Aviation and Climate Science

To get the answers you want, you simply ask the right question, and no industry is better at asking the right question than the aviation industry. Almost all air passengers will have been consoled at one stage or another by answering the aviation industry’s rhetorical question about why they should be targeted for criticism when they only account for 2% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, and many environmentalists will have been pushed onto their back feet wondering how to counter this seemingly invincible argument.

In this essay we are going to unpick the 2% argument and put it into perspective. We will explain that the 2% is both out of date and it fails to tell the whole story as it does not take into account the growth in aviation that has been experienced since 1990, or the future growth that the aviation industry is trying to create. We will demonstrate that once the wider impacts of aviation are taken into account then its contribution to greenhouse gases rises further and we will further demonstrate that there are no technological solutions or alternative energy sources that will allow aviation to meet the massive cuts needed in CO₂ emissions that are necessary to avoid runaway climate change.  Fundamentally, the only way we can avoid runaway climate change is for a massive reduction in excess consumption and excess travel.  

As stated above the 2% relates to 1990 IPCC figures and so is hopelessly outdated. Since 1990, the aviation industry has been growing between 5% and 9% per annum which is far higher than world economic growth. Applying this rate of growth to the aviations 2% contribution to anthropogenic emissions, it can be conservatively calculated that as of 2010 aviation’s contribution to total greenhouse gas emissions will have risen to approximately 4%.

Bringing these numbers closer to home and considering the proportion of aviation emissions within the UK total CO₂ budget, Gillian Merron (Secretary of State for Transport) confirmed in 2007 that aviation accounted for 6.3% of total UK emissions. However this was with the incredible caveat that international emissions were limited to only outgoing journeys, as it is deemed too difficult to reconcile the full impact of international emissions. As international travelers outnumber domestic travelers by about 8 to 1, then the true figure of emissions to and from UK airports would be 11.9%. What has been done amounts to a cynical way of avoiding the most contentious issue of the day.

But even if we were to give the aviation industry the benefit of the doubt and assume that they kept their emissions at just 2% of total anthropogenic gases, then it would still be unacceptable as total manmade anthropogenic emissions are increasing at the alarming rate of 3.4% per annum. This is despite the much hyped low carbon technologies, carbon trading agreements and environmental campaigns.  When we apply a little bit of mathematics to a 3.4% compound growth rate, we see that the annual emissions double in approximately 20 years (see note 1) placing the planet’s CO₂ growth projections well beyond the worse case scenario of the IPCC reports which has a doubling period of 30 years. So using the airlines own argument, that they remain at only 2% of total CO₂ emissions, we would also be expecting their annual emissions to double in the next 20 years. This is bang inline with the predictions of emissions growth that environmentalists claims, but which the aviation industry claims are far too pessimistic.

The credibility of the claim that aviation’s emissions will double in just 20 years can be tested by looking at emerging events around the world. Just as the developing countries such as China want to eat more meat, then they also want more aviation. With predicted sales in China of 2,800 passenger planes in the next 20 years, China, along with India, are primary markets for Boeing and Airbus.  Recently, David Cameron was extolling the virtues of Britain as a long haul and thus high carbon holiday destination for the Chinese. In the UK, and elsewhere in Europe, all the main regional airports are pushing expansion plans with the expectation that they will be able to open up additional long range routes using the new Boeing 787. Meanwhile the EU has liberalised access to airport hubs with the open skies policy which has the express purpose of developing aviation further.

Now for a bit more simple but scary maths; because manmade emissions are growing at 3.4% per annum the total CO₂ that we will emit in the next 20 years will be the same as all the emissions since the beginning of the industrial revolution (see note 2). This is absolutely terrifying as our climate is already unravelling with the current levels of CO₂, and we have absolutely no way of knowing how it will behave when we double the CO₂ loading.  To add to the terror level, this doubling will happen on a 20 year timescale, rather than the 250 year timescale since the start of the industrial revolution; so our planet will have virtually no time to absorb the surge in greenhouse gases that we are about to inflict on it.  This surge will occur when the scientific evidence is telling us that we must reduce our atmospheric CO₂ to 350ppm to have a reasonable chance of avoiding runaway climate change. Today our CO₂ emissions are at 390ppm and rising steadily. When we include all the other greenhouse gases such as methane and fluoride gases we are at 455ppm. We are already deeply into the danger zone, and worse, the rate of increase is increasing. If the rise of CO₂ emissions continues on its current track, then by 2032 we will have exceeded 450 ppm of atmospheric CO₂, which is considered the trigger point beyond which irreversible and catastrophic climate change is unavoidable.

The current situation is so desperate it is difficult to imagine a worse case. In these circumstances, it does not matter if an industry’s emissions are 2% or 20% of the total anthropogenic CO₂ as everyone’s moral obligation must be to massively reduce greenhouse gas emissions over and above everything else. So the aviation industry’s argument that they should be allowed to continue business as usual because their 1990 emissions were only 2% of total anthropogenic emissions is a hollow claim and a cruel distortion of the facts

They also can not claim that they are being unfairly targeted, or that cuts can be made in other industries to offset their emissions.  While it is true that other manufacturing industries such as paper, steel and cement account for similar slices of the total greenhouse gas emissions pie, these industries are finding it equally as difficult as the aviation industry in cutting their emissions as they are as wedded to fossil fuel as the aviation industry. Lakshmi Mittal’s successful lobbying for extra carbon credits for his steel businesses, along with threats to relocate his steel manufacturing to China if not provided, shows they will fight just as hard and dirty as the aviation industry to maintain their right to pollute.

