Examination of Witness (Questions 65-112)
PROFESSOR KEVIN
ANDERSON
23 JUNE 2009
Q65 Chairman: Good morning and welcome
back to the Committee; nice to see you again.
Professor Anderson:
Thank you very much.
Q66 Chairman: We are all familiar
with your work and judgments. Can I kick off by asking why you
think that the recommendations of the Committee on Climate Change,
who have already given evidence to this inquiry, on targets and
budgets are not consistent with the level of cuts needed to keep
the rise in temperatures below 2°C?
Professor Anderson: The first
point, which is not a point perhaps directly for the Committee,
is that if we are to avoid dangerous climate change and if that
is characterised as 2°C (and that is a social or a political
decision), then to avoid something that is dangerous, would you
think a 50:50 view of that is reasonable? For you to avoid a dangerous
something, do you think a 50:50 chance is an appropriate percentage,
which is broadly what the Committee used? I would suggest if it
is a dangerous something that you are trying to avoid 5% is still
too high and 1% might be about reasonable. That is, I think, a
fundamental issue that the committee has to grapple with: why
would it choose 50:50 to avoid something that is dangerous? There
are some reasons, I think, why they might choose 50:50, because
1% gives you a much more demanding target so they choose an overshoot.
There are other people later who can comment as to how viable
they think that is. I think it is fair to say that the scientific
understanding of "overshoot" is not as robust as it
is if we do not go up and then drop to a ppmv. There are some
uncertainties around what that might trigger and we have to be
quite optimistic that that will not trigger unforeseen circumstances
that we know are out there but we do not quite know where they
are, and they hold that overshoot, which I think Brian Hoskins
referred to as a slight overshoot. I think 50ppmv is quite a large
overshoot, and for it to be held for, I cannot remember exactly
what, but something bordering on a century seems quite a long
time and to hope that you do not trigger something else. That
seems, as I say, quite optimistic. My understanding is that they
use a single climate sensitivity distribution. I do not know whether
that is an appropriate route to go down but again the later witnesses
can explain why they did that and whether they feel it is appropriate
or not, but certainly some of the work that is out there tends
to use a range of climate sensitivity distributions. I understand
they use a single cumulative value. We have recently discussed
it outside, actually. An important point is that if you look in
IPCC AR4 they generally get a wide range of emission cumulative
values, a fairly specific concentration, and they have 450 parts
per million, arguably CO2 but I think it is not unreasonable to
think that it is also CO2e if you are going to link it to temperature.
They have a big range of what the emissions are, how much we can
dump into the atmosphere over 100 years. The bottom end of that
range I understand came from the Hadley Centre, and they have
robustly defended the bottom end of that range, being that their
model embodied a lot of carbon cycle feedback, which is a better
way than lots of other people's models, and that significantly
reduced the total emissions by, I think, about 27%; yet the Committee
on Climate Change's cumulative value is much higher. I think it
is outside of the upper end of the AR4 values. You could make
the argument that one is CO2 and one is CO2e, and that is an issue
that needs to be debated. I do not think there is a simple correct
response to that, but certainly it seemed a very high value used
and it was a single value and I would question why they would
be using a single value. Why would you not use a range for that?
Turning to deforestation and food, deforestation could be as high
as 25% of total emissions. That was not taken into account by
the committee as far as I am aware, which you could argue implicitly
suggests that deforestation is the responsibility of the countries
that deforest. Given that we have already deforested in Annex
1 nations, I think that is possibly not a fair allocation of those
emissions, so I think for countries that do deforest (and that
will undoubtedly go on) some of those emissions are the burden
of Annex 1 nations and that significantly changes the budgets.
They did not consider food emissions, and indeed many people have
not considered food emissions, which are again very significant.
Emissions from agriculture overall are a very significant proportion
of emissions. They did not include aviation up to 2022 and then
it was pretty much a fudge after 2022. If you add deforestation,
food, aviation and shipping you significantly reduce the energy
space, so when they talk about things like decarbonising by 2050,
the electricity system, they are not clear as to whether the rest
of the system is fully decarbonised or not. I would argue that
you cannot wait that long if you factor in deforestation, food,
aviation and shipping emissions. I think there is a large hole
in that part of the analysis which needs tightening up. The peak
year we again discussed briefly outside. If I asked you when you
thought global emissions were going to peak I think it is very
unlikely that any of you would choose 2016 or Stern's 2015 or
Paul Bear's work, 2012-14. If the economy bounces back, as everyone
apparently hopes it does, emissions will continue to rise and
I think it is unrealistic, possibly naively optimistic, and misleading
to do the analysis around 2016 as a peaking year. Many people
do not think of that. They do not take account of the fact that
the peaking is that early. Do we really think this country is
going to peak in 2016? In the States Obama said they might get
emissions down by 4% by 2020 compared with 1990; yet they might
fail so they may get nowhere on that. Generally most people miss
their targets. The Japanese have said something like 8%, so you
would expect the non-Annex 1 countries' emissions to be going
up well beyond 2020, and therefore I think a peak of 2020 is still
highly optimistic and fundamentally changes the results for the
political world in terms of the rates of reduction that are necessary.
I think 2016 is a dangerously misleading peak. It would be lovely
if we could achieve it. Remember that in the UK emissions are
going up and are going up very significantly. They are not going
up in terms of our immediate national budget, and that is because
we are buying more goods from elsewhere. If you look at the consumer
index budget for the UK, published by Defra, you will see that
emissions in the UK are rising, and rising very rapidly indeed,
whereby a lot of those emissions are effectively in the goods
we buy from countries that do not have caps. For the UK, which
is probably one of the leading countries in terms of climate change,
our emissions are rapidly going up because we are consuming more
and more goods, so the best example out there is still going up.
The other part which is important in this is the CDM. They said
in the evidence[1]
(I looked through it briefly on the train this morning) that under
the interim budget there is no CDM (Clean Development Mechanism).
