greenhouse gases. Q455 David Lepper: In terms of the individual, what would achieve the most in terms of significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by the individual? Leave aside the household, what the Government ought to be telling us to do. What change can I make that would make the biggest difference? Dr Reay: When I am asked what is the single thing I do when I want to tackle climate change as far as my home goes, my advice would be to switch to a green energy supplier, to actually source your power from renewable resources, and obviously that has a feedback as far the expansion of renewables. So, as far as behaviour, it is a straight switch from a fossil fuel supplier to a renewable energy supplier. Q456 David Lepper: Is there not some ambiguity about quite what is meant sometimes when the suppliers claim to be providing us with the green energy? Dr Reay: There is. Q457 David Lepper: And is there any helpful way for us to distinguish between what is really green and renewable and what is not? Dr Reay: I think the Energy Savings Trust has a list of the different schemes and tells you what percentage of your power is coming from renewables. There are at lot of schemes. There are some that put money into the RSPB. There are various different formats. There is quite a lot of choice out there as far as what you want to go for as far as a personal interest. Obviously there is not the capacity for the whole country suddenly to switch over to renewables for home energy use, but there is a feedback effect there. If you get people switching over, and in some cases you do pay a premium for green power over the cheapest version if you go on one of these website comparison sites, but it is not a big premium, and I think it is a great first step, there is a whole range of things that an individual can do, but if I was saying just one thing that is not going to change your lifestyle really at all, then switching to a green supplier would be it. Q458 Sir Peter Soulsby: Do you think that there ought to be a proper accreditation scheme for green energy suppliers, and, if so, who should administer such a scheme? Dr Reay: I think there should be. The accreditation problems: for green energy supply and for the whole offset side of things as well which feed into it, at the moment, I think, there is a bit of a gap there as far as people paying money for what they think is green energy or for green energy based on offsets, and there is not an overt system of accreditation. Who should be responsible for that? I suppose, if we are using existing bodies, then the Carbon Trust and the Energy Savings Trust need to actually quantify: does a scheme reduce greenhouse gases or how much of your energy is coming from renewable resources? Q459 Mr Drew: Just a quick point about the level of technical knowledge in this area. When I have been talking to people who are actually trying to introduce various forms of renewable energy, they are very clear that there is a dearth of people who have technical expertise, and that makes it very difficult to know how you go about getting proper advice. Is that something you would agree with and, if it is, what should we be doing about it? We have had this discussion with Ofgem. Dr Reay: This is advice for what? For expansion of renewable generation? Q460 Mr Drew: For looking at how you try and explain to the general public what it is that they should be doing with their houses, what they should be doing in their place of work and just really trying to communicate properly what is possible and what is affordable? Dr Reay: There is a lack of expertise in the UK and more widely as far as renewable energy, but energy saving in the home, as far as residential--- Q461 Mr Drew: How do we bridge that gap? Who should be doing it? That is the problem that some of us are having in this inquiry. Who should be taking this forward? Dr Reay: I have not got an answer for that. At the moment we have got a situation where many of us in the scientific community talk to the public and we feed through into various energy saving schemes as far as the information we publish on paper, and then there are various bodies with experts like the Carbon Trust who can give advice to business, for instance, the Energy Savings Trust for homes. How you increase the numbers of those people and add expertise is not going to come out of thin air, it is going to take money and it is going to take training to expand the numbers available. Q462 Chairman: Do you think that is a job for government to try and address that deficit of skills? Dr Reay: Who else is going to actually put that into train? Q463 Chairman: I think this comes back to the point I was making at the beginning, which is: how do you connect the body of science and analysis, which in the nicest sense you represent, and action on the ground to actually translate the warnings into action to counteract the trends which you have identified? Dr Reay: If we were talking about local authorities being possibly a convector for this and, if you are looking at a top-down approach, then saying to local authorities, "You need a team who are experts in providing this advice for your various departments and providing information on residential emissions, residential energy saving." There are local authorities where that expertise already exists and others where it does not exist, and, obviously, you need something top-down to actually say, for every local authority, you have an obligation to provide this information to your community. Q464 David Taylor: Can we go, Chairman, to the area of household energy efficiency. You have already said in response to David Lepper's questions that households are using stand-by power and waste three million tonnes in greenhouse gas emissions every year. In your submission you say to us: "The public perception is that many of these devices either are not drawing much power or cannot be turned off and on without the risk of the device breaking." Is not that perception still a moderately accurate one in the second category there, in that when I have had devices go, whether it be computers or TVs or whatever, it has often been on switching off or on, or is that just coincidental? Dr Reay: There are a lot of myths associated with turning things off and on. The whole idea we should leave lights on because they use more energy when they are warming up, and with TVs, videos, computers, that you should not turn them off and on, in the majority of cases it does not apply, they can be turned off and turned on regularly every day for 20 years, say, for a computer, so well beyond the lifetime of most PCs and they will be fine, and that applies to most of the appliances. There are some occasions when most of us notice that it has gone when we have turned it off and turned it on - that is when things seem to break - and so the perception is that we should not be turning things off and on. Again, there is an onus on manufacturers, in that case, to make sure that things can be turned off and on. There are some myths associated with energy used by appliances though, and one of them is that they should be left on because they use more power powering up than they do if you just leave them. Q465 David Taylor: Like many people, I make intensive use of PCs, both here, in the constituency and at home, and it is more than just a perception: when I leave the PC running overnight or for days it is stable but if I turn it off all hell breaks loose. Dr Reay: You should get a Mac rather than a computer! Q466 David Taylor: Was that an advertising campaign! Behind the three million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year from households wasting stand-by power, the assumption is there are an average of 12 such devices in the average home, I think the Energy Savings Trust has said, and many of those use ten watts and upwards. Let us say ten 150 watts times 25 million households: a quick figure shows about 3.75 gigawatts. How many power stations is that then that are humming away merely to power unused devices throughout the land? Dr Reay: If we took Drax, which is possibly the biggest, most famous power station in the country, that produces about seven terawatts, seven terawatt hours per year. If we could do away with stand-by