I have been at the Hay festival for the last few days. I have never been there before and was quite overwhelmed just how good it really is. It is a wonderful event for two main reasons: The quality of the authors/speakers and the intellectual level of the audience. I heard two climate related talks which could not have been more different.
First Dieter Helm described the thinking behind his new book ‘Natural Capital’. Natural Capital proposes a model for sustainable economic growth, maintaining nature and addressing climate change. How can we preserve the natural world, solve climate change while still continuing human progress? The basic premise is the need to place an economic value on natural resources and then legislate that any development that reduces Natural Capital must be offset by an equal or larger increase in regenerated Capital in natural resources elsewhere. So if 500 houses are built on a green field outside a village then an equal area elsewhere must be regenerated and made available to nature. £1 billion should be invested in natural parks to compensate for the lost woodlands caused by the £30 billion invested in HS2. This way economic growth can be sustainable in the long term and natural resources renewed. Some of the current eco-policies do the opposite, such as meeting biofuel targets which causes huge environmental damage. An example of this are the vast swathes of our countryside being sterilised and carpeted in rape seed to make biofuel. The agricultural lobby and the renewables lobby are just too effective. The national trust has 3 million members and itself should be lobbying far stronger on behalf of preserving the nation’s Natural Capital. His proposal for a realistic energy transition to low carbon is explained in his other book ‘The Carbon Crunch”.
Chris Rapley: 2071: THE WORLD WE’LL LEAVE OUR GRANDCHILDREN. “Climate change is a matter of importance to everyone, but what to do about it is mired in controversy. What’s needed is a conversation.” However, a conversation is exactly what what we didn’t get. Instead he gave a 6th-form level talk on climate change to some of the smartest people at Hay. He kept going for the full 60 minutes without any let up, ignoring the mandatory 15 minutes for discussion. There was then no time left for any ‘conversation’ – perhaps he already knew he might get a hard time. I was left with the impression of a man with a closed mind on a mission, yet with little perception about exactly what to do about climate change. Apparently we should simply run about shouting so that our politicians are forced to do something or the other, because there are only 25 years left to stop the planet from warming by more than 2C. Yet even the IPCC admit this is a lower limit. A more reasonable figure is 50±25 years to cut back carbon emissions significantly. Rapley believes we must cut back now and then afterwards, given enough investment, scientists will eventually come up with an effective zero carbon energy source. Strangely enough they already have done that – it is called nuclear power!
The concert last night by Nigel Kennedy and his band interpreting Jimi Hendrix was amazing.
Ah, yes, I have learnt what people like Rapley mean when they say we must have a “conversation” or a “dialogue”. It means everyone else must listen to what I’ve got to say.
It is essentially a nihilist message as he offers no solutions. He just says ‘repent now’ to save our grandchildren. Should they have to live a subsistence lifetstyle to avoid suffering a climate similar to Biaritz ?