I do not think that is true because under the Emissions Trading
Scheme there will be some CDM. If you look at the latest EU energy
and climate change package and tally that with the Committee on
Climate Change's report, under the interim budget 17% of emissions
we have bought from Ghana, Nigeria and other countries that have
no targets. Under the intended budget 27% of the UK's effort can
be bought. If you add to that the rest of the EU ETS that we can
buy, and everyone, of course, wants to buy out of the EU ETS,
you effectively can buy out under the interim budget 67% of the
UK's effort and 75% for the intended budget. To me that does not
seem a responsible way to go for a country that is trying to lead
on climate change, that ability to buy out significantly from
other poorer parts of the world that have no caps, so there is
no guarantee of any emission reductions there. In fact, you might
get an emissions increase, and on top of that to be able to buy
from the EU ETS I think is probably irresponsible. You can already
see that with Geoff Hoon announcing the third runway, for instance,
and saying that emissions in 2050 from aviation will be the same
as they were in 2005. On the same day his own department published
a report saying there would be a 60% increase in emissions, and
the smoke and mirrors that allows that to occur is the buying
from the EU ETS. Everyone is doing that with their airports. Everyone
is doing it with all of their expansion. Everyone expects to buy
in the future to allow them to build high carbon infrastructure
now. There is a range of things there. Is 50% fair and appropriate
for something dangerous? Overshoot, I do not think is necessarily
the most scientifically robust route to go down. Is the single
climate sensitivity distribution correct? Is the single cumulative
value correct? If it is, is the high one correct? Ignoring deforestation,
food, aviation and shipping—is that appropriate? Then should
we be allowed to buy either the small amount you have left to
do from CDM and the Emissions Trading Scheme? If you put all of
those together what tends to be the case is that in everything
we do we try to choose the most optimistic end of the science
or the policy. If, every time you go to the supermarket and they
overcharge you, eventually you start to think there must be something
systematic in the fact that they always overcharge and never undercharge.
If, every time we choose a number that knocks the amount we have
to do politically down, I start to wonder how close plausibility
or practicality is sailing to political expediency, and I am uncertain
as to how much the committee, and I have a lot of time for what
they have done, have been driven by what they think the political
orthodoxy is prepared to face. I do not think as an independent
committee that is their responsibility.
Q67 Chairman: You have raised plenty
of issues in that answer. Just picking out one or two things,
first of all on the point about the 2°C, given all that you
have said, what level of cuts would we require to make to keep
the temperature rise to 2°C?
Professor Anderson: For the UK
or globally?
Q68 Chairman: The UK to start off
with.
Professor Anderson: For the UK
it would depend on how you apportioned emissions. At the event
I was at last week with some of the facilitators from the less
developed countries they suggested that we should have cut to
zero emissions a few years ago because they would say there is
a massive burden historically. We already have a debt to them
of what we have emitted, so it depends enormously on what apportionment
regime you go for. I know a lot of the LDCs are now saying that
we should pay for historical emissions. If that is the case you
will have to find some form of sequestration, or you buy enormous
amounts of emissions from them at a very high carbon price, I
would say, to make it fair. I do not think there is an easy answer
to that. If you believe in historical emissions and our responsibility
for those then we have to cut immediately to zero. If you think,
"Let us forget historical emissions; that is the past",
if you take from 1992, from Rio, we knew from there, or if you
take from 2000, you can then do some apportionment regime, and,
depending what apportionment regime you do, you will get different
reduction rates. One of the papers we have produced would say
6-9% would be reasonable for the UK if we peaked in the next few
years, say, 2012, 2014. Six to nine per cent per annum reductions
from energy would be about right because remember we have to factor
in food and you have to say what do we do about deforestation.
I do not think the committee took those into account. They have
2.8% reduction, I believe. If they took deforestation and food
into that and then said what is left for energy, even for them
there would be a much tighter reduction rate than that.
Q69 Chairman: That would be quite
challenging. Is there any point in our doing that unilaterally?
Professor Anderson: It depends
on your moral framework, really. Do you want to show leadership
or do you want to go down with the Titanic? That is purely
a political decision. I know where my views on that are. I think
the climate change community has not served the policy makers
well, either in terms of demonstrating leadership or often in
terms of directly giving their message to policy makers. I think
it has often been softened, to be honest. I think we have all
chosen to go down the route of least resistance and I think that
if we are going to show leadership we have to move away from that,
both in the scientific community and the political community.
I see no evidence of that at the moment.
Q70 Chairman: The Committee on Climate
Change has to operate in the real world, the political world and
so on. Is it more realistic to talk in terms of trying to reduce
the risk of a rise of temperature of 4°C to very low levels?
Is that a more realistic and meaningful aim than for the Government
to continue talking about keeping the rise to 2°C, which
seems now very unlikely to be achieved?
Professor Anderson: I take the
view, and I have done for several years, and I know that Bob Watson
from Defra now takes this view, that we should all-out aim for
2°C in terms of mitigation but we should adapt for something
considerably higher. At 4°C, as I understand it, and again
some of the later witnesses are more expert on this than I am,
you do not stabilise, so you have got to see ongoing increases
from there. I do not think we can survive in any social form that
we recognise globally at 4°C. A one metre sea level rise
takes out about a third of Bangladesh; 35 million people live
there. It takes out all of Orkney pretty much and lots of the
low-lying parts of the world. We would all be impacted by that
one way or another. I think if we go down the 4°C route it
is completely morally irresponsible and I think we would rule
the day but we would be able to do nothing about it because we
will set that in train over the next few decades. That is why
it is absolutely essential we make the right decisions now. I
do not think 4°C is the right route to go down. However,
I do think we have to do adaptation, particularly for poorer parts
of the world, at 4°C. Do not build any city below a 10-metre
sea level rise.
Q71 Chairman: We are happy to address
adaptation issues in the autumn. Just finally on this section,
you characterised a 50% likelihood of exceeding 2°C, if we
think that is dangerous, as a pretty hefty percentage. Do you
therefore regard it as really necessary that we should aim for
a much lower concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
in order to reduce that 50% likelihood of exceeding 2°C?
Professor Anderson: Yes, I do.
In the same way that the Committee looks at these things in a
practical way as well, I see no evidence that we are prepared
to make those changes to our lifestyles, but yes, I think we should
be aiming for something much lower, and certainly 400 would be
to me to be the upper end of what we should be aiming for, but
that would mean absolutely fundamental changes to our lives this
afternoon and we are not prepared to make any of those changes;
I see no evidence of any of us doing that, so, yes, I do think
400 would be a far more appropriate target to aim for.
Q72 Joan Walley: You say you see
no evidence of people making changes to their lives this afternoon.
That really brings it home, does it not, and yet we are talking
about a trajectory that is taking us with budgets up to 2022?
Professor Anderson: Yes.
Q73 Joan Walley: How would you reconcile
this really complicated five-yearly budget set 15 years in advance
between now and 2050 and the immediacy that we need to make changes
this afternoon?
Professor Anderson: At the moment
I do not think they can be reconciled. In terms of the budget
approach, and again all credit to the Committee here and indeed
to the whole parliamentary process, it has shifted away from the
scientifically illiterate view of long-term targets to a scientifically
robust view of cumulative emissions; at least it has significantly
embraced that approach, not fully but significantly, and I think
that is a real improvement, so the budgets are a real way forward.