The fundamental fact is that the significant emissions cuts that we need can only be achieved by reducing output, and this is the crux of the problem. Which outputs do we target first and by how much - the manufacture of essential materials or the right to luxury travel for the rich?    

If we had an ideal world where new low carbon technologies came on line, such as renewables and safe nuclear to power our cars and houses, we would see the proportion of the total emissions from the high carbon industries increasing over time.  The aviation industry and its supporters are of course saying that they will also reduce their emissions by finding new technologies, alternative new fuels such as hydrogen and alternative energy sources such as biofuels, all of which will make the future a nirvana of green aviation and so they should be allowed to continue with business as usual today because tomorrow all will be well. This is a fantasy world fit only for dreamers.

Technology will never deliver planes that are so fuel efficient as to be considered “green.” To do this we would need fuel reductions in the order of 90%. This is impossible. The newest planes coming onto the market such as the Boeing 787 are only 10% more fuel efficient per passenger kilometre and there is nothing significantly better on the drawing board. Worse, this improvement is not used to environmental benefit; it is used for commercial benefit to fly more often and to further destinations. This will maintain the upward trend in total aviation emissions that has existed since the Wright Brothers flew their first plane and despite the continuous improvements in technology. We would be hopelessly naïve to believe that this relationship is suddenly going to change with the introduction of the next fleet of planes, especially when the Boeing 787 is the most successful plane at launch ever with over 800 orders confirmed and that Airbus’s flagship A380 super jumbo is being sold as a private jet to Middle Eastern billionaires.

As for hydrogen as an alternative energy source, it simply does not have the energy density necessary to power a plane and the energy needed to compress the massive volume of hydrogen would defeat the logic of the idea. Then, try explaining to the local residents of an airport that their houses are still safe when planes are taking off with massive fuel tanks of hydrogen pressurised to tens of thousands of pounds per square inch whilst aeronautical engineers are simultaneously challenged with hydrogen embitterment of key safety critical components such as the engines and fuels tanks on the planes.  An accident on a hydrogen powered plane would instantly transform it into a bomb so massive it would make the Hindenburg disaster seem like watching candles burning on a birthday cake.

The other dream world is that biofuels can be used to replace existing fossil fuels and airlines such as Air New Zealand have been pushing forward on this front.  Air New Zealand has pursued the idea of using the Jatropha plant, which is a weed deemed to be so poisonous and invasive that it is not allowed into New Zealand and instead has to be grown in developing countries that have little or no environmental legislation.

Despite Jatropha’s status as a poisonous weed, it is still quoted by the industry as being the knight in shining white armour; its supporters claim it can be grown in semi-arid regions of the world and without fertilizer, and because it is poisonous it does not compete with food supplies. How much longer does the industry expect us to believe that the laws of science can continue to be broken and that basic human rights can also be ignored?  Field experience supports common sense, and shows that if the Jatropha crop is not irrigated and fertilised, it will not produce fruit. The stupidity of the logic only increases when the end result is a large scale replacement of food crops and other ecosystems with a poisonous weed so in any future famine, neither the produce nor the land can not be transferred back to the food market.  Then there is the slight problem of being able to find all these semi arid unused parts of the world that the industry implies are so abundant. It is being achieved today by the appalling land grabs which are so prevalent in Africa. Calculations show an area well over twice the size of France would be needed to fuel just half the aviation industry at today’s levels of consumption – but we know from our basic maths that the demand will double, so in only 20 years we will need four times the area of France. This will happen when agricultural land is coming under increasing stress as climate change impacts are starting to hit much harder and quicker than predicted. At best, for all this damage we would only be cutting aviation’s emissions by half and with the current industry growth rates we would then be back at today’s totally unsustainable levels well within 20 years.

Having failed with Jatropha, the industry is pushing the idea of using genetically modified algae, but still there is no large scale proven production process and many of the ideas propose using the CO₂ from the flue gases from power stations as a feedstock. This is not carbon neutral, as we simply use aviation to delay by a couple of weeks the time it takes for dirty power stations gases to be released into the atmosphere. Our objective with fossil fuel power stations must be to either close them or to use carbon capture – using the exhausts for biofuels is counter to all these efforts.

In additional to the CO₂ emissions from planes, there are other greenhouse forcing gases that significantly increase aviation’s impacts on the environment. When these are taken into consideration, aviation’s contribution rises considerably above their 2% claim.  The two main factors are the impact of NO_x gasses which have a warming effect of 400 times that of CO2 and the high altitude water vapour. 

With the NO_x gases there is an essential compromise. To make a plane’s engine efficient and so reduce, its CO₂ emissions, the engine must run as hot as possible and with as high a compression as possible.  But running an engine at very hot temperatures and high pressures causes the nitrogen in the air to burn with oxygen, and so there is always a compromise. You can either reduce NO_x gases but increase CO₂ or visa versa. To put it in perspective, while the total quantity of NO_x gases is very much smaller than CO2, the warming impact is almost as great.  

Also coming out the aircraft engines exhaust is water. At high altitude, this causes the formation of circus clouds. While these to a certain extent reflect some of the sun’s energy, this is countered by the warming effect that they cause by preventing heat from the earths surface being radiated back to space. The total warming effect is highly positive, and again is estimated to be at least equivalent to the actual CO₂. So in total, the combination of the NO_x gases and high altitude vapour results in the uplift factor which is currently assessed as being between 2 and 4 of the actual CO₂ impact, and is known as radiative forcing. The warming effect of cirrus clouds also destroys the rational of the hydrogen powered planes, as they produce even more water than conventional fuel and maximum efficiency a hydrogen powered plane has to fly higher, further accentuating this effect.

