A carbon milestone
This column appeared in the Jersey Evening Post on the 3rd of May, 2017 (this is an expanded version for online readers)
Last month the world breached another major milestone. Earth spent its first day for around five million years above 410 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, as measured by the Mauna Loa observatory. It passed the 400 ppm milestone reached less than two years ago in 2015. Scientists were shocked at the results because it highlighted the rate at which CO2 is being pumped into our atmosphere.
Some of the increase can be attributed to natural events such as El Nino but scientists agree that it’s people burning fossil fuels and contributing extra gas to the environment that is the primary cause of climate change. Simply put, more carbon in the atmosphere traps more heat causing a warming effect:
Jersey’s Chief Minister, Ian Gorst was asked in the States Chambers in December last year about Jersey’s part in addressing climate change. He stated:
“Jersey takes its international environmental obligations very seriously” and we are “committed to reducing carbon emissions”
Yet, Locate Jersey — supported by the taxpayer — has worked to attract oil and gas companies to the island, attending the annual World Oil & Gas Week events in London. When questioned on this apparent conflict the Chief Minister responded that Locate Jersey are making sure these companies are “managing environmental risks” and are “responsible and ethical”.
This shows either a serious failure to understand the problem or wilful blindness. It is the very use of oil and gas fossil fuels that are the major cause of climate change. Scientists have stated that 75% of known fossil fuel reserves must stay in ground and the International Energy Agency estimates that 3 million people a year are being killed by fossil fuel air pollution. More than wars, murders, and traffic accidents combined. Therefore, it’s impossible for Locate Jersey to manage the environmental risks. In fact, they are contributing to them by providing the tax efficiencies that allow dominant fossil fuel companies to continue to compete for longer against smaller companies offering greener solutions like solar, wind and tidal.
Oil and gas companies also contribute little to the island in tax revenues; they are neither finance nor a utility and therefore pay zero corporation tax, but it also apparently conflicts with general public opinion in Jersey. The ‘My Jersey Survey’ showed that islanders would like to see the most change in managing the threats posed by climate change, something they consider Jersey currently performs the worst at. Part of managing those threats must surely mean by not contributing to them?
In 2006, an application to the Kyoto Protocol was accepted and therefore now extends to Jersey. Part of the application process is the acceptance and acknowledgment that (a) global warming exists and (b) human-made CO2 emissions have caused it. The protocol aims to ensure that global temperatures are kept below 2ºC and that carbon in the atmosphere does not exceed 450ppm — if we’ve gained 10ppm in as little as two years we could breach the 450ppm limit as soon as 2025.
The States government website boasts of the Kyoto Protocol that: “we will go further than the 36% reduction on greenhouse gas emissions that we have already achieved” and that: “Jersey wants to play its part in combating climate change”. Certainly achievable when you completely ignore the emissions generated by mining and fossil fuel companies registered in the island.
Despite signing up to the agreement it seems not all Jersey politicians adhere to it. Senator Sarah Ferguson openly denies the significant link human-made CO2 emissions plays in climate change and regularly posts on social media articles from the Global Warming Policy Foundation. A UK based think tank that promotes climate change denial and has previously refused to disclose the source of its funding, hiding behind its charity status. As it happens, the Guardian managed to reveal in 2012 that one of the funders was Michael Hintze, a leading Conservative party donor who runs the £5bn hedge fund CQS. Despite the GWPF denying its funding came from fossil fuel companies, it came to light in 2014 that funding to the “educational charity” was being received via another think-tank that did receive funding from oil companies. Despite me highlighting these issues, Senator Ferguson so far has refused to comment on the matter, continuing instead to disseminate information from the questionable think tank.
Climate change also has the major affect of increasing the scarcity of vital resources such as food and water, especially in the dryer regions of Africa and the Middle East. Academics have recently established a statistical link between global warming events and resource depletion in exacerbating the likelihood of armed conflict and war. Dr Jonathan Donges has stated: “Recent analyses of the societal consequences of droughts in Syria and Somalia indicate that such climatological events may have already contributed to armed conflict outbreaks or sustained conflicts in both countries.”
Armed conflict and climate change naturally leads to mass migration of peoples and the refugee crisis has already impacted far across the Middle East, Africa, Europe and even in Jersey. Yet this is considered just the beginning as extreme weather events are set to rise, causing ever greater droughts, storms, famines and violence with people struggling over dwindling resources.
In March this year emergency grants of £200,000 were issued by the Jersey Overseas Aid Committee due to millions facing starvation as famine and drought hit Ethiopia, Kenya with the United Nations officially declaring famine in war-torn South Sudan. A United Nations Dispatch article at the time asserted that climate change was partly to blame, stating:
“Changes in rainfall aren’t the only climate shocks facing East Africa if the world doesn’t rein in fossil fuel emissions — the entire continent is poised to see more and more days with extreme heat, with what might be considered an anomalously hot day in 2017 becoming the norm by 2040.”
As the climate becomes warmer a phenomenon known as a feedback loop can develop. One example being, as more ice melts, less heat is reflected back out to space, meaning more is absorbed into the oceans. Another feedback loop are wildfires like the one that occurred in Funchal Madeira last year. The fires led to widespread devastation and hundreds of Islanders raised thousands of pounds in support of the devastated area. Drier conditions and higher temperatures increase not only the likelihood of a wildfires occurring, but also the duration and the severity of the wildfire. This in turn creates the feedback loop that releases more CO2 into the atmosphere and therefore wildfires are expected to become more frequent in the future.
As well as an increase in droughts, storms, famines, conflict and wildfires, climate change is estimated to be currently costing the global economy 1.3 trillion US dollars a year. Equating to 1.6% of global GDP being lost on an annual basis according to a study conducted by 50 scientists, economists and policy experts. The extreme weather events are impacting upon food production causing major losses in productivity. If you include property damage, increases in insurance costs and premiums, liability claims, rising seas, changing geography — US State of Louisiana is roughly losing a football field of land to the ocean every hour — and hotter days impacting workers, you start to get a sense of the scale of cost that climate change is having on all our economies, especially developing ones.
So rather than being some distant future event, the impacts of climate change are being felt across the world right now, including in Jersey. The major victims of climate change are predominantly not white and it disproportionately impacts upon women and the poor, but ultimately none of us will be left unscathed. Right now is as good as it gets and increasingly for our children, our friends children, and future generations it will only be worse. Our actions today “bake in” future temperature rises that will continue for years to come, even if we stopped using fossil fuels tomorrow, which we won’t.
Countries and territories do not exist in a vacuum, we cannot promote and support the burning of fossil fuels while at the same time declare we’re combating climate change by better insulating our houses. The planet has no tolerance for such doublethink. It’s clear that our politics are yet to catch up with the scientists, or even the will of the people who both recognise that climate change is the biggest issue facing mankind today. Never before has the future depended so much on the present.
The Chief Minister has said Jersey takes its international environmental obligations “very seriously”. Other than token gestures, there’s little evidence to support this statement. But climate change isn’t his responsibility, it’s not even the government’s, or businesses, or the responsibility of the education system. It’s all of ours. It’s easy to despair at the situation but there are solutions, it’s not too late. We need to recognise that change will only come through all of us working together to everyone’s benefit. Unfortunately so far, this message is being drowned out in the name of ever expanding growth.
So onwards we race, towards the next milestone….
