A modest proposal to save the planet

Our leaders are finally waking up to the fact that climate change, far from being a 'green' fantasy, is a real, imminent and potentially catastrophic threat to humanity. Yet preventative action seems to be as remote as ever. Isn't there something we could be doing? In an extract from his acclaimed new book, Mayer Hillman advocates radical changes to the way we conduct our daily lives that would ensure a future for our children

27 May 2004

Climate change is the most serious environmental threat the human race has ever faced; perhaps the most serious threat of any kind. The dangers can hardly be exaggerated. Within 100 years, temperatures could rise by 6C worldwide. Much of the earth's surface could become uninhabitable, and most species could be wiped out. In the UK, over the next 50 years, we will experience hotter, drier summers, warmer, wetter winters and rising sea-levels. In most of our lifetimes, millions of British people will be at high risk from flooding; there will be thousands of deaths from excessive summer temperatures; diseases from warmer regions will become established; and patterns of agriculture and business will have to change for ever.

This is not the view of alarmists, but the considered opinion of the overwhelming majority of international climate scientists. It is acknowledged by most governments and their advisers. Last month, government-funded scientists at the University of Washington in Seattle made the key admission that the troposphere is indeed warming at 0.2C per decade - precisely as predicted by the main global-warming models. The UK Government's chief scientist warned the same month that if global warming continues unchecked, by the end of this century Antarctica is likely to be the only habitable continent.

The World Health Organisation blames climate change for at least 160,000 Third World deaths last year. Tony Blair admitted that climate change was "probably the most important issue that we face as a global community". The message is clear. Doubting the imminence of significant global warming may once have been an intellectually defensible position. It isn't now.

Decisions must be taken as a matter of urgency. We cannot rely on optimism. We need to think beyond energy efficiency and renewable energy, towards ideas of social and institutional reform and personal changes that require1  much lower energy use. Yet government action is only scratching the surface, and current policies on transport and growth can only make things worse. We are on the road to ecological Armageddon, with little apparent thought for the effects on the current population, let alone those who follow.

It doesn't have to be like this. Nor does anyone want it to be. The UK government said in 1990 that it was "mankind's duty to act prudently and conscientiously so that the planet is handed over to future generations in good order". This is crucial. As well as posing the most demanding challenges to the character and quality of our way of life, the issue has to be seen and acted on from a moral perspective.

Taking this as a starting point - that it is a matter both of necessity and of responsibility to try to save the planet - only one solution has a realistic prospect of success. This article is an attempt - made more fully in the book I have written with Tina Fawcett, 1 How We Can Save the Planet - to bring that solution to the centre of public debate.

The direction is simple and generally agreed: cuts must be made to greenhouse-gas emissions. The difficult part, where moral as well as scientific questions arise, is deciding by how much, by when and by whom. Should the most "energy profligate" nations and individuals be obliged to bear the greater burden of emissions reductions?

The solution set out here - first at a global level and then at a local, individual level - is radical. But it can achieve a sufficient decrease in emissions, by a set date, transparently and fairly, so that it can command wide public and political support. For the UK to adopt this strategy will mean that it can meet its own commitments to greenhouse-gas reductions and show global leadership.

The most plausible way to reach a just - and thus realistic - global agreement on emissions reduction is the system known as Contraction and Convergence (C&C). This brilliant and simple method was first proposed by the Global Commons Institute (GCI) in 1990, and its unique qualities have been widely recognised. A large number of national and international bodies have endorsed it, including - in the UK - the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, the Cabinet Office'' Performance and Innovation Unit, and the Greater London Authority.

C&C is founded on two principles: first, that global emissions of carbon dioxide must be progressively reduced; and second, that the reductions must be based on justice and fairness, which means that the average emissions of people in different parts of the world must ultimately converge to the same level. This latter requirement has not been included for moral reasons alone; climate change cannot be restricted to a manageable level without all countries sharing this common objective.

C&C simplifies climate negotiations to just two questions. First, what is the maximum level of carbon dioxide that can be permitted in the atmosphere without serious climate destabilisation? Second, by what date should global per capita shares converge to that level?

The targets in the Kyoto protocol are not based on a reliable understanding of the safe limits of greenhouse gases: rather, the reductions were determined by what was considered to be politically possible in developed countries. By contrast, C&C would use the best scientific knowledge to set maximum safe levels of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere (now estimated at 450 parts per million), and hence the maximum cumulative emissions.

While the date of convergence would be subject to agreement, the principle of equal rights for all would remove the potentially endless negotiations that would otherwise occur, with each country making a case that its contribution to global reductions should be modified in light of its special circumstances.

Another important element of the C&C proposal is the ability of countries to trade carbon-emissions rights. Countries unable to manage within their agreed shares would, subject to verification and rules, be able to buy allocations of other countries or regions. Sales of these unused allocations, almost invariably by vendor countries in the Third World, would fund their development in sustainable, zero-emission ways. Developed countries, with high carbon-dioxide emissions, gain a mechanism to mitigate the expensive early retirement of their carbon capital stock, and benefit from the export markets for renewable technologies this restructuring would create.