power, it would be the equivalent of taking Drax off line for several months. Q467 David Taylor: You referred to the existence of the voluntary initiative, and that is fine, but do you believe that our country and our Government is, in fact, taking the lead in introducing appropriate standards in relation to the one watt device and providing clear and easy to use off buttons and so on. How would you prod government into action on this if it is saving a Drax, or almost a Drax? Dr Reay: That is a good incentive in itself, when you have figures like that, as far the controversy over Drax and the costs involved, saying that through reducing stand-by power wastage we can essentially save this amount of power, we can address this much as far as our Kyoto commitment. I think things are being brought into focus a lot lately by the Stern Report. The actual financial implications of climate change mitigating emissions now verses the cost of adaptation later on, I think that message, not just at a government level but at an individual level, actually has quite a lot of--- Q468 David Taylor: What should the Government be doing in relation to the manufacturers of electrical and electronic goods to bring about the reductions in power consumption of stand-by and also discouraging the use of stand-by at all? Dr Reay: If I had a magic wand, I would get the EU to basically commit manufacturers to producing their appliances with a one watt stand-by power use, rather than the ten, 15, or whatever it is at the moment; and the same with low-energy light-bulbs. Forget importing tungsten light-bulbs, compact fluorescents or light emitting diodes are the thing which will be supported and tungsten light-bulbs will be taxed or prohibited within the EU. If I had a magic wand, that would be what I would do straightaway to address what I see as a lot of energy wastage Q469 David Taylor: In your submission, again, you say, "Some commentators have lamented high greenhouse gas emissions from power-generation in the UK, suggesting that it is futile for individuals to cut their emissions while fossil fuel-fired power generation continues to dominate the energy mix." That is a quote from your submission, is it not? Dr Reay: Yes. Q470 David Taylor: To complete, you say, "What those commentators overlook is the prime reason for the existence of these power stations: direct and indirect energy consumption by households." That has an interesting parallel. I was not part of the Committee visit, but I know that when this Committee visited California fairly recently they heard how the Pacific Gas and Electric Company proposed to replace one of San Francisco's power plants with a new plant twice the size, but then the regulator in that State examined energy demand in the area and its energy resource plan showed that energy efficiency measures could save the equivalent of the extra power that would be generated by what was therefore proven to be an unnecessary power station. You presumably warmly endorse that sort of approach? Dr Reay: Yes. It comes back to the whole idea of being able to take Drax off line through simple energy efficiency in homes. Q471 Chairman: One of the problems is that we all buy our power from lots of different producers. We have no real idea of what the energy use's mix is in terms of what our individual activity is going to be in terms of what your power producer then does in reacting to your diminishing demand. Dr Reay: Yes. The ideas with great potential (and the studies have been fairly limited and mainly in the US) are these things called smart meters. The idea behind them is that you actually can see how much energy your home is using and it can either convert it into a price as far as how much you are being charged for your electricity, or your gas, or the carbon footprint of your energy use. Like say, they are limited studies, but the evidence from that is that they have allowed people to see what impact they are having as far as their energy use, but they have allowed people to see what impact things like putting in low-energy light-bulbs or turning off the lights at night or turning things off at the plug actually has on their energy use and on their climate impact. The figures are about a five to ten per cent reduction in household energy use from the installation of these smart meters, and I think they have got a great potential to raise awareness and to connect people with the fact that, when we switch a light on or turn the TV off, that actually means something to our pocket and to the environment. It might be hundreds of miles away at a big power station that the emissions arise, but it gives that connection and it is there for people to see. Q472 Chairman: The greenhouse gas emissions that are directly attributable to households through cooking and heating and public transport, and so on, have continued to increase over the last ten years or more, at round about one per cent a year. It really is crucial that we turn that graph in the reverse direction, is it not? Dr Reay: Yes, it is a bit of a tragedy really because our efficiency of production has increased, as far as energy goes, and if everything else had stayed the same you would have seen emissions fall in households, but we are using a lot more power, we have got a lot more gadgets, we have got a lot more demand as far as single person living, a lot more houses that need heating, and so the residential energy use has continued to rise, even though behind that UK emissions have been falling, and transport and residential emissions are the two sectors where we do not seem to be succeeding in at least levelling things off let alone reducing emissions. Q473 Chairman: Do you think that clear and indisputable link between greenhouse gas emissions for individual households and the GHG emissions from the power stations which are pumping all this wasted energy away is being made? Dr Reay: I do not think it is. I think your average man or woman on the street might see that if they have got their gas fire on that could be emitting these gases, but the lights in the room or the TV, I do not think that link is there at the moment for most people, but that is also driving climate change. Q474 Mrs Moon: You talked about the one watt stand-by. One of the things that concerns me is that that is for the future. A large number of families are already running things on stand-by, and I smiled at your image of balancing on one leg and turning the television off. I do that every time I am home and it is very silly. Is there any suggestion that anyone is working on a sort of plug, something that you can connect to the existing equipment that you have got, that would filter that stand-by? Dr Reay: There is a "stand-by killer" apparently. I have not seen one of these things, but apparently it will detect when things go into stand-by mode and it will turn them off. It is kind of an interface between the socket and your gas guzzling set-top box. I have read about that technology, I do not know how effective it is, but people have thought about that. Q475 Sir Peter Soulsby: Can I take you back to light-bulbs, because this is something that is fairly easily understood by people and fairly easy to do. When we heard from B&Q they told us about the research they had done which suggested that, even on comparatively low-cost lighting items, the price differential between conventional lighting, tungsten lighting, and low-energy lighting was quite significant and gave the consumer choices. I really wanted to check that I had got your position correctly. I think you were suggesting that subsidising low-energy was not a sensible thing to do but that actually taxing or prohibiting tungsten was the way forward? Dr Reay: Yes. I think at the moment we are in the situation where you can say to people, "Look, a low-energy bulb will last longer and pay you back much more than you would spend on a comparative conventional bulb", and they will still go and buy the tungsten bulb because it is slightly cheaper. So, if you are going to subsidise low-energy bulbs, it needs to be to the extent that they are at least equal to the old-fashioned tungsten bulbs, if not cheaper. At the moment, wherever there is a price differential, the default seems to be to go for the old-fashioned