Nigel Lawson
Feature
Sunny outlook
by Jane Clifton
A prominent sceptic about the impact of global warming sees the sense in a carbon tax.
If governments were serious about getting carbon emissions down, says former British Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson, they’d tax them. And he wouldn’t mind all that much.
This seems rather off-message from someone who is (a) the driving force behind the Thatcherite and many subsequent low-tax regimes in various countries, including our own, and (b) a prominent sceptic about the likely impact of global warming.
But Lord Lawson, here recently to give the annual Sir Ron Trotter lecture, says that it would do no harm to make carbon emissions a prime driver of revenue collection. And it would make everyone who believes that global warming is a serious menace feel a lot better.
“It seems to me the most sensible thing to do – and quite politically safe, unlike a lot of the other anti-global warming measures being talked about – would be for a government to impose a carbon tax on all uses of carbon, but to say, we are not increasing our overall tax levy, but we’re using this carbon tax to reduce our other taxation. You would think this would be something governments would do. I personally don’t think there’s any need for it, but if you’re a country that does, why not?”
Lawson says that we have always taxed to curtail social evils like tobacco. Though he would argue that climate change is not as big a menace as tobacco, he accepts most people probably think it is.
Why he doesn’t think so is a long story, told in his lecture. In summary, he is unconvinced by the existing available science that the world’s climate is currently warming significantly, and sceptical about the degree to which it will warm in time. Clearly, he says, there has been some warming. And it is inarguable that if there is too much carbon in the atmosphere, there will be more warming. “That is fact.”
His major beef is in the world’s response to the possibility of climate change, major or minor. He says there is no practicable way of reducing carbon emissions in the foreseeable future. We have to accept that if the worst-case scenarios about temperature are true, and are the consequence of carbon emissions, then we are stuck with it.
The developing world will not abide by the Kyoto Protocol and, given how much these countries are emitting, this would make the West’s efforts to cut down futile. And he doubts the West will make much progress cutting its emissions, because people simply will not tolerate governments passing measures that significantly depress their standard of living.
Lawson believes we are wasting time with Kyoto, trying to achieve the unachievable when we should be working on ways to adapt to a warmer climate.
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC} says warming will be between about 1.8 degrees Centigrade and four degrees. That’s quite a wide range. Now, that will bring benefits. For instance, there will be a decline in cold-related deaths.
“But it also brings disadvantages, and the effects will be unevenly spread. But I think it is possible by intelligent adaptation to pocket the benefits while reducing the adverse effects. In farming, by the use of bio-engineering we can make tremendous gains.”
Point out that in this country, for instance, people generally mistrust genetic modification, and Lawson grows fierce. “Look! In the rich countries they can afford to be resistant. In the poor countries where they have famines and hunger, they’re not going to resist this.”
A life peer, retired to the south of France, Lawson is travelling the world to promote his thesis – he was a guest here of the Business Roundtable – because he sees global-warming panic as a threat to globalisation and economic growth. He is protecting a world order he played no small part in establishing as Margaret Thatcher’s chief finance minister – a fact that will make adherents to conventional thinking about climate change even more narrow-eyed about his views.
Lawson says, however, he is not the Anti-Gore. He is not a climate-change denier. Clearly the climate has changed; but he believes the facts are being catastrophised. The world’s climate is not set in stone, with changes occurring before man had the heft to affect it. “We know that the Romans produced wine on a commercial scale in central and northern England. Clearly, the climate then was a great deal warmer than it is today.”
Lawson also points out that both Finland and Singapore are generally considered to be economic success stories, yet one has an average annual temperature of less than 5°C, while the other’s exceeds 27°C – a difference of more than 22 degrees.
If humans can successfully cope with that, he says, why shouldn’t they be able to adjust to a mean increase of slightly under 3°C, given 100 years to adapt to the change?
The capacity to adapt, says Lawson, “is arguably the most fundamental characteristic of mankind”. The Dutch, he notes, managed to adapt to rising seas pretty effectively even with the 16th-century technology.
As for food production, he says that the IPCC has not been sufficiently reported. “I quote: ‘Globally, the potential for food production is projected to increase with increases in local average temperature over a range of 1-3°C, but above that it is projected to decrease.’
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