New record temperature of 29.3C in London, Met Office confirms

A temperature of 29.3C has been recorded at Kew Gardens in London, just over 1C higher than the record-beating temperature recorded there earlier today, the Met Office confirms. 

The highest temperature recorded in Wales was 27.4C at Cardiff Bute Park.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cwy0mwvx04lt

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BY TONY BLAIR

People know that the current state of debate over climate change is riven with irrationality. As a result, though most people will accept that climate change is a reality caused by human activity, they’re turning away from the politics of the issue because they believe the proposed solutions are not founded on good policy.

So, in developed countries, voters feel they’re being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal. Whatever the historical responsibility of the developed world for climate change, those with even a cursory knowledge of the facts understand that in the future the major sources of pollution will come principally from the developing world.

But for that developing world, there is an equal resentment when they’re told the investment is not available for the energy necessary for their development because it is not “green”. They believe, correctly, that they have a right to develop and that those who have already developed using fossil fuels do not have the right to inhibit them from whatever is the most effective way of developing.

Therefore, there has been a period where climate-change action and global agreements, notably the Paris Agreement in 2015, seemed to herald a new era; but that momentum has been followed – exacerbated by external shocks like Covid and the Ukraine war – by a backlash against such action, which threatens to derail the whole agenda.

Activists shifted the political centre of gravity on climate change, bringing the issue into the mainstream. And as a consequence, huge strides were made in renewables, energy efficiency and commitment by countries to climate action.

However, because of the levels of growth and development, present policy solutions are inadequate and, worse, are distorting the debate into a quest for a climate platform that is unrealistic and therefore unworkable.

So, the movement now needs a public mandate, attainable only through a shift from protest to pragmatic policy. Too often, political leaders fear saying what many know to be true: the current approach isn’t working. But they mustn’t be silent – there’s a new coalition to build; one that unites disillusioned activists with technologists and policymakers ready to act.

The following are facts that stand out in contradiction of the present policy approach.

Despite the past 15 years seeing an explosion in renewable energy and despite electric vehicles becoming the fastest-growing sector of the vehicle market, with China leading the way in both, production of fossil fuels and demand for them has risen, not fallen, and is set to rise further up to 2030. Leaving aside oil and gas, in 2024 China initiated construction on 95 gigawatts of new coal-fired energy, which is almost as much as the total current energy output from coal of all of Europe put together. Meanwhile, India recently announced they had reached the milestone of 1 billion tonnes of coal production in a single year.

Airline travel is set to double over the next 20 years.

By 2050, urbanisation is expected to drive a 40 per cent increase in demand for steel and a 50 per cent increase in demand for cement – core inputs to development, but materials with a significant emissions footprint.

Africa – at present responsible for just 4 per cent of global emissions – will see its population double in the next thirty years. This growth will demand energy, infrastructure and resources.

And though action by the developed world is still vital, by 2030 almost two-thirds of global emissions will come from China, India and South-East Asia. Yet the global financial flows for renewable energy in the developing world have fallen and not risen in the past few years.

These are the inconvenient facts, which mean that any strategy based on either “phasing out” fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.

It is important to be clear where this argument leads.

None of this invalidates the inconvenient truth that the climate is changing, and to our detriment – or that this is one of the fundamental challenges of our time.

Nor does it mean we shouldn’t continue to deploy renewable energy, which is both necessary and cost effective.

But it does mean we need to alter where we put our focus and resources.

We need to recognise that without turning some of the emerging technologies into financially viable options, the world will choose the cheapest option. This applies to everything from nuclear fusion to sustainable aviation fuel, to green steel and low-emissions cement.

We should put carbon capture – directly removing carbon as well as capturing it at source – at the centre of the battle. At present, carbon capture is not commercially viable despite being technologically feasible – but policy, finance and innovation would change this. The disdain for this technology in favour of the purist solution of stopping fossil-fuel production is totally misguided.

Nature-based solutions – principally afforestation – are the easiest way to capture carbon, but there is no comprehensive plan as to how to encourage them or invest in them. (Though these do not offer a permanent solution, especially as floods, fires and pests, all exacerbated by warming, can turn forests from carbon sinks into carbon sources.)