energy waster. Q476 Chairman: Do you believe that? I sent for a British Gas kit - I decided I would see what the propaganda was - and along came my two energy saving light-bulbs. I walked round my little house in the constituency looking for somewhere to put them, and I could only find one light-fitting that the energy saving bulbs would actually fit in. When I looked round at the plethora of light-fittings which we have invested in over the years, they were all different and variable and the manufacturers of these energy saving bulbs have not got round to producing such a variation. People have invested a lot of capital in the light-fitting of their choice. It is a bit difficult to say to them, "In the interests of climate change, scrap all this lot and go for things that are compatible with energy saving light-bulbs", but that is the reality. Dr Reay: I do not think it is as bad as that. There are lampshades which will not take the compact fluorescents, but, in general, if you go to a big supplier, say, Ikea, for instance, they have a wide range of lower energy bulbs, and, speaking about my experience in my house, for most of our light fittings we can get low-energy light-bulbs easily, and for the trickier ones it is a search on the internet and you have to pay a premium to get these specialist ones, but they do exist and it is not simply that most of the old-fashioned fittings will not take the bulbs. Manufacturers have made an effort, I think, to bridge the gap for the more odd fittings and the more odd lamp shades. All right, you are going to have things in your house, you are going to have lamp shades that will not take anything but the old-fashioned ones, but you are talking about one out of 12. It is of that kind of order. Q477 Chairman: You argued in your evidence that the use of those bulbs can save more than 50 kilos of greenhouse gas emissions a year? Dr Reay: Yes. Q478 Chairman: Do you think we are very good at communicating to people what effectively is the weight of greenhouse gas or carbon emissions from their property? If they are mentally saying, "Okay, this is my number. Now I am knocking so much off", I would imagine that very few people, including me, have got a really clear idea in weight terms of the carbon and greenhouse gas emissions they are actually emitting. How do we get round that problem? Dr Reay: At the moment, like you say, most people do not have a clear idea. When you went to your energy supplier they sent you to that site, and that would have calculated your carbon footprint and the weight in tonnes of your emissions. You either tackle it by saying to the energy provider: "Give out bills with the greenhouse gas emissions on", so that people can see that it is this many kilowatt hours but it is this much climate impact, or you do it, as I was saying, as far as raising awareness of climate change impacts and mitigation on a community level. You can imagine a mass poster for a local authority saying: "The average household is emitting this much greenhouse gas. We are supplying smart meters so you can see how well or badly you are doing and we have got this list of practical ways to reduce your carbon impact, and you can actually quantify that using a smart meter or through your energy provider." Q479 Lynne Jones: I want to go back to this issue of light-bulbs. Although I agree, I have been able to get every type of fitting, bayonet or screw fitting, small or large, the issue is design. You cannot get, for instance, small candle type bulbs or small round bulbs. It is the aesthetics and the design that is the issue. How can we ensure that manufacturers actually invest in the production of those? They are probably going to be even more expensive because they have to be so much smaller. Are we back to the fact that we perhaps do have to make the tungsten bulbs of that kind that much more expensive to justify the investment in those designs? Dr Reay: I think, if you are comparing compact fluorescents and tungstens, then, yes, you are in that situation where you are stuck with tungsten. Q480 Lynne Jones: No, to get the kind of small bulbs, you need further investment in even smaller designs. Dr Reay: What we have got in this country, which is very exciting, something which we should probably put a lot more funding into, is LED technology, the development of light emitting diode lights, and they lend themselves brilliantly to these tricky situations where you want a really small bulb, you want a coloured bulb, you want a niche bulb, if you like. They are very energy efficient, and they are something which we can see already. Over the next couple of weeks probably from space you will be able to see the Christmas lights of the country, and most of those at the moment will be pretty inefficient as far as what is possible as far as their use of energy, but light emitting diodes, the LED technology, not just for Christmas lights but for general lighting, has a big potential to fill that gap. Q481 Lynne Jones: What sort of price are we talking about? Dr Reay: At the moment you are looking at a greater cost than for your tungsten light-bulbs. Q482 Lynne Jones: I know that, but how much more? People do not mind paying a couple of quid, but if it is 12 quid--- Dr Reay: I will check it out and send you the prices. They are not of the order of ten or 20 times more expensive, but I will have to check the prices for you. They already exist. You can get them for Christmas lights, certainly in the kind of lighting situations as far as the home goes. So they are a technology which has good potential, but I will check the prices for you. Chairman: Has anybody else got a commercial here! Lynn, do you want to carry on with your other questions. Q483 Lynne Jones: Yes. A lot of people are very suspicious under the Energy Efficiency Commitment that they have got British Gas or their energy supplier offering freebies, acting on the assumption that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Perhaps the take-up would be higher, do you think, if it was made explicit that this was an obligation on the energy suppliers to do this, that they are not just doing it out of the goodness of their hearts? Dr Reay: Yes, I think it is a real issue that people are a bit distrustful. I think you could go some way to make it clear that this is something that they have got to do and that they are not doing it to try and get you to agree to a new scheme that they have got going. One of the best examples I have seen of getting that kind of action and getting round that problem of mistrust is, I think, Basingstoke, but there is a local authority essentially where you get a rebate on your council tax. Q484 Chairman: Braintree. Dr Reay: Braintree - that is it. That has been really successful. The uptake has been much higher. It gives it more legitimacy, I think, when it is coming from a local authority than from your power company, who you might have just switched to in the last year because they had a cheap rate or they were giving money to the RSPB. It actually engenders more trust, as a tool to break through this barrier where people distrust what they see as, "There is no such thing as a free lunch. There must be something attached to this free light-bulb." Q485 Lynne Jones: The concept in the Energy Review is that energy companies should be energy service companies rather than energy supplying companies. That might be okay for the sort of installations that we have been talking about - light-bulbs, loft insulation, cavity wall insulation - but there is plenty of scope there because that is relatively cheap; but if you are coming down the road of more expensive energy saving measures or microgeneration - you just mentioned the energy companies, that you might have switched several times, you have not got that kind of relationship and trust - is that a reasonable model? The Energy Savings Trust tells us that because of this short-term relationship it is very difficult to move that kind of model. What is your view on that? Dr Reay: Ask me again. I did not quite get the question. Q486 Lynne Jones: The Government wants the energy companies to change into energy services companies, whereby they make their profits by providing services, energy, efficiency and microgeneration rather