The former PM has a new green masterplan: it won’t mean giving up our energy-rich lifestyle but it will cost us billions
The silence from Tony Blair is so long it’s embarrassing. He has just spent 15 minutes enthusing about his new global report about how technology can help the world to combat climate change when the obvious question arose: what has he done to make his own life more sustainable?
Er . . . (long silence) . . . “We’ve got solar panels on our house.” Which one (he has a handful)? “The London one.”
Another long silence, then an aide mentions the offsets: “Ah yes, we offset our travel, too.” More silence: “And we have some home insulation.”
It is an awkward interlude. Blair is about to launch himself onto the world stage in yet another new role: as an evangelist for world-saving green technology.
Tomorrow he will launch Technology for a Low Carbon Future, a report put together with the Climate Group, setting out his arguments. Since it has been months in the making, the lack of prepared answers about his own life is odd.
His recovery, however, is swift. Blair may not be familiar with his own energy needs but for the rest of the world the solution is simple. We should let science into our lives and just go on getting and spending.
“The answer to climate change,” he says solemnly, “is the development of science and technology. Yes, we will get changes in the way we consume but we will be consuming differently, not necessarily less. People are not going to return to the 19th century. The critical thing is to use the technologies we have and to incentivise the development of new ones. That is the only practical way we will make this thing work.”
As statements go, this is breathtaking. For the past few years scientists have been issuing ever gloomier warnings about climate change.Some have even called for a deliberate and sustained global recession as the only way to cut emissions.
Blair, however, is having none of it. He has a new-found faith in science and is determined to spread the word. “The only way we will succeed . . . is if we develop new technology,” he reiterates. “If you say the future is that people won’t travel or won’t use cars, then no, I don’t agree. I think what people are looking for is clean energy ways of doing these things. They are not going to buy a return to the past.”
So far, so clear. But why has Blair stepped into the climate debate? Hasn’t he got enough on his plate, what with resolving the Middle East conflict, writing his memoirs and lobbying for the post of Europe’s first president? And where did this sudden faith in science’s power to solve climate change — shared by few bona fide scientists — come from in the first place?
Part of the answer lies in the timing. Blair’s report comes as the world prepares for December’s United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen, where more than 180 countries will try to agree on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
The challenges are daunting.
The world emits the equivalent of 53 billion tons of CO2 a year — and rising fast. That needs to fall to 20 billion tons by 2050 if we are to stand any chance of keeping the global temperature rise below 2C.
It means that each of the 9-10 billion people alive by then will have to limit themselves to no more than 2 tons of CO2 a year. Considering that your average Briton currently generates 10 tons and the average American 22 tons, the difficulty is obvious.
Blair, however, insists that we can hit that target without pain: westerners can keep flying, driving and consuming while those in developing countries can realistically aspire to the same things.
What’s more, he suggests, low-carbon technologies can be infiltrated into our lives so subtly that they go almost unnoticed.
“The biggest single thing you need to make a difference in a person’s life is that instead of getting their energy from a carbon-based fuel they will get it from a non-carbon source,” he says.
“They won’t necessarily even see that change unless we get to microgeneration where we all generate energy from our homes. You might have an electric vehicle powered by clean energy. But people are not going to stop using cars.”
It is in the longer term, post 2020, that Blair’s vision for deploying science and technology really kicks in. He foresees, for example, a world where carbon sequestration plants would sprout like dandelions. Sited next to power stations and other large polluters, these units would strip CO2 from the gases they emit and bury it underground.
In theory, such a technology would have the power to remove billions of tons of potential emissions each year. Alas, so far, that technology exists largely in the heads of engineers. Only a handful of plants have been built and all have been small — designed for demonstration only.
In Blair’s brave new world there will also be dozens of nuclear power stations, probably including fast-breeder reactors — the type that produce not only power but also lots of nuclear material suitable for fuelling more such plants.
There will be massive investment in research into biofuels, along with the replacement of all petrol and diesel vehicles with others powered by electricity or hydrogen.
“What we are talking about is a revolution in the way we produce and consume energy, travel and design and manage our urban and rural environments,” says Blair, eyes gleaming.
“The only way we will succeed in this is if we develop the technologies, starting from now. That is why our report is very practical about finding technological ways of solving this problem.”
Blair’s faith in science to achieve such changes seems unbounded, which is odd, given that he has no formal scientific training and used to speak out vigorously against the expansion of nuclear power when Labour was in opposition.
He does, however, have a history of investing huge faith in whatever people, issues or causes he chooses to adopt — sometimes in the face of all evidence to the contrary. His critics might cite the “dodgy dossier”, on which he based many of the arguments for the invasion of Iraq, his support for George W Bush and Peter Mandelson, and even his religious beliefs. This time, where does his belief come from?
Some trace the change to the arrival in Downing Street in 2000 of a new government chief scientist — David King.
Until then, most government scientists had made little impression on policy making, but King got lucky. Just a few months after his arrival, Blair’s election plans were thrown into disarray by an outbreak of foot and mouth — and King was called in to solve it.
His ability to use statistical analysis to predict and control the outbreak so impressed Blair that King gained a place at the top table. He used that privilege to great effect and was credited with prompting Blair into several big policy shifts, including taking an increasing interest in climate change.
King described how he made this conversion happen in an interview with this newspaper last year. He told how, in 2002, he had “engineered” the opportunity to give the Zuckerman lecture for the British Association for the Advancement of Science (now the British Science Association), choosing climate change as his topic.
Then he delivered the same lecture to Blair and the cabinet, both in person and on paper. “For Blair, that was a turning point,” he said. “It was when he read that lecture he realised we had to do something about climate change.”
Blair’s “new convert” passion, married to his natural optimism, has a certain persuasive power —
if you don’t study the numbers too closely. He’s not just optimistic about science, though, he’s optimistic about the resolve of world leaders, too. And that’s an altogether tougher sell.
“Policy makers have undergone a paradigm shift in thinking,” he says. “I first put climate change on the G8 agenda in 2005. I had to struggle to do it and we came out with a rather general formulation about the 2050 targets for cutting emissions.
“In the four years since then, however, we have come a huge way. The new US administration is supporting legislation in Congress and Japan has changed its position.”
Well, they may believe it — but will they be able to act on it? The basis of the Copenhagen talks, and of Blair’s vision, is that developed nations can be persuaded to invest hundreds of billions of pounds in technologies such as carbon sequestration and new nuclear. On developing such systems they will — or so the rhetoric goes — promptly hand over the technology, plus money to build it, to countries such as India and China.
For Blair the logic is obvious. “If we do not involve those poorer countries, they are not going to be able to implement these measures and their emissions will expand, wiping out any cuts we make,” he says. “They need help and it’s in our interests that they get that help.”
Voters may not see it that way. Instead they will see vast sums of western money — Blair’s own report puts it at up to £98 billion annually, starting next year — being sent to fast-growing rival economies in the East. And, credit-crunched as they are, they may not like it.
How will western voters be persuaded? Another brief silence — then a certainty that his critics will recognise all too well: “We will just have to find a way.”
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