However, I do think that the policy framework, the social framework,
to bring about what has been put into the budgets laid out by
the committee is completely lacking. For instance, I was at the
Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this year where 2,500
of the world's scientists flew to Copenhagen to tell the rest
of the world about how urgent climate change is. These are the
people who are fully informed who are making no changes to their
lives on average. In fact, I would think almost certainly their
emissions will have gone up every year for the last 10 years.
The people who know the most about it, with the most amount of
information, somehow think they are the group that should not
respond. The civil aviation industry thinks that, the shipping
industry thinks that, the car industry thinks that. Every sector
thinks it is the unique sector. Every individual thinks they are
the unique individual that should be the exception and everyone
else should make the changes. Whilst the budgets are there, there
is no political structure to make those significant changes from
all of us. We think that we are the reasonable person and everyone
else is not.
Q74 Joan Walley: But we need to be
confident that there is an agreed level of effort that fits into
that public framework and into that social framework, and I do
not see how we can be confident that that is going to be there
to get us on to the emissions pathway, given the complete lack
of interest and awareness that there is about this one core issue.
Professor Anderson: I would agree
but do we despair or do we say—that is the reason we have
meetings like this. That is the reason people are engaged in this
process, trying to drive the whole process forward. It is not
in my view going in the right direction in any way, shape or form
yet, but there is a thin hope that we can get some conversion
there. I think it will require really dramatic political leadership,
way beyond what currently we have been discussing. It is all very
well putting the budgets in place but the mechanisms to bring
about those changes simply are not there. I do not think the public
will is there either. Actually, I think the politicians are way
ahead of the journalists and well ahead of the public on this,
so I think some credit should be given to the politicians that
have been engaged in all of this process, particularly for the
UK here. However, still I see no real drive towards this. The
only hope we have at the moment is that bankers have really screwed
up our economy, because growth globally is now down 2.9% over
this year. Emissions will have come down. The only time emissions
come down is when you have a hit on growth, so after September
11 you saw emissions globally come down. Now you are about to
see emissions come down. Until we are prepared to accept the fact
that you cannot reconcile the rates of reduction we now require
with economic growth in the short to medium term whilst you put
low-carbon supplies in place we will not get the rates down to
levels that match the budgets that move us towards 2°C.
Q75 Joan Walley: And you are saying
that we should have a continuous trajectory all the way up to
2050?
Professor Anderson: Yes, but,
obviously, the further out you go the more you hope to be able
to understand. Yes, broadly the committee had that. They drew
it out to 2022 and then they drew a vague dotted line out to some
80% reduction by 2050 and some sort of discussion about aviation
and shipping. It was certainly a start but, as I say, it did not
take account of food or deforestation. Those issues were not considered
and aviation and shipping are a fudge at best. They have made
a very good start but there is a long way to go to make that more
robust. However, I still think it gives a really clear political
signal about what we need to do now.
Q76 Joan Walley: You mentioned just
now about the political orthodoxy of the Climate Change Committee.
Do you feel that it is limiting its recommendations in terms of
what will be accepted by governments or do you think that it is
showing the leadership that it should be showing?
Professor Anderson: It is showing
some really important leadership on the emissions issue. Moving
away from long-term targets (at least to some extent) towards
cumulative emissions is a big improvement, but, reading through
the evidence that was given here from the committee, the words
"practical" and "plausible" kept coming up
all the time. I get this everywhere I go—"That's politically
unacceptable". My guess is that living under a metre sea
level rise is politically unacceptable. There is an assumption
that because the orthodoxy will not allow us to mitigate to a
certain level so that is unacceptable then there is no cost to
that. If we are not prepared to accept that we are inherently
then accepting the high level adaptation or complete displacement
of some economies. The future is unacceptable and there is no
acceptable route out of that. In fact, if anything looks politically
acceptable at the moment it is unlikely to work. One of the metrics
of political unacceptability is a requirement of whatever future
we go down, and we have got ourselves into that position. We are
in 2009 and our emissions in the UK and globally continue to rise.
We have known about this since 1992 at best. We have been talking
about it ad infinitum since 2000 and we have done absolutely
nothing. We have got ourselves into the position knowingly and
now we are faced with really difficult choices because it is cumulative
emissions approach, not a long-term target approach. We have no-one
to blame but ourselves for this.
Q77 Joan Walley: Just finally from
me in this series, do you believe that the work that the Climate
Change Committee is doing in terms of that trajectory is now sufficiently
factored into the work that is being done to overcome the difficulties
because of the recession?
Professor Anderson: I think the
answer to that is no, and I do not blame the committee or anyone
else. We do not know how to bring these things together as yet
but I think it is really important we start to link them together.
I think there are some interesting lessons from what we call a
recession. Unfortunately, I do not see how the Annex 1 countries
can continue to see economic growth and reconcile that with the
rates of reduction necessary for anything like 2°C. I think
we have to learn lessons from how to distribute the pain and suffering
of a recession more fairly because I think we have to go through
that, particularly in the Annex 1 wealthy countries, in the interim
period over the next 10 or 20 years for us to have any hope of
the sorts of reduction rates that are necessary.
Q78 Mr Caton: You have already mentioned
the Committee on Climate Change's interim budget which the Government
has decided to follow until there is a global deal when the EU
moves to a target of a 30% cut by 2020. What are the risks associated
with following an interim pathway rather than the intended pathway?
Professor Anderson: Quantitatively,
I think it is very difficult to work out exactly what that would
mean because the risks relate to the global budget and that does
not say anything necessarily about the global budget but I think
there is a significant risk in terms of leadership. I did not
quite understand the first response from David Kennedy on this.
If you claim to have a view as to where we need to go for 2°C
you cannot say that if the rest of the world does less we will
do less as well. That is not coherent. If the rest of the world
does less you have to do more to move you to towards 2°C,
so they are not being driven by that; they are being driven by
what they claim to be the political realities of the world around
them. Therefore, there is a danger for the interim route. It is
an easier route and again it sends a message to everyone that
we are not prepared to demonstrate the leadership that the intended
budget would have shown, so I think there is a risk there in that
we should have shown that leadership, though I have to point out
that a 27% buy-out for the CDM significantly reduces the benefit
of having an intended pathway.
Q79 Mr Caton: If we end up keeping
the interim budget right the way through to 2022 how much steeper
will we have to cut UK emissions after that date?
Professor Anderson: The difference
between the intended and the interim is very small. We produced
a report which, if the Committee has not had it, I am happy to
pass on to you, which shows that difference.[2]
It plots the graphs out to 2050. The difference between the intended
and the interim is not particularly large in terms of the cumulative
emissions. It is a matter of just a few per cent difference, so
it is not that significant.
Q80 Mr Caton: So we need a tougher
budget than either the interim or the intended?
