Climate Change – Is the EU taking the right approach?

Dr Caroline Lucas

Institute of European Affairs, Brussels Branch, 4 March 2008

Introduction

Thank you very much for asking me to take part in this debate. The question before us is whether the EU is taking the right approach to climate change.

My answer, in a nutshell, would be that it’s doing too little, too late, and relying too heavily on market mechanisms. It’s talking political leadership, but failing to demonstrate it. The EU is introducing some positive policy proposals, but these risk being undermined by other policies which completely contradict them.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the EU is uniquely well placed to take a lead on climate change. It has enormous potential to be a real pioneer when it comes to demonstrating new ways of tackling the challenge. And if it were to take up that challenge, it might also find that its own institutions are revitalised, and it’s reconnected with citizens it’s supposed to represent. It would have found its new Big Idea, which could inspire people, and rebuild its legitimacy.

2. Policy response so far

Unfortunately, there is little sign that any government anywhere in the world has grasped the scale or the urgency of the task we face and indeed, and the EU is sadly no exception.

You’ll recall that last month, the Commission finally launched its long awaited energy and climate package, but while it was a first step in the right direction, it was also seriously flawed.

The first problem is with the overall emissions reduction target of just 20% by 2020. The EU itself argued at the Bali Climate Summit in December that industrialised countries needed to make cuts of between 25 and 40% by 2020. Here was the Commission’s first opportunity to deliver on that, and it has completely failed to do so – in spite of admitting that a higher reduction is demanded by the science.

Instead they came up with a typical EU fudge and compromise: ministers have said that it will move to a 30% reduction target if all other industrialised countries do the same. But since the EU prides itself on real international leadership, since the EU has said that meeting these reduction targets will create jobs and kick-start a new green revolution, and since the EU has said that to have a good chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change requires at least a 30% reduction target – it should have had the boldness, the ambition, and the leadership to set that target for itself right now.

On renewables: while the overall thrust of the proposed legislation on how the EU should meet its 20% renewable energy target by 2020 is positive, the individual targets still fall far short of the enormous potential we have. Instead of regarding an expansion in renewable energy as some kind of punitive means of achieving climate goals, governments should acknowledge it as a key means of reducing our dependence on imported fossil fuels, and creating jobs in Europe.

Finally, despite overwhelming evidence of the serious social and environmental impacts of growing mass plantations of so-called biofuels – plants that can be grown for fuel - the EU is continuing to insist on a binding target for member states of ensuring that biofuels make up at least 10% of road fuels by 2020.

That’s in spite of increasing warnings that not only does some biofuel production involve the destruction of rainforests, leading to yet more greenhouse gas emissions, but also that there is a growing crisis in terms of food security.

And those warnings aren’t only coming from the usual suspects – the Green NGOs. They’re coming from the EU’s own research body, the JRC – the Joint Research Council – which gave a damning verdict on the proposals, revealing that the EU’s biofuels policy is likely to have a net cost of up to 65 billion euros, need huge amounts of land outside Europe, and questions whether it will make any greenhouse gas savings at all.

The environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas himself has admitted that the EU did not foresee the problems that would be raised by this target. “We have seen that the environmental problems caused by biofuels and also the social problems are bigger than we thought they were," he’s on the record as saying a few weeks ago. And yet, while he promised the EU would “move carefully" on the issue, he’s refused to change the 10% target.

I think we have to ask ourselves whether we really want to give out a signal that growing food to feed our cars, is more important than growing food to feed the hundreds of thousands of people in the world who still go to bed hungry every night?

Far more effective than investment in mass biofuels would be to tighten the CO2 emission standards from cars. To its credit the EU has been trying to do this for years. A voluntary emission limit of 120g/km was first proposed over 10 years ago, but the car manufacturers have been stalling and delaying and lobbying against it, so – the target having been missed on at least 3 occasions, we’re now finally looking at a mandatory target. But even then, the industry is crying foul and the Parliament has frankly not helped by diluting the target to 125g.

Indeed, the power and influence of the corporate lobby when it comes to watering down proposed EU climate legislation is not to be under-estimated. There are currently suggestions before the Parliament about trying to regulate, or at least make transparent, some of this lobbying activity, and quite frankly it won’t be before time.