The next step is for our government to adopt the principle of C&C, and to lead diplomatic efforts to establish it as the basis of future international agreement. The UK cannot act unilaterally. But this does not mean it cannot be in the vanguard. What would happen if it did? Or, put another way: how can a reducing emissions quota be shared out?

Based on the equity principle in C&C, the obvious answer is for a system of personal "carbon" rationing for the 50 per cent of energy that is used directly by individuals. Indeed, as part of a global agreement, per capita rationing would be the obvious mechanism for all countries.

The main features of this would be:

* Equal rations for all adults (and an appropriate fraction for children);

* Year-on-year reduction of the annual ration, signalled well in advance;

* Personal travel (including travel by air and public transport) and household energy use to be included;

* Tradeable rations between individuals; and

* A mandatory, not voluntary, arrangement, instituted by government.

Clearly, giving people equal carbon rations - an equal "right to pollute", or an equal right to use the atmosphere - is equitable in theory and reflects the international equity principle in the C&C proposal. There may have to be some exceptions to this rule. However, in general, it will be better for society to invest in provision for the energy efficiency of "exceptional" cases so that they can live more easily within their ration, rather than to keep tinkering with the ration. The more exceptions granted, the lower will have to be the ration for the rest of the population.

The rations will have to decrease over time, in response to the need both to reduce emissions and to allow for a rise in population. Giving due warning of future ration reductions would allow people to adapt homes, transport and lifestyles at the least cost and in the least disruptive way to them individually. Experience has shown that industry has been able to produce more effici- ent equipment (fridges, washing machines) at no extra cost if given time to adapt the design and manufacturing processes. The same is likely to be true of people adapting to low-energy, low-carbon lifestyles.

With personal travel and household energy use included, half of the energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in our economy is covered. The other half comes from the business, industry, commerce and public sectors, which produce the goods and services we all use.

In theory, it might be possible to manage this half by calculating the "embodied" emissions in each product or activity (such as all the emissions from the processes entailed in the production, transport and disposal of, say, stereo equipment, or cars) and give consumers a further allowance for buying products. But this would be very complex and data-intensive, as well as being very difficult to apply to some goods and services - how could you "carbon rate" a haircut, or a hospital stay? It would be much simpler to make the non-domestic sector directly responsible for reducing its share of CO2 emissions (for which a separate rationing scheme, on similar lines but not described in detail here, would be needed).

Not everyone will need to use their full carbon ration. Those who lead lives with lower energy requirements, and who invest in efficiency products and energy renewables, will have a surplus, which they can sell. Those who travel a lot, or live in very large or inefficient homes, will need to buy this surplus to permit them to continue with something like their usual lifestyle. Thus people will want to trade carbon rations.

Economic theory says that by allowing trading, any costs of adapting to a low-carbon economy will be minimised. Price would be determined by availability of the surplus set against the demand for it. For this purpose, a "white" market would be created, possibly via a government clearing "bank", or a version of the online auction system eBay (cBay?). There would be little chance for a "black" market to develop.

History suggests that appeals to reason and conscience have not been sufficiently effective in achieving major changes in our irresponsible patterns of behaviour and consumption. To be effective, therefore, carbon rationing would have to be mandatory. A voluntary approach would not succeed: the "free-rider" would have far too much to gain.

But managing carbon rationing should be simple. Each person would receive an electronic card containing that year's carbon credits. The card would have to be presented on purchase of energy or travel services, and the correct amount of credits would be deducted. The technologies and systems already in place for direct-debit systems and credit cards could be used.

A number of social, technical and policy innovations would be needed to make it possible for people to live within their carbon allowances. On the technical side, these could include "smart meters" that inform people how much of their annual ration is left; which appliances are using most energy; and how much carbon could be saved by, for example, reducing the time spent in the shower, or by heating bedrooms only in the late evening. Alternatively, energy companies could install sophisticated carbon-management systems in houses, which take these decisions automatically and guarantee carbon savings. In terms of policy, equipment that uses less energy could be favoured through devices such as VAT, labelling, minimum standards and subsidy.

At present, the purchase of the most efficient types of equipment is encouraged, whether it be cars, refrigerators or washing machines. In future, the emphasis will be on items using the lowest amount of energy or with the lowest emissions, with much better information available at the point of purchase of everything that uses energy, from new and existing homes to televisions and mobile phones. It will thus be in the economic interest of manufacturers to supply goods that make the lowest use of carbon. Socially, one would envisage that attitudes would change so that thrift rather than profligacy in energy use and carbon emissions was increasingly preferred.

There has been no recent experience of long-term rationing (other than by price) in the UK. The nearest comparison is the food rationing introduced in the Second World War, when the availability of food, clothing and other goods had to be reduced drastically. Despite difficulties, contemporary opinion polls showed that rationing and food control were, on the whole, popular. Equity - the principle of a flat-rate ration for all - was a key feature of its introduction and maintenance and was widely accepted as the only fair approach, to which no one could reasonably object.