than simply supplying the energy. Obviously, if people do that their energy bills would reduce. In California, for example, the energy companies provide businesses with smart metering, the ability to switch off their vending machines over night, they are providing photovoltaic installations targeted at poorer households. Basically, the energy company puts the investment in and then people pay back in terms of their energy bills. So their actual consumption is down but they are paying a contribution towards the energy efficiency or microgeneration measures. Dr Reay: I think the phrase that comes to mind with such a scheme is "the tipping point". It is people being able to see it working on their neighbour's house or see it working in their street as far as winning them over for these high-cost things like photovoltaics or wind turbines even or solar water heating. You are talking about thousands of pounds, and I think to get people to say, "Yes, I will take this installation from my electricity service company and pay money on the basis that it will pay me back"--- Q487 Lynne Jones: You are not putting money up front. The energy company is putting the money up front. It is like taking out a loan with the energy company and paying it back in instalments on your bills, but your bills are going down because you are consuming less energy? Dr Reay: Sure, but I imagine the instant perception for most people, because it is their energy provider, would be, "This is just another hike on my bill." I can see why it is more attractive than paying a big capital cost, having it installed and then having to pay that back to the bank, say, if you have got the money to have that installed, but I think to make it work there is a critical point about it being clear to people that this is something that does work, that there are enough landmark sites, I guess, around the country or in their city where they can see solar panels are effective. In Edinburgh we have got a great example where the local authority did not have the money to put solar water heating on a whole row of tenements, so they put them on the roof of every third block. The response from the residents with the solar water heating was really positive, as far as they became much more energy aware, but the demands from the other two houses in each set of three were suddenly, "Why have we not got solar water heating", and the perception that this is not something that is odd as far as microgeneration goes. Q488 Lynne Jones: But did it make them willing to pay? How would they pay for it if they were low-income households? Dr Reay: Anecdotally they were willing to pay more for access to solar water heating, and they were much more accepting of--- Q489 Lynne Jones: What, on their rent? Dr Reay: What happened with that particular scheme is that that is where it stopped, and so we are still talking about how we actually build on things in Edinburgh and get whole communities more invested in taking up microgeneration. Mark Lazarowicz, obviously, has been key to this in Edinburgh, and we have got some big plans to try and put in place a landmark development as far as renewable energy goes for residential buildings which hopefully then will send out these ripples, and, with enough follow up, you kind of get through that tipping point that I was alluding to, as far as people accepting this as something that they will pay extra for. Q490 Chairman: Can you help me to look little bit into the future in the light of what we are talking about, because so far the conversation has focused on how do we introduce, particularly into the domestic sector, today's technology and perhaps a little bit of tomorrow's with LEDs. If I look at the numbers in your evidence, you show that not only have the emissions from the household sector been rising, but you say that the trend is set to continue and household energy use will rise by a further 25 per cent by 2025 and emissions from private transport by 50 per cent. If I look at the track which the government has set, with its overall target of one per cent a year starting in 1990 through to 2050, globally we are running at a rate of having to say, from now on 1.9 per cent a year, otherwise we cannot catch up and meet the target. The sectors we have been discussing are not just going to have to run, they are going to have to sprint to catch up, and what I am not getting is that, if you could wave your Reay magic wand and put in all of the things that are presently available, it strikes me (and I do not know numerically whether we would have caught up) that then there is a lot more still to do. What I am not getting the message on is, when we have done what we can do, what does come next? If we are having a struggle getting today's technology implemented, how on earth are we going to get something that is even better, more high-tech, more difficult to do in place if we are going to meet this ever receding target of our 60 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050? It seems like we are always going to be chasing the light at the end of the tunnel. Dr Reay: To be honest, I think we probably are for the 60 per cent, and the 60 per cent has got to be taken in context that that was designed around the idea of avoiding the two degree centigrade increase in global temperatures from pre-industrial--- Q491 Chairman: Can I ask you specifically, does 60 per cent achieve that? Because there is a bit of a battle going on with some people saying it has got to be 80 per cent, and not 60 per cent, so that you maintain the two per cent figure in terms of global warming increases. It is quite difficult sometimes, with the battle of the targets going on, to know what is the right number. Dr Reay: Globally 60 per cent would do it, but given that we are high emitters, we are a developed world nation, 80 per cent is more like what we are going to need. If I am honest, I think as to keeping global temperatures below two degrees centigrade, it is hard to see us being able to do it given the current models, and it is going to take a huge reduction in emissions. Q492 Chairman: If that is the case and we are sitting here grinding our way through how do you move this thing on incrementally - and you have just told us, whether it is 60, 80 or some other number, the chances of us actually getting there is going to be very difficult to do - does that not say that we are not adopting the vigorous strategies that we need to be if we are actually going to make an impact on this problem? Are we not just nicely going along, a few energy saving light-bulbs, a bit of insulation here, a bit of energy service there? It is all a bit stodgy really, is it not? Dr Reay: Yes. I think it needs to be big as far as the effort we put into addressing not just residential but transport and business emissions. It needs to be a step-change in the level of activity, the level of awareness in the public to this whole idea of maybe a 1,000 or 10,000 communicators on a grass roots level communicating climate change and how it can be mitigated. Yes, I think we really need to get our skates on. Q493 Daniel Kawczynski: I think Great Britain is responsible for two per cent of global carbon emissions. Dr Reay: Yes. Q494 Daniel Kawczynski: So even if we did all of those things that you are saying, we still would not be able to really affect climate change because we need the other countries - China and India - to play their part in the developing world? Dr Reay: Yes. Q495 Daniel Kawczynski: Do you have any interaction with colleagues like yours in these countries to see whether they are as serious as you are about pushing for this with their governments? Dr Reay: No, not really. The interaction we tend to have is with European colleagues and colleagues in the States and Australia. It often comes back to this whole idea that, if we halved our emissions, it would only mean a one per cent cut in global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. If you are going to throw your arms up in the air and say we are cannot do anything, you can throw that argument into the ring, but, on that basis, for the US, which is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gas, as a nation, they could say, "We are only 25 per cent. What impact could we make? Seventy-five