Because one of the most worrying aspects of EU policy-making is that the messages we hear from the corporations are always those of the lowest common denominator. Industry-wide lobby groups are the worst – even when you know that individual companies within the group have more progressive positions, the message that gets conveyed on their behalf is always one of diluting targets, delaying timetables, diminishing ambition. I have never once been lobbied by a corporation asking me to make targets stronger, timetables faster, or ambition, greater.

But it’s not just that the EU’s climate policies aren’t ambitious enough. It’s also that they are fatally undermined by policies in other areas which risk cancelling out any potential emission savings.

To give you a recent example. Just a few short weeks after having agreed new greenhouse gas emission reduction targets at the March EU council last year, to much fanfare and pride, the same EU ministers signed the EU-US Open Skies agreement – again with much fanfare and pride – which will fundamentally undermine those targets, by overseeing a major liberalisation of air travel.

It is simply incompatible to be encouraging a large increase in the number of flights between the EU and US (25m extra passengers over the next five years emitting an extra 3.5m tonnes of CO2 annually) at the same time as trying to cut greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to either prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

Even if, as some argue, this agreement will improve the fuel efficiency of some transatlantic flights, any reductions in emissions will be completely outweighed by the overall growth in flight numbers that will surely accompany it.

The reality is that aviation is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU, and we will not be able to reduce them overall if we allow the aviation sector to keep expanding.

This same contradiction lies at the heart of the problem with the EU’s over-dependence on emissions trading to deliver the major part of its climate policy.

To continue on the theme of aviation, take the Commission’s proposal to put aviation into the ETS. It doesn’t take a Nobel Prize winner in physics to work out t hat the only way this can possibly reduce aviation emissions is if there is a sufficiently rigorous overall emissions cap, and serious limits to the amount of extra permits aviation is allowed to buy from other sources (ie other industrial sectors, or projects abroad). Sadly, these two provisions were conspicuous by their absence.

Indeed, according to the Commission’s own figures, the proposal would mean that, by 2020, instead of growing by 83% under a do-nothing scenario, aviation emissions would still grow by an extraordinary 78%. And since the effect of the scheme would be to add only a maximum 9 euros to the price of a ticket, it’s hardly surprising that it will have almost no effect on aviation demand. By the same date, under the proposals, instead of growing by 142%, demand is still predicted to grow by a staggering 138%. If that’s global climate leadership, I wouldn’t want to see climate complacency.

Some economists will argue that it doesn’t matter; that as long as emissions are coming down somewhere in the economy, it doesn’t matter whether aviation is making the cuts, or some other sector is. But actually it does matter, for at least two reasons.

First, aircraft produce not only CO2, but also contrails and nitrous oxides which, at altitude, are far more powerful gases than carbon dioxide. But the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme takes no account of them. If, therefore, an air carrier buys the right to emit a tonne of CO2 from a ground-based source that doesn’t emit those other gases, the net effect on the environment is far worse when aviation emits it – because the impact of the condensation trails and nitrous oxides simply aren’t accounted for.

Second, perhaps even more importantly, the more that one particular sector puts off having to adjust, the more difficult it might be to make that adjustment in the future. Allowing the aviation sector to grow further before applying the brakes, for example, will increasingly lock people into air-travel dependent lifestyles, and make it harder to act to reduce demand in the future.

But trying to get acceptance for this point is almost impossible. Policy makers simply don’t want to hear that they can’t continue with business as usual.

Sometimes, it seems as if the political establishment inhabits two parallel worlds. In one, the world of business as usual, governments single-mindedly pursue economic growth, and promote the biggest expansion in aviation in a generation. In the other world, they wring their hands and lament the imminent destruction of the planet. Such behaviour isn't just pathological: it's grossly irresponsible, and represents a monumental failure of political leadership.

3. The way forward – what should governments be doing?

And so in terms of moving forward, in terms of trying to ensure we do have the right policies in place, the most important case that I want to make is that climate change isn’t primarily a technical challenge, or a scientific challenge, or even an economic challenge.

It is, more than anything, a challenge of political will.

It’s not that we don’t know what needs to be done to address it – the massive investments in energy efficiency, renewable energies, in demand reduction strategies, and in new technologies.

The question is whether we can build the necessary public momentum and political will fast enough, to act, in an equitable way, to avert the worst of climate change.