In the case of climate change, the principles of carbon rationing are far more straightforward than the quite complicated wartime system. But the benefits would be less immediately obvious. It is therefore particularly important that a cross-party consensus be achieved on the benefits of C&C and the adoption of carbon rationing. The future of the planet is too important an issue to be treated as a political football. It would be devastating if there were no common purpose, and instead political groupings vied with each other to obtain electoral support by making less demanding commitments on climate change in manifestos.

However, the likelihood of achieving such co-operation is by no means remote - it is just that a consensus has not yet been sought. None of the main UK parties has expressed reservations about either the significance of climate change or the need for serious, concerted action to limit its impacts. The challenge now is to convince politicians - and the electorate they represent - that the time for concerted action has arrived.

Carbon rationing is not a perfect solution. It will have its losers as well as its winners. Energy-intensive industries, such as motor manufacturing and international tourism (dependent as it increasingly is on flying, which is the most damaging of all human activities from a climate-change perspective), will no doubt object strongly to the concept of C&C. Its adoption will lead to a steady reduction in demand for their products and services, with consequent job losses. The future of international events attracting participants from across the world - whether for sporting, cultural, academic or business purposes - is, clearly, threatened. But such consequences cannot be considered a sufficient justification to reject what is so obviously the only assured solution to a planet-threatening problem.

The rationing system will bring rising environmental benefits in its wake, particularly in terms of the imperative of limiting damage from climate change, while spheres of the economy that are not energy-intensive - such as education, non-motorised travel, local shopping and leisure activities and domestic tourism - are likely to prosper. The important thing to remember is that this proposal is for a phased reduction, over a sufficiently long period to ease the transition towards ecologically sustainable patterns of activity.

And if a world with personal carbon rationing seems unacceptable, just imagine how much less acceptable would be a world in which effective action had not been taken to tackle climate change. The point of departure must be that, if we do not make substantial alterations to our lifestyles, the problem of climate change will intensify.

Education will be vital to break the cycle of denial. The media, too, will have a role to play - although given the proportion of their income derived from advertising "high carbon" products and activities, they are unlikely to lead the way. Meanwhile, anyone who cares about our future wellbeing and that of the planet should not turn a blind eye to the likelihood that the consequences of inaction will be awesome.

Blair outlines strategy to cut global warming

By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor

26 May 2004

Tony Blair committed the Government yesterday to taking measures to tackle global warming one of the priorities for Britain's presidency of the G8 from January.

But the Prime Minister stopped short of endorsing the call by Professor James Lovelock for Britain to start a massive expansion of the nuclear industry to avert catastrophic climate change.

Mr Blair was pressed about the remarks by Professor Lovelock reported in The Independent on Monday.

Mr Blair said: "The long-term threat to the stability of the planet comes from the environment and from climate change - that's why we have made it a priority for us, along with Africa, at the G8 summit next year."

Mr Blair said Europe had played "quite a part" in persuading Russia to agree to sign up to the Kyoto protocols, which could leave the US isolated among the major industrialised countries in the G8. He added that he had committed Britain to tackling climate change in a recording he has made for a conference on renewable energy in Germany next Tuesday.

"We are absolutely committed to cutting carbon dioxide emissions and to ratification of Kyoto," he said.

Zac Goldsmith, the editor of the Ecologist magazine, condemned Professor Lovelock's proposal to increase reliance on nuclear energy, arguing yesterday that it could lead to vast areas being contaminated with radiation if a terrorist attack used planes as bombs.

James Lovelock: Nuclear power is the only green solution

We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger

24 May 2004 

Sir David King, the Government's chief scientist, was far-sighted to say that global warming is a more serious threat than terrorism. He may even have underestimated, because, since he spoke, new evidence of climate change suggests it could be even more serious, and the greatest danger that civilisation has faced so far.

Most of us are aware of some degree of warming; winters are warmer and spring comes earlier. But in the Arctic, warming is more than twice as great as here in Europe and in summertime, torrents of melt water now plunge from Greenland's kilometre-high glaciers. The complete dissolution of Greenland's icy mountains will take time, but by then the sea will have risen seven metres, enough to make uninhabitable all of the low lying coastal cities of the world, including London, Venice, Calcutta, New York and Tokyo. Even a two metre rise is enough to put most of southern Florida under water.

The floating ice of the Arctic Ocean is even more vulnerable to warming; in 30 years, its white reflecting ice, the area of the US, may become dark sea that absorbs the warmth of summer sunlight, and further hastens the end of the Greenland ice. The North Pole, goal of so many explorers, will then be no more than a point on the ocean surface.

Not only the Arctic is changing; climatologists warn a four-degree rise in temperature is enough to eliminate the vast Amazon forests in a catastrophe for their people, their biodiversity, and for the world, which would lose one of its great natural air conditioners.