From the UK perspective, the result of the radiative forcing is that aviation’s impact on the environment rises from 6.3% to approximately 20% of our total greenhouse effect. When this is placed in context with our ambitions to create 20% of just our electrical power from renewables, it is clear that emissions from aviation will negate all the efforts from building wind farms and other renewable energy projects around the country.

The ongoing compound growth in aviation emissions, and the inability to create an environmentally acceptable alternative, will on its own prevent the UK from meeting its own targets as set out in the Climate  Change Act, even if every other sector in the economy went down to zero carbon. Try explaining to people who are loosing their jobs in the steel industry, or the old people that are living in the cold that their hardship is so the aviation industry can continue to send the richest in our society to holiday in the Caribbean and you will see the social fabric of the country almost immediately break down.

To finally complete the picture of the damage that aviation does, one has to look beyond the exhaust gases from the engines, and consider how aviation facilitates many other unsustainable industries.  To understand this, consider how the industry delights in explaining how important it is to the world economy and the things that it has enabled. The flip side of this claim is that without the aviation industry, we would not have obscenities such as Dubai on the edge of the desert complete with both indoor ski centres and the world’s highest per capita CO₂ footprint or flowers being grown in Kenya which is one of the most food insecure countries in the world.

As well as enabling some of the most unsustainable industries and countries, the aviation industry requires its own industrial complex of fuel supplies, airports, factories and mines  to keep it going. This complex can only be managed with huge greenhouse gas emissions, none of which the aviation industry claims, instead these will be accounted to other industries such as manufacturing, oil industry, mining and the military. As we are going to increasing lengths to secure oil, such as developing the Canadian Tar sands, pursuing in Iraq the most energy intensive resource war ever and burning down the tropics for biofuels, enormous secondary emissions are created which will by far exceed the emissions directly from the planes.  Absolutely none of this is accounted for in the 1990 estimate of 2% of total emissions that the industry uses, but without this invisible greenhouse gas overhead being paid the planes will not fly.  

So as for the 2% claim –it has been prepared by those whose interest is to be economical with the truth; it is for dreamers and for those that are easily fooled; it is for the comfort of the passengers who read about it in the in-flight magazines as they fly over the millions of poverty stricken climate refuges; it is for governments to justify their support of one of the most environmentally damaging industries the planet has ever seen, and it is for the powerful elite on our planet who want to maintain their right to hypermobility.

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Note 1 - Doubling time = log(2)/log(1.034)= 20.7 years

Note 2- Analysis of areas under a exponential growth curve:

Comments to Telegraph, following support for Trident

Con Coughlin's article dangerously conflates the logic of the Cold War with the cold logic of today’s world. 

In the Cold War, there was a slight rationality for the maintenance of a nuclear deterrence, no matter how odious it was. The underlying rationality was founded on three principles; it was in both the US and USSR’s long term interest not to start a war and instead maintain a strategic stalemate, that the leaders of both countries were essentially rational and their motives could be predicted, and that there were only two players, the Warsaw Pack and NATO. Consequently a tense but, reasonably predictable peace could be maintained.

By comparison, the cold logic of today’s world is much more dangerous and Trident is wholly incompatible with this. 

Today’s world faces devastation from climate change and resource shortages, and a stalemate solution cannot be tolerated by a weaker side, as they will simply starve and die – it is therefore in the interests of a weaker side to pre-emptively attack to secure resources and to do so sooner rather than later, while they are still strong enough to wage war. This is already happening today. America and the UK had to attack Iraq to secure oil – in the calculus of Bush and Blair, they must have surely been aware that if they were to wait to some time in the future they would not have the economic strength to wage the size of war necessary as their economies face the prospect of peak oil.

As other critical resources to our survival become scarce and the problem is amplified by increasing populations, it is easy to envisage many more potential flash points. Given Russia’s collapse in grain production due to climate change, and the move round the world to “land grab” the last fertile parts of the planet to feed distant populations, it is not difficult to envisage the scenario of major wars starting between nuclear armed players over resources such as African land or North Atlantic fishing rights, with the advantage going to the player who makes the first strike. African land may sound a strange thing for major powers to go to war over, but securing African resources was the instigating source of tension between Britain and Germany in the lead up to the First World War.

Throw into the mix the rise of the “idiot political class” around the world that is afflicting all nations on every side of every divide. Examples are everywhere. Tony Abbot, Australia’s potential new prime minister thinks “climate change is crap;” currently every one of the six Republican candidates in New Hampshire is a climate change denier and tackling climate change is the least important thing for rank and file Conservative MPs in this country. So perhaps it is hardly surprising that we find the vast swathes in countries such as Pakistan hating us and supporting the Taliban, who are simply as stupid as our politicians, when their environment alternates from catastrophic drought to catastrophic flooding due to the climate change that we have inflicted upon them.

The third factor that differentiates our world from the Cold War world is we are now in a multiple player game, and where the players have a much bigger range of strategies. In the Cold war, if a nuclear attack happened on one of our cities, we could be virtually 100% certain it came from the Soviet Union, and we would be able to verify this by picking up their missile tracks on our radar, or seeing their bombers coming across our horizon. We would then fire our nuclear response knowing which cities to vaporise. 

