Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change’s report: Some Unanswered Questions

Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change’s report.

Among the action points the group has suggested are that no new petrol or diesel vehicles should be allowed to be registered in the Island from 2025 and that a full ban on such vehicles from Jersey roads should be in force by 2050. (JEP)

It's fine to have a vision and strong ideals, but if there is no practical way of implementing them, it is a pipedream. Part of my gripe with the recent report that it is a set of goals, but no homework seems to have been done on how to get there.

Unanswered Questions:

It’s estimated that around a third of the UK’s 27 million households don’t have off-street parking, so many EV owners will need to use public charging points. What is the estimated number of households for Jersey households with cars?

If no figures are available, when is it estimated they will be available?

Who is developing plans for implementing street charging points (such as lamp-post charging used in the UK) for users with street parking in St Helier? No details are mentioned.

How much will this cost and who will pay for it? No figures are given.

How much does a single public charging point cost to put in place? (as there are existing charging points in public car parks, this should be available). No figures are given.

Are there plans to retrofit chargers into multi-occupancy property parking? No details are mentioned.

How long is all this going to take? If we start now, will we have enough electric charging places by 2025? 2030? 2050? No figures are given.

Mention has been made of States support and incentives. How will this work, how much, and can the States afford it. No figures are given.

None of these questions have been addressed, and if there are calculations, they have been well hidden away. Obviously if there are, they will need to be examined carefully to make sure they stand up to scrutiny and the finances are properly costed.

Some Cases to Show  

Les Quennevais - blocks of flats have shared tenancy parking, and there are no electrical points there. How are those occupiers going to manage to charge electric cars, assuming they can afford them? Who will pay for electric points?

These people have their own driveways, and can implement (at their own cost) electrical connections. 

Some of the parking at Les Quennevais - and of course a lot in St Helier - is on the roadside. Are these going to be excluded from electric cars?

Haves and Have Nots

Two stumbling blocks can keep drivers from switching to EVs: the lack of chargers and the cost of a new car.

A lack of enough cheap second-hand electric vehicles is likely to remain an issue for at least a decade; another is the high cost of new cars, although manufacturers say prices are coming down - but not that quickly, and increased post-Covid and Brexit costs are slowing that process.

It is the poorer who usually live in the blocks of flats, with communal parking, or on-street parking, while those with more means live in dwellings with driveways into which electric points can be placed. They are also going to find it harder to afford an electric car.

If we are not careful, we will have a lower-class population having to drive increasingly aging cars because the infrastructure for charging them is not available, while those well to do will have their shiny new electric vehicles. The gap between rich and poor will increase.

The Lesson from Germany

A report highlights some of the issues:

"Germany, like many other countries, offers subsidies of up to €4,000 ($4,400) to offset the cost of a new electric vehicle. On Friday, the government said it would hike those incentives within two years to help it meet a target of cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from vehicles in half by 2030. The subsidies will be paid out of the proceeds of a new carbon tax."

"Most governments in the world are trying to hit two important targets: on environmental issues and inequality. By protecting the environment, we're actually in danger of creating more inequality," Miguel Angel Tovar, co-author of a 2017 research paper on electromobility for the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), told DW.

"Tovar likened the German government's electric vehicle policy to the subsidy scheme for solar panels, which he said allowed wealthier households to benefit financially by selling their excess electricity to the national power grid. This income stream is often unaccessible to low earners in public housing."

"Similarly, higher-income households will quickly absorb the cost of installing home charging infrastructure for their new battery-powered cars, while low-income groups may be the last to get connected and be forced to rely on higher-priced public charging stations."

The Cloud-Cuckoo Future

A 2019 report by Bloomberg indicated, due to dropping prices for EV batteries, that electric vehicles should be more cost-competitive with combustion-engine cars within three years. Three years have passed, and it has not come to be the case. Technology will certainly have a gradual effect in reducing prices, but if anyone thinks it is going to be swift, they are living in cloud-cuckoo land.

The Australian noted in 2020 that electric cars "almost everywhere cost more across their lifetime than their petrol counterparts."

The Financial Times noted that:

Electric cars will remain significantly more expensive for European carmakers to produce than combustion engine models for at least a decade, according to new research.

Of course we could - as the Action report suggests - penalise those still driving petrol cars, but who will that hit the hardest - rich or poor?