Professor Anderson: Oh, yes. I
think the EU should be going for something like a 40% reduction
by 2020, and I am not even sure whether we should take that on
a consumer basis rather than a producer basis. If we keep exporting
our emissions to China and elsewhere that have no caps I do not
think that is necessarily appropriate so I think we should consider
taking a consumer basis for our emissions from the OECD countries,
from the EU, and we should look at a 40% real reduction by 2020.
It will do two things. It will send a far clearer signal to the
LDCs to sign up to something significant in Copenhagen, which
they will not do unless the Annex 1 countries show real leadership,
which we are not going to show, I think, so we would have to make
those sorts of levels of reduction, and we cannot keep assuming
that we only look at our immediate at-home emissions. We have
to take account of the fact that a large proportion of our emissions
come from other parts of the world.
Q81 Colin Challen: Can I come back
to the question of aviation and shipping and ask whether there
is a logic in including them in the targets but not in the budgets?
Professor Anderson: There is a
logic to some extent with shipping. I do not think there is for
aviation. We know everything we need to know about aviation in
terms of CO2 emissions. It is robustly quantified, we know all
of that data, we know where the airport is setting off. We have
a reasonable way of apportioning emissions 50:50.
Q82 Colin Challen: But there is no
agreed way of apportioning emissions.
Professor Anderson: The UK broadly
accepted that when it worked out its aviation emissions. It works
them out. It already has ways of quantifying these numbers. The
EU is very likely to accept exactly that particular route of 50:50.
If you take all landings, all takings off or half of all return
flights and add that cumulatively around the globe that works,
it adds up to the full number, so we all accept that. There are
big issues about uplifts, the other factors of aviation which
we can come back to if you want to discuss that, but I think aviation
could have been factored into the budgets from now, and I think
should have been factored into the budgets.
Q83 Colin Challen: Has it been factored
into the budgets?
Professor Anderson: Yes.
Q84 Colin Challen: What difference
has it made? Is it significant?
Professor Anderson: For the UK
aviation is just under 7% of UK emissions and growing. Aviation
and shipping, if you add them together they have roughly the same
emissions as private cars. It is like saying let us ignore private
cars. I think most of us would suggest that that is not a reasonable
approach when we look at CO2 emissions, to ignore all cars. It
is a very nice proportion for the UK, very different from the
numbers globally. As I say, it is a little under 7%. Given that
that is a sector that is growing very rapidly and, you could argue,
is being promoted to grow by certain planning rules that allow
expansion of airports and so forth, and given that the emissions
from aviation are looking to grow significantly whilst at the
same time we are supposedly going to reduce emissions from elsewhere,
they very rapidly become an even more significant proportion of
the emissions. I think to ignore aviation is again a dangerous
omission that we knew about. We did not have to do that. Often
people say aviation and shipping are the same thing. They are
not. First, the shipping data is all over the place whereas the
aviation data is not. Secondly, it is really hard to know how
you apportion shipping emissions. If a ship brings apples from
New Zealand to the UK but on the way runs off to Venezuela and
picks up chickens to drop off in Holland, how do you apportion
those emissions? These are things that are not well understood.
Some of the emissions data estimates on shipping are twice some
of the other estimates, so there is a huge discrepancy in shipping
emissions and we do not know how to apportion routes that are
not clear. Ships bunker fuel. They go to a particular port just
to put on lots of fuel because it is cheaper and they can carry
it round at no real energy penalty. Aviation cannot do that. Shipping
is more complicated so we definitely should have included aviation.
I think it would be reasonable to make a fudged guess as to what
shipping might be and have it there as a proxy number.
Q85 Colin Challen: How long do you
expect it to be before the shipping problem has been resolved?
Which carbon budget should we be aiming to include shipping in?
Professor Anderson: There is quite
a lot of discussion about whether shipping should be a country
in itself, and I think there is some logic to that, to say that
it is such an awkward, difficult sector that perhaps it should
just trade within its own boundaries. I would suggest, if we do
that, that it is not allowed to buy emissions from anywhere else
and we give it a very stringent emission reduction pathway. It
will want to buy out from elsewhere; everyone wants to buy from
elsewhere. I think there is some argument to be said for shipping
being its own country and that it has to reduce its emissions
at whatever, 6% per annum, and let it do it however it feels fit.
Let the market for shipping determine how to do that, but I am
very reluctant to say that it should be allowed to buy from other
parts of the world or from other sectors.
Q86 Joan Walley: Given the importance
that you are adding to shipping, have you engaged in discussion
at all with the Chamber of Shipping or with Lloyd's List?
Professor Anderson: Yes.
Q87 Joan Walley: What response have
you had?
Professor Anderson: I have had
some engagement with them myself, not a lot. I should express
an interest. I served my time as a marine engineer in the Merchant
Navy so I am responsible for a lot of the emissions from these
ships that bring our goods over here. One of my colleagues in
particular has been discussing things with the various shipping
organisations for quite some time. They are quite keen on the
idea of there being a separate sectoral emissions budget for shipping.
They want to be able to buy from elsewhere though. That is where
we would probably to some extent differ from their view, but they
think there is some merit to be had from being separate. I think
at the moment we may broadly hold with that because it looks very
difficult to know how you add it to a national emissions budget.
Myself and my colleagues, who have been looking at shipping for
some time now, would probably agree with their view but you cannot
buy out from that cap.
Q88 Joan Walley: The reason for my
question is that there has been some concern expressed within
the shipping industry about a recent report of this Committee[3]
and I just wonder where the informed debate is within the shipping
community that could bring forward the leadership that is required
at all kinds of different levels, including within the shipping
sector.
Professor Anderson: I think it
is still an uninformed debate at the moment across the board on
shipping. We do not know the data. The raw data is missing. We
have not as yet been able to track the routes particularly well.
We know what happens in ports but we do not know the routes by
which ships come here. We know that ships bunker fuel all over
the place. We do not really understand that, so at the moment
we do not have a lot of data, but I do think, as I said before,
that we are in a position now where we could start to set up a
mechanism for shipping to work within its own remits whilst we
tighten up the data side.
Q89 Joan Walley: And that would include
the IMO, would it?
Professor Anderson: Oh, yes.
Q90 Colin Challen: I have been listening
to your evidence. It feels to me like, whilst you say you respect
the Climate Change Committee and give it due credit, nevertheless
what it is recommending is complacent, or is it worse than complacent?
Professor Anderson: As I said,
I think they are being too much influenced by immediate plausibility
and political realities.
Q91 Colin Challen: That is part of
their remit, is it not?
