Climate scientist Professor Kevin Anderson has said Chancellor Rachel Reeves support fora third runway at Heathrow airport is based on “the usual techno babble. You know, ‘sustainable aviation fuel and electric planes.’ These cannot deliver on scale and in timeline for the current aviation, let alone the growth in aviation.”
In an interview conducted before making a presentation at a January 30th public meeting in Glossop, England, Anderson went on to condemn the advice being given to Reeves, and her stance on climate change.
Either she was sufficiently ignorant to not be aware of this, and given she’s had lots of guidance and expertise and all the research expertise that she needs to lay her hands on to understand it, that is concerning. Or she’s been dishonest, but under both those, I think she’s not fit for office, if that’s what she thinks is appropriate. So either she can’t understand the issues well, I’m sorry, you need to get a handle on issues, or you’re not being honest with the population, and I think as an electorate, we should have, we expect should expect – this may be naive – I expect honesty and integrity. I don’t have to agree with them – to expect honesty, integrity of our elected officials. She seems, at the moment, I can see no other way but to say she’s failed on one of those which means she is not fit for purpose.
The interview covered a range of topics, and isl being released in installments. Part one, on the physical impacts we can expect is here. Part two, on “Team Mann vs Team Hansen” and the speed of recent warming is here. . It was conducted by Dr Marc Hudson, who has interviewed Professor Anderson on several occasions over the past 15 years. Dr Hudson runs All Our Yesterdays, an “on this day” website about climate politics, technology, protest that covered events from 1661 to the present day.
The transcript of the relevant portion of the interview can be found below.
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Stay tuned for Monday’s blog post – is Kevin on the Climate Change Committee and its influence on government and academia.
Which brings us to yesterday, the Labour Chancellor, who, two years ago, said that she was going to be the first green – small g green – Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, came out and said that she favored Heathrow airport expansion, and the BBC coverage was helpfully saying things like, “Can sustainable aviation fuel and electric planes make Heathrow’s third runway green?” And my simple response was, “FFS, no.” But we come to you, Kevin for more than “FFS, no.”
So, can sustainable, aviation fuels and electric planes make Heathrow’s third runway green?
Kevin Anderson 14:15
Well, on the question “Can the third runway be made green through technology”. – here I go back to both Mann and Hansen, and their respective timelines to deliver on Paris. And the answer is a categorical no.
But the answer is a categorical no for the existing aviation demand as well.
So it’s not just about any new aviation promoted and facilitated by the third runway. If you focus on the UK, aviation is quickly returning to about 10% of our national emissions. And as we try to cut the emissions from other sectors, then this proportion is only set to increase. The Government’s own Climate Change Committee envisages almost no change in aviation emissions out to 2050, and possibly beyond. Such an industry, at existing levels of emissions , is completely incompatible with our Paris commitments. The third runway is just a reinforcing nail in the Parisian coffin.
So my concern with what Rachel Reeves, our Chancellor, has said, it’s the usual techno babble. You know, “sustainable aviation fuel, SAF and electric planes” These cannot deliver on scale and in timeline for the current aviation, let alone the growth in aviation. They are simply used as a ruse to allow business as usual to continue. Either she was sufficiently ignorant to not be aware of this, and given she’s had lots of guidance and expertise and all the research expertise that she needs to lay her hands on to understand it, that is concerning. Or she’s been dishonest, but under both those, I think she’s not fit for office, if that’s what she thinks is appropriate. So either she can’t understand the issues well, I’m sorry, you need to get a handle on issues, or you’re not being honest with the population, and I think as an electorate, we should have, we expect should expect – this may be naive – I expect honesty and integrity. I don’t have to agree with them – to expect honesty, integrity of our elected officials. She seems, at the moment, I can see no other way but to say she’s failed on one of those which means she is not fit for purpose.
But of course, she is being supported by Reynolds, the business secretary, and lots of other MPs who all of a sudden have discovered the fact that they can somehow reconcile growth in pretty much the highest carbon activity we can imagine with our climate commitments.
And one of the ways that’s been reconciled is this ruse of “net zero 2050”, because there’s a concern here that you can almost squeeze anything you want into that, because you can just assume that in the future, our children and their children will find ways to remove our carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And that is what’s reliant what the Committee on Climate Change, and indeed, many of the big climate models here now reliant on – a really key aspect of them is this, this removal of carbon dioxide, some big carbon sucking machine that we simply do not have today, that is just assumed to occur in the future.
marc hudson 17:30
So does the net in net zero imply Negative Emissions Technology? See what I did there? Yeah,
Kevin Anderson 17:35
Yeah the net in net zero does imply that.
I mean, the net is slightly different, the way it’s been….
Unfortunately we use this term in two ways, the net zero. In other words, we will find ways to remove carbon dioxide that will compensate for some of the emissions that are still put into the atmosphere, and particularly for the Committee on Climate Change, it’s aviation. Very large. Round about for total emissions, about 30 million tons of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels in 2050. That’s more emissions per person in 2050 than the Kenyan emits today. So it’s completely incompatible with Paris.
But the other part about the net is we use this language of net, as in negative emission technologies. Now that term just trips off our tongue because we’ve used it so often. but in fact, they don’t really exist.
These are, these are in such a small level that they’re little more than sort of unicorns in this storyline. They’re sort of made-up technology, because they exist in that they capture a few 1000 tons, and yet atmospherically, we’re putting out about 37 billion tons. So these are completely different in scale to what we’d require.
And so the Chancellor and indeed, many of her sycophantic MPs and ministers are completely reliant on these ruses to allow their Business As Usual to continue. The physics will continue, regardless of any political machinations. And most worryingly is that the repercussions for poor people around the world – typically very low emitters, and also typically, often people of color who have very little political influence – their lives will be willing be increasingly damaged, ripped apart, their livelihoods destroyed by the sorts of decisions that people like the Chancellor’s making over here.
And she’s obviously just dismissed the concerns, any concern for those people. But she’s also dismissed the concern for the children of the electorate in the UK who will suffer the repercussions of her ill-informed decision.
See also
Paul Rogers writing recently for Open Democracy