Every ash cloud has a silver lining

Most of those stranded on foreign shores – including my colleague David Nash, whose keynote presentation at a symposium in Beijing seemed like a good idea at the time – will fail to appreciate the ash cloud’s silver lining.

It’s equally hard to see how British businesses will benefit or how those whose products rely on fast delivery to market, such as the flower growers in Kenya, will appreciate the bright side of the continuing ban on flights to and from the UK.

According to Independent newspaper – using Reuters copy – though, there are ten silver linings to the cloud of volcanic ash currently hovering over northern Europe. These include lower risk of stroke, which apparently is heightened by aircraft noise, and saving 1.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions; equivalent to the annual emissions of 50 of the world’s poorest countries.

Slightly different estimates of the carbon emissions saved are available here, but you get the picture.

So why is a climate change researcher such as me not rejoicing? Because aside from clearing the skies of west London (and allowing the people of Hounslow to return to their back gardens for what, by coincidence, was a scorcher of a weekend), the ash cloud’s temporary excoriation of all aircraft and their vapour trails from our skies brings mostly economic pain and major inconvenience. And from an environmental perspective, there has been no structural change. Once the ash cloud has gone, it will be business as usual; the emissions saved utterly trivial.

What, on the other hand, the continued eruption of the world’s most unpronounceable volcano shows with great clarity is that whether we like it or not, our economy and the way we live our lives is heavily reliant on aviation. Ground planes – for whatever reason – and at least some of the machinery of globalisation grinds to a halt.

Is there an electoral silver lining? Certainly the conjuring of Dunkirk spirit is never a bad thing (it worked for Thatcher in 1983), although there is a danger that politicians merely look impotent at the hand of nature and, as such, it’s equally hard to see how the non-incumbents can make political capital out of the ashes.

If anything, the volcanic ash has exposed – once again – how vulnerable the current model of globalisation is and how trying to deal with emissions from aviation, whose growth will be a major problem for future governments, simply by curbing flying is a political non-starter.

When the ash cloud lifts and planes take to the air again, we need politicians to think about how we can accelerate technological innovation to reduce emissions from aircraft permanently, how the noise, misery and health impacts that jet aircraft bring to those grounded under their flight paths is reduced, how to replace flying where possible with hi-tech alternatives and how gradually we can shift to a more sustainable model of global trade.

Andrew Pendleton

How green are our parties?

The Green Party published its manifesto yesterday and is clearly taken great pains to emphasise its thinking in policy areas other than environmental issues, such as the economy, pensions, health and employment.

Nevertheless, the name ‘Green’ does tend to focus one’s attention on the environmental policies - so how do the parties compare here?

Clearly, the big issue is climate change and all set out ideas for how they would tackle this problem. The Conservatives want Britain to become the ‘world’s first low carbon economy’, while Labour seeks a ‘low carbon revolution’ and the Liberal Democrats to ‘lead the fight against climate change’. The Greens, however, suggest that ‘only the Green Party understands that this [climate change] is just one sign of the stress our economies and lifestyles put on the environment… it is a warning of the catastrophic social and environmental consequences of business as usual’.

As far as the three main parties are concerned, many of the ideas for reducing carbon emissions are very similar, although they have been given different names. The Liberal Democrats pledge a ‘ten-year programme of home insulation…paid for by the savings from lower energy bills’; the Conservatives a ‘Green Deal’, essentially a programme of home insulation paid for by the savings from lower energy bills; and Labour have an eye-catching ‘Pay As You Save’ scheme, which is … well, you can probably figure it out.

But there are some important differences, perhaps the most obvious being the parties' positions on nuclear power. Both Labour and the Conservatives are for a new generation of nuclear power stations in the UK. The Liberal Democrats oppose new nuclear on the basis that it is too expensive. And the Greens, unsurprisingly, resolutely oppose it both on economic and environmental grounds.

The most striking difference is really in the differing ideologies on how to achieve carbon reductions. While Labour believe active government intervention will be necessary to achieve a low-carbon transition and to generate new green jobs, the Conservatives' approach is much more laissez faire, eschewing ‘rules and regulations’ while embracing ‘incentives and market signals’. The Lib Dems have plans for tougher targets and green investment programmes and the Greens want even higher carbon targets along with direct government investment and even the re-nationalisation of gas and electricity providers.

Of course, these differences may be of little interest to an electorate focused on avoiding recession and dealing with the deficit, which suggests that the Greens’ decision not to lead on their environmental credentials but to focus on economic policies is a smart political manoeuvre.

Jenny Bird