In Conclusion

I still have to see a solid, costed strategy for providing electricity to charge vehicles who are on roadside parking permits in St Helier, or even for that matter, on road sides in Les Quennevais for that matter. There are numerous flats which have a nice communal parking space, but that would need to be fitted out with charging points. 

As usual, the model being worked with is one which favours those who have their own house and parking space, i.e. mostly (but not always) the better off. It hasn’t been thought through at all! I can see panic as deadlines approach, and I suspect the UK is not in any better position. You cannot even with fast charging, just pull into a charging station and top up your electricity in a couple of minutes as petrol cars do. Even the fastest can only manage 20 minutes, and there is a risk of shortening the lifespan of your car batteries as well.

This reminds me of the Chief Minister and his gardens with outside entrances (if you have a garden at all) all over again.  Remember  how in the first lockdown, people could meet in gardens (if they had them!) and when John Le Fondre was asked about back gardens with only an entrance through the house, he expressed surprise that situation existed!

This strategy is a present clueless because they don’t think about ordinary people, they’ve been living in a comfortable, cosy place for far too long.

Most private EV owners are currently middle-aged, male, well-educated, affluent, and live in urban areas with households containing two or more cars and with the ability to charge at home. Evidence from various sources has found that private owners charge their EV mainly at home, on a daily basis, and generally overnight.

Why should I care? I have a driveway, so it is not such a big issue for me, but why should I not care? If we do not give adequate consideration to these matters, we will become an island in which the poorer are also power-poor. And penalising petrol cars will add further to the increasing division in our society.

The Shades of Micawber

We do need a properly thought out and costed scheme for moving everyone to electric cars, but this recent report doesn't provide one. 

It reminds me of the sunken road in the original Waterfront Masterplan. It was decided to lower the road, build on top of it, and bring it out at the bottom of Gloucester Street, which has been prone to flooding. How to solve that problem? All the wonderful plans said (in a footnote, no less!) was that "an engineering solution will be found".

It's the equivalent of Mr Micawber in David Copperfield - lots of brilliant ideas, and no practical homework done on how they may come to fruition, but just saying "Something will turn up." 

If I was to endorse this current wish list - and I wish I could - I'd need the Citizen's Panel to do a lot of homework, real research for practical outcomes, well thought out, well costed. Then I could take it seriously.

References

https://www.dw.com/en/electric-cars-low-earners-may-never-get-to-drive-one/a-50517095

https://www.stantec.com/en/ideas/power-poverty-the-new-paradigm-for-social-and-economic-inequality-of-electric-vehicles

https://grist.org/justice/making-electric-cars-more-equitable/

https://www.ft.com/content/a7e58ce7-4fab-424a-b1fa-f833ce948cb7

https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/metals/020221-expect-lithium-supply-crunch-by-2025-as-ev-market-booms-piedmont-ceo

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/464763/uptake-of-ulev-uk.pdf

Trends in Climate Change

Trends in Climate Change

Yesterday as well as rising sea levels, the pre-amble to the sequence on BBC Radio Jersey described “wildfires” as a consequence of climate change! Really?

There was recently a wild fire at Les Landes. It does not take much for the gorse to get tinder dry, and this happens every year. What does set it on fire – as happened at Les Landes – is man made as a result (for example) of someone carelessly throwing away a cigarette butt, still smouldering. It is not exactly connected with climate change, and it looks as if the merry jingle cataloguing disasters was pinched from elsewhere – maybe places like Spain or California, where they really do have wild fires raging.

Yesterday we had something even odder. We were told that young children were an age group vulnerable to climate change – in particular flooding and heat. Now heat I can understand – like older people, the body’s regulation of heat in the young is not as good as that of most adults, and they are vulnerable to extremes of cold and heat. But – flooding?

I pictured to myself the flood waters rising to the necks of small children and then over the tops of their heads, while to adults standing nearby, it was only reaching waste height! At any rate, no explanation was given as to how young children were vulnerable to flooding, particularly in Jersey, which after all was supposed to be the focus of the story.

At present, there is no measurable increase in sea levels around Jersey, but there is more unsettled weather, and a greater coincidence of high winds, heavy rain, and high tides – the elements for flooding on the lower coastal areas.