The scientists who form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2001 that global temperature would rise between two and six degrees Celsius by 2100. Their grim forecast was made perceptible by last summer's excessive heat; and according to Swiss meteorologists, the Europe-wide hot spell that killed over 20,000 was wholly different from any previous heat wave. The odds against it being a mere deviation from the norm were 300,000 to one. It was a warning of worse to come.

What makes global warming so serious and so urgent is that the great Earth system, Gaia, is trapped in a vicious circle of positive feedback. Extra heat from any source, whether from greenhouse gases, the disappearance of Arctic ice or the Amazon forest, is amplified, and its effects are more than additive. It is almost as if we had lit a fire to keep warm, and failed to notice, as we piled on fuel, that the fire was out of control and the furniture had ignited. When that happens, little time is left to put out the fire before it consumes the house. Global warming, like a fire, is accelerating and almost no time is left to act.

So what should we do? We can just continue to enjoy a warmer 21st century while it lasts, and make cosmetic attempts, such as the Kyoto Treaty, to hide the political embarrassment of global warming, and this is what I fear will happen in much of the world. When, in the 18th century, only one billion people lived on Earth, their impact was small enough for it not to matter what energy source they used.

But with six billion, and growing, few options remain; we can not continue drawing energy from fossil fuels and there is no chance that the renewables, wind, tide and water power can provide enough energy and in time. If we had 50 years or more we might make these our main sources. But we do not have 50 years; the Earth is already so disabled by the insidious poison of greenhouse gases that even if we stop all fossil fuel burning immediately, the consequences of what we have already done will last for 1,000 years. Every year that we continue burning carbon makes it worse for our descendants and for civilisation.

Worse still, if we burn crops grown for fuel this could hasten our decline. Agriculture already uses too much of the land needed by the Earth to regulate its climate and chemistry. A car consumes 10 to 30 times as much carbon as its driver; imagine the extra farmland required to feed the appetite of cars.

By all means, let us use the small input from renewables sensibly, but only one immediately available source does not cause global warming and that is nuclear energy. True, burning natural gas instead of coal or oil releases only half as much carbon dioxide, but unburnt gas is 25 times as potent a greenhouse agent as is carbon dioxide. Even a small leakage would neutralise the advantage of gas.

The prospects are grim, and even if we act successfully in amelioration, there will still be hard times, as in war, that will stretch our grandchildren to the limit. We are tough and it would take more than the climate catastrophe to eliminate all breeding pairs of humans; what is at risk is civilisation. As individual animals we are not so special, and in some ways are like a planetary disease, but through civilisation we redeem ourselves and become a precious asset for the Earth; not least because through our eyes the Earth has seen herself in all her glory.

There is a chance we may be saved by an unexpected event such as a series of volcanic eruptions severe enough to block out sunlight and so cool the Earth. But only losers would bet their lives on such poor odds. Whatever doubts there are about future climates, there are no doubts that greenhouse gases and temperatures both are rising.

We have stayed in ignorance for many reasons; important among them is the denial of climate change in the US where governments have failed to give their climate scientists the support they needed. The Green lobbies, which should have given priority to global warming, seem more concerned about threats to people than with threats to the Earth, not noticing that we are part of the Earth and wholly dependent upon its well being. It may take a disaster worse than last summer's European deaths to wake us up.

Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media. These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. Nearly one third of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe air laden with that all pervasive carcinogen, oxygen. If we fail to concentrate our minds on the real danger, which is global warming, we may die even sooner, as did more than 20,000 unfortunates from overheating in Europe last summer.

I find it sad and ironic that the UK, which leads the world in the quality of its Earth and climate scientists, rejects their warnings and advice, and prefers to listen to the Greens. But I am a Green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy.

Even if they were right about its dangers, and they are not, its worldwide use as our main source of energy would pose an insignificant threat compared with the dangers of intolerable and lethal heat waves and sea levels rising to drown every coastal city of the world. We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear - the one safe, available, energy source - now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet.

The writer is an independent scientist and the creator of the Gaia hypothesis of the Earth as a self-regulating organism. 

US isolated as Russia moves to back Kyoto

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor

23 May 2004

President George Bush's bid to stop international action to combat global warming faces failure this weekend, as he is left more isolated than ever before both at home and abroad.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin - who will effectively decide whether the Kyoto Protocol stands or falls - announced on Friday that his country would "rapidly move towards ratification" in the wake of a complex deal with the European Union.

One British source close to negotiating the deal said yesterday that the announcement was "more than I had dared to hope". Another said he thought it increased the likelihood of the treaty coming into effect "from less that 50 per cent to about 90 per cent".

Mr Bush is also coming under increasing pressure at home from industry, Congress and Republican governors. The Senate, unanimously opposed to the Kyoto Protocol seven years ago, is expected to pass a resolution backing strong action on global warming next year, whoever wins the US presidential election.

Mr Putin's announcement, by far the strongest statement of support for the treaty that he has yet made, immediately followed the EU's agreement, at a Moscow summit, to drop objections to Russia joining the World Trade Organisation.