By comparison, in today’s world we are much more likely to have a nuclear attack on a city as a result of a terrorist nuclear bomb, and recent reports of attempted sales in Eastern European states of bomb grade uranium show how precedent this is. Now if a terrorist nuclear bomb goes off in London, how do we decide which cities of our many enemies to vaporise? As our enemies know that we can not decide who to target and we are unlikely to unleash our strike on everyone just in case, they are free to pursue their dream of a terrorist nuclear strike if this is what they choose. Worse, the procession of Trident makes this more likely as it perpetuates the arms race into unstable countries where weapons grade material and weapons expertise are more likely to leak into the hands of terrorists, while simultaneously reducing our resources to tackle these sales.

So we now enter a world where it is strategically advantageous to make the first strike, where politicians on all sides are increasingly irrational, and where the concept of overwhelming force will not deter nuclear attacks. 

Into this morass we naively throw the Trident replacement, and with the logic of Con Coughlin we need it to justify our membership of the Security Council. There is a better way out of this that the members of the Security Council should consider. That is to demonstrate leadership to actively pursue a global demilitarisation programme. 

We should immediately ban the military shows, such as Air Tattoos, around the world as these legitimise the destructive arms build ups in the eyes of the tax payers that fund them; that should be followed by a ban on provocative military exercises and activities, that should be followed by a commitment of the security council to work towards a just solution to tackle climate change which even the American Military recognise is our biggest threat. 

There is precedent for this. At the height of the Cold War the Soviet Union and USA were able to agree on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and Strategic Arms Reduction Talks. We should learn from these brave moves and consider how the replacement of Trident makes it increasingly impossible to achieve the world wide agreements we desperately needed to tackle climate change.

By contrast, we remain wedded to the idea of glorifying the military industrial complex and using our exclusive possession of its most lethal products as justification for membership of the “Security Council” which has been consistent in extending its hegemony over the rest of the word.

Appeal to MP to support a world wide military air show ban

Dear Neil Carmichael MP,


I have read with interest the offer in the Stroud News and Journal you made this week to adopt a charity that you wish to support in the coming year.

I offer you a proposition:

I am starting a campaign for a world-wide ban on military air shows and would welcome your engagement and support. To understand the seriousness of this proposal, I ask you to consider the wider picture and imagine of what would happen if we were able to make it a success, and the path that it could lead to. Please read on:

1. The inescapable conclusion is that runaway climate change which will lead to the loss of most life on this planet by the end of this century is inevitable with business as usual. Despite this, no country has succeeded in making the required deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and no worthwhile international agreements have been achieved that have led to any carbon reductions. The appalling outcome from Copenhagen was but the latest in a series of disappointments and is made even worse by the revelation in the Guardian’s August 4th article that loopholes in the current agreement are so large as to make it worthless to the point that it will simply allow emissions to continue rising. The situation is so dire that the Copenhagen Accord is widely accepted to be a step backwards from the already ineffectual Kyoto agreement.

2. There are two interlocking and fundamental reasons that no worthwhile agreement has been made. Firstly no democratic government feels it has the mandate from its people to insist on the lifestyle changes necessary to allow the CO2 cuts we need - in fact none are even prepared to start the discussion. Secondly, agreeing to the cuts would compromise the power base that the developed world has over the developing, and that power base is delivered by the military-industrial complex which needs to be continually fed with vast amounts of fossil fuel.

The desire to hold on to this power base led directly to the “Danish text” at the Copenhagen Conference demanding that the developing world make cuts in their CO2 emissions in exchange for financial aid from the developed. This was a racist attempt to push for a two-tier emission world where the powerful continuing emitting whilst the weak are paid to die.

3. To have any realistic chance of combating climate change, we must make significant emission cuts now and at all levels of our society. The only way we can do this quick enough is to cut all unnecessary consumption. Whilst we may make progress on renewables and nuclear technologies in the long term, we no longer have the luxury of time on our side to implement these solutions. Even with the best possible scenarios, these much hyped new technologies will not provide the energy we need for our society to operate anywhere near its current standards and levels. Finally, unless there are restrictions to consumption, the fossil fuel savings made will simply be squandered elsewhere, such as the ridiculous sale of A380 Super Jumbos as private jets.

4. As our global society becomes increasingly unstable due to the combined effects of over population, resource shortages and climate change we will move towards a worldwide arms race which will exacerbate the underlying problems. These issues are already evident in the many conflict zones of today. As worldwide tension builds it will become increasingly unlikely that we will ever reach the international agreements that our survival depends on and which is already proving so hard to achieve. In the face of this continuing failure, rather than enlightening our population of the problems and seeking to educate them on the solutions, we do the opposite by glorifying war and fossil fuel consumption.

5. The glorification of war and fossil fuel consumption comes in many guises, from adverts for cruise holidays in the Caribbean, F1 racing and military air shows. However, it is the military airshows that stand out as a particularly pernicious target. They combine unwarranted displays of power and fossil fuel consumption together, with a government blessing that implies cutting CO2 emissions will always be someone else's job.