Sceptics will point to extreme weather in the past, and it is important not to ignore these facts. Two years before the idyllic long summer heat wave of 1976, Jersey was being battered by severe weather, twice in one year.

This makes it important to look at trends, of looking at clusters of bad weather events and their frequency over a number of years. Two dice, after all, when thrown twice will come up sometimes with two sixes. But if the dice are weighted, as we may well suspect they are because of climate change, one would expect to see a greater occurrence of sixes than was hitherto the case, or could be expected by chance.

A statistical study in 2014 by Dr Erich Markus Fischer showed that extreme heat waves and heavy rain storms are already happening with increasing regularity worldwide. The chart above shows the annual frequency of North Atlantic Tropical storms. The chart goes up and down, but the overall trends is upward, and sharply. We are in a period of very nasty unsettled weather.

Locally, the late Tony Pallot, Principal meteorological officer has said in 2014 that while the recent conditions are not unusual in themselves, bad weather is becoming more common.

And another report shows that so-called “blocking patterns”, where hot or wet weather remains stuck over a region for weeks causing heat waves or floods, have more than doubled in summers over the last decade. That's certainly something effecting us in Jersey.

Even the sceptics must admit that change to more extreme weather is occurring, even if they deny its cause. The fact remains, however, that regardless of the acceptance or not, that sea defences need to be looked at to improve greater resilience against bad weather.

What sceptics do is to point to bad weather events of the past, to show that it happened then. That is why statistical trends are more important than singular occurences.

An example is the severe weather of 1974, demonstrating that extremes of weather have occurred in the past, even if their frequency, taken as a long term trend, is increasing year on year. The Almanac report was as follows:

January 28 1974: The motor yacht Naomi sank in Gorey Harbour last might after she broke loose from her moorings in the gale-force winds. Only the cabin top of the yacht, owned by Major-General J. H.O. Wilsey, of Maufant Manor, was visible early this morning, and Gorey Harbour attendant, Mr. Doug Park, said that the vessel was badly damaged.

January 29-Although the petrol tanker Esso Tynemouth has been sheltering off the Isle of Wight since the weekend and is not expected to reach the Island until tonight, Esso say they have plenty of petrol in store.

The tanker, carrying 520 tons of petrol for the Island, has been unable to complete her journey from Fawley because of gales.-The Defence Committee announced that the Island had almost met the required reduction in the use of all fuels, said that the saving in petrol usage only amounted to 5 ½ per cent last week. A further call to motorists not to use their cars for non-essential journeys was made,

February 9: Rough seas and winds gusting to gale force caused chaos on Jersey’s low-lying south coast this morning when they combined with a 39 ft high tide. For more than an hour, parts of the of the coast roads from La Grande Charriere through the Dicq and Havre des Pas and from Gloucester Street right along to St Aubin were flooded and closed to traffic.

February 11: This morning’s high title combined with gale-force winds from the south to cause some of the worst damage on exposed south coast areas in many years. Hardest hit was Gorey where the harbour took the full force of the storm and a number of boats were wrecked. Tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage was caused at Gorey in what was described by a veteran fisherman as " the worst storm in living memory”. The occupants of two sea-lashed cottages at Gory say they were afraid to sleep in their homes tonight because of the possibility of more serious damage.

March 9.-The full extent of the damage to the early potato crop caused by the severe frost earlier this week has not yet been ascertained, but it is expected to be quite serious.

September 2.---Mountainous seas and gale-force winds lashed Jersey's east coast this morning leaving a trail of destruction from Gorey to St. Catherine for the second dine this year. At least three valuable boats were smashed against the rocks until they were nothing more than drift wood, and several other craft suffered minor damage after dragging their moorings and pounding against harbour walls.

Trust in Science

Nothing is more characteristic of a dogmatist epistemology than its theory of error. For if some truths are manifest, one must explain how anyone can be mistaken about them, in other words, why the truths are not manifest to everybody. According to its particular theory of error, each dogmatist epistemology offers its particular therapeutics to purge minds from error. (Imre Lakatos)

If no exception occur from phenomena, the conclusion may be pronounced generally. But if at any time afterwards any exception should occur, it may then begin to be pronounced with such exceptions as occur.(Isaac Newton)

When the physicists started to talk about "electricity," or the physicians about "contagion," these terms were vague, obscure, muddled. The terms that the scientists use today, such as "electric charge," "electric current," "fungus infection," "virus infection," are incomparably clearer and more definite. Yet what a tremendous amount of observation, how many ingenious experiments lie between the two terminologies, and some great discoveries too. - Polya [1954] v.1p.55 -p.95

I watched "Horizon: Science Under Attack" last night, in which Nobel prize winner Sir Paul Nurse went on a journey to find out why science appears to be under attack.

