Climate fatigue leaves global warming in the cold
The global warming hysteria is well and truly over. How do we know? Because all the relevant indicators – polls, news coverage, government u-turns and a manifest lack of interest among policy makers – show a steep and deepening decline in public concern about climate change.
Public opinion is the crucial factor that determines whether policy makers advance or abandon contentious policies. Surveys in the United Kingdom and other European nations reveal that the levels of concern about global warming have been falling steadily in recent years. Media coverage of climate change has dropped sharply.
The public's concern about global warming as a pressing problem is in marked decline not least because of the growing realisation that governments and the international community are ignoring the advice of climate campaigners. Instead, most policy makers around the world refuse to accept any decisions that are likely to harm national interests and economic competitiveness.
They are assisted in this policy of benign neglect by a public that has largely become habituated to false alarms and is happy to ignore other claims of environmental catastrophe that are today widely disregarded or seen as scare tactics.
As a result of the failure by the international community to agree a global climate treaty, investors are exiting green projects and carbon trading schemes. Most of the leading carbon trading organisations have been shut down. In February, the UK Climate Camp movement announced that the green campaign group was terminating its campaign. Activists for the climate movement explained that the camp was being disbanded and that the group would focus on new and more pressing ecological, social and economic issues.
Part of the reason for the evident waning of public concern can be attributed to the issue-attention cycle developed by Anthony Downs in 1972. According to Downs' concept, certain environmental events can trigger public interest and concern. After a while, though, and even if the supposed problem remains unresolved, other issues replace the original concern because the huge costs to 'solve' the problem become apparent while boredom and fatigue set in.
Moreover, the long-term effects of climate change are generally gradual. This gradualism of climate change means that most people have become used to living with moderate warming, not least because the warming trend of the 1980s and 90s has come to a halt during the last decade. Unless a significant warming trend re-emerges in the next 10 years, it will be near impossible to revive climate change as a major public concern.
As a result of climate fatigue and a public backlash against costly green energy schemes, Europe's climate policies are in crisis. Japan's nuclear disaster has made them a lot messier. Due to the nuclear predicament, coal and gas-fired supply are likely to replace lost Japanese and German nuclear power output, a move that will accelerate CO2 emissions in two of the west's leading nations that used to be at the forefront of green energy policies. Renewable alternatives, in contrast, are too expensive and too feeble to fill the nuclear energy gap triggered by the misfortune at Fukushima.
Around Europe, governments are reneging on guaranteed subsidies and feed-in tariffs for renewables. Thousands of solar investors face bankruptcy. Government guarantees are no longer safe – this will make green investments ever dicier. The economic climate for renewable energy subsidies has cooled sharply due to the recession, the financial crisis and not least the global shale gas revolution which is beginning to restrain investment in low-carbon energy projects. The new gas glut is making renewables and nuclear increasingly uncompetitive. The International Energy Agency estimates that there is 250 years' worth of unconventional gas available to the global market. In short, there is no shortage of cheap and abundant energy, but a dead end of conventional energy politics.
Neither governments nor industries are likely to commit large sums of money to promote alternatives that are three, four or five times more expensive. There is now a growing risk that Europe's green energy strategy will undermine the economic recovery and governments' attempts of selling it to an increasingly hostile public.
Dr Benny Peiser is the Director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation
Green policies are gaining momentum all over Europe, the reality that the low-carbon transition is the one way we can recapture growth in Europe is well established and energy is moving increasingly towards a decarbonised future with the active engagement of industry and policy makers.
This article is uniformed and undertaken with the bias one would expect from the UK's leading climate-sceptic, fossil-fuel lobbyists - namely the GWPF. If you must give this space in your publication, clarity on the position of the author and an insistence that such bizarre assertions as it makes are backed up with at least a few facts would be appreciated.
Conrad - Brussels
Well Conrad, it does state in bold that Dr Benny Peiser is the director of the global Warming Policy Foundation so I would suggest that it is hardly hidden.
joe gough - wigtown dumfries and galloway
The article clearly cites Dr PeIser as the "director of the Global Warming Policy Foundaton". And while his contribution is long on assertion and short on detail, so too are your remarks.
Anonymous
Question: what is the rational response to a problem that a) may be imaginary and b) we can't do anything about right now anyway? Short answer: do nothing. Long answer: wait and see.
Jon Jermey - Blaxland NSW
Conrad's assertion that 'the low-carbon transition is the one way we can recapture growth in Europe' is only a 'reallity' if he is referring to growth in subsidies for projects that would not otherwise be viable. At a time of economic turmoil and fiscal austerity this is not a policy to be applauded.
If recovery from recession could be achieved simply by discouraging well-established, efficient and cheap means of energy production, and replacing them with untried, inefficient and very expensive new technologies, then it is unlikely that the economic history of Europe would include any recessions at all.
Conrad would do well to give serious consideration to what Dr Peiser says, rather than attempting to dismiss his article with the spurious and unfounded assertion that he works for 'fossil-fuel lobbyists'.
TonyN - N. Wales
Re Conrad: describing the article as "uniformed" (I think you mean: uninformed) is hardly fair comment: the GWPF website with which the author is intimately associated contains a great deal of information.
As for facts, Dr Peiser states as part of his argument that the global warming trend has been at a standstill over the past ten years, and this agrees with the chart given by the Met Office.
If you are going to assert that green policies are gaining momentum all over Europe, then a few facts to support that would be much appreciated.
Astronist - Oxford, UK
AGW has peaked out, the way all social manias do.
We maybe lucky enough that it just fades away without doing more harm to the environment or economies of the countries with powerful AGW believers, but I doubt it. But Dr. Peiser is offering a reason to hope it may still be so.
hunter - Houston/USA/citizen
Conrad: "Green policies are gaining momentum all over Europe." The results of a recent MORI poll, as reported in the Ecologist, would suggest otherwise.
Only a quarter of Britons believe climate change is one of the most important environmental issues facing the UK today, according to a survey conducted by Ipsos MORI and released to the Ecologist this week.
Of the 24 countries surveyed, the UK was among the least concerned about climate change, with energy security, waste disposal and overpopulation listed as the most pressing environmental issues. Other European countries showed similar results to UK, with people in Germany and Sweden principally concerned with sources of future energy supplies.
Alex Cull - London, UK
Conrad: Of the eight comments on this thread, no less than seven challenge the assertions that you made in your lead comment, which inclue an attack on Dr Peiser's academic competence and integrity.
It really would be interesting to hear a response from you. I thought that advocates for action against climate change were supposed to be engaging with their critics these days in order to win them over, rather than attempting to ignore them in the hope that the questions they pose will miraculously vanish. Surely you do have a response?
TonyN - N Wales
A report by the International Energy Agency has warned of far-reaching consequences of more is not done to reduce global reliance on fossil fuels
