Lobbying for a carbon fee and dividend
This week’s title is not a description of my dream-job. It’s actually a way forward for all of us. Too good to be true? Stick with me and I’ll try to persuade you that I haven’t lost my marbles. I’ll start where I left-off in my previous column–carbon-taxes are an effective way to encourage millions…
It’s been a dramatic few weeks. Climate Emergencies were declared by the Scottish, Welsh and UK parliaments last week (and the Irish Parliament this week) whilst, last Thursday, the government’s own Committee on Climate Change (CCC) published a report recommending the UK have a target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The last few…
Last Sunday I stood beneath an 80m tall wind turbine—its blade tips rushing past at 100 mph. It was a dramatic sight but the loudest sound I could hear was the singing of skylarks. This was quite striking as, a few days before, I’d been reading objections placed in 2015 against placing of a wind…
Over the past two centuries we’ve added as much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as it already contained, and the amount should have doubled. However, the concentration has gone from just below 0.03% to just over 0.04%—about half the increase expected!
It’s all very well demanding that Wiltshire Council declares a Climate Emergency but what can it actually do? The reaction of several councillors was a request that we set out concrete, practical steps. That seems reasonable to me and here are some ideas. To start with, we need a target. How many tonnes of carbon…
Wiltshire produces more solar-electricity than any other county in the UK but we’re joint 190th for wind energy. In fact, we produce about 6000 times more energy from the Sun than we do from the wind. That’s quite a contrast and we could do better. Of course, many people find wind farms ugly and don’t…
We are about to lose all our shallow water tropical reefs. From Australia’s Great Barrier to the shifting shoals of the Bahamas, the world’s warm-water ecosystems are facing total destruction—possibly within ten to twenty years. The only way to avoid this catastrophe is to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 centigrade. There are many reasons…
Don’t take my word—or anyone else’s—for anything. You don’t need to. The data is so clear that you can see, for yourself, the reality of human-induced climate change. The graph above has two curves. The first, in blue, shows the cumulative amount of carbon dioxide that we’ve put into the atmosphere since 1880 whilst, in…
Economic activities have now pumped almost as much carbon dioxide into the air as the atmosphere contained, in total, at the start of the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago. Science has known for over 120 years that this should, in theory, cause warming by a few centigrade. Mankind is now testing that theory in the…