Under the protocol's complex terms, Russia's support is all that is needed to bring it into effect. But over recent months, President Putin has been predicted to reject it, dooming it to failure.

Mr Putin's economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, has been increasingly strident in his condemnations; he described it last month as an "economic Auschwitz".

Last week, a report by experts from the Russian Academy of Sciences, led by Professor Yuri Israel, another prominent critic, told the President that ratifying the treaty would damage the country's economy. And on the eve of the summit senior Russian government sources were insisting that Kyoto would not be on the agenda.

Yet, almost unnoticed, Mr Putin has been inching in the opposite direction. In a meeting with Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission, last month, he privately distanced himself from Mr Illarionov. In another, with the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, he discreetly intimated that Russia might soon endorse the treaty.

Concern about the US's policies in Iraq has played a part in the shift, as has a desire for warmer relations with the EU, now Russia's neighbour following the accession of Eastern European countries this month. But the crucial factor has been gas prices. Russians pay only a fifth as much for the fuel as its overseas customers; until now the EU has insisted that prices must be equalised, at the risk of severe damage to the economy, if Russia is to be allowed to join the WTO.

Friday's deal, brokered by the EU trade commissioner, Pascal Lamy, will let Russia join the organisation so long as it doubles the domestic price. Mr Putin, who has been using Kyoto as a bargaining counter, can present this at home as an important political victory. It will also provide a boost to the growing support in the US for action on global warming. Opinion polls show that 70-80 per cent of Americans want their government to take the lead on combating climate change.

Surprisingly, Mr Bush is under pressure from the industry responsible for much of the pollution: electric power companies owning nearly two-fifths of US generating capacity have endorsed legislation that would compulsorily limit their emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global-warming gas. There are even indications that ExxonMobil, the main industry cheerleader for the President's position, is beginning to change its stance.

Three key Republican-governed states - California, New York and Massachusetts - have parted company with the President and moved to take aggressive measures to reduce emissions. Both houses of Congress have called on the Bush administration to return to the negotiating table.

Putin promises to 'speed up' Kyoto ratification

By Andrew Osborn in Moscow

22 May 2004

President Vladimir Putin saved the Kyoto climate change pact from extinction yesterday and stunned environmentalists by saying Russia would ratify it.

His announcement will allow the United Nations treaty to become legally binding and leaves America looking isolated on the world stage as an environmental sinner. Ending months of speculation, Mr Putin said Moscow would lend the pact its support despite advice from his own chief economic adviser to give it a wide berth.

The breakthrough came at an EU-Russia summit in Moscow during which Mr Putin won Brussels' endorsement for his country to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Mr Putin said this had paved the way for his country to return the favour and ratify Kyoto.

He said: "We support the Kyoto process. The fact that the EU has met us halfway in negotiations on the WTO could not but have helped Moscow's positive attitude to the question of ratifying the Kyoto protocol. We will speed up Russia's movement towards its ratification." But Mr Putin did not give a precise date for ratification, saying Russia still had some problems with its fine detail.

But the thrust of his comments was overwhelmingly positive. Analysts had long thought that Russia's reluctance to sign up to the pact was due to the Kremlin's desire to use it as a bargaining chip in other negotiations, a theory borne out by Mr Putin's statement yesterday.

Environmentalists had become concerned, however, by a series of negative statements about the pact emanating from some of Mr Putin's closest advisers. Two reports - one prepared by the country's academy of sciences and another by a senior policy adviser - recommended Mr Putin to reject it on the grounds that it would cause irreparable damage to Russia's booming economy.

Caught on the back foot yesterday, environmentalists rushed to welcome Mr Putin's announcement. Klaus Toepfer, head of the UN Environment Programme, said: "This is a very welcome and positive signal. It is vital that the Kyoto protocol enters into force as a first step towards stabilising the global climate. Ratification by Russia is the last crucial step."

1. Warming up: the debate over a movie that claims to be a vision of the future

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

08 May 2004

 The storyline begins with a chunk of ice the size of Scotland falling into the Antarctic sea. It continues, at breathtaking speed, with hailstones as big as grapefruit battering Tokyo, hurricanes pounding Hawaii, snowstorms in Delhi and tornadoes whipping through Los Angeles. New York and London are plunged into a new ice age.

Welcome to the latest Hollywood blockbuster, The Day After Tomorrow, which depicts climate change as a dramatic series of disasters sweeping across the world.

The makers insist the film, starring Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal, has its basis in scientific fact, but climate researchers have questioned the way it represents the speed and manner of climate change.

Critics say the film is seriously misleading and could cause the public to be become inured to the threat posed by climate change when they see it being trivialised by the same Hollywood director who made Independence Day.

But the science adviser behind the movie has hit back at its critics, arguing that The Day After Tomorrow, due for worldwide release on 28 May, will do more to raise the public awareness of the greatest environmental issue of our times than any number of research papers and documentaries.

