Anthony Browne is MP for South Cambridgeshire, the Chair of the Conservative backbench Treasury Committee and a member of the Treasury Select Committee.
Is the end of the world nigh? And are you to blame? There was a clear millennialist religiosity to the Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil protests in Westminster last week: the messianic passion, the angry righteousness, the need to convince the sinners to change their ways or else the world will end. Doomsday cults have existed throughout history, but the difference this time is that some (though not all) of their fears have a scientific basis – and the fears have gone mainstream.
Climate change is the biggest challenge facing humanity and the planet. But we should not descend into pessimistic fatalism about it. I do many talks about the environment in schools, and worry about our children being told the world has no future, and therefore that they have no future. There are increasing concerns about the impact this has on their mental health. I always try to reassure them they have a great future ahead of them, but we need to work hard.
Unchecked, climate change would cause untold disruption to crops and habitats, causing widespread loss of life and biodiversity. Changing the behaviour of seven billion people and 200 countries, and getting them to act in their long term rather than their short term interests, is a heroic challenge. That is why generally I have supported the spirit of Greta Thunberg and her followers. It is unscientific nonsense to say that climate change will lead to the extinction of mankind, but there needs to be a sense of collective urgency if anything significant is to get done.
But like many people who have worked to tackle climate change, the more involved I have got, the more optimistic I have become. It is a problem with a solution. It is a challenge that I am confident that not only can we meet – but actually in increasing ways, are already meeting. I don’t think that we serve our children or planet well giving in to the counsel of despair. Tackling climate change is more akin to an engineering challenge – one we know we can do.
One protester insisted last week that the Government was doing “absolutely nothing”. That is a common theme among radical environmentalists, but it is palpably untrue. When I was a child, most of our electricity was made from coal: next year, our last coal-fired power station will close, bringing to an end a once-mighty industry.
The UK’s greenhouse gas emissions are falling fast, but because good news is no news, it rarely gets reported. The UK’s per capita carbon dioxide emissions are down by over 60 per cent from the peak year of 1971, far faster than in any other major developed nation, and are lower now than any time since the 1850s before the industrial age really gathered pace.
Our emissions have dropped by nearly 40 per cent since the Conservatives came to power in 2010 (a 36.8 per cent drop from 2010 to 2021 – about three per cent a year). That is not nothing. And no, it is not because we have exported manufacturing overseas – that only makes a difference of about ten per cent. And, no, it hasn’t destroyed our economy.
EU per capita emissions are the lowest since the 1960s, and the US’s are the lowest since before the Second World War. It is China that is a true shocker, pushing up global emissions.
When I was environment editor of the Times and Observer over two decades ago, I wrote about the then seemingly crazy demands to generate large amounts of electricity from wind. Now – as a result of consistent Government policy rather than an accident – wind is not only our largest source of electricity, but it is the cheapest.
It turns out that not having to dig up fuels from deep under the earth and transport them hundreds of miles saves a lot of money. Last week, the UK and other European countries met to agree major infrastructure investment to build wind power plants in the North Sea of unprecedented scale. The latest wind turbines are almost as high as Canary Wharf tower, each turn of the blades generating enough electricity for a house for a whole year. The engineers building these wind turbines are the unsung saviours of the planet, and speaking to them is inspiring: you can sense the almost unlimited opportunity. The technology exists for floating turbines that can be used far out to sea around the world. Making this happen will bring about the green jobs that politicians love to talk about.
Twenty years ago, Ford flew me to Cornwall to test drive a prototype electric car, but the technology was so ropey that it broke down and had to be towed away by a diesel truck. Now electric car sales are doubling every year, and the sale of new petrol and diesel cars will be banned in just seven years. Clearly, there are challenges, not least in rolling-out the charging network, but that is rapidly being solved. A vast number of people and a large number of companies are working hard to install the charging network, and it is certain that the current frustrations will soon be a thing of the past.
It helps to take a historical perspective. We are going through a technology transition, something we have done repeatedly many times in the past. We went from getting most of our energy from wood, to getting it from coal, to oil, to gas. In the lifetime of my grandparents, we went from heating homes with dirty coal (remember the coal chutes?) to heating them with natural gas. This was an extraordinary complex engineering undertaking, not just getting a volatile explosive gas from under the sea, but transporting it without leaks in pipes across the country and then directly into many millions of homes in every town in the country. Yet we did it, without our latest technologies, and without much fuss.
We went from horse-powered carriages to internal combustion engine powered cars. Imagine the range anxiety of early drivers before the network of petrol stations was built out around the country. People had to drive around with spare cans of fuel just in case.
There are still many major challenges. We are not clear what the solution to gas heating in the homes is, but when I go to Norway (I am half-Norwegian) I see every home made toasty warm by electric heat pumps, in a country far colder than ours. The solutions exist – we just need to deploy them.
In some cases, we don’t know the solution: what is the future of aviation? We don’t know the answer, but there are an awful lot of companies and engineers in places like the Whittle Laboratory in Cambridge who are convinced they have the answer, from synthetic aviation fuel to hydrogen planes. The clear lessons from history are that we can do this.
There are many reasons to move on from fossil fuels, including climate change, national security, and economic resilience. Depending on the rotten remains of dead plants and animals dug up from underground is an old and dirty technology, and it is time for us to move on, as we did from cathode ray tube TVs to flat screens. Fossil fuels have served us well since the start of the industrial revolution, but the fossil fuel age is coming to a close. That is something to celebrate, and be optimistic about. We can do this. But we need to make sure we continue with political determination.