Geneticist and biologist Paul Nurse examines the reasons why public trust in key scientific theories, including the cause of global warming, the safety of GM food and the link between HIV and Aids, seems to have been eroded. He travels to New York to interview scientists and campaigners from both sides of the climate change debate, and meets a man who has HIV but does not believe the virus is responsible for Aids.

We knew that Nurse was a Nobel Prize winner because he told us. And a president of the Royal Society. And throughout the programme, the pedigree of various scientists was elucidated, to give us confidence. But this style of presentation was deeply inimical to Nurse's focus on "the facts" that really mattered. It was really little more than the "men in white lab coats" of countless advertisements on television in the 1960s and 1970s; it was the argument from authority, scientists giving pronouncements, couched in modern terms. It reminded me most of what Orwell noted in his essay on the shape of the earth:

Much the greater part of our knowledge is at this level. It does not rest on reasoning or on experiment, but on authority. And how can it be otherwise, when the range of knowledge is so vast that the expert himself is an ignoramus as soon as he strays away from his own specialty?

Here are a few of Nurse's arguments, and why I disagree with them.

a) Climate Change Deniers are involved in cherry picking data

"You cannot ignore the greater body of evidence in favour of something you would prefer to be true" said Nurse. But it is equally true that you cannot ignore the smaller body of evidence in favour of a greater picture into which it doesn't fit. In other words, there has to be some contradictory data, some exceptions, for the climate change deniers to focus on, and this is marginalised.

What seems to happen is that these exceptions are eliminated by what the philosopher Imre Lakatos termed "piecemeal exclusions", which is the mirror image of cherry picking.

Nurse had an analogies of a garden, and he said science (unlike deniers) say "look at the whole picture", but what he didn't really come to grips with was how are exclusions are dealt with - are they treated as seriously as they should.

In fact, when it came to deniers, he more or less argued that this was a psychological stance, they had a fixed idea, and just looked for evidence of that. He argued that science looks for refutations, yet gave no examples of how this was done with climate change. Instead he just produced pictures and talked to people who produced plenty of supportive facts, and told us how the models were improving all the time, but gave no indication of what would disprove their case.

There was a wonderful Nasa globe, in which real weather patterns could be matched with the mathematical model, and you could see visually how the model was improving all the time. This would be even more convincing if it had the ability to predict the weather, and for example, warn the Australians of the imminent danger of flooding. After all, a theory is only as good as its testing, as Nurse told us repeatedly. I suspect the Nasa models are very weak when it comes to future weather patterns, but very good in real time or retrospectively, which is more or less what we have with weather forecasting today, when we are told why a weather pattern has occurred, but not why the predictions failed (as anyone reading the papers will note).

There was a contradiction between his formal expression of science (as a Karl Popper style program of testing to destruction) and what he was actually presenting to support his case. He virtually came out with a Popper methodology - we test our most cherished science and try to refute it:

At the next step our tentative solution is discussed; everybody tries to find a flaw in it and to refute it.[producing] a competitive struggle which eliminates those hypotheses which are unfit. From the amoeba to Einstein, the growth of knowledge is always the same; we try to solve our problems, and to obtain, by a process of elimination, something approaching adequacy in our tentative solutions (Karl Popper)

In fact Popper often confused his own logic of scientific discovery with the practice of scientific discovery, as philosopher Mary Midgeley noted:

As we know, this is not really the way in which infant ideas get reared. From their first germination, they normally grow in public, in the common soil of the community. They occur to somebody, who mentions them, and they begin to be talked about. Their growth becomes possible because of shifts in the general climate of thought, and is fostered by half-conscious contributions from many sources for a long time before any one person thinks them out explicitly....People who get interested in them usually want to share them with others, and that fertile sharing is the main source of their further development. Of course elimination plays its part in discriminating among various emerging possibilities. But the main work of developing them is the positive, constructive, imaginative process of building them and thinking out better ways to use them, and this work is normally best carried on co-operatively, among circles of friends and acquaintances.