Michael Molitor, a former climate change consultant, said he had already attracted more media interest over his connection with the film than at any time in 20 years of working on the science and politics of global warming. "The amount of commentary by climate scientists on this film has been unbelievable and I find it almost comical," Dr Molitor told The Independent. "This film could actually do more in helping us move us in the right direction than all the scientific work and all the [US congressional] testimonies put together."

Set in the not-too-distant future, The Day After Tomorrow is based on the idea that global warming could trigger a sudden and dramatic change in the planet's climate system.

Roland Emmerich, the film's director, has chosen a sudden collapse of the Gulf Stream and the huge body of heatit carries from the Caribbean to the north-east coast of America and Western Europe.

Oceanographers know that the Gulf Stream relies on a second, deep-water current running in the opposite direction along the seabed creating a "conveyor belt" driven by the sinking of cold, salty water in the north-eastern Atlantic, a phenomenon called thermohaline circulation. But this engine for the Gulf Stream could in theory be interrupted by the melting of the Greenland ice sheet as it pumps huge volumes of freshwater into the Atlantic, diluting the salinity and hence density of the surface water.

"A change in the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic is one of several abrupt climate change scenarios that we have some familiarity with," said Dr Molitor. "There's some disagreement about the probability but the fact that that link has been made is quite accepted. On that level the film is accurate.Where the film departs from our knowledge is where the changes in the story occur on a timescale that's probably faster than we expect."

When climatologists talk of sudden changes they usually mean a period of decades or even centuries, but this is far too slow to sustain the pace of a Hollywood film, he said.

"No one has ever made any public claims that this film is completely accurate. This is entertainment," said Dr Molitor. "The trade-off is between a significantly more accurate film that would depict a more accurate story that is only seen by a million people, or a film with a more exaggerated storyline that is seen by 500 million people.

Other scientists are not convinced. Bogi Hansen, an oceanographer at the Faeroese Fisheries Laboratories, said that exaggerating the effects of global warming could lead to a public backlash.

"I don't think it's justifiable because you lose credibility and people tend to react in the opposite direction when they find something is not true. They then say 'there's no problem'," said Dr Hansen, who has yet to see the film.

Other scientists, including Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser, and senior figures in the Met Office have been invited to a private screening next week in London.

In America, reaction within the scientific community was initially muted. The New York Times revealed that climatologists at Nasa, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, had received an official instruction not to comment on the film for fear of upsetting the White House, which is famously sceptical of climate change.

Roland Emmerich, who will be interviewed on Sky television as part of its "End of the World Week" on 17 May, insisted the fundamental basis of the plot of his film was scientifically sound and that it served an essential dramatic purpose. "At the core of any 'disaster movie' there always has to be something factual, something real for the audience to grab onto," Mr Emmerich said.

"What we already know about global warming and climate change has provided us with a great fact base for the movie," he said.

To emphasise his personal commitment to the environmental cause, Mr Emmerich has paid $200,000 (£125,000) out of his own pocket to Future Forests, an organisation that promises to make the film "carbon neutral" by offsetting the energy used during filming by planting hundreds of trees.

Blair's drive to cut global warming hit as CO2 emissions rise

By Marie Woolf,  Chief Political Correspondent

25 March 2004

The Prime Minister's desire to put Britain at the forefront of the battle to cut global warming is expected to receive a dramatic setback today when figures will show that CO emissions in the UK rose last year.

Official figures to be released today are expected to show there was an increase of between 1 and 2 per cent in carbon dioxide emissions, despite a pledge to meet targets to reduce them significantly.

The figures come after Tony Blair has pledged to take fresh strides to put global warming back at the top of the international agenda. Mr Blair plans to make reducing global warming a main plank of the UK's presidency of the G8 group of leading industrialised countries next year. He is also expected to apply fresh pressure on the American President George Bush to sign up to the Kyoto protocol to tackle CO emissions, the principal gas causing global warming.

The elevation of the issue up the political agenda follows a warning from Britain's chief scientist about the threat to the environment from greenhouse gas emissions.

The UK has pledged to cut CO emissions by 2010 - an even more ambitious target than the Kyoto agreement, which commits the UK to a 12.5 per cent reduction.

Norman Baker MP, the Liberal Democrat environment spokesman, said the rise in emissions was extremely embarrassing for ministers and showed the Government was "failing catastrophically on climate change". He said the switch from coal-fired power stations to gas-fired power stations, which has helped reduce CO emissions, shielded a lack of overall commitment by ministers to try to tackle the issue.

"They have to address the transport sector where carbon emissions are going out of control. Gordon Brown did nothing in the Budget to help because he failed to increase fuel duty. It's time the Prime Minister started listening to his chief scientist and stopped listening to President Bush."

In 1990, the UK produced about 605 million tons of carbon and emissions. The figure fell after coal-fired power stations went out of service but, since 2000, it has crept up and is now about 8 per cent lower than 1990 levels. In 1997, when the Government came to power, there were 152.9 million tons of carbon emitted. The figures for 2003, to be released by environment and trade and industry ministers today, are expected to show a marginal increase from the 150.4 million tons of carbon emitted in 2002.

