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Tackling climate change costs money

Money from the UK Government’s economic stimulus package should be used to bolster flood defences, Smith School Director Sir David King says.

In an article in The Independent he says that sewer and drainage systems must be improved and homes and businesses better protected from overflowing rivers and coastal erosion.

Global warming is raising sea levels and making storms and floods more frequent, Sir David warns. These are threats highlighted in a government study five years ago, which Sir David led.

Sir David’s article follows the publication last week of the Environment Agency’sFlooding in England report which warns that one in six homes in England is at risk of flooding and calls for substantial extra funds to protect against floods.

Sir David strongly supports the agency’s call. In his article he says: “Floods that today we would expect only every 150 years could hit us every 10 years by 2100 if we do not significantly cut carbon emissions.”

He adds: “Governments are detailing their economic stimulus packages aimed at helping us out of our dire financial straits…Investing more in flood protection should be part of those packages and is crucial if we are to save money in the future.”

Not enough biofuel to go round

The potential for filling the world’s cars with biofuel may never meet demand, the Smith School’s Dr Oliver Inderwildi has warned international vehicle makers.

He told a meeting of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) this week that second generation biofuels – those that do not use the edible part of crops – could not fully fuel our current desire to drive.

“First generation biofuels have caused a lot of trouble but at the moment, we can’t produce enough second generation biofuel to replace our fossil fuels and probably never will,” he said in a keynote speech to a conference in Florence.

“The key things instead are to make car engines more efficient and reduce the weight and size of vehicles.”

Dr Inderwildi said that biofuels had been portrayed as a green panacea two years ago but that now they were being blamed for food shortages and price rises in many parts of the world.

More recently, electric vehicles had replaced biofuels as the great green hope but their use, particularly in the UK, had serious pitfalls too.

“Electric cars only make sense in France where only 10 per cent of electricity is generated by fossil fuels compared to nearly 80 per cent in the UK,” Dr Inderwildi said. “In Britain and elsewhere, more electric cars would simply shift emissions from the exhaust pipe to the power plant without any reduction.

“One of the most important things we can do is to reduce our fuel consumption and the new standards for fuel efficiency that President Obama is pushing through in the US are one way of doing that.

“If we cut fuel use and introduce second generation biofuels we will cut our transport emissions by a substantial amount. But we must de-carbonise our electric grid before we talk about the electrification of transport.”

Dr Inderwildi added that the US was unlikely to reduce its coal use in the near future. “Many of the swing states have a large coal industry which means that if you want to be President you had better be nice to coal. America is probably not going to move away from coal any time soon.”

Why we must switch to a low carbon economy

Al Gore and former UK Government Chief Scientist Sir David King will be amongst high profile speakers at The Times/Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment, in Oxford from 5-7July 2009.

More than 200 politicians, business leaders and academics are expected to attend the event with the President of Rwanda Paul Kagame, Indian Science Minister Shri Kapil Sibal, former BP Chief Executive Lord Browne and ex-London Mayor Ken Livingstone also addressing the conference.

The event, at Keble College, University of Oxford, will address the question: ‘Is there a model for low-carbon growth?’ with discussions focusing on how we ensure economic growth while simultaneously de-fossilising our economies.

International plans of action for governments, the private sector and academia should emerge from the World Forum, feeding into climate change talks in Copenhagen in December.

This year is regarded by many as the make-or-break year for agreeing a successor to the Kyoto climate change protocol, parts of which expire in 2012. Many of those attending the World Forum will be involved in the succession of meetings taking place in many parts of the world and leading up to the Copenhagen negotiations.

Sir David King, Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, said: “The World Forum will provide a unique opportunity for world leaders from governments, business and academe to develop their thinking together on the transformation to a low carbon global economy.”

Ends

Contact:

Michael Evans at Madano Partnership, 020 7593 4000

Notes to editors:

  • More details of the World Forum are available here
  • Most business sessions of the conference are open to journalists who should register their interest with, and submit interview bids to, Cath Harris, Smith School Communications Officer cath.harris@smithschool.ox.ac.uk / 01865 614925 / 07917 338266.
  • Sir David King will host World Forum media briefings on:

Ø Wednesday 1 July, 11-11.30am at the World Conference of Science Journalists

Ø Sunday 5 July, 11am-12noon at Keble College, Oxford

  • There will be press conference immediately after Al Gore’s closing speech on:

Ø Tuesday 7 July, 12noon-12.30 at Keble College, Oxford

  • Al Gore is only visiting briefly and unfortunately will not have time for interviews.
  • For accommodation in Oxford, click here
  • The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment is a unique interdisciplinary hub where international academics from a range of disciplines are working with the private sector and government to find solutions to the major environmental challenges of the 21st century. The School was founded in 2008 by a benefaction from the Smith Family Educational Foundation and will be the foremost institution of its kind in the world. The School’s work covers environmental economics, finance, international development, law, politics, and all areas relevant to the response of the private and public sectors to environmental problems. Units from across the University of Oxford are involved in the creation and ongoing work of the School. Professor Sir David King is the Smith School’s first director. Sir David was the UK government’s Chief Scientific Advisor from 2000 to 2007.