Nuclear power is going to be an essential part of the answer. The confusion of this with nuclear weapons and consequently the irrational fear of it, intensified by hyperbolic campaigning, has led the world to an egregious policy error with many countries turning their back on it from the 1980s onwards, when embracing it would have significantly changed the trajectory of global emissions. The new generation of small modular reactors offers hope for the renaissance of nuclear power, but it needs integrating into nations’ energy policy.

AI, applied to energy efficiency and the better use of the energy grid, is itself potentially revolutionary in reducing energy use. Yet there is little time devoted at climate conferences to it.

Planning restrictions are a colossal inhibitor of clean energy growth. Yet measures to change them and make the whole planning process simpler, faster and more efficient are much less highlighted than the polarising and largely fruitless attempts to shame people for their consumption habits.

Philanthropy has a huge role to play, but much of it appears to be centred around placating campaigners through “green” initiatives that don’t move the needle, rather than directed towards the technological innovations that really could.

We need a much greater emphasis on how we finance climate-change action, including engaging politically to create the markets into which finance for proven renewable solutions can flow. The carbon market will help here but has yet to fulfil its promise. But it cannot be beyond the vast array of financial talent the world has at its disposal to devise that system so that it can deliver its full potential.

And adaptation to climate change must also move up the agenda because the impacts that are already locked in cannot all be mitigated in the time available. But adaptation has always been the poor relation of climate action because it seems to accept that some climate change is inevitable.

Which brings us to the way the politics of the climate-change issue has played out over the years. Political leaders by and large know that the debate has become irrational. But they’re terrified of saying so, for fear of being accused of being “climate deniers”. As ever, when sensible people don’t speak up about the way a campaign is being conducted, the campaign stays in the hands of those who end up alienating the very opinion on which consent for action depends.

This reaches its apogee in the COP summits. Political leaders argue for days in public about wording like “ending”, “phasing out”, “reducing” fossil fuels, proclaiming that we can still meet the 1.5 degrees target on limiting global warming, about who bears “responsibility” for climate change, and “loss and damage” compensation, in a forum that frankly doesn’t have the heft to drive action and impact.

Because – agree with it or not – most political leaders are decent people who do want to do the right thing, in recent times the COPs have become uncomfortable for many leaders. They would like to start taking some of the hysteria out of the climate debate but are reluctant to be the first to do so.

The COP process will not deliver change at the speed required. The great gathering of all the nations has its place though probably not every year. But the reality is that it is the decisions of the large countries, and the policy direction they give towards the technology and the financial flows, which can in truth solve the climate issue. This is what will decide whether we begin to match our noble ambitions to protect the planet with the necessary actions to achieve them.

Yet there is no proper process in place that allows the detailed and complex policy work to be done, mandated by the few nations that can make a real difference to climate change. If COP scaled global ambition on climate action, we now need a new process that scales global solutions. A new cooperative approach to technological solutions could be a galvanising next chapter – focusing political and real capital on alternative fuels and carbon-capture technology, including financing, deployment and R&D.

This paper is a chance to reset the debate, not by denying the urgency of climate action, but by updating the strategy. We need solutions that match the scale of the challenge and a new politics to get them done. Both are well overdue.

Tony Blair

https://institute.global/insights/climate-and-energy/the-climate-paradox-why-we-need-to-reset-action-on-climate-change

FOR MANY PEOPLE, CLIMATE CHANGE AKA GLOBAL WARMING IS A GLOBALIST VENTURE... 

GLOBALISM IS A SCOURGE TO BE AVOIDED, BUT GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL AND ANTHROPOGENIC. OUR POLITICAL GLOBALIST RESPONSES TO GLOBAL WARMING ARE NOT THE SOLUTIONS... BLAIR IS CORRECT THAT WE NEED TO DO BETTER, BUT BLAIR IS A GLOBALIST FROM GLOBALISTAN...

SEE ALSO: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/33287

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