Or whether we’ll spend all our time commissioning ever more reports, searching for every last piece of scientific certainty, and go down in history as the only species that spent all its time monitoring its own extinction, rather than taking urgent action to avoid it?

And so it seems to me that we urgently have to challenge the complacency which still surrounds policy-making in this area; to drive much higher ambition in the proposals which are put forward and – crucially – to urgently develop and harness much greater public momentum and political will.

There are three key things that I think the EU should be doing:

• First, recognising that climate change is primarily not simply an environmental problem, but a problem of international security.
• Second, putting in place a mandatory policy framework, not relying on individual action alone.
• And third, recognising that efficiency gains on their own aren’t going to be enough – we need to fundamentally change our consumption patterns, and, indeed, our measures of progress

Let me say a few more words about each of these

3.1 First, understanding that climate change is a primarily a security problem. To fail to recognise that is a monumental failure of imagination. And so we need to mobilise resources on the same scale that Governments bring to more traditional security threats, like the so-called “war on terror.” I don’t like that phrase very much, but a similar “war on climate change” might just perhaps leverage some of the billions currently being spent on replacing our nuclear weapons system, for example. So we need to frame the issue as one of climate security.

3.2 Second, policy makers have an absolutely key role to play in establishing a mandatory policy framework to enable us to make the urgent and ambitious changes necessary to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Of course individual action is important; voluntary measures by business also have a role. But the bottom line is that addressing climate change is so urgent that we simply don’t have time to wait for each individual Chief Executive or even each citizen to have his or her own personal Green conversion on the way to an ecological Damascus.

The EU needs to demonstrate genuine political leadership to put in place a mandatory, unambiguous long-term policy framework, based on up-to-date science and on the precautionary principle, to enable business to plan ahead and make investment decisions based on policy certainty.

And the good news is that, by and large, we know what we need to do:

• We need a mandatory framework to ensure that the EU is committed to binding annual emission cuts, which are backed up by direct compliance and penalty provisions against Member States if they fail to meet them.

• We need an efficiency revolution – with much stricter building regulations, zero carbon construction, much tougher efficiency standards for a whole range of appliances.

• A huge investment in renewable energies – together with policies to promote them.

• We need decentralised energy - Conventional, centralised power stations waste two thirds of the energy they generate, by losing hot air through the cooling towers, or by transmission losses along power lines. If we have combined heat and power stations, where that heat is captured and used for local distribution, we could save a huge amount of energy at one stroke.

• Massive investment in public transport – with emissions charges and taxes on aviation that currently gets away with no tax on aviation fuel and no vat on tickets or new aircraft, amounting to an annual subsidy in the EU of well over 35 billion euro.

• Changes in agricultural practices - The Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that livestock production is responsible for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions – that’s more climate gases than all the motor vehicles in the world – so another policy would be to reduce our dependence on meat.

• More education about population growth, and improved strategies for reducing that growth.

All of this is NOT rocket science. Not only that, but many of these policies will actually save more money than they cost to implement. And what we know for certain is that the cost of acting to avoid the worst of climate change is very much less than the cost of inaction.

3.3 Re-defining Progress

But governments need to do more than set out a new menu of different policy options. We also need a new political context in which to put it. Because even if governments introduce tough new mandatory efficiency standards, the efficiency gains they make risks being completely outweighed if overall consumption continues to increase.

In other words, more efficient aeroplanes or more fuel-efficient cars won’t solve the problem, if their impact is more than cancelled out by the increasing total volume of planes in the sky and cars on the roads. Technological changes, on their own, won’t be enough.

If you’re in any doubt about that, consider the extraordinary growth of a country like China, which has now overtaken the United States as the world’s leading consumer of four out the five basic commodities – grain, meat, coal, and steel – and will overtake the US in its consumption of oil by 2025. Indeed, on current trends, by 2031, China will be consuming 99 million barrels of oil per day. That might not mean much until you know that total world production today is only 84 million barrels per day. By that same date, China would have 1.1 billion cars if it matches current US trends – that would be more cars in China alone than the total number of cars on all the road in the rest of the world put together, today.

To say this is not to criticise China, which is simply following the same development model that we in the West have done. But it is to say that this model is patently unsustainable for all of us – and we in the industrialised countries have a greater responsibility to change.