Government sources say the figures are "going in the wrong direction" and admit that it will be a struggle to meet the ambitious targets which they have set themselves.

Last night, green groups attacked ministers for failing to adhere to their own policy. Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said: "The insane growth forecasts for aviation that are backed by the Government will utterly wipe out any progress made in renewable energy and energy efficiency. The Government is falling behind its own targets and must pull its finger out."

Global warming will plunge Britain into new ice age 'within decades'

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor

25 January 2004

Britain is likely to be plunged into an ice age within our lifetime by global warming, new research suggests.

A study, which is being taken seriously by top government scientists, has uncovered a change "of remarkable amplitude" in the circulation of the waters of the North Atlantic.

Similar events in pre-history are known to have caused sudden "flips" of the climate, bringing ice ages to northern Europe within a few decades. The development - described as "the largest and most dramatic oceanic change ever measured in the era of modern instruments", by the US Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, which led the research - threatens to turn off the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe's weather mild.

If that happens, Britain and northern Europe are expected to switch abruptly to the climate of Labrador - which is on the same latitude - bringing a nightmare scenario where farmland turns to tundra and winter temperatures drop below -20C. The much-heralded cold snap predicted for the coming week would seem balmy by comparison.

A report by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme in Sweden - launched by Nobel prize-winner Professor Paul Crutzen and other top scientists - warned last week that pollution threatened to "trigger changes with catastrophic consequences" like these.

Scientists have long expected that global warming could, paradoxically, cause a devastating cooling in Europe by disrupting the Gulf Stream, which brings as much heat to Britain in winter as the sun does: the US National Academy of Sciences has even described such abrupt, dramatic changes as "likely". But until now it has been thought that this would be at least a century away.

The new research, by scientists at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Acquaculture Science at Lowestoft and Canada's Bedford Institute of Oceanography, as well as Woods Hole, indicates that this may already be beginning to happen.

Dr Ruth Curry, the study's lead scientist, says: "This has the potential to change the circulation of the ocean significantly in our lifetime. Northern Europe will likely experience a significant cooling."

Robert Gagosian, the director of Woods Hole, considered one of the world's leading oceanographic institutes, said: "We may be approaching a threshold that would shut down [the Gulf Stream] and cause abrupt climate changes.

"Even as the earth as a whole continues to warm gradually, large regions may experience a precipitous and disruptive shift into colder climates." The scientists, who studied the composition of the waters of the Atlantic from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego, found that they have become "very much" saltier in the tropics and subtropics and "very much" fresher towards the poles over the past 50 years.

This is alarming because the Gulf Stream is driven by cold, very salty water sinking in the North Atlantic. This pulls warm surface waters northwards, forming the current.

The change is described as the "fingerprint" of global warming. As the world heats up, more water evaporates from the tropics and falls as rain in temperate and polar regions, making the warm waters saltier and the cold ones fresher. Melting polar ice adds more fresh water.

Ominously, the trend has accelerated since 1990, during which time the 10 hottest years on record have occurred. Many studies have shown that similar changes in the waters of the North Atlantic in geological time have often plunged Europe into an ice age, sometimes bringing the change in as little as a decade.

The National Academy of Sciences says that the jump occurs in the same way as "the slowly increasing pressure of a finger eventually flips a switch and turns on a light". Once the switch has occurred the new, hostile climate, lasts for decades at least, and possibly centuries.

When the Gulf Stream abruptly turned off about 12,700 years ago, it brought about a 1,300-year cold period, known as the Younger Dryas. This froze Britain in continuous permafrost, drove summer temperatures down to 10C and winter ones to -20C, and brought icebergs as far south as Portugal. Europe could not sustain anything like its present population. Droughts struck across the globe, including in Asia, Africa and the American west, as the disruption of the Gulf Stream affected currents worldwide.

Some scientists say that this is the "worst-case scenario" and that the cooling may be less dramatic, with the world's climate "flickering" between colder and warmer states for several decades. But they add that, in practice, this would be almost as catastrophic for agriculture and civilisation.

One man can take the heat off. Will he heed the global warning?

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor

07 August 2003

The temperature in central London yesterday reached 35.4C (95.7F) - the hottest on record - with Gravesend in Kent even hotter, at 35.9C (96.6F). Even in Glasgow it was in the 80s Fahrenheit, and the UK record of 37.1C (98.8F) could be broken on Saturday, forecasters said, as all across Europe the merciless sun roasts citizens, sets forests ablaze and makes rivers run dry.

But this heatwave is nothing compared to what global warming has in store, United Nations scientists say - and the international agreement to counter it is now hanging by a thread. Its name is Putin.

If Russia's leader and his government do not soon ratify the Kyoto Protocol - the global warming treaty - the whole agonisingly constructed international mechanism for trying to deal with climate change will fall apart. To the mounting concern of officials in many countries, they show few signs of doing so.