6. Given the above, achieving a worldwide ban on military air shows and other unnecessary displays of force is vital for the following reasons:

a. All long journeys start with a single step. To expect the worlds nations to agree on the massive cut backs necessary in a single step, such as that proposed at Copenhagen is fantasy. Better by far to try a series of small steps which lead to the end goal, and where each step allows confidence to be built up so the next step can be taken. So far, not a single significant step has been taken, not at Kyoto, not at Bali, not at Copenhagen.


b. Banning military air shows is an easy first step. No one suffers, all countries can be involved, it is verifiable and the logic is clear and obvious. Further more, it has precedent with the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and Strategic Arms reduction agreements which were made at the height of the cold war and which are credited with saving us from nuclear Armageddon.


c. Governments around the world, but especially those in the developed nations, would be able to determine if they have the mandate from the people to make cuts in living standards and expectations necessary to achieve the greenhouse gas reductions that we need.


d. As airshows are predominantly events carried out by the powerful nations, it would send a message to the developing world about our determination to cut emissions - it is an action that is the polar opposite to the destructive Danish text of the Copenhagen Conference. This single action will speak louder than all the words that can be delivered and will be heard by leaders and populations alike.


e. The Fairford Air Tattoo, like many other similar events, is a shameless attempt to glorify militarisation, to seek a mandate from the tax payers to continue funding the arms trade, and to recruit our young people into the forces. This leads to self fulfilling prophesies where governments of the day become infatuated with the war machine at their disposal and are more inclined to wage war. You may remember Hans Blix’s recent statement that “George Bush was high on military” prior to the second Gulf War. This attitude in both our leaders and population at large is especially dangerous when we are rapidly moving to the brink with critical resource shortages, mass migration and other mounting pressures around the world.


f. A ban on military air shows can quickly be followed by similar bans on provocative military exercises, such as those being held off the Iranian and Chinese coasts. These lead directly to increased tensions and arms races around the world, at a time when we can least afford such distractions. The recent reports of China's development of new anti-aircraft carrier capability in direct response to the US exercises off their coast is a case in point. These weapons which deliver mass death within seconds massively increase the chance of an accidental holocaust, whilst simultaneously diminishing the chance of achieving successful agreements on climate change.


g.  If tensions can be reduced, then a space opens up for the kinds of intentional agreements that are so urgently needed, such as the introduction of carbon rationing or carbon taxation. Defusing of tensions is the first step to sapping the lobbying strength of the military-industrial complex that worked so hard on undermining the last Copenhagen agreement and it will allow recognition that we must enter a difficult era of international co-operation rather than international competition.


The global response to climate change is reaffirming the ferocious law which states, "To he that has, will be given; from he that has not, will be taken away." Failure to challenge this law will lead us to world wide chaos and anarchy, yet challenging it will be the first step toward a genuine solution to climate change. Providing the right governance that we need in a planet afflicted by limits requires courage to do the things we would never expect nor imagine and to have the vision to see the path ahead.

This initiative needs political and activist support. If you are willing to provide the political support that is needed, I will explain to you the next steps that we are taking.

Finally, it has widely been stated that we need a crisis to galvanise the world wide response to climate change. This summer we have witnessed the deaths of thousands and destruction of the way of life for millions. If now is not the time, then when is?

Regards,

Kevin Lister

2nd Email to Neil Carmichael MP - still no response to my first email.

Dear Neil,

As a keen environmentalist, I am sure that you will be appalled by your party’s position to support the wishes of the oil industry to start drilling in the deep waters of the West Coast of Scotland.

The consequences of a disaster are only too apparent after the problems of the Gulf of Mexico disaster and a country of our size would be unable to mount an appropriate clean up operation. 

In addition to the increased risk exposure from a spillage, there is the certainty of this development massively increasing our CO2 emissions. I would trust that you are already familiar with NASA’s conclusion that the safe limit for atmospheric CO2 is 350 ppm, yet we are at 390 ppm and the rate of increase is increasing. Furthermore, when additional green house gases are taken into consideration, the current level is 450 ppm (equivalent).

I also trust that you are familiar with the IPCC report that concluded even with a zero carbon economy we at severe risk of breaching the 2 deg C threshold that is the target set by the EU for a safe temperature rise.

These are extreme circumstances and they pave the way for a difficult and dangerous future.

Your party made much play about its environmental commitments and concerns about climate change during the election. I am sure that you must agree with me and many other concerned people that supporting deep sea drilling to the West of Scotland is totally contradictory to any statements that your party made on climate change.

I would like you to confirm your position on deep sea drilling and give me your confirmation that you will vote against it in any parliamentary debates.

I look forward to your reply and your reply to my previous email.

A copy of this email will be posted on my blog, http://kevsclimatecolumn.blogspot.com/

Regards,

Kevin Lister

Letter to Neil Carmichael MP (Stroud Conservative)

Dear Neil,

I would like your clarification, action and support on the following issues; 

1. Depleted Uranium Munitions.

As you are probably aware the UK government has stood with the US government by opposing any move towards a worldwide ban on depleted uranium munitions by the UN.

These barbaric weapons have left poisoned landscapes in places like Southern Iraq, where birth deformities are so bad and so frequent that women are advised not to have children or offered abortions in the event of pregnancy.

The half-life of depleted uranium is measured in billions of years, so as long as there is civilisation on this planet, those areas that have been subjected to depleted uranium attack will remain uninhabitable.

Depleted uranium attacks result in fine airborne powders that contaminates water supplies and the wider environment. The residue is easily ingested and destroys by emitting deadly alpha radiation. 

It is sad that we were so concerned about Sadam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons, but had no compulsion about the use of our own poison weapons which are equally dangerous, or their continued sale elsewhere around the world.