The bottom line is that an economic system, based on ever-increasing throughput of natural resources, is patently unsustainable
Of course to admit such a thing is regarded as the greatest heresy, and almost every single politician and economist will go to enormous and tortuous lengths to try to disprove this basic biological and physical fact.

And the refusal to address this is the greatest single obstacle to more effective climate policies in the EU or anywhere else.

Clearly in poorer developing countries, a certain quantity and quality of economic growth is urgently needed. But in the richer countries, once our basic needs are met, it seems that more money doesn’t make us happier. Recent research from the New Economics Foundation reveals that one of the reasons for this is that we’re constantly moving the goalposts. We adapt very quickly to the material gains which come from increases in income, and we also compare ourselves to others who have more, leaving us in a restless state of constant dissatisfaction.

Worse yet, there is a growing body of evidence which shows that things are actually getting worse in terms of real mental wellbeing. Suicide rates have increased markedly since 1950, as have levels of violence, alcoholism, drug addiction and substance abuse.

And so - if policies to address climate change require a different economic paradigm or model, one that isn’t based on ever increasing resource-based growth, then that’s not to be feared. It’s actually to be welcomed, since such a paradigm might just have a better chance of improving our well-being as well.

And that takes me to my most important point: that the policies we need to tackle climate change are precisely the policies we need to improve our well-being, and to enable us to lead better, more fulfilling lives.

4. Reframing the Climate Debate

Green campaigners and politicians need to get better at communicating the fact that many of the changes we need to make to deal with climate change are changes that – in any case – we would want to see. The outcomes are desirable in themselves – a low carbon future isn’t a future of shivering around a candle in a cave. It’s a comfortable and more secure one.

A low-carbon world is a labour-intensive world. Some jobs would certainly be lost in some of the more carbon intensive industries, but these would more than be made up for by new jobs in an economy based on repairing, recycling, and re-use.

A low-carbon world is one of strong local communities. There would be less long-distance commuting, fewer dormitory towns and villages, greater local production and consumption, thriving local businesses.

A low-carbon world is one where social and environmental justice meet. Poorer people living in fuel poverty, for example, unable to afford to heat their own homes, would have their houses insulated; energy efficiency measures mean spending less on your fuel bills.

A low-carbon world would be a much safer world. Much of current foreign policy in the West is about securing access to someone else’s fossil fuel resources, often in very unstable parts of the world. If we were far more self-sufficient in energy resources, there would be far less chance of resource conflicts.

Conclusion – the role of the EU

This vision of zero carbon world isn’t an idle fantasy – it’s a real and compelling picture of how Europe and the world could be. And the only thing stopping it is a chronic lack of imagination, vision, and political will from our current political leaders.

But Europe is potentially brilliantly placed to take the lead in demonstrating the benefits of living more lightly on the planet – in terms of quality of life as well as of environmental security.

And such an inspiring purpose might also help reconnect the EU institutions to the people they are supposed to represent.

Because I’d argue that the EU currently faces a crisis of legitimacy – you see it in the low-turn out in the European elections, in the rejection of the EU Constitution by the only two countries allowed a referendum on it, in the continuing euro-scepticism across much of the EU.

And so I'd make the case that the EU needs a new Big Idea. Fifty years ago, its aim was clear – to bring peace to Europe by binding countries together in an ambitious free trade project. Now that project risks being an end in itself.

The debate on the future of Union has been dominated by “economism” – the idea that the overriding goals of European integration were economic and that the progress of the EU should be judged in terms of economic growth and the removal of internal market barriers alone. People are not clear what the EU is for, any more. Economism has allowed the EU to avoid many fundamental questions of political culture and strategic purpose and has contributed to its “crisis of idealism”, its inability to inspire the mass of citizens with a sense of enthusiasm and common cause.

A new big idea, based on a genuine attempts to achieve sustainability in all its facets, could both revitalise the EU institutions, and re-inspire that enthusiasm. The EU could be a leader in demonstrating how to address climate change in a fair and sustainable way; it could be a leader in learning to live more lightly on the planet, it could be a leader in pioneering different economic models which improve our quality of life without being at the expense of the environment, future generations, and the poor of both rich and developing worlds.

There’s a lot that needs to change before it can fulfil that aspiration – but it’s a hope and a vision that sustains me in my work in the European Parliament.