Professor Anderson: It is, but
it is also to be informed by the science. If immediate political
realities cannot be reconciled with the science which side do
you come down on? The role of the committee in my view is to be
an independent committee that is significantly influenced by the
science and less by the political realities. That is the role
of politicians; that is what we appoint them for. If the committee
ends up being another filter between the science and the politicians
that is completely inappropriate because there are far too many
filters between the science and the policy makers already. I think
the role of the committee is principally to be driven by the science
with some awareness of some of the broader political issues that
are there. I personally would like to have seen the committee
being a scientific committee. I wish it had not got any economists
on it. I do not think that is the role of the committee; that
is the role of economists and the Government, to deal with those
issues. I think they should have been given as impartial summaries
of the science as possible, and I do not feel that is what the
committee has done. It has looked at what is politically acceptable.
Maybe I am wrong on this but it does seem to me that every time
they choose something that is at the much more optimistic end
of science you add all these together and you come up with a result
that says, "Hey, this is just about doable within the political
orthodoxy, a bit challenging but we can do it". That just
feels a little bit too convenient.
Q92 Colin Challen: So you are saying
that the Tyndall Centre's approach and their approach are using
the same figures but they are simply taking a more generous view
of what those figures might permit?
Professor Anderson: Yes. Somebody
might say we have taken the opposite end of the spectrum. I hope
we have not, and I would be pleased if people could point out
where we have. I hope what we have generally tried to do is take
almost like the orthodoxy in terms of the science. For instance,
we take no account of tipping point issues. We have not factored
in aerosols. We have also not factored in uplift issues from aviation
which would be very significant for the UK. We have taken almost
the most conventional form of the science and the results are
still politically very demanding. I do not think the rest of the
nuanced issues around it are very important for the policy debate.
I think we are very clear which route we should be going down,
and yes, taking the sort of approach we have taken, taking the
orthodox data that is out there across the full range and allying
that with things that most people ignore, like deforestation,
food, peaking after 2016, are absolutely central issues. You come
up with very different results, but if the committee had done
their analysis with a peaking of 2020 their results would not
be hugely different from ours, I do not think. They would be very
similar. That peaking date is absolutely essential to understand
how important that is, and whether you think 2016 is an appropriate
peaking date. The other bit they did not do any real work on,
they say they did not even consider it particularly, I saw in
the responses, is about apportionment. They must have used some
form of apportionment of global emissions to the UK to develop
any UK budgets but they certainly did not take account of any
historical emissions in there, so that apportionment issue is
another one that the committee have glossed over and it needs
to be more thoroughly investigated.
Q93 Colin Challen: On that point
they have said that they have used a C&C approach, sort of;
they do not actually use contract and converge as contract and
converge. This peaking date is clearly important for future emissions,
say, after 2020, because it is bound to have a significant impact.
What difference does it make to the post-2020 trajectory, having
these different dates between 2015 and 2020 itself, and could
you perhaps say something about the impact of the recession on
the peaking date because I have read that the recession would
have a 6% reduction impact on global emissions. Maybe that will
impact on when we should have the peak year for emissions.
Professor Anderson: I will comment
on the last point first, the recession. I think it is very difficult
to say. The estimate is now that growth will drop by 2.9%. You
would expect emissions reduction to be a little bit less than
that over a year, not more, but, of course, everyone is trying
to push the economy back up. There is a bit of rhetoric about
this, about some green growth, and particularly OECD countries,
in terms of their reflation packages, are putting virtually nothing
into green growth. The places that are leading on that are places
like South Korea and China. They are putting about a third of
their reflation packages into meaningful green growth. We are
doing nothing, the rest of Europe is doing nothing and the States
are doing nothing. It does appear that everyone is trying to drive
forward out of the recession as quickly as possible to get back
to the old pathway, so, yes, this will be a step. You will go
up, emissions will stabilise or maybe drop a little bit for a
couple of years or so, and if we can actually drag ourselves out
of recession, which is the goal of all these economic reflationary
packages, we will go back on the old pathway as quickly as we
possibly can and then we will start to think about climate change
and the environment again, probably. Arguably, if we have a stabilisation
of emissions for two years, we have reached the peak and then
we go back up again, that will adjust when you might think that
peak should be. I would still suggest that we should not move
2020 out to 2022. I still hold the view that we should go for
2014, we should go for this afternoon as the peak. The sooner
the peak the easier it is for us to achieve. I just think it is
unrealistic to keep doing the analysis on 2015 and 2016 when almost
all of us accept that that is so unlikely to occur because 53
or 57% of global emissions come from the non-Annex 1 countries
and those emissions, quite rightly, are going up very rapidly
because that is a sign of their improved welfare and development.
Our emissions are also going up, so everyone's emissions are going
up. There is no sign of any sense of urgency towards 2016, so
I think it is more realistic to choose 2020. I would not want
to see that pushed back to 2022 because of the recession. I think
2020 is just about doable. I did not quite get your first point
on that. You said if we peaked in 2020 what would be the emissions
reductions afterwards.
Q94 Colin Challen: If we delay the
peak it is bound to have an effect on the cumulative total in
the atmosphere by that point. Therefore, we would have to have
more severe reductions following 2020. It leads on to my next
question, which is about our annual reductions pathway. If we
peaked this afternoon at two o'clock what would be our annual
reductions target, do you think, from such an early peak? If it
were to be delayed until 2020, from that year on what impact would
that have on the annual reductions that we would have to make,
if you have done that calculation?
Professor Anderson: Not without
a computer in front of me. If we could peak now or in the next
few years the reduction rates are going to look not too dissimilar
from the ones outlined by the committee, probably a bit steeper
than that. This is looking at it from the UK perspective. If the
whole globe peaked and you attributed the emissions to the UK
in the way that the committee have done, then a 2 or 3% per annum
reduction rate would not seem unreasonable, but remember that
that is for all emissions. That includes food, if it is not taken
out of it, and they have not included deforestation which I think
should be factored in there. Therefore, on any view it would still
be somewhat steeper than that. It is probably reasonable to say
3-5% for energy if we could peak now. If we go to 2020, and then
if we take out food and deforestation out of 2020, basically the
rate of reduction is double figures. You decarbonise almost immediately.
The difference is an infinite reduction rate pretty much after
2020 for energy, if you want to hold any reasonable chance of
2°C, because the rest of your emissions that you will be
permitted after that would have to go into food and would be taken
out also by deforestation. I think if we leave it to 2020, and
we tried to show this with some energy curves in the paper, you
would have to completely decarbonise the global system, even if
you were really optimistic, by about 2035, 2045. That is assuming
the upper end of the cumulative values for 2°C. If you think
it is reasonable to assume that the non-Annex 1 countries would
be allowed to use energy after us, fossil fuel based energy, and
I think that was a reasonable assumption in the past, then we
would have to decarbonise well in advance of 2035, so 2020, 2025.
As I say, it is almost a vertical drop if we globally peak in
2020 for Annex 1 countries or you fail to meet 2°C or any
reasonable chance of it, which I think is far more likely.