In fact, despite what Nurse was saying, he neither gave no examples of how scientists committed to climate change are trying to refute their own hypothesis, but on the contrary, provided lots of shots of scientists telling us that climate change was undeniable because of the "facts", which were presented in superficial glossy Horizon way. It was an opportunity missed.

There was no real consideration of the logic of refutations, which is no doubt why Nurse cannot understand how people don't accept his position when the evidence is so clear-cut. This is a sketchy approach (based on Lakatos) that I would consider to understanding the problems involved; it is probably a simplification, but I think it is more realistic than the Popperan approach suggested but not practiced here.

If a "proof" of a conjectures - such as climate change - can be broken down into subconjectures which support the main conjecture, then we may have a global counterexample, which contradicts all the subconjectures, or a local counterexample which contradicts a smaller subconjecture, but does not completely overturn the main conjecture. But that may mean that several supporting subconjectures are in fact false, or are not giving the complete picture.

Unless we can see this process clearly at work, and the weaknesses of the cases of exceptions (which may not matter, and we need to explain why), the production of exemptions will simply suggest that climate change scientists, as much as deniers, are shutting their eyes to what they don't want to see. That, I think, is the public perception, and why climate change science is so much under attack.

b) Look at all the evidence, science is evidence based.

This was Paul Nurse's other argument - we can see how the data is used, there are peer reviewed scientific journals, and scientific evidence is there, open to scrutiny by anyone who doubts.

Yet then he goes on to speak to the scientist at the centre of the "climategate" affair who complains about being bombarded with freedom of information requests for his supporting data. And the scientist in question says this is evidence of a conspiracy against him, not that he should have put all his data out into the public domain anyway!!

Even Paul Nurse realised there was a contradiction here, and said that the model way of doing things should be the Human Genome Project. Unfortunately the human element of science, namely staking a claim to fame by priority, still counts for a good deal.

"Scientists have got to get out there. They have to be open about what they do ... even if it does put their reputation in doubt", he said. Keeping evidence back from public view suggests that what does get on display may be selective, it certainly fuels suspicions, and rather than Nurse talking to camera about a more open public access to science and data, he didn't question the climategate scientist at all about keeping his data to himself, and why that somehow legitimate. Instead he seemed to almost let that slip by.

c) Cherry Picking

Paul Nurse cited selective use of evidence, and yet when it came to GM crops, there was an appalling amount of cherry picking in his presentation. For example, on GM foods, he said "of course they contained genes, everything does", suggesting that the public were somehow ignorant of this basic fact. This was patronising and completely untrue; it was a a gross oversimplification of the issues at stake. Somehow he forgot to mention:

1) gene splicing (such as introducing scorpion genes into vegetables) rather than selective propagation is one cause of concern, as no one has any idea about alien genes and long term side effects of these in the food chain.

2) GM crops are produced not just to be resistant to blight (his example of "good GM"), but also resistant to extremely strong pesticides, regardless of the environmental hazard to the ecosystem that produces

3) terminator seeds, are manufactured, which are designed not to be able to be propagated, so that the manufacturer retains a monopolistic control of the food chain.

"Trust no-one. Trust only what the experiment and the data tell you. We have to continue to use that approach if we are to solve problems such as climate change." said Nurse. If his presentation on GM crops is anything to go by, no one is likely to trust him on climate change.

He also provided his "killer question" -

Suppose you were ill with cancer would you wish to be treated by "consensus" medicine or something from the quack fringe? (Paul Nurse)

what he is in fact providing is a medical version of Pascal's wager, and it overlooks the fact that while most people will opt for "consensus medicine", it may still kill them.

Going back to the issue of hygiene and the work of Semmelweis, the "consensus medical practice" for doctors was (in the 19th century) not to practice strict hygiene and as a result were killing women by infecting them in childbirth. Semmelweis noted this and proved that these infections could be stopped with effective hygiene. He was hounded out by the "consensus".

Oxygen supplied to premature babies (as best consensus) caused blindness.