five per cent is not up to us." Where Britain could really lead the way is if we really do get stuck into mitigating climate change on a domestic level right through business, through things like aviation across the EU, we could pull a lot of other countries along. We could show India, we could show China that we can have sustainable development without big increases in greenhouse gas emissions. Obviously, if we assist them in their development in a way that does not produce the greenhouse gases that constituted our industrial development, then it is in our interests to do that, because obviously climate change is going to impact on us as well as them. As far as their awareness and their action on climate change, I know that in China there is a lot of concern about the impacts of climate change already because of drought impacts and water shortages. I think, given the right amount of help, and Kyoto gives us, albeit an imperfect, mechanism under the Clean Development Mechanism to provide less carbon intensive growth in these countries and, all right, we might only represent two per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, but we can punch our way maybe ten, 20 times that if we show people how it can be done. Q496 Daniel Kawczynski: But the countries that you mentioned that you are interacting with sound to be all rather Anglophile countries. Dr Reay: Yes. Q497 Daniel Kawczynski: In the work that you do, you are arguably going to be even more important than MPs in convincing foreign governments to act on this issue, but why is it that you are not interacting more with non Commonwealth Anglophile countries? Dr Reay: We do have a level of interaction through the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, which basically has representatives on the working groups from developing world and developed world nations as far as scientists go. Obviously the scientific community is a global one. My personal work does not actually link in with developing world scientists, but that is not to say that a lot of other climate change scientists do not, but a lot of them do have a good line of communication as far as what is happening on the ground. You can see that if you look at the Third Assessment Report, and the Fourth Assessment Report from the IPCC is out next year. In all three volumes there are contributions from the developing world as far as science, adaptation and mitigation. So it is not like there is not a line of communication. Q498 James Duddridge: I would like to return to microgeneration. In your submission you identify three principal barriers for microgeneration, cost planning and grand confusion. What more can we do to overcome these barriers and, specifically, how effective is the Government's microgeneration strategy in overcoming the three barriers that you have identified? Dr Reay: It comes back to communication again, I think. From a personal perspective, I went to get solar water heating for my house and, first of all, I hit a planning barrier in that planning did not know if we were allowed to have solar water heating in our area, and then they got back to me after a while and said, "You will have to go and measure the area because we think there is a percentage limit and how much it sticks out by." This is a low-tech microgen, not a wind turbine or anything like that; but not only were there lots of hoops to go through planning-wise, there was a lack of clarity as far as the planning department on what was possible and what was allowed. Then I went to get a grant, as far as a rebate, and they are pretty attractive in Scotland - we can get a third back for microgeneration technologies from the capital cost, which obviously makes a big hit. So I was blithely coming down to England and giving talks and saying, "Yes, you can get a third back", and then someone came up to me after one of my talks and said, "No, I tried and it is a maximum of £400." For a £5,000 installation it is not really going to cut the mustard. So there does not seem to be enough clarity as far as what is available for people and how they get it through planning. From start to finish, ideally, it should be clear, if you want to get solar water heating, what the payback time is going to be, what the cost is going to be, what the rebate is going to be for your area, and that does not seem easy. As far as being a climate change scientist and trying to get solar water heating, it took me the best part of a year, and I imagine most people give up long before that, and that was for what I think is one of the simpler technologies to adopt. Q499 James Duddridge: Is the Government's microgeneration strategy too little too late and at the moment pretty useless? Dr Reay: No. On the train down here today I always look out of the window to see who has got solar water heating, who has got turbines, and they are cropping up (you can see that there is some uptake and it is growing fast), and when you talk to the manufacturers, they are being inundated with requests, so I think it is--- Q500 James Duddridge: But is that not the power of the citizen and the citizen's agenda? They are doing it to spite government. Government is getting in the way in many regards rather than assisting the process? Dr Reay: Government is getting in the way, I think, in that it could be happening so much faster because there is this willingness to do it and the cost through government aid, through the money you can claim back, is making it attractive to people, but people are being put off by the hassle factor. There is a hassle factor which is too big at the moment, I think. Q501 Lynne Jones: When I asked B&Q about their wind generator they could not tell me what the carbon emissions were in its manufacture. Obviously wind generators are very good when you have got a lot of wind, but maybe they are not terribly good in an urban setting. Is this not just a trendy thing that people are going down - it looks good that they have got a wind turbine - but in terms of actual carbon savings there are much more important things that people should be doing. Dr Reay: Wind turbines in the right place--- Q502 Lynne Jones: I have got a hillside in Wales and a house with no mains electricity, so that is how I get my electricity, but in Birmingham it is probably a waste of time. Dr Reay: Yes, that is where, being able to see that this is going to give me so much energy, this is going to give me so much pay-back compared to solar water heating or the other microgeneration technologies, it is not easy to actually make that comparison. Q503 Lynne Jones: We should also have CO2 emissions in the manufacture? Dr Reay: Yes, the embodied energy for wind turbines and for solar water heating is not massive, it really goes up for PB cells, so it is a bigger consideration for that as far as the payback time. So when I am talking about payback, it is not just money, it is getting the energy back that went into making the thing in the first place which is something that needs to be in there. If you are going to say this is going to give me a payback carbon-wise in 30 years' time, this technology versus one which will give me a payback in three years' time, obviously that is going to inform your decision, and those data are not readily available. Q504 Mr Williams: On the planning issue, have you made any investigation about that? Should there be permitted development rights for microgeneration up to certain percentage of roof size or size of--- Dr Reay: We were limited to ten per cent of roof area, and then I tried to get a wind turbine and apparently our house is the wrong design, and there were issues about how high it could be if we wanted one in the garden. Again, they were very unclear about the noise level and what was acceptable, and when I went to the manufacturer they had a huge waiting list for wind turbines. They came out to do a site visit on ours, this is after eight months waiting, and said, "Oh, no, it is not suitable for our wind turbine." I think the initial uptake of microgeneration is stalling a bit because of the hassle and the time it is taking people. Certainly for us with wind turbines, we explored it for a year and then decided that was too much hassle, we would stick with the solar water heating, and that must be