I would like clarification on what your parties position is on depleted uranium, your guarantee that you will use your position in parliament to support a ban on these weapons in line with our obligations to the Geneva convention, that you will press for full disclosure on the extent of depleted uranium weapons use by the UK in Iraq, a commitment that you will support clean up operations and a commitment to support any UN ban on DU munitions.

See http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/docs/131.pdf

2. Fairford Air Tattoo

As you are aware the Fairford Air Tattoo is due in the next week. As a keen environmentalist, I am sure that you will have no hesitation in condemning this event. I am sure that I do not need to spell out the inconsistencies with this event. However, you should consider:-

At schools and colleges, sustainability must be incorporated into lessons and this is an Ofstead inspection criteria. To simultaneously have an air-show in our locality where B52 bombers are flown across the Atlantic, along with hundred of other planes makes a mockery of teaching sustainability in our schools.  To portray such a confusing and contradictory message to our young people is cruel and we should not be surprised that so many of them are currently suffering from depression and alienation from society.

The CO2 emissions from this single show negate the efforts of many thousands of people who are making sacrifices to cut their own emissions. This is divisive. It will eventually lead either to complete scepticism within society about the merits of minimising CO2 emissions, or worse lead to conflict and anger between those who are trying to cut emissions and those that are not bothered.

The situation on climate change is deadly serious and time to take action has all but run out. With business as usual, by 2030 we will enter a total and unrecoverable runaway climate change scenario; we have already massively breached the safe limit of 350 ppm of atmospheric CO2 and our survival depends on moving as close to a zero carbon economy as we can and doing it as fast as possible. Thus, the overwhelming priority is to make immediate cuts in CO2 emissions in all possible circumstances.  Cancelling events such as the Fairford Air Tattoo sends a powerful message to the people of this country and the governments elsewhere in the world that we are prepared to act and change our society and expectations to reflect the science and evidence before us.

Cancelling frivolous events such as the Fairford Air Show result in immediate cuts to emissions without any hardship to society. To rely on making cuts in CO2 emissions by introduction on new technologies alone will take more time than we have, if it is ever even successful. The longer we delay in making cuts, the more dramatic the cuts need to be, even if today’s targeted 80% cuts in CO2 emissions are not already dramatic enough.

I have tried for several years to get the local press and the BBC to report on the environmental impacts of this show and to consider the wider message that this show delivers which is that we can carry on with business as usual and CO2 cuts will be someone else’s business. However, no news media outlet has ever questioned the logic of the show, despite many people raising with me the question of its merit and relevance in today’s world. This one sided reporting is a straight forward result of the massive marketing budget that the airshow has every year for wining and dining reporters and providing advertising to many small paper to keep them going.


This year, I uploaded a spoof site to highlight these inconsistencies and received a letter from Airshow’s lawyers for my efforts along with a demand for its removal along with a further demand that I do not even comment on their Facebook site. This amounts to state censorship and is in breach of Article 10 of the European Court of Human Rights. These events demonstrate the power large carbon based industries, such as the aviation industry, have over the press and how they will use their power to maintain the current status quo.

I therefore trust that you will publicly support calls to cancel future Air shows and back the strong line that Martin Horewood MP (Lib Dem, Cheltenham) recently took when discussing the challenges faced by Messers Dowty when he warned that the aviation industry had no choice but to look at contraction in the face of climate change challenges.

As you are also aware, the airshow claims to support the RAF Charities. Yet according to their own accouts only 2% of the Air Tattoo sales goes to charities. It is clear that this show is more of an arms fair and an advert of the aviation industry than a charity. I finally trust that you will also support any complaint I make to the charities commission about the continuing status of the airshow.

I look forward to your response.

Regards,

Kevin Lister

Brooklyn, Park Road Crescent, Nailsworth, Stround, GL6 0HZ

Chain mail letter to the Constituents of The Cotswolds.

Dear Cotswold Voter,

I want to share with you my experiences of campaigning over the last couple of weeks to help you decide which way to vote as we move into the final days of the campaign. I share these experiences with you as honestly as I can.

I have been around much of this large constituency either on bike or on bus – I believe in practising what is preached and have not spilt a single drop of fossil fuel during my campaign. I have met hundreds of people and listened as carefully as I can to their concerns.

It has been a heart warming and exciting experience, and in a Conservative strong hold I would never have expected the level of support that people have given me.

    

This support stems from more than mere dissatisfaction with Geoffrey Clifton-Brown’s abuse of the expense system and his inability to apologise, significant though this is.  It stems from the deep seated concern all thinking and caring people have which is that the main parties will not tackle the implications of climate change. This is vital; the safe level of atmospheric CO₂ to avoid runaway climate change is 350ppm. Our CO₂ levels are currently at 455ppm equivalent (when all the additional green house gases are factored in). Not only have we breached CO₂ safety limits but the rate of increase is increasing.  These are truly terrifying numbers and facts for us to contemplate while we live in the brief interlude between cause and effect.

Thus the urgency of taking decisive action can not be overestimated. In the period of the next parliament, we will have to take the most difficult decisions since the start of our democracy in the 14^th century. These decisions will have to be taken at all levels of our society, starting at the individual level, progressing through community and national levels and going right up to international level.  Collective failure at any one of these levels will be failure at all levels, and the consequences of failure are too difficult to imagine.

