Alternattiva Demokratika Chairman, Arnold Cassola, has expressed his dismay on the EU’s postponement of its decision on measures to combat climate change and urged the Maltese Government not to give up in its bid to see the EU’s climate change strategy to be in place by the end of the year.
Recently Labour MP Leo Brincat has given notice of a Private Member’s Bill calling for a strategic plan of action to tackle climate change and introducing a system of accountability to ensure that the plan is adhered to and climate change is placed high on the national agenda. Even though the official government reaction to Mr Brincat’s bill was that a strategy had to be first worked out before legislating on the measures needed for its implementation, it is pretty obvious that the PN, the MLP and AD are taking the threat of climate change very seriously. The political rhetoric is there, all right!
All this talk about climate change strategy translates into concrete efforts aimed at the reduction of carbon emissions. In fact, the postponement on the EU front is the result of dithering by some member states, particularly Italy and Poland who insist that their economies cannot bear the added burden that reductions of carbon emissions would impose. The main issue for Poland and most other former Soviet bloc states is the use of 2005, rather than 1990, as the baseline for setting new emissions targets. They contend that they had made significant cuts in carbon emissions in the intervening period – a fact that is attributed by some to the economic decline that followed the fall of Communism, and not to any effort at reducing these emissions!
In other countries, however, the call for a climate change strategy is not falling on deaf ears. As a result of Gordon Brown’s recent reshuffle of the UK Cabinet, a new ‘Energy and Climate Department’ was established. Yet the efforts of the British government to reduce carbon emissions came under heavy criticism from former Greenpeace activist Bjorn Lomborg in a scathing article in The Times of London on September 30. Lomborg is adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School and author of: ‘Cool it: The Sceptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming’.
In his article, Lomborg does not contest global warming and accepts the conclusions of the UN climate panel. However, he argues that this phenomenon will “most probably warm the planet by between 1.6 and 3.8°C above current temperatures by the end of the century” and insists that the total cost of the consequences of this warming is estimated to be US$ 15 trillion, which is only half of 1% of the net worth of all the wealth that is projected to be generated in the world during this century.
He compares this with the British Government plan to reduce carbon emissions by 950-1,100 million tonnes of CO2 by 2030; investing about £100 billion in order to achieve this aim. From computer modelling, it results that the temperature increase by 2100 without the British effort would be 2.4536181°C and the huge UK effort would reduce this to 2.4532342°C. This is a difference of about 0.00038°C, or about one three-thousandth of a degree in a hundred years.
The UK emits about 2% of global CO2 and if its effort is multiplied by 50 to reduce the other 98% proportionately by the same amount, the result would still be trivial at a cost of £100 billion. So Britain’s efforts to reduce the speed of global warming will cost huge sums of money and have a pitifully tiny effect. I dare not ponder upon the effects of Malta’s as yet unannounced efforts!
Lomborg insists that this clearly indicates that governments have the wrong priorities. With much less money, they will be able to cope with global warming (when it happens) and meanwhile fund alternative energy research and give clean drinking water, sanitation, basic education and healthcare to every human being in the planet!
Lomborg concluded his article succinctly: “When it comes to climate change, we have to come to our senses. Yes global warming is real and caused by human beings, but it doesn’t mean we should panic in our policy decisions. We need to do the right thing – and invest in discovering and developing new low-carbon technology.”
Lomborg seems to be the voice of reason. There are others who take up a much more extreme position and even pooh-pooh the idea that we can forecast climate change and control it. One such is Philip Stott, who is Professor Emeritus of “Biogeography” at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London and former editor of the “Journal of Biogeography”.
Stott recently berated The Economist for claiming that “global warming is happening faster than expected”. In a letter he sent to the authoritative newspaper he insists that the world’s average surface temperature has exhibited no warming since 1998 and that recent studies demonstrate that it may stay roughty the same for at least a further decade.
Basically, Stott argues that our planet has been subject to climate change ever since it was formed and climate is the result of so many factors that it is both presumptuous and ridiculous to consider just one factor – carbon emissions caused by human activity – as the only variable that sways the equation. In short Stott, who was invited to address the British Conservative Party conference only a few days ago, debunks all this talk of climate change as nonsense. In his words: “Global warming has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices.”
Evidently Stott is not shy of exaggerating in order to stress his point of view.
The trouble with climate change is that, computer modeling notwithstanding, there is a lot of guesswork involved. The gulf between the alarmists and the sceptics is quite impressive and both present reasonably convincing arguments. There are even some who argue that whatever the truth, we have to take this problem seriously just in case it is!
Of course, there is also the philosophical approach to all this. Isn’t it pretentious and conceited for Homo sapiens to believe he can control the climate of the planet he inhabits? Even though some damage has been caused by his actions, what makes him think that he can ‘save the planet’?
Even more intriguing is the question as to why and how has humanity decided that the climate we have been experiencing in the last century is the optimum one for planet earth. Did anyone mention ‘playing God’?

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