Thalidomide enjoyed a wide spread "consensus" among the medical profession that it was a safe and effective treatment for morning sickness in pregnant women.

It wasn't so long ago that the medical consensus was that stomach ulcers were caused by worry rather than helicobacter pylori.

I'm not saying one shouldn't seek medical advice rather than "quack medicine", but just that by overlooking the flaws in consensus medicine along the way (and I'm not going to start on psychiatry), Nurse is painting a much rosier picture than he should. You may have "consensus medicine" for cancer, but you may well die anyway. Either / or is simplistic - most people will go for both "consensus" medicine, and unorthodox treatments.

"I think today there is a new kind of battle. It's not just about ideas but whether people actually trust science... Science has created our modern world so I would like to understand why scientists are under such attack and whether scientists are partly to blame," Sir Paul said.

Overall my son was unimpressed. Why couldn't he show us the whole email in Climategate about ""Mike's Nature trick" rather than telling us what it meant? Why did they just show nice graphics, and not give much in the way of solid data? That, of course, is why he hates most Horizons nowadays, which eschew real science for glossy visuals, and dumbing down.

If you treat people like idiots, people won't trust you - that is more or less why people don't trust scientists like Paul Nurse. Watching the Horizon, I suspect he will have alienated more people than he won over to his point of view. And he will have been partly to blame.

William Hague on Climate Security

Foreign Secretary William Hague has recently delivered a speech titled 'The Diplomacy of Climate Change' to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. There has been a lot of problems with addressing climate change, because a good many people simply refuse to look at any evidence, or find various alternative explanations.

The debate is often, as in Jersey, conducted between environmentalists such as Mark Forskitt and Nick Palmer, and deniers such as Senator Sarah Ferguson, in such a way that it seems removed from the public arena. Indeed, a few politicians whom I spoke to recently thought that part of the debate on the Island Plan had been subjected to an attempted hijack by environmentalists, who were taking up valuable time, and distracting from the main issues. Of course, they are sure, we don't really need to do anything with redundant greenhouses, but knock them down for housing. And no one can really believe Jersey should look at become that bit more more sustainable in producing its own food, because that's not commercially viable.

But when a politician of William Hague's stature throws down the gauntlet, perhaps it is time to listen. Hague began by setting out the importance of climate change; it is not a trivial issue, because as resources become scarcer, if the issue is not addressed, competition and conflict over who gets those resources will become increasingly important:

Climate change is perhaps the twenty-first century's biggest foreign policy challenge along with such challenges as preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. A world which is failing to respond to climate change is one in which the values embodied in the UN will not be met. It is a world in which competition and conflict will win over collaboration.(1)

The keynote phrase in his speech is "climate security". As the climate changes, and as non-renewable energy resources become scarcer (so that biofuels, rather than food) becomes more viable, the connectedness of the modern world means that any problems ripple through the system, impacting on a global scale. No one can bury their heads in the sand. It is irresponsible to do so:

You cannot have food, water, or energy security without climate security. They are interconnected and inseparable. They form four resource pillars on which global security, prosperity and equity stand. Each depends on the others. Plentiful, affordable food requires reliable and affordable access to water and energy. Increasing dependence on coal, oil, and gas threatens climate security, increasing the severity of floods and droughts, damaging food production, exacerbating the loss of biodiversity and, in countries that rely on hydropower, undermining energy security through the impact on water availability. As the world becomes more networked, the impacts of climate change in one country or region will affect the prosperity and security of others around the world.

He notes that the time to start thinking about low carbon business is necessary now, not "business as usual", because otherwise it is future generations that will pay the price for our delay, our willful refusal to take any form of action. Locally, this means looking at food production, about the standards of houses being built to be energy efficient, about transport, power etc. Part of that can be done by private citizens taking action - as is the case locally with the move to buying organic products (not dependent on oil-based fertilizers), increased recycling by dropping off newspapers, plastic bottles at recycling banks, less use of plastic bags. Small things can bring about surprisingly significant changes. But part has also to be the responsibility of governments in empowering the citizen towards a lower carbon, less wasteful, lifestyle.