The only road maps that the main parties offer us though this crisis is Greenwash. Each main party is guilty. Labour has told us to take action on our emissions, yet pursues airport expansion, the disastrous Palm Oil based biofuels and subsidies to high carbon industries.  The Conservative Party has only 10% of its prospective MPs believing that they should even bother tackling climate change. Their manifesto is committed to opening oil exploration in the hostile waters to the West of the Shetland Islands, raising the risk of exactly the same sort of crisis that is destroying the Gulf of Mexico today. The Lib Dems continue to bend which ever way the wind blows. They say in their manifesto they want a zero carbon Britain, yet Mike Collins (The Cotswolds Lib Dem Candidate) approved the expansion of Gloucestershire Airport which was aimed principally at private jet use; this Lib Dem duplicity has been repeated everywhere across our country and they see nothing wrong with this behaviour. 

Each party continues the claim that they are committed to reducing CO2 emissions and moving to renewables. However, this alone will not tackle our growing emissions, and they know it. Simply introducing renewables without imposing limits on consumption merely results in the fossil fuel savings being used elsewhere; put simply, if I cycle around this constituency then someone else will use the fuel that I save in their car. It is therefore vital that we think through our ideas on consumption, and start serious consideration of proposals such as carbon rationing and the implications that this will have on our society.

Any party that is not prepared to take onboard and support these kinds of debates are lying when they say that tackling climate change is the big concern for them. Furthermore, these debates must centre on policies that ensure the fair distribution of remaining resource. The principles of the current free market model where winner can take all must be challenged. The brutal and fundamental reality is that in a world were resource usage is increasingly constrained people can only become richer by depriving others of their entitlement to those same resources. We can not allow this to happen.

The overwhelming majority of people that I have met during this campaign recognise these issues. They understand the main parties are too wedded to existing policy and philosophies to tackle climate change and they equally understand they will not address the fundamental issue of resource distribution in our society.  This is why about 80% of the people that I have met are still undecided on which way they will vote. The superficiality of the leadership debates has simply confirmed to them that they are only capable of arranging the deck chairs while the Titanic sinks.  

The extraordinary thing is that the only people I meet who have definitely decided which way they will vote are those that have chosen Green, and they are no longer in a small minority. This truly is time for change. If you vote Green, you will therefore be in the company of many others and in no way will it be a wasted vote.

I do not ask you to vote Green because I want to be an MP, I ask that you vote Green because I believe that it is the right thing for you to do.

I leave with the thoughts of Martin Luther King, who said, “We either live together as brothers, or die together as fools.” This is our challenge, and it has never been so vital to rise up to the ideals of this great man.   

And finally, I ask for one favour from you. Irrespective of the decision you make with your vote, I ask that you forward this onto as many people as you know within The Cotswolds constituency.

With kindest regards,

Kevin Lister

Green Party PPC

The Cotwolds.

Question on climate change for a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate

Hi Adam,

Thank you for your email and for expressing your concerns on climate change.

Firstly, I would like to assure you that I am absolutely committed to tackling climate change. The fact is that our response to climate change is the defining issue of our time. Most importantly, we need to accept that there are no easy solutions ahead of us. Our greenhouse gas levels by far exceeded danger levels, and worse not only are they continuing to increase, but the rate of increase is increasing. Already, it is anticipated that it will take our planet over 100,000 years to recover from the damage that we have inflicted upon it over the past 200 years since the start of the industrial revolution. See David Archers book, “The Long Thaw, How Humans Are Changing The Next 100,000 Year Of The Earths Climate.”

This situation is made worse by government policies that are either naïve or deliberately disingenuous. For example, we are seeing the total destruction of the Indonesian rainforest for Palm Oil to supply the biofuel industry which is only sustained by government subsidies and legislation, we are being told that by carbon trading we will be able to continue with business as usual as cuts can be made elsewhere, we have seen this government provide untold billions in subsidies to high carbon industries at a time of peak oil, we are seeing this government pursuing a third runway at Heathrow and the Conservatives supporting regional airport development everywhere else in the country.  Worse, we are seeing the cornerstone strategies of the main parties to be a resumption of economic growth with no questioning of this in the press.  The economic growth that they are selling us will mean that in the next 25 years we will require as much resources as we have consumed since the start of industrial revolution and produce the same amount of pollution.

As we move towards resource depletion in virtually every one of our supply chains, this will mean more resource wars as we scramble to grab hold of what is left. Not content with a resource war in Iraq, we are now readying our armed forces for renewed combat in the Falklands over the rights to drill for oil there. We should also be cautious of being involved in those wars that we do not notice, for example the appalling land grabs that are currently going on in Africa, South America and Indonesia where over 100 million indigenous people have been displaced from their land to make way for cash crops for the West, with a further 1 billion facing food shortages. We generally do not recognise this as war, as we win by subcontracting our battles to the militias and corrupt governments of these countries - but it is war none the less, just an undeclared one.

Whilst I recognise your target of being able to achieve 15% of our power from renewables, I would in actual fact challenge this and say that it is far too modest and that it is also the wrong measurement tool. Simply saying that we want 15% of our energy to be produced by renewables does not in itself stop an increase in fossil fuel burning. At the moment worldwide energy derived by fossil fuel energy is increasing rapidly and still outstripping the increases in renewable energy sources. What is far better, and more onerous, is to have a target that actually reduces our fossil fuel consumption by 15% per annum. 

This alternate approach forces the debate on moving to renewables and simultaneously tackles the issue of excess consumption.

Whilst I fully support the move towards renewables and believe we should introduce all financial incentives, it is clear that this will never provide the amount of energy that we need to run our economy with a population that is expanding to 70 million, see for example David Mackay’s excellent online book, Without Hot Air, http://www.withouthotair.com/.