Q95 Mr Chaytor: The revised EU ETS
Directive for Phase III weakens the cap quite significantly. I
am interested in what you feel about the balance between allowing
Member States to purchase allowances within the trading system
as against the proportion of their reductions that could be achieved
by purchasing offset credits using CDM.
Professor Anderson: I think CDM
should not be allowed. I completely disagree with any CDM.
Q96 Mr Chaytor: Why?
Professor Anderson: First, if
the CDM countries have caps, that is fine and if it is a cap structure
that is apportioned around the globe based on some underlying
premise like a certain Community value for 2°C and you apportion
that out in a way that everyone accepts, then fine, you can have
CDM, but that is not what CDM is about. CDM is buying emissions
from countries that have no caps.
Q97 Mr Chaytor: But, following Copenhagen,
there may well be the possibility of some caps being agreed by
non-Annex 1 countries. If there were a deal that led to that then
that would change the situation over CDM.
Professor Anderson: Yes. There
is a slightly more nuanced point in this, but if there were a
deal that led to emissions caps for all nations around the globe,
and if those emissions caps were all premised on the same underlying
scientific approach and the same target, 2°C or whatever
that target might be, then I think you could argue that CDM is
a workable mechanism, because if we buy a tonne off them they
cannot emit that tonne. However, if there is no cap and we buy
a tonne off them the important thing to remember is that CO2 is
in the atmosphere for a long period of time. We keep hearing about
this additionality thing, "We can guarantee the additionality".
Over 100 years? That is how long the CO2 is in the atmosphere
for. You get these sorts of things, "We will put some wind
turbines up and displace something else", but those wind
turbines will give access to electricity that gives access to
a television that gives access to adverts that sell small scooters
and then some entrepreneur sets up a small petrol depot for the
small scooters and another entrepreneur buys some wagons instead
of using oxen and the whole thing builds up over the next 20 or
30 years, so it is the same thing. The additionality test would
be, if you can imagine Marconi and the Wright brothers getting
together to discuss where they will be in 2009, easyJet and the
internet will be facilitating each other through internet booking.
That is the level of additionality you would certainty have to
have over that period. You cannot have that. Society is inherently
complex. The CO2 is there for that long, so additionality is a
meaningless concept in a complex system, which society is over
that sort of time frame, so CDM has no validity as a mechanism
for reducing CO2 emissions in the absence of caps. It may have
validity as a mechanism for providing funding to other countries
that deserve that funding, in my view as reparation because we
have stopped them going down the fossil fuel route and we have
also imposed very significant climate change impacts on them,
so it is not aid; it is reparation, but if that is used as a way
to allow us to do the things we want to carry on doing then that
is completely inappropriate. That is why I am fundamentally opposed
to CDM in the absence of caps. When it comes to the EU ETS, it
is okay if you buy off that but you have to think that, if everyone
is going to buy off it, like you are using the reason for why
you build the third runway: you buy it off the EU ETS, and no
doubt every other airport is doing the same thing, how viable
is that as the caps tighten up in the future? Are we locking ourselves
into high emission infrastructures we cannot get out of?
Q98 Mr Chaytor: Is that not the purpose,
to encourage more people to buy through the allowances so the
price of allowances will go up, which is the biggest incentive
for them to invest in low-carbon infrastructures?
Professor Anderson: Within the
EU?
Q99 Mr Chaytor: Within the EU.
Professor Anderson: Yes, the price
will go up but—
Q100 Mr Chaytor: But the consequence
of more people buying the allowances will drive the price up.
Professor Anderson: You are quite
right, so every nation invests in massive airports, buys all the
new A380s and the new Dreamliners when they come out, and then
turns round and says, "Actually, we have bought all of these
things. We cannot fly them any more because we cannot, unfortunately,
switch them over to hydrogen". There are biofuels but there
are massive concerns about biofuels and they also wax at altitude
so it is difficult to fly with biofuels, so we will have built
all of this high carbon infrastructure and then somehow we are
going to have a political system to say, "That is perfectly
okay. We will just leave that to one side. We do not mind having
spent all this money on it. We are not going to use it".
As soon as we have built these things we will find every mechanism
out there to allow ourselves to be able to use them and show no
leadership. The idea that we are going to deliberately set up
a high carbon infrastructure because we can buy out elsewhere
and then in the future somehow we are going to make that redundant
well within its lifetime is a complete waste of capital expense
when we could be improving the tram systems and lots of other
things in our countries that we are lacking. I think it is an
irresponsible route to go down. I think Hoon's comment is a really
good example of exactly what all the countries will be trying
to do. They will be gaining the whole system to allow them to
carry on doing what they historically have done. They appear in
discussions about whether we can have power stations without CCFs,
the idea that they might retrofit in the future. All of these
sorts of things and the emissions that come from that allow us
to buy out of the EU ETS. Germany and Poland will be saying that,
everyone will be saying that, and all that will happen is that
you will weaken the national allocation plans so the emissions
will get weaker and weaker because every country will be arguing
as to why they cannot make the changes.
Q101 Mr Chaytor: So you are not opposed
to the trading scheme itself but should there be a cap on the
amount that individual countries can buy through the trading scheme?
Professor Anderson: There is a
cap now. Obviously, it is only the traded sector. I do not have
a problem if the cap is tight and we had a very clear idea of
where that cap is going, because then we would know, if we built
these things, to some extent what the prices might be. We have
no idea what the cap is because it is a horse trading process;
we all know that. They are all horse traders, so the more high
carbon infrastructure every country puts in there the more they
are all horse trading, the weaker the caps will turn out to be
and we will end up with the pretty meaningless system that we
have got now. I like the EU ETS as a mechanism within the EU;
I do not think it would work globally, but it is fundamentally
flawed and it is far too weak. The other thing, and this is an
important point that needs some more research, is that the assumption
at the moment is that a tonne is a tonne is a tonne. I think buying
a tonne from CDM is not a tonne at all; it is nothing to do with
climate change, but buying a tonne from the ETS is still assumed
to be, "We buy a tonne from there; it is the same as us emitting
a tonne here". I do not think that necessarily holds. If
the UK has a very strong view that 2°C has a certain probability
as the way it should go and it works out its own pathways, the
EU does not have that as its premise. At the moment it has a traded
sector and some ad hoc policies for the non-traded sector, so
the overarching structure of the science and the regime within
the EU is not as robust as that for the UK. For a robust regime
to go to a non-robust regime and claim that a tonne is a tonne
seems to me not appropriate. If you imagine a country that really
believed in 2°C and another country that really believed
in a 6°C future, is it appropriate for the 2°C country
to buy a tonne out of the 6°C country? They are not the same
thing. This country would have to make no changes. I think that
if the UK wants to show some leadership, which it claims it does
and I would argue it is doing, it should not buy it out of the
EU ETS on a tonne-by-tonne basis. There should be some proportionate
cap so that every time we buy it there is only 0.8 of a tonne
or 0.7 of a tonne.