We need to shift investment urgently from high carbon business as usual to the low carbon economy - this means building an essentially decarbonised global economy by mid century. At the same time we must ensure development is climate resilient: otherwise the changes in climate that are already unavoidable will block the path for hundreds of millions of people from poverty to prosperity

Rather than decrying wind power and other renewable sources of energy, the UK, under what Hague describes as probably the greenest coalition government in its history, is committed to improving production from those sources. A new wind farm has just opened offshore in Kent. Instead of blocking such strategies, and talking them down, Jersey should show how innovative it can be. Guernsey recently financed a seabed survey, to give public data as a springboard and incentive to commercial wave power companies. We too can do more, and we need to start thinking about targets. Denmark generates more than 15% of its electricity from the wind, which is not insignificant.

The UK is already the world leader in offshore wind with more projects installed, in planning and in construction than any other country in the world. We are undertaking the most radical transformation of our electricity sector ever. We aim to provide over 30% of our domestic electricity from renewables by 2020. We have committed to build no new coal-fired power stations without carbon capture and storage technology - CCS - and we have announced our intention to continue with four CCS demonstration projects.

The other matter of importance highlighted by William Hague is to not just let matters rest with environmentalists but also to look at business engagement. Is anyone in the States of Jersey talking with any commercial groups who provide renewable energy? And are builders sufficient aware of environmental specifications? What of older "Masterplans"? Did they factor in environmental and climate issues?

And we must also reach out beyond, to NGOs, faith groups and business. Of all these, perhaps business engagement is key to making a difference. It is business that will lead the low-carbon transition. It is business which best understands the incentives needed to help us all prosper.

The Parish of St Helier has been very pro-active in looking at recycling. In August they published a report which noted that:

In April this year the Parish sought expressions of interest for a Recycling Partner capable of finding environmentally sound and cost effective end uses on or off Island for the recycled materials the Parish is producing; the recycling partner would also be responsible for the transport of the recyclables from the depot to the end-users. This generated considerable interest with 11 initial applications from French and Jersey companies, some of which put forward very detailed proposals.

And they are looking in particular at ROMI Recyclage, which has been established since 1866 and has a number of sites across France.

The business operates over a broad range of recyclables to ensure stability for the company during fluctuations in the waste commodities market, which will in turn provide stability for the Parish's income streams from the sale of recyclables

With regard to building, it is worth noting that one office has been built recently to BREEAM specifications. What is BEEAM?

BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment Method) is the leading and most widely used environmental assessment method for buildings. It sets the standard for best practice in sustainable design and has become the de facto measure used to describe a building's environmental performance.(2)

And Ogiers new premises, recently mentioned in the Green Building Press, has recently been completed; it is the first office building on Jersey to be built to BREEAM specifications

Ogier, providers of offshore legal and fiduciary services, have moved into their new premises, Jersey's largest and greenest single occupancy office. The the partnership between the company, developer JCN and local building firm Camerons as the main contractor has resulted in a new landmark for St Helier. Ogier House has achieved a "very good" BREEAM....Additional to the atria, solar shading has been used to reduce the need for air-conditioning and movement sensors avoid electricity being wasted by lighting rooms with no-one in them. Seasonal Commissioning ensures the building is operating at optimum efficiency all year round, with thermal zoning of different rooms. Space has been allocated for storage of recyclable waste, promoting green management strategies within the building.(3)

Hague makes the point that it is not "an idealists pipe dream" to look at strategies for moving to a low carbon economy, and the sooner we do so, the better we will be prepared for the future:

A global low-carbon economy is not an idealist's pipe-dream but a 21st century realist's imperative. Countries that adapt quickly to a carbon constrained world will be better able to deliver lasting prosperity for their citizens.

Describing the weather catastrophes of the past year - in Russia, Pakistan, China - Hague comments that:

While no one weather event can ever be linked with certainty to climate change, the broad patterns of abnormality seen this year are consistent with climate change models. They provide a vivid illustration of the events we will be encountering increasingly in the future. The clock is ticking. The time to act is now.

And he concludes with a message to take action now:

This is not a hard choice. We have to get this right. If we do, we can still shape our world. If we do not, our world will determine our destiny.

Links
(1) http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2270476/william-hague-climate-change
(2) http://www.breeam.org/
(3) http://www.greenbuildingpress.co.uk/article.php?category_id=1&article_id=681
(4) http://www.recycle-more.co.uk/nav/page726.aspx