It is therefore clear that we must introduce personal carbon rationing, and there are very well developed ideas about this, such as Tradable Energy Quotas, http://www.teqs.net/. Fundamentally moving towards a carbon rationing economy is the only way that we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Relying on efficiency improvements and renewables alone will simply not do the job. All that happens is that someone else will use the fuel saved. This is already happening today – BP has recognised that market growth is not going to happen in Europe, and so are focusing their business on the Far East where environmental concerns do not feature.

I do not underestimate the challenges of moving towards a carbon rationing economy. It will be the biggest change ever since the signing of the Magna Carta. It will seal the end of unlimited economic growth, but will herald the start of a society that values the environment, which recognises fairness, which appreciates limits and the challenges of living within limits.

These are the difficult challenges we must rise to, the consequences of failure is a global temperature rise well in excess of 6 deg C which is too awful to contemplate. Unlike the other parties, I do not hold out the false hope of continued economic growth - I do however offer the chance to start the debate that we need to build the future we want to see.

Regards,

Kevin

--- On Wed, 7/4/10, XXXXX  wrote:

From: XXXXX
Subject: What are you promising on climate change?
To: kevin.lister@btopenworld.com
Date: Wednesday, 7 April, 2010, 19:47

From:
Adam Druett

Dear PPC,

Climate change will be one of the most important issues for whichever party forms the next government. Most observers recognise that greenhouse gas emissions must peak and begin to drop within the next five years – the maximum length of the next parliament.

The next government will have to take tough decisions and make big commitments, but the potential rewards are enormous. Investing in green technology and industry will create jobs, diversify our economy and cut inefficiency – as well as reducing the scourge of fuel poverty, where some of the most vulnerable in our society cannot afford to heat their homes. All parties must be aware of the advantages of action, as well as the danger of inaction.

We therefore need committed and enthusiastic MPs who will put environmental issues at the top of their agendas. That’s why I want to know your opinion on a number of key policy areas, which I believe can make a real difference to preventing climate change.

The UK’s meat and dairy production is reliant on the cultivation of soy in the developing world. Greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation are the result of our dependence on these crops. Peter Ainsworth MP, backed by a cross party group of MPs, has proposed a new law which will require the UK to end its dependence on imported soy and increase domestic production of animal feed – is this something that you would support if elected?

Would you back an international deal on cutting emissions – where those responsible make the deepest cuts first, and developing countries are supported to grow in a low carbon way? To do this, we need to work hard to cut our own emissions. Our current targets for cutting greenhouse gases aren’t high enough; we need to be aiming at a 42% cut by 2020, with sufficient investment to achieve it. Is this something you support?

Lastly, we need to make sure that councils do their fair share of cutting our emissions – would you back Local Carbon Budgets for every council area? They would make sure each area played its part in meeting the UK’s climate targets and create local jobs, boost the economy, and slash people’s fuel bills. Communities would benefit from better-heated homes and more sustainable transport systems.

Time is running out for us to deal with the environmental challenges the world faces. These measures are not the whole answer to the problems, but they are key steps towards ensuring that we build the low-carbon economy we need.

Please show your support for these policies by signing the Friends of the Earth Election pledge:

http://election.foe.co.uk/sign-our-pledge

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

Response from Tesco on Biofuel - doesn't look like they have an audit trail.

Dear Kevin,


Thank you for your emails regarding palm oil and biofuel. I apologise for the delay to this response, but I wanted to be able to reply as fully as possible.

Let me start by updating you on our palm oil policy. Since your last correspondence with Andrew Slight we have publicly committed to ensure that all the palm oil used in our products is fully certified and sustainable by 2015. This is a long-term project as our products use palm oil derivatives and, at present, the traceability and certification of the derivatives of palm oil are still in their infancy.

To achieve our target we are working closely with our supply base and in July we issued a new Code of Practice to all our suppliers. This code of practice sets out the way sustainable palm oil should come into the business. We have also held training courses for all Tesco’s Technical Managers, in conjunction with AAK and Greenpalm, to ensure they can support our suppliers.

Our suppliers are already making good progress. All the oil used in our products can be traced back to an RSPO member, although not all their plantations are fully certified yet and there is not a segregated supply chain for all the palm oil derivatives used. Uptake by our suppliers of sustainable oil through all four systems recognised by the RSPO is being monitored on a monthly basis through our central specification database. Our suppliers are already using Green palm certificates across the product range and are in negotiation for purchasing segregated oil where it is available for the type of derivatives used in our products.

You expressed a concern that we do not label the type of vegetable oil we use in our products. We use palm oil as part of a blend of vegetable oils that can be changed on a regular basis to ensure we meet the quality and price expectations of our customers. We know what the mix of vegetable oils is for every batch of product produced and can trace the palm oil back to an RSPO producer.

With regard to biofuels, we are aware that the impacts of biofuels are complex and the environmental impacts depend upon how they are made. All our fuel suppliers are members of the RSPO. Greenergy, who supply almost 50% of our fuel requirements, have been praised for their work in developing biofuel sustainability criteria and audit programmes. They seek to minimise the use of palm and publish usage figures on their website http://www.greenergy.com/.

We recognise that there is work to do, especially on the traceability and sustainability of biofuel raw materials and we have asked the Sustainable Consumption institute at Manchester University to help us understand the long-term impacts of biofuels. EU rules about the sustainability of biofuels will also speed up the uptake of sustainable palm in the biofuels industry.
I hope you find this information helpful.


Kind regards,



Hannah