The danger is passing unremarked by most people feeling the heat this summer, a summer whose unusual temperatures and extreme weather events across the world have already been highlighted, and explicitly linked to global warming, by the World Meteorological Organisation.

India, Sri Lanka and the United States have registered record high temperatures, rainfall and tornadoes; continental Europe has seen forest fires like never before and great rivers such as the Po in Italy reduced to a trickle; and now it is Britain's turn.

Yesterday a mass of air with the heat of a desert enveloped southern England, breaking records. And the highest temperature recorded nationally, Gravesend's 35.9C, may be exceeded when even warmer air arrives on Saturday, possibly breaking the UK temperature record of 37.1C (98.8F) set at Cheltenham in 1990.

In central London, which felt to anyone walking its streets like a Turkish bath, the mercury in the thermometer on the roof of the London Weather Centre reached 35.4C at 2.59pm, beating the previous record for the capital of 35C (95F) set in August 1990.

Across the country, train travellers faced a third successive day of delays because of the speed restrictions imposed amid fears that lines could buckle in the heat. Network Rail quoted 11 instances of rails buckling this week and said some rails had been as hot as 50C (122F).

On the roads, drivers were warned by the AA to look out for melting carriageways. London's big wheel, the London Eye, was closed. Otters at a Birmingham aquarium were so hot that managers brought in a supply of snow from an indoor skiing centre.

But if all this heat feels unprecedented, it will feel much hotter in the years to come, according to the scientists of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as an atmosphere thickened by increasing amounts of waste gases from industry, energy generation and transport retains more and more of the heat from the sun, like the panes of a greenhouse.

Cutting back on emissions of those greenhouse gases, principally the carbon dioxide (CO) left after burning coal, gas and oil, is the only realistic option the world has to rein in a runaway global temperature rise that threatens real disaster, with extensive droughts, agricultural failure, more severe storms, and a worldwide rise in sea level predicted as consequences.

The Kyoto Protocol - hammered out in Japan in December 1997 between 180 countries, the whole international community - agreed to begin making those cuts by using renewable energy schemes, improving energy efficiency and developing technologies that do not emit CO, such as the hydrogen fuel cell to replace the internal combustion engine.

The developed nations took the lead at Kyoto, accepting targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions to an average of 5 per cent below their 1990 levels, by 2010, as a first step.

But after President George Bush, the oilman son of an oilman father, unilaterally withdrew the US from the treaty in 2001 - saying that the American economy would be damaged by the cuts, and that it was unfair that none were being made by the developing nations such as China and India - the protocol's particular arithmetic means that Russia, the second biggest CO emitter after the US, must now ratify it for it to enter into force.

No matter that Britain - last year - and more than 100 other countries have already ratified. Without the Russians, the commitments are no longer binding. The treaty is dead. The world will have to think of something else to try to deal with what is probably the greatest threat it has faced.

And concern is mounting, especially among European governments and environmentalists, that the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and his government - the only major nation apart from the United States not to have ratified - may never do so.

British officials are constantly analysing Russian pronouncements on Kyoto, and find they usually contain "warmish" words about the treaty - but always stop short of pledging ratification.

It is known there are many people in Washington who hope and believe that Russia will not ratify, and some European governments are suspicious that the Bush administration may be actively pressing the Russians to do nothing.

Tony Blair, on the other hand, has personally pressed Mr Putin to ratify on numerous occasions, as have the German Chancellor Gerhard Schr6der and other European Union leaders. British diplomats raise the issue whenever they meet their Russian opposite numbers. They have all got nowhere.

What makes Russia's failure to ratify the treaty potentially calamitous is that it was almost impossible to construct a common position on global warming. Since the initial agreement to act, at the World Climate Conference in Geneva in 1990, reaching that common position has taken exhaustive negotiations by many thousands of officials and politicians from around the world, all of them with different domestic interests and agendas.

Even after the Bush withdrawal, the treaty remained intact and its final technical details were painstakingly put together in a further series of conferences. But a Russian veto means the end of everything. A senior British official said: "It would be absolutely disastrous."

Roger Higman, senior climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: "If Russia doesn't ratify Kyoto, 13 years of negotiations will have been wasted and talks on further cuts in emissions will be stillborn.

"But what's worse is that Russian failure to ratify would be a victory for George Bush and his corporate backers, and a catastrophic blow to European diplomacy. It would demonstrate once and for all that America can dictate the terms of any global agreement - vetoing those that don't suit its interests.

"If Tony Blair's foreign policy is to have an ethical dimension, he must make Russian ratification of Kyoto an absolute priority. We need the same determination to get Kyoto ratified that Mr Blair showed when drumming up support for the war in Iraq."

On 30 September, President Putin will make the opening speech at an international conference on the science of climate change held in Moscow. It would be the perfect stage to announce that Russia will ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

  Those feeling this week's heat, who can sense what global warming will be like, should hope and pray that he does.