happening. From personal experience that is what has happened to me, and I imagine it is happening to a lot of people: they look into this, find it is a lot more hassle than they expected and then do not take it up. Q505 Chairman: Can I draw this part of our proceedings to a conclusion by asking about personal carbon allowances or domestic tradable quotas. The Secretary of State has recently produced some work indicating that, in his judgment, such a scheme could be introduced within the next five years. Do you think that such a scheme is practical or beneficial? Is it something you would support? Dr Reay: Absolutely, yes. I think it is going to be very difficult to actually put it into practice and avoid some of the negative problems. There are issues about whether you increase fuel polity for some households, for instance, who might have very poor insulation. I guess if you use the model of the Energy Efficiency Commitment and actually look at basically low-income housing, giving them some protection, if such a carbon allowance would really exacerbate fuel poverty in these situations, and that is something that would have to be avoided in some way, but as a general mechanism to reduce emissions across the board, I think it has huge potential. I think it could do masses, yes. Q506 Chairman: Do you know of any practical examples where anybody has actually tried it? Dr Reay: No. Chairman: Thank you very much indeed for your contributions to that and for your observations and also for the written submission that you were kind enough to make. You have given us plenty of food for thought in terms of connecting with the citizen in this particular part of our agenda so thank you very much. Witness: Sir David Attenborough, gave evidence. Q507 Chairman: Ladies and gentlemen, this is almost the occasion that I have to say that our next witness requires no introduction, but it is a great pleasure and an honour for the Committee to welcome you, Sir David, to be amongst us. As somebody who went to Leicester University the name "Attenborough" is etched on me in terms of the Attenborough Building where I did an awful lot of my study and in fact we have colleagues who represent Leicester constituencies here so in some way, shape or form we already feel an affinity to you notwithstanding the work which you have done on the television. My Sunday nights for the last few weeks have never been quite the same in terms of the presentation of the variety of wildlife on the planet and under the planet that you and your incredible team have exposed to us. I am sure I speak on behalf of all of the Committee, we are delighted that you have helped to communicate some of these huge challenges and problems that face our globe in a way that we can at least understand and assimilate. However, we were particularly interested in the message and the lessons that came out of the programmes Are We Changing Planet Earth? and Can We Save Planet Earth? and the BBC very kindly made available to the Committee copies of those programmes. I looked at them and I found them both challenging but also at the end of them quite reassuring in a funny kind of way because what you did not leave us with was an apocalyptic view that there was nothing we could do. However, you did set the challenge of what the steepness of the climb was in addressing some of these climate change issues. You have travelled the world and you have seen things that we can only look at. What prompted you to make those two programmes? Sir David Attenborough: One quite precise thing, in November 2006 I went to a lecture given by Professor Cicerone from the United States who is an expert atmospheric chemist. He showed a series of graphs showing world temperature and critically population as well as ingredients within the atmosphere. The congruence of those things convinced me beyond any doubt whatever that not only was the climate changing, but that humanity was responsible for that. Until then, one knows that the climate has changed over geological history, and I was not totally sure that this was not just an aberration within the parameters of their ability, but Professor Cicerone's graphs convinced me beyond any doubt at all. It is not my job of course to make judgments on these things, my job is to make programmes about wildlife. When the BBC was discussing this I, of course, said, "Yes, I believe absolutely so that this is the case and if you want me to go and investigate and talk to people, I will gladly do so". The only inhibition I had was that people might think I was setting myself up as an expert on climate technology and climate science, which I am not. Therefore, the programmes were very much an investigation from people such as Dave Reay, for example, who appeared in one of them and other people to talk about climate and the reality that really is taking place and secondly what we can do about it. Q508 Chairman: You were convinced by Professor Cicerone's analysis. Of all the things that you have seen, if you like, in recent years, when we have been focusing on our growing understanding about climate change that, if you like, physically convince you that something is going on - bearing in mind what you do with great expertise is communicate to the public, you are the interface between the reality and the viewer, your job is to articulate what you have seen in a way that the viewer can understand and respond to - if you wanted to give one or two dramatic examples of things you have seen, what would they be? Sir David Attenborough: I suppose the Arctic and the Antarctic where retreating glaciers are very visible. The big changes that I see are primarily to do with density population rather than increase in temperatures. Of course, if you look at distributions of animals in this country, for example, if you look at butterflies or whatever, you can see perfectly clearly that there are migrations, increases and changes in the distribution of animals that are coming in from warmer parts of Europe, but again you have to be convinced that this is not just a variation which goes on all the time, you have to be convinced that it is a real permanent move and that is a difficult thing to do with one observation, you can only take it in perspective. Q509 Chairman: What kind of feedback did the BBC get as a result of those two programmes? How did the public respond to what you were saying? When you were framing your remarks and looking at the script, did you have an audience of people out there that you were thinking, "I have got to convince them of the messages which I am seeing so they will do something about it" or did you say, "My task is to present what I am seeing in an entirely neutral fashion and leave the audience to draw their conclusion". For example, I was taken by the visuals of the amount of carbon stacking up in big blocks. You have got some message in global terms, what it was about, but, on the other hand, at the level of the individual it is quite difficult to know which of the block up there I was responsible for. Sir David Attenborough: I think the job of the broadcaster in this instance is not to be a propagandist necessarily but to be an investigator. Of course, it is easy to say like that and you think it is black and white, but, of course, it is not. There are a series of givens which you have to accept. The given in the second programme was that climate is changing and humanity is responsible, that was the given, and people say, "That is still problematical". At some stage you have to decide where you stand and from that basis you then become an investigator. Q510 Chairman: Did the pubic, after having seen the programme and being offered at the end a strategy which said "If we do the following in these sectors, noting the graph coming down to stabilise today's level of emissions, here is the position that we think we might get at 2050", then respond in some way to the BBC by saying, "Tell us more, what can we do?" Sir David Attenborough: I am afraid I cannot answer that because the very morning after the second programme I left for Australia from which I only returned ten days ago. I have not seen the qualitative research which was done as a consequence. I was close enough to hear the statistical results which were that the programmes