Green Blogging

Is climate change real?

After reading and reviewing Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, I decided that I ought to read a book coming from the other side.  An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming by Nigel Lawson jumped off the bookshop’s shelves, so I duly took it home with me (after paying for it first of course).

It was not an easy book to read.  Mr Lawson is skeptical about climate change.  Although accepting that he is not a scientist and therefore cannot really challenge scientific evidence, he says that so far as he can see there is little evidence to justify many of the statements made about the immediate danger to our planet.  He points out that most of us have lifestyles which are far more comfortable than that of any of our ancestors, and the indications are that this will continue.

Climate change and the alleged need to save the planet from global warning has, he claims, become a new religion, and most of us are feverent believers and unable to see the truth, ie that it is not happening.

These are worrying ideas.  Are we all deluding ourselves?  I am not a scientist either, and haven’t a clue, from my own knowledge,  whether the planet is warming up, cooling down, or just staying the same.  But can anyone?  I once read somewhere that the only accurate model of the planet is the planet itself.  We don’t know.

So what if climate change is not happening?

So where does this leave me as a green supporter?  Should I gleefully join those who have been crowing over the ineptly drafted emails hacked from the UEA scientists? Should we turn the heating up, stop worrying about plastic bags at the supermarket, and forget about the train holidays in favour of air travel?

My answer

I have, essentially, had green leanings all my life  I have worried about pollution and wanted to live a  greener life.  These beliefs were not because I thought the planet was overheating.  No-one thought this twenty years ago.  I  believed these things because I though they were right.

People don’t support green principals and ideas just because they worry about global warning.  There are many sensible reasons for acting on green principals and developing the technologies described by Chris Goodall in his book :

• It is unwise to become too dependent on oil, because one day it will run out.  Peak oil it is called.
• The oil industry can be very destructive to the environment.  As I write a huge oil slick is approaching the beautiful and unique Florida coast, threatening to do enormous damage
• Plastic bags wash out to sea, where they are unsightly and can strangle wildlife

There are also often sound economic and other reasons for developing green technologies, as this post on the UEA sportspark shows.  Even though we have a long way to go in developing green technology :

• for virtually all insulation and micro generation projects there is a payback time (the problem is being able to afford to do them in the first place)
• windfarms usually cost little to run once they are up (apart from basic maintenance)
• it is healthier to walk modest distances, rather than to drive everywhere (and cheaper)
• growing (some of) your own food is healthier, both because the food is nicer and because of the exercise involved in growing it

So if Mr Lawson is right and the planet is not warming, then good.  That will be nicer for our descendants.  However this does not mean that we should not develop green technologies as fast as we can.

Look to the future not the past

When I was younger a computer was something which took up an entire room, and the internet had not been invented.  Now I can perch a computer, just as powerful if not more so than those room filing monsters, on my knee while I type this post, and carry one even smaller in my handbag (its called an iphone).

There is no reason why green technology should not develop equally as dramatically, and in as unexpected ways.  We should not hark back to a golden past allegedly lost, but look forward to an exciting future.  But that future will be more sustainable if we use the resources at our disposal in a responsible way, and respect our environment.  That is only common sense. And even if the planet is not warming dangerously just now (although of course if could be), it may still do so in the future.  We only have the one planet – can we risk it? It behoves us to take care.