If you rented out a property and the tenants trashed the place, you would want them to repair the damage. NONE of us own any part of our planet. We lease it from the next generations and hold it in trust for them. We may not be entirely responsible for the climate crisis but we are the first generation to be aware of the damage human activity has done to the planet through habitat destruction and the use of fossil fuels. Our latest victim is likely to be the Bahamian nuthatch.
The residents of the Bahamas are still struggling to come to terms with the devastation of Hurricane Dorian (which hit 2 weeks ago) and also with the additional impact of Tropical Storm Humberto which reached the islands on Friday night, bringing more heavy rain and more strong winds. But the human population is resilient and they will eventually rebuild and resume their lives on the Caribbean islands. But for the Bahama nuthatch, it’s thought that Dorian was the final straw. The endemic bird, is (or was) one of the rarest birds in the western hemisphere, in fact it was already thought extinct (after the damage wrought by Hurricane Mathew in June 2016) until last year when Professor Diana Bell and her team of conservationists from the University of East Anglia rediscovered it. But now, after the hurricane it is feared lost forever, and it may not be the only irreversible ecological loss for the Bahamas.
Expeditions will be sent to try to find if any survived but hopes are low. The Bahamian nuthatch lost habitat due to human development and hurricanes made worse by global warming has likely finished them off. That same podcast (I believe is not geo-blocked) also reports how nanoparticles and smaller from road traffic are capable of affecting fetuses in the womb.
Now those we hold the planet in trust for are demanding action. Their most famous spokesperson, Greta Thunberg rightly made these observations and demands to world leaders at the UN on Monday.
"This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean, yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?
"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words," the 16-year-old said.
And she urged world leaders to act urgently, saying: "We will be watching you."
Greta’s solo protest has spread like Australian wildfires. In a short time she has inspired millions of children to come out onto the streets of the world’s cities and towns to demand urgent action. The Paris Accord aimed to prevent a rise of over 1.5 degrees…if all of the promises made by governments so far were kept there is likely to be a 3 degree rise by the end of the century. Broken promises mean a 4 degree rise.
The way forward is by big and small actions. Individuals can do a lot. Changing out light bulbs for LEDs makes a huge difference. That and the introduction of other energy saving measures have reduced the UK’s demand for electricity per head back to 1984 levels, having peaked in 2003. Look at the whole life of an appliance. A cheap refridgerator with average energy efficiency may cost less to buy but it is likely to last fewer years and consume more electricity than a well made energy efficient one. Consuming less “high carbon mileage” food and, importantly, not wasting it while at the same time consuming better quality foods is one solution. Meat eaters might consider eating less beef in favour of chicken or port which produces less CO2 for the same weight of meat. (While you are at it, campaign for the likes of MacDonalds to stop adding to plastic pollution by selling shoddy toys to kids in the guise of providing “happiness” to a “Happy Meal”).
The main actors though have to be governments. What to do with the workers currently involved in fossil fuel extraction, particularly coal bedevils several countries. China is installing huge amounts of PV solar, to the extent it is now cheaper for those to produced electricity than using coal yet they are still building coal fired stations to use the coal produced. They are though retraining former miners to build and service those solar installations. The Chinese are to some extent fortunate in this respect of having a centrally directed command economy, much like Trump apparently would like to do with his directives to US companies. The simple fact is that the future of coal is to extract very limited quantities of coal for the very rare number of customers who must use coal and here I would cite the UK’s heritage railway industry which has not yet found an alternative to coal for their steam engines. King Coal is dead and his ashes are being blown away on the wind.
Be in no doubt, the point has come where nothing less than radical action will start to slow increases in greenhouse gas emissions, let alone reverse them. Understanding quite how fast action needs to start is not lost on those millions of young people on the streets damanding action. The UK government claims to be a world leader as the first major industrial nation to enact zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Even that target is not as ambitious as it should be and those demonstrating are demanding a deadline of 2025. Still, it is better than Trump’s policy of “drill baby, drill”.
I should add that there is good news on the cost of offshore wind from the UK. UK consumers pay a “green energy surcharge” on their bills to encourage generators to switch to renewables. To encourage new offshore wind farms, tracts of the sea were leased on the basis that the government would pay the extra costs over the wholesale price by agreeing to buy each Mega-Watt Hour at a higher rate. Generators bid for the leases on the basis of how low they wanted the fixed MWh rate to be. In the early days, this could be £120 per MWh. Last Friday the Guardian reported that the latest tranche of leases were for £39.65 to £41.61 per MHh. That’s less than the current wholesale price. The winning bidders include one which will build the world’s largest offshore windfarm on the Dogger Bank.
They are aiming to develop an “industrial wind hub” made up of three interconnected offshore windfarms with a total capacity of about 3.6 gigawatts, enough electricity to power the equivalent of 4.5m UK homes.
Eldar Sætre, the chief executive of Equinor, said the Dogger Bank project would be able to deliver low-cost energy due to the “excellent wind speeds, shallow waters and scale”.
He added: “A full-scale development of Dogger Bank will constitute an industrial wind hub in the heart of the North Sea, playing a major role in the UK’s ambitions for offshore wind and supporting the net zero ambition.”
For comparison,Wiki lists the current largest and second largest offshore windfarms as having capacities of 659 MWh and 630 MWh, around a fifth. Those two are also in the British sector of the North Sea. The world’s largest onshore wind farm is listed as the Alta Wind Energy Center with a capacity of 1.548 gigawatts.
In the 1960s many young people were declaring that they could not in conscience bring children into a world threatened by nuclear war. Last week young people were expressing similar wishes not to bring children into a world broken by humans. Many of those demonstrating will be voting next year and in the years after. Politicians will ignore this growing movement at their peril.