When I interviewed Jacqueline McGlade, she was getting ready to climb into a kayak, paddle across a fjord in Greenland, and then race up a 1,000m mountain. That was the start of the Siku Extreme Arctic Challenge, a 250km, five-day competition that draws teams of adventurers from around the world. McGlade was there, with seven fit teammates from the European Environment Agency (EEA), to draw attention to the melting of the Greenland ice cap.
McGlade has been head of the agency for four years and combines interests that do not fit the stereotype of an EU bureaucrat. She loves deep-sea scuba-diving, flying light aircraft and trekking in the wilderness. Before moving to the agency, she was a maths professor at University College London and, among other things, developed decision-making software used by the US navy to help locate near-shore mines.
These are interesting times to be running the EEA. While Europe's population is beginning to feel the impact of climate change, there is still no global consensus on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The EU aspires to be the world leader, both in committing to emissions cuts under the Kyoto protocol, and in setting up the world's first emissions trading system for carbon dioxide (see "A rough guide to carbon trading" by Matthew Lockwood, Prospect February 2007). But the scheme has been heavily criticised. At the same time, China is overtaking the US in greenhouse gas emissions, and with neither China nor America signed up to emission limits, Europe's efforts appear ineffectual (the EU accounts for around 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions). To make Europe's position more complicated, the rapid growth of cheap air travel is threatening its emission targets.
Amid these storms, the EEA has a uniquely independent voice. Based in Copenhagen, the agency does not create policy but monitors the state of the environment, assesses policy and tells the 490m citizens of Europe "how responsible their governments are being." Before McGlade set off for the glacier, I asked her what the future holds.
Alun Anderson: Do we have much to worry about in Europe as the globe warms?
Jacqueline Mcglade: Within Europe, we can expect climate refugees, probably within ten years. The southern part of Europe is heating up, with temperatures increasing at about 1.5 times the rate of the globe, and in northern Europe we are seeing more frequent floods. The heatwaves of 2003 were a warning. In France, which is well equipped for every emergency, there were 20-30,000 excess deaths because of the heat.
In the south, it is not just the intensification of heat but the more frequent days of extreme heat, and what that will mean for the availability of water and normal standards of living. Large areas near the Mediterranean will become less and less hospitable.
Humans, particularly Caucasians, are not well designed to live in temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius. Given that we will be at 35 degrees and above for much of the summer period, that means either that people vacate their homes in summer, or we have populations migrating north across Europe. The middle range of Europe—from Ireland through much of Britain, and across towards the Czech Republic—will be the most habitable part of Europe 20 to 30 years from now. We should anticipate that more people will migrate into these regions.
Those that remain in the hot regions will have to find alternative ways to live. They will need to be more sensible about energy use and water. They will need to build naturally air-conditioned buildings. All these tricks can be learnt from other very hot parts of the world. On the other side, in northwest Europe, there will be increased flooding of the kind we have seen recently in Britain. The Netherlands has already stopped saying that it will never give up an inch of land, and instead moved to the sensible policy that it will bring people back from the parts of the coastline that will inevitably go under water.
AA: This is grim news. Is Europe prepared?
JM: I guarantee that in a few years we will be having a serious discussion about population movement, but today most people are still thinking in the old way, about timeshares and golf courses in southern Spain. Still, Europe should be better able to cope with migration than other regions. Despite our 25 languages, we are used to having a mobile workforce.
AA: The EU sees itself as a world leader in cutting carbon dioxide emissions with its trading scheme. But the scheme has been plagued by big swings in the price of carbon and claims that companies are avoiding technological change by buying meaningless emission reductions in poor countries. Meanwhile, China has overtaken the US in total greenhouse gas emissions and neither nation has signed up to emission limits. It doesn't look good, does it?
JM: This is the kind of message we need to challenge. If we don't act, global warming will get worse and worse. I don't want my two daughters to inherit that kind of world. Many people don't understand that we already have pretty much everything we need to transform society, for energy, transport, and for clean water. There are so many obvious things that we must make happen. Every electrical appliance should automatically come off standby. We could drastically cut emissions just by getting our building regulations right. I have good grounds to be positive. A few weeks ago, the EEA launched the Environmental Technology Atlas of Europe, a web-based map of new European technologies designed to tackle these issues. You'll be astonished if you look at the rapid growth in technologies that are available, just in Europe—from pumps inside generators all the way through to vehicles and solar panels.