have attracted a very much bigger audience than some people thought likely and the BBC has two measurements, it has a quantitative and a qualitative one. Within the qualitative one, which is expressed as a percentage, they were surprised to discover that the audience thought it was very good because quite a lot of people say, "It is very boring, why are you putting this on?", but that was not the result. The result in short was that they had a very good reception and were very pleased, but I cannot say that we either recommended or saw the consequence of people saying "Yes, we will use low energy bulbs". Q511 Chairman: You have travelled the world, what are the feelings that you have picked up about how other countries see this issue? From the standpoint of the United Kingdom, the Government is fully engaged in the issue, putting aside for a moment what you think of the way it is doing it. The United States officially is disengaged, although some parts take part in it. Then, we go further afield and we look at China and India as potential generators of further emissions as opposed to sources of solutions. I think it would be very interesting to know if you have picked up how other people around the globe who you visited are reacting to the climate change issue and whether in fact they are engaging in this matter in the same way that we feel we are. Sir David Attenborough: Just before going to Australia, I was in the United States filming in the South West and I was in Tucson, which is a very large city, and there was not a cloud in the sky and the temperatures were 110° during the day. The conditions were absolutely perfect as far as I could see for solar power. I did not see a single solar panel, not one, but what I did see was every house with an air conditioner working at full blast. The only thing you can say is that the citizens of Tucson had no concept that energy saving was of any consequence at all. Q512 James Duddridge: In order to mitigate against climate change what two single actions can, first, individuals take and, secondly, would you advise the British Government to take? Sir David Attenborough: I grew up during the war and during the war it was a common view that wasting food was wrong, and it was not that you thought you were going to defeat Hitler by eating up a little bit of gristly meat but that it was wrong to waste food. People felt that widely and universally and I think people do not do the sort of arithmetic which we have been talking about earlier on very often, some do and some do not. There should be a general moral view that wasting energy is wrong. Everything we do goes on up there and stays up there for 100 years or so in terms of carbon dioxide, and the more it does, the hotter it is going to get, the less it does, the less hot it will get. Therefore, it does not matter whether it is a tiny bit or a big bit, but it is your general attitude to life and I sense that is already in the process. People do look at 4x4s in central London and curl a lip already. It is part of the conversation, that that is wasting energy. I am hopeful that there is a real change taking place in moral attitudes which is not to do with saving pennies here or there, it is just that it is morally wrong to waste energy because we are putting at hazard our own grandchildren. Q513 James Duddridge: I know it is simplistic, but a single thing for the British Government to do, what would your advice be? What action would you recommend? Sir David Attenborough: The primary thing that the Government has to do is the international agreements because it is at that level that it has a unique ability. Lots of people, town councils, local councils, local bodies and citizens, can affect matters in the home and the policies of manufacturers and stores can affect the home, but the one thing which Government alone can do is to bring about the international agreements, which, fair play, it is working very hard to try and do. That is where we have to give it every support and particularly when the Government makes laws which will cost the voter money in his pocket, and as voters we have to tell the Government that we understand that is the case. Q514 James Duddridge: Can I probe the balance between mitigation and adaption. Given that we are locked into potentially 25 years of climate change, even if we remedied our bad behaviour almost immediately, are we focusing enough on adaption? Sir David Attenborough: I should think probably not because almost everything we can do, we are not doing enough of. We all know that we are not going to be able to improve the situation. What we can do is prevent the situation deteriorating faster than necessary, that is the only thing we can do now. Climate change is ongoing. If we reduce our carbon and various other things then the changes will not be as swift and not as severe but that there will be changes, there is no question. Q515 Daniel Kawczynski: Sir David, you mentioned that you were relatively impressed with the Government in trying to secure an international treaty on climate change but here in the United Kingdom we recently had - I know you said you have just came back from Australia - the Pre-Budget Report by the Chancellor of the Exchequer which is being criticised wildly by environmentalists as doing far too little for tackling climate change. As a Conservative MP, I could bang on about this to the Chancellor until the cows come home and he will not listen to me obviously. As someone of your stature and someone who is known throughout the United Kingdom so well, would you be prepared to state publicly that the Chancellor is not taking this problem seriously enough and is not doing enough to stem it here in the UK? Sir David Attenborough: I have to say that in that particular instance I have not looked at the document since I have come back, so I cannot say I would stand up and say that, but, again, whatever is done is not enough. You cannot do enough, whatever happens, and that he should do more, I am sure that would be true to say too, but I cannot look at the small print and say, "Yes, he should put tuppence on the bulb" or whatever. Q516 Daniel Kawczynski: My second question is with regard to the responsibility of making communities be more sensitive to climate change. Do you think that is a role for Government or should local councils play a greater role? I do not know whether you can give us an example of where you live. Sir David Attenborough: Yes, I certainly can. For example, I live in Richmond and I am involved in certain environmental bodies that are working there concerned with the Thames. At the end of the war, barges were loaded up with the rubble from central London and dumped on water meadows in Ham, raising the level of the land very considerably and effectively eliminating the water meadows as a flood safety valve. We are in the process of a scheme which was started by a local architect and is backed by many of the local bodies to put that rubble onto barges to float it out to the Channel and dump it in the North Sea. That we have had lots of local inquiries about; we have had protests. People from Ham have said, "You are going to destroy an area where I walk my dogs, and that is a terrible thing to have done because we have had to rip up that land and we do not want water meadows". The debate has been a real one and I think that we have more or less won the debate, are now looking at European money to bring that about and so on. That is an example of a local council, local organisations and conservation organisations caring about their own environment and doing something about it. Q517 Lynne Jones: You are a great educator and communicator, and you mentioned a little while ago that we were basically killing our children. My son goes around and, if anybody leaves a light on, says, "You are killing my children". What role do you think the education system can play in getting across to young people, and through young people to adults, that this is a moral issue, because politicians are perhaps not the best people to put this message across? Sir David Attenborough: I do not know enough about schools in practical terms, but my impression is that a great number of schoolteachers ‑ and I have no doubt that these are crucial people in our society ‑ instil in children something which is already growing there, which is a respect for the natural world. Every child starts with a respect and an interest in the natural world, and primary schoolteachers build on that. I get a lot of correspondence, but I get passionate correspondence from children from eight, ten, 12 and certainly into the teens who are really powerfully motivated about the iniquity of some of the things that people have done. Pretty occasionally, they are pretty simple-minded, not simple-minded but simpliste, they take a very simple proposition and back it without thinking of the consequences, but, fundamentally, the moral drive is people think killing and exterminating wild animals is wrong. You do not have to argue that. Q518 Lynne Jones: Do children often want to do something, but they have not got the means to take action? We have heard about programmes with NGOs and schools, that there is very little funding for those. Do you think this is something that really ought to be given a higher priority so children can go home and tell their parents, "Look, why don't you do this?"