We need energy research more than ever before

The resurgence of interest in energy research and development has come none too soon, Smith School Director Sir David King told a conference today.

He said the need to keep the lights on, maintain competitiveness and reduce emissions meant energy research was “the most important topic of today.”

Sir David told delegates at the Oxford Energy Futures Conference at Oxford University that energy research had ground to a halt in the 1970s and 1980s because gas and electricity privatisation had led to energy companies buying in all they needed rather than conducting their own research, and because the discovery of North Sea oil and gas seemed to have fulfilled the UK’s long-term energy needs.

“But now we are running out of oil and gas rapidly so the issue of security of supply is once again very high on the agenda,” he said.

The need to cut emissions meant Sir David’s first job while UK Government chief scientist was to review the state of energy research. “Our habit of building post-industrial society out of fossil fuels was something we had to move away from.

“We have never needed research and development as much as today. We are losing the resources of the North Sea and having to de-carbonise our economy. There has never been such a dramatic transformation of such a strategic industry.”

Because of inertia in the climate system the consequences of our actions today would not be apparent for another 30 years, Sir David added. “That means that whatever we do, we are faced with adapting to rising temperatures and sea levels.

“But our actions now will assist future generations. We are demanding something quite remarkable from our politicians: to invest now for the benefit of those in the future. This is the biggest challenge our civilisation has ever had to face.”

Scientists call for CO2 limits

Scientists behind recent warnings about CO2 emissions and climate change have published an open letter urging negotiators at this week’s climate talks in Bonn to accept the need to limit emissions soon.

The experts, who include Smith School Deputy Director, Dr Dave Frame, and School Associate, Dr Myles Allen, warn that “any affordable strategy to avoid releasing too much carbon dioxide in total will require global emissions to peak soon.” They add that targets for cutting emissions should be met not by drastic greenhouse emissions after 2020 but by steady cuts starting much earlier.

They believe that emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases will eventually have to cease altogether to avoid dangerous climate change.

Three of the letter’s signatories, Dr Frame, Dr Allen and Dr Malte Meinshausen of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research will today press the case for limits on cumulative CO2 emissions at the Bonn talks. Their presentation runs from 7.30pm to 9pm.

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Open Letter to the negotiators of the UNFCCC

We welcome the efforts of governments around the world to reach agreement on measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and wish to draw attention to recent scientific research indicating that a key determinant of the risk of dangerous climate change is cumulative emissions over all time of the longest-lived greenhouse gases, in particular carbon dioxide. This has three important implications:

First, current emission trends are incompatible with the goal of limiting cumulative emissions to a level that provides an acceptably low risk of dangerous climate change. Estimates of tolerable risk and allowable emissions vary, but in all cases costs rise sharply with the speed of emission reductions, so any affordable strategy to avoid releasing too much carbon dioxide in total will require global emissions to peak soon.

Second, in devising emission targets for 2020 and 2050, governments need to be aware of their implications for cumulative emissions. A policy that allows carbon dioxide emissions to rise over the coming decade in the hope of reducing them rapidly after 2020 results in a substantially higher contribution to the cumulative budget, and hence a greater contribution to the risk of dangerous climate change, than a policy of steady reductions reaching the same 2050 target.

Third, fossil carbon reserves substantially exceed the amount that can safely be released into the atmosphere. Net global carbon dioxide emissions will eventually have to decline towards zero leaving a substantial fraction of available fossil carbon stored, in some form, out of the atmosphere indefinitely.

We urge the participants in December’s Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to acknowledge the need to limit cumulative carbon dioxide emissions as one element of their vision for long-term cooperative action to avoid dangerous climate change.

Myles Allen, Department of Physics, University of Oxford
David Archer, Department of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago
David Frame, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford
Damon Matthews, Department of Geography, Planning and Environment,
Concordia University
Malte Meinshausen, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research
Stephen Schneider, Department of Biology, Stanford University
Andrew Weaver, School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Victoria University
Kirsten Zickfeld, Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis

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