Regarding the European trading scheme (ETS), I am less pessimistic than you. Under Kyoto, the EU took on a target of reducing its emissions over the period 2008-12 to 8 per cent below 1990 levels. Change has been slow, but the train is now on the move. Countries have got together and created a market for a gas that you can't even see. Under the ETS, companies in certain sectors, not including transport, were given a fixed number of permits to emit greenhouse gases. If they needed to increase their emissions, they would have to buy spare permits from other companies that were cutting their emissions, or offset their carbon by paying for projects in the so-called "clean development mechanism" that cuts carbon emissions elsewhere in the world.
In the first period of the ETS, which runs from 2005 to 2007, we needed to build up a sense of the price of this commodity. It didn't come out quite right at first; we didn't have the scarcity needed to ensure that the price was driving energy efficiency in the right direction, but nevertheless a price was established. But the second round will start next year, and all the permits from the first round will become null and void. Forward traders can see that the next round is going to be much stricter. There are prices already posted at €15-16 a tonne, which suggests that the EU is not being pushed by industry to go easy on the supply of permits.
The price swings in the first round do not make the scheme a failure. There were companies which bought in and saw the value of their credits collapse, but it triggered a big move within those companies to cut out inefficiencies. Yes, they got burnt but it taught them that there is a value to carbon. Then there are those who paid a high price and didn't make changes. When it comes to the next round, they'll pay another high price because they haven't made changes. Hopefully they'll go out of business.
You are sceptical that these mechanisms have driven innovation. I would have agreed before we gathered data for the Environmental Technology Atlas. We are seeing ideas being transferred very quickly into production. The interviews we have done show a direct correlation with Europe's commitment to reduce emissions. We have stimulated an environmental technology industry worth €3bn and growing fast. It employs more people than the food industry and is likely to overtake pharmaceuticals soon. The development of energy-efficient pumps might sound banal. But there are European companies producing pumps that are 10 to 20 per cent more efficient than normal. Put those in every fridge in China and it means a lot. Europe may not be creating the new hybrid vehicles that grab the headlines, but we are developing the components that contribute to an energy-efficient global economy.
As you say, China's rapid growth changes the picture. But the Chinese are much further along than we might imagine. They are open to technology transfer and they are not passive. They have just put an enormous amount of funding into an environment agency. They recognise they can't follow the economic pathway that Europe and America have indulged themselves in—China will run out of water and resources, and will damage its air quality. So it has to allow the new technologies to come in. To speed this process, we have to be prepared to put the intellectual property rights of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) into abeyance. That isn't to say that innovation can't be properly rewarded, but technology transfer is so important that it is beginning to make the Doha round of trade negotiations irrelevant. We need a different discussion on trade that integrates the needs of the environment. Pascal Lamy, director-general of the WTO, has indicated that he is prepared to listen and think about this.
In the US, there is opposition to European-style emission limits and Bush seems to think that big technology will solve everything. The rhetoric in America is yes to technology, yes to innovation, but deployed mainly to create energy independence.
AA: Everyone is now thinking about what will happen after 2012, when the Kyoto protocol expires, and all nations, including the US, China and India, might agree on how to tackle climate change. Will we see one vast European-style carbon trading market?
JM: My favoured outcome would be a green industrial revolution. But to create industries with resource efficiency at their core, we have to get the price right not only for carbon but for a whole range of other resources. I don't think a worldwide trading scheme is the 2012 goal. I would see trading schemes, plural, with prices set appropriate to the economy. What is affordable in India and in Europe are different.
But in a post-2012 regime, we must all be accountable for our carbon use. Simple extensions of the cap-and-trade system being used in Europe will not work. Cap-and-trade works well when the major emitters are big industry, because you have a finite number of players: you can set an allocation and then squeeze it. It has, for example, been successfully used to cut sulphur dioxide emissions in the US.
Taxation is the other key way to tackle energy consumption, and works well when you are trying to deal with many diffuse sources. As an example, the average new passenger car in the US uses over 40 per cent more fuel per kilometre than the average new passenger car in Europe. This is because fuel taxes in Europe are 60-75 per cent of the wholesale price, compared with only 20-25 per cent in the US.
The other big emitters are households. In Europe there are many ways to tax households, but few reward good behaviour. You could, for example, weigh waste coming from households and charge accordingly—but that leads to illegal dumping.
