Lord May

By Daniel Nelson

For someone who is on record as saying "we live on the brink of the worst of times", that we may already have exceeded Earth’s sustainable carrying capacity and who has criticised President Bush for acting like a latter-day Nero who fiddles while the world burns, Lord Robert May face to face comes across as quiet spoken and measured.

But there’s no doubting the confidence, clarity and firmness of the scientist and former chief scientific adviser to the Government.

I was going to add "optimism" to the description, but I feel his optimism may be the sort that simply refuses to accept the reality he understands only too well because to do so would make life debilitatingly bleak.

"I feel the basis for all action has to be optimism," he says – "whether or not I personally feel optimistic or pessimistic."

Optimism can be difficult to sustain, he admits, and gives the example of the debate over air transport: "The [UK] government, which is better than any other government in terms of its expressed concern and its attempt to negotiate international deals, shows no disposition to put tax on aviation fuel", even though he says moves to limit flying would be perfectly reasonable.

He says he likes schemes that give everybody a tradable carbon quota so that people who have to fly for work or for other reasons would be forced to transfer money to the less well-off: "At least it addresses the problem, rather than just deciding it’s too tough."

To the suggestion that public opinion has moved a long way towards recognising the reality and importance of climate change, he responds coolly: "I certainly wouldn’t read all that much into the fact that at last you are getting general acceptance of something that’s been obvious and increasingly unambiguously asserted by the relevant scientific community for at least a decade."

It’s difficult to feel reassured "when all that people are agreeing about is that there is a problem." The point, in other words, is not just to recognise the problem, but to do something about it.

He emphasises the importance of working out which actions are needed to tackle global warming, and then to tackle the obstacles blocking implementation.

One obstacle, he points out, is that it’s a global problem that demands everyone’s participation in equitable proportions. President Bush’s view was that developing countries, which were not part of 1997 Kyoto climate agreement, should act in exactly the same proportion as, say, the United States, but this overlooked the fact that industrialised countries currently emitted as much carbon into the atmosphere each year as the rest of the world put together and those emissions would remain for the rest of the century. "So one has to ask everybody to cut back, to contribute to the effort, but the effort differentially has to come from the richer countries.

"It’s difficult enough to get everybody agreeing to act. You can just imagine the interminable discussions there are going to be about what constitutes equitable proportions.

"We haven’t even begun coherently to discuss it: we’re still talking about talking about what comes after Kyoto, and Kyoto is no more than a token first gesture."

Another obstacle cited by Lord May is that although a programme of 15 courses of action had been proposed, all using proven technology, which would result in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere beginning to stabilise at less than twice pre-industrial levels, the actions are surrounded by controversy.

Trebling the global energy generated from nuclear fission, for example: "Not easy – lots of problems there." For example, nuclear power had to be a part of the medium-term future but Labour "has not wanted to take that on because it’s politically schismatic within the party. So they just dodge the issue." (To the world-weary suggestion that such goings-on are just political reality and have to be endured, he retorts sharply: "The political reality is, the longer we don’t do things, the worse it’s going to be.")

Or increasing to two billion over the next 50 years the number of cars running on double the current average miles per gallon: "Again, it’s not an easy thing to do."

Positive developments are occurring, Lord May admits – such as a fall in demand for 4x4s and Australian legislation to make long-life light bulbs universal by 2009 – but they don’t add up to action on the scale required. "They are good signs but certainly not room for too much satisfaction, in my mind."

Will it take a catastrophe to get people to act?

"I don’t have a thought on that. I hope it will not. But it is going to require really quite significantly more recognition that not only is the phenomenon real but that we need to be doing something about it now."

And whatever action is selected, he adds, "it can’t be only voluntary: it’s going to have to be a mixture of sticks and carrots, a mixture that addresses the problem in different ways, that creates an atmosphere in which people want to do things voluntarily and acquiesce in the things that are not voluntary."

After all, he notes, plastic bags have been outlawed in parts of Asia simply because they are such a menace, choking drains and water courses.

What about the increasing number of large-scale high-tech solutions being put forward? "Anybody who thinks there’s going to be one simple single answer … a futuristic trouble-free way that’s going to save us from all this, is either a fool or a knave, or probably both."

A last word on the "denial lobby"? "Some of the denial, I cannot but believe, was by people who realised there was a problem but didn’t want to face it. Whether they really believed the stories they told themselves or whether they really believed it wasn’t true, or whether it was an affectation to avoid facing something that was inconvenient to face, I don’t know. But it became unsustainable long before people gave up on it."

* Lord May of Oxford has been president of the Royal Society and a Professor at Sydney, Princeton, Oxford and Imperial College London.

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