Q102 Mr Chaytor: Just on this method
of accounting within the carbon budgets, what is the significance
of us using the allowances as the means of accounting for progress
rather than the actual emissions? Is there a significant difference
between allowances and emissions?
Professor Anderson: I do not know
the answer to that one. My view is that we should take the emissions
as what we should be assessing our progress against, not just
home emissions but emissions that relate to consumption as much
as production, the emissions data Defra has had produced for itself
already. It is public if you go and search for it but it does
not make it openly public that UK emissions are basically doing
that. It always tries and says they are going down a bit, so I
think we should take the consumption emissions as well as production
emissions but it should be the emissions that matter.
Q103 Colin Challen: Do you think
there have been any major scientific developments which perhaps
the Climate Change Committee has not taken into account? I am
thinking particularly of the IARU Conference in Copenhagen in
March and its conclusions which have just been published.
Professor Anderson: Undoubtedly
the science is changing. Anyone who plots a learning curve, and
we have all been plotting these things for years, would be able
to tell you that whatever we think was fairly good before becomes
bad now. The situation gets worse and worse. There is no learning
curve, so what is coming out of Copenhagen is that it looks like
the impacts for 2°C are probably at the worse end, and no
doubt they will not be appropriate for 2°C; they will be
appropriate for 1.5°C. We have not learned from this. All
the time we underestimate the scale of the problem and the scale
of the adaptation issue and the impacts and the scale of the mitigation
issue, and we have no learning curves there at all. We get burned
every time and we put our hand back in the fire again and we will
no doubt do it again. What has happened is that the science has
changed. The science says, yes, things look even more demanding
than they were before. Originally people used to talk about 550
for 2°C and that has gradually moved towards 450 and some
people talk about 400 now. You can almost plot that pathway and
I think we should be aware of that. This is my concern with the
Climate Change Committee. It errs on the side of optimism and
yet the learning curves say you should err on the side of pessimism.
Q104 Colin Challen: Should it somehow
be more flexible, able to respond more quickly, because I do not
think they are going to publish another report on these initial
conclusions for quite some time? As I say, they have done their
main body of initial work which will carry us through politically
for quite a period of time. There seems to be a mismatch there
in its ability to quickly update the Government on changes that
might be necessary for budgets.
Professor Anderson: What it should
have done in the first place was take more a pessimistic view
than an optimistic view and then it should not have to revisit
the science too often. The concern about revisiting the science
is that science is inherently an iterative, uncertain process,
and that is what is good about science; it is not a black and
white view. Therefore, you have to be quite careful of any process
that keeps coming back to revisit the latest science because the
latest science is likely to be wrong or not quite as it seems
in a couple of years' time. I would be a bit cautious about approaches
that kept going back to the science and revisiting the budgets,
but I think if we had started off in the first place by taking
a far more practical view (and they would probably argue that
politically it was not very practical), if we had taken a more
negative end of the spectrum, I think that would have held us
in good stead as the science changes out in the future and it
is very likely to carry on down that learning curve as things
are going to get worse and worse. If you had done that in the
first place you would not have to keep revisiting the science,
but it is really important that we do revisit the science. One
of the big issues that came out, particularly in terms of the
poorer parts of the world, was acidification, that at 400-450ppmvCO2
you are going to see some very significant acidification issues.
We do not know quite what will do to fisheries and things like
that, but a lot of the poorer parts of the world are really dependent
on things like their local fisheries and those sorts of impacts
are potentially catastrophic for some of these economies and societies
and I do not think they have been factored in sufficiently well.
There are some really important issues we need to think through.
For instance, DFID's role might be to think about those sets of
issues to do with how the aid budgets reflect the change in acidification;
are there issues that need to be thought through there, or the
adaptation to the areas that rely very heavily on fishing to other
forms of support for their economies? There are issues that come
out of that that may affect other things than just mitigation.
I think the committee should probably have taken a less optimistic
view, possibly a more demanding view, than they did and therefore
they would not have to keep revisiting the science so often.
Q105 Colin Challen: But that would
require far more demanding budgets and some kind of crash programme
of public works, et cetera?
Professor Anderson: It would,
yes. We have no problem investing trillions in the banks. You
must have heard this over and over again; people go on about this
now. We have been arguing for a few billion pounds here, there
and everywhere. There is never any money around. As soon as the
banks go pear-shaped there is trillions that somebody found, so
we can find trillions to deal with things but we cannot find a
few measly millions or billions to deal with supposedly one of
the greatest threats that we face, so, yes, I think there should
be a massive investment programme in all sorts of things to drive
things in a different direction, but we have unfortunately spent
the money on the banks.
Q106 Mr Caton: You accuse the Climate
Change Committee of being over-optimistic. Recent history shows
the Government has been even more over-optimistic in its forecasting.
What are the main lessons that it needs to learn now for the future
of the UK climate change programme, given the disappointing progress
towards the 2010 target for a 20% cut in CO2 emissions?
Professor Anderson: The lessons
that we all know. Everyone is always so optimistic. They say it
is just a learning curve. We can look at that learning curve.
The committee has been far too optimistic, the Government has
been far too optimistic, the globe has been far too optimistic.
So many people will be relying on Copenhagen as if something worthwhile
is going to come out of Copenhagen. I hope something worthwhile
comes out of Copenhagen. It looks extremely unlikely that that
is going to happen and very few people I know who are senior people
involved in the negotiations there think anything significant
is going to come out of it, so we need to be thinking a bit more
realistically about where things are going, and if you do that
you come out with the sorts of things that Colin is talking about
here, almost like a Marshall Plan. That is the sort of shift that
we are going to have to see but we are not going to do that. We
are going to come up with as much optimism as possible that allows
us to carry on with the orthodoxy, so until we are prepared to
recognise that all we are doing at the moment is preparing to
recover the deckchairs on the Titanic in preparation for
moving them. We are not even at the moving the deckchairs stage,
let alone pointing the ship in a different direction. We are so
far removed from the scale of the problem and we are so reluctant,
all of us, to address this because it affects us personally, it
affects our economy, the way we live our lives, our attitude towards
other people, that at every level we try to find anything we can
to avoid that, whether scientifically or politically. I do think
we are far removed from this, and this is almost an issue of culture
and philosophy as much as it is now of science. In some respects
the mitigation agenda is well understood from a science perspective.
The science has got to tell us a lot more about the adaptation
agenda as yet but I think for mitigation we know what we need
to do. The problem is not lack of engineering, the problem is
not lack of science; it is lack of will. I think it is far more
of a cultural, political, philosophical issue now than it is one
of science and engineering.