I don't think we are ready for personal carbon taxes. I believe we need to help people to make the right choices through price incentives. That's where I diverge from the American view; I think that in the beginning we have to subsidise the right choices, so you subsidise lightbulbs that are energy-efficient, you subsidise public transport, you induce people to give up highly energy-intensive consumption patterns, and you hook them into the right choices.
AA: How can all these different methods and markets be made to add up reliably to the cuts in global emissions that are needed?
JM: The best answer is to wire the earth. It is now possible for us to buy very cheap carbon sensors—just $5 each. We could cover the globe with a sensor net which will give real-time information about carbon concentrations all over the world. An agency like mine could be empowered to say what the near-ground carbon levels are across Europe. The same could be done for the US, India, China. At the moment, we only have patchy coverage of the planet and we have to make estimates of what different nations' emissions really are. With a sensor network, whether India or China liked it or not, their farming practices would come under scrutiny and we would be able to see if they do release a huge amount of carbon dioxide or methane. We might find that overall emission levels are high in London, and then tell the citizens of London to pay up. It can be done.
AA: The EEA has lent its weight to much more radical ideas. These include abolishing income and capital taxes and replacing them with pollution taxes, an idea that Al Gore is pushing in the US.
JM: When I first came across this idea, I thought it would be tricky to sell. But the more you talk to industry, the more you realise that it could work. The overall taxation levels won't change but the burden can be shifted away from labour towards resources, with huge benefits. Companies will pay less tax on salaries and so will find it easier to employ more people. The downside is that companies will pay tax on what they consume; if, for example, you run an industry that uses a lot of water, you will pay a lot of tax. But that will push you to become more efficient and make better use of resources.
A few months ago I presented these ideas at a conference of 500 tax officials organised by EU tax commissioner László Kovács, and they got a warm reception. The agency has data to back up the case. Where taxes on industry's use of resources have been put in place, electricity being the classic example, industry's resource productivity improves overnight. But most taxes have been on labour. As a result, from 1960 to 2000, labour productivity in Europe rose by 270 per cent while materials productivity rose 100 per cent and energy productivity by only 20 per cent. So it's a no-brainer for us, and it is encouraging to see Sweden shifting taxes from income to the environment. Last year I raised the idea of pollution taxes in the informal council of ministers and I was shot down by Britain, and a couple of other countries, who said don't interfere, tax is a national issue. But the ground is shifting.
AA: Is the growth of cheap aviation making it more difficult for Europe to cut back greenhouse gas emissions? Should we all be signing up for the "no-fly" pledge? Or can we buy carbon offsets like Al Gore?
JM: I think the airline industry needs to stop putting its head in the sand, or becoming aggressive and using ridiculous numbers, as Ryanair has done in its recent advertising campaign, claiming that aviation accounts for only 2 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions. In Britain alone, the real figure is 6 per cent, and in Europe it is even larger.
Obviously the industry has to create a more modern fleet as quickly as possible. But there are other solutions. More than 10 per cent of fuel could be saved by reducing the time spent in holding patterns, which would please passengers too. There is a strong argument for a "single skies" agreement over Europe that would centralise the different air traffic controls, civilian and military. Also, within Europe, we need to make fast rail links more effective and deliver renewable energy into the grid for them.
On carbon offsetting, it is difficult for the public to find schemes they can trust. When we in the EEA decided to offset our own travel, we set very high technical standards. After an open competition across Europe, we only found one company that was able to deliver what we wanted: projects that really tracked the carbon and where the money that we were paying actually went to the project. My concern is that one or two rogues will make people believe that it is all hogwash.
Then there is the issue of the morality of simply buying your way out of the problem. I use a bicycle to get around, but I like to fly planes and am always enthralled by seeing the earth from the air. I would say that the planet couldn't care less about morality. It's just concerned about how many molecules of carbon dioxide there are in the atmosphere. So long as carbon offsetting is effective, there is nothing morally wrong with it.
I would like to see small-scale enterprise projects encouraged in the developing world so that you get the double benefit of development and of taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Think of the green belt movement, led by Kenyan Nobel peace prize-winner Wangari Maathai, with its plan to plant a billion trees to help offset climate change. There is a big opportunity for entrepreneurs in the developing world to create a proper carbon offset market. But agencies like mine and people like you in the media need to expose the charlatans, because there are many solutions on sale that don't do the job.