? Sir David Attenborough: Yes, and there is a number of organisations that do that. BTCV, the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers, is a marvellous organisation which takes children out and shows them how to clean hedgerows, how to improve pastures and how to clean up mess and remove litter, and kids love it and do a great deal for it. I hope very much that the leadership on all these things is not the monopoly of the Government, that every group within the community, and there are lots of them, should also play its part because it has got to come from the community and from the grass roots if it is going to affect the children rather than being inculcated by Big Brother and television. Q519 David Lepper: Sir David, some people say that when there is either here or anywhere in the world an extreme event, such as a drought, heatwave or flooding, that is a good vehicle for the Government, or whoever else is interested, to remind people about the importance of behavioural change, in other words perhaps to use scaremongering as a way of trying to affect people's behaviour. There is another school of thought, I believe, which says, "Well, that is more likely to make people feel that the scale of the problem is so huge that there is not much we can do about it". Do you have a view about that? Sir David Attenborough: I think if I was living in a village or a small town that either had just been flooded or, indeed, had a landslide it would be catastrophic and tragic. I would certainly think I would not be saying, "There is nothing you can do about it", I would be demanding that things should be done about it and people do. People whose houses regularly flood certainly want things to be done about it. I think there are other things, more to the point perhaps, in that the Government can help, not particularly in dealing with that, in their housing policy of not building on flood plains, which seems to me the most purblind and short-sighted of plans. Q520 Chairman: Could we go back to this issue of connecting people on the ground in the United Kingdom with the global nature of the problem. It strikes me that one of the problems we have is the Government talks about it as if it is somewhere else. You mentioned that the major activity which the Government could indulge in is international negotiation which, again, takes it away from the domestic agenda. The Government has spent some £6 million on a communications programme to help local bodies communicate more with people, but somehow for most busy people this all seems a bit remote. They see the odd thing on the television, they pick up a bit of news about the odd glacier melting and the polar icecap, but somehow it does not touch them. How do we make the connection? You were talking about the development of a new moral feeling, that we have got to do something about it, but what, in communications terms, do you feel should be the tools that are used to really make people say, "Yes, I have heard this new piece of news and that does matter to me. I must now do something about it"? Sir David Attenborough: I do not know the answer to that and, indeed, it is with the democratic system as to whether or not the Government assumes a dictatorial role and instructs people what to do or whether it advises people what to do. I guess that quite a lot of us would like to have some dictatorial power to say, "You have got to do this, that and the other", but that is not the system under which we live, I hope. It can only be done by continual persuasion, by talking here, by suggesting there, by changing the moral climate and the intellectual climate, that is the only way. I do not personally think that there is any way in which you can do it by fiat. Q521 Chairman: I understand that, and I do not think anybody on the Committee would suggest that, but in terms of building up the movement towards getting people engaged; about your two programmes you said that there had been a remarkably large audience compared with that which you thought it was going to be. I do not know whether you can tell us how many people did watch the programme? Sir David Attenborough: I do not have the figures. Q522 Chairman: We will have to get in touch with the BBC and ask them the question. What I am interested in is, what are the mechanisms that ought to happen in propaganda terms that follow up, a scene setter that says, "This is what we have got to do"? Do you think it is the role of broadcasters to say that we have a responsibility to carry on filling in the gaps instead of simply reporting about the phenomena, that we need to go further? Sir David Attenborough: Yes, I think that is so and it is one of the functions of public service broadcasting that it takes issues which are of importance to society and makes sure they are properly ventilated, and that applies to environmental issues as well as many other kinds of issues. That is what public service broadcasting ought to do and I would like to think it does do. You do it on different levels. One is quite straightforward saying, "This is what should be done", but there are other methods like, for example, simply showing what the natural world is like and convincing people that it is worth saving. It is a paradox that worldwide there are more people living in towns now, divorced from the natural world, than there ever were, there are more than people living in the landscape itself, and so where do people know about glaciers, whales, marine pollution and so on? From the media like television, particularly television, and television has that important role which I think it has taken and seized. Q523 Chairman: Do you think that the major broadcasters should be looking, perhaps, to develop some environmental champions because it strikes me there has got to be a continuity of engagement with people on this, instead of saying, "Well, we will have a six‑week programme and then that is climate change for 2007, and we might come back to it in the schedules"? It is a continual drip feed. Sir David Attenborough: Yes, and I think a responsible network controller does have that in mind. On Friday I shall be filming another episode on climate change, and I have got two more programmes which are coming up within a few weeks and so those things are going on all the time. Q524 Chairman: When will we have the benefit of seeing your latest works on that? Sir David Attenborough: I am afraid I do not know the transmission date, but it is within the next few weeks. Q525 Chairman: Very good. Could I thank you most sincerely for coming before the Committee and, as probably one of the best known communicators in the country, putting in very straightforward language that everybody listening to you would have understood. I just wish sometimes some of the other people who talk about the subject would be as straightforward and simple as you are. I think sometimes they talk in an academic language that is somewhat beyond the citizen to understand, but you have given us some very good pointers about, bluntly, how to get this message across. Thank you for giving your time, we appreciate it. Sir David Attenborough: Thank you very much. |