Q107 Joan Walley: You have said what
is wrong with how we are going forward but, given the policy framework
that we are currently operating in respect of the Climate Change
Committee, what do you think the Government should be doing? How
should it be addressing the need for a more consistent and regular
approach towards evaluation? What would you put in place? What
would you advocate? It is all very well to say what should happen
but what would you do to evaluate our existing policies on that?
Professor Anderson: They are not
going to point us in the right direction and that is principally
because they are driven by the price mechanism. The price mechanism
for dealing with climate change is just one of a suite of instruments
it might use and it is being overly emphasised as to its importance.
The price mechanism is a perfectly reasonable route to go down
if you have marginal adjustments year-on-year. If you want to
reduce emissions by 1% per year, yes, up the price of carbon,
up the price of fossil fuels and you will gradually move in that
direction. You will not deal with climate change but you can use
the price mechanism. If you want to deal with climate change you
are going to have to look at some reductions that are far greater
and there are enormous equity implications from doing that, so
I think you require far more of a regulatory framework. If Government
is going to genuinely be committed to climate change it has no
longer to be fearful of very stringent regulation and there should
be no get-out clauses in this. For instance, in the legislation
that is coming through on cars some time soon, I think, it is
130 grams per kilometre of CO2. That is a fleet average. If a
car can be made at 130 grams per kilometre, and Audi made the
A2, which is a four-seater, with 94 miles per gallon at 100 grams
per kilometre about seven or eight years ago, you should be selling
no car above 130 grams, not as the fleet average. The regulatory
framework should be really clear on this, that in miles per gallon
terms no car should be allowed to be sold on a forecourt next
year that does less than 50 miles per gallon, and it will be improved
at 5% every single year, year in, year out, to give a real clear
market signal. That is no new technology; we do that already for
some of our cars. That also affects the role model issue. The
Top Gear end becomes about driving the more efficient car
rather than the faster car. I think we need to have really clear
regulations like that. I would have a moratorium on airport expansion,
so no airport expansion until the improvement in efficiency from
aviation can be matched to any growth rate. There should be no
increase in emissions in aviation.
Q108 Joan Walley: You have just mentioned
two things. You have mentioned greater emphasis on and use of
regulation and you have mentioned the whole issue towards airports
and airport capacity and airport policy, but, given that we have
got the Climate Change Committee and we have got DECC, what you
have just talked about in terms of trying to change the policy
framework links to two different government departments, ie, BERR
and the Department for Transport.
Professor Anderson: And Treasury.
Q109 Joan Walley: And Treasury. In
terms of what you are saying, how would you reconcile these different
government departments with the work of the Climate Change Committee
and its policy framework?
Professor Anderson: I assumed
that government was completely joined up nowadays so it would
automatically transfer between these departments. That is what
we have been told for a long time. In reality the Government is
like every other part of our own lives—there are all these
separate elements where there is no integrated thinking. There
is lots of integrated rhetoric, and that is not just in government.
I work in the university and the whole university spectrum is
like that. It is set up in silos. Our own lives are like this
where we do not behave rationally. It is a huge problem. I regard
this not just as a government problem; it is a huge problem of
our modern society—how do we integrate and think about these
sets of issues and sustainability? We have to deal with that across
the board of these remits. You have to have far more powerful
ministries. At the moment they are little snapping dogs at the
ankles of BERR and Transport and Treasury. That is not appropriate.
What they are setting in train has to be fundamental in what the
Treasury is thinking about and what BERR is thinking about and
what Transport is thinking about, so they will have to meet with
the goals that have been laid out by the Committee on Climate
Change, or, I would suggest, more stringent goals. There is no
sign of that occurring yet but there is if you look at places
like the Welsh Assembly Government, and arguably it may be occurring
in Scotland, where you see more integration. I think the UK Government
is a peculiarly English government in that sense in that it maintains
this level of fragmentation and hierarchy that is not immediately
evident. If you talk to Jane Davidson in Wales, she is driving
through all sorts of things in Wales with a peanut budget, and
it also gets opposition within the Welsh Assembly Government,
that we are just not prepared to do here. There are examples out
there of governments even within our own boundaries that are demonstrating
greater leadership on integration. I think the UK, as I say, almost
a peculiarly English government, is not demonstrating that at
the moment and that is another area of leadership where we should
be showing that to the rest of the world, that we can actually
do that, that Treasury will jump to the tune sometimes of DECC
and Defra, which it certainly does not do at the moment.
Q110 Joan Walley: And in this joined-up
world that we are talking about how would you make sure that all
the changes and advances and greater understanding in respect
of scientific awareness is then consistently and periodically
factored into this non-silo operation of other government departments?
Professor Anderson: One thing
that is happening at the moment, and this is my own experience;
I have recently given a number of talks to DfID, is that there
has been a whole range of seminars we have set up for DfID and
they look to me to be really interesting dialogues. It is very
much a two-way dialogue. As academics it is good for us to have
some sense of what is going on in the political process. There
was a two-day event and they have got some follow-ups to that.
I have got some more seminars coming up with DECC, so I think
those standard mechanisms can allow us to get the message across
to the policy makers, but we do not get asked to go to BERR, Transport
or the Treasury. We are there at DECC and Defra. I do not think
there is anything particularly difficult about getting the scientific
message across; I think we know how to do that, and it is the
Committee on Climate Change's responsibility to do that as well.
It is the idea that, once you have got the message across, what
powers are there to ensure that these ministries match the requirements
of what the science has shown, interpreted through the committee
and the way it does that?
Q111 Joan Walley: How much would
you say that that links back to whether or not there is or is
not a sufficiently broad skill-set amongst the professionals and
the civil servants in each of the silo departments that you have
just referred to?
Professor Anderson: I have met
some very good civil servants and some very good MPs, but many
of them, I think, still probably struggle with some of the science.
I do not know if anyone has got the graphs on this, but my guess
is that there are far more people trained in the classics than
there are trained in science across the Civil Service and across
Parliament, all of the MPs, and the Lords for that matter. I think
that is probably not particularly healthy, and I think that is
a long-term issue, how you overcome that. I do not think we are
going to do that overnight.
Q112 Chairman: Thank you very much.
We have covered quite a lot of ground. Your characteristic trenchant
views are of interest to the committee and we will be discussing
them further, I am sure.
Professor Anderson: I thought
they were moderate views!
Chairman: Thank you very much for coming
in.
1 Ev 103-104 Back
2
Note: www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/tyndall_climatereport_ccc2008 Back
3
EAC Fourth Report, Reducing CO2 and other emissions from Shipping,
HC 528, Session 2008-09, published 1 June 2009. Back
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