FIVE years ago the world was in the grip of a financial crisis that is still reverberating around the globe. Much of the blame for that can be attributed to weaknesses in human psychology: we have a collective tendency to be blind to the kind of risks that can crash economies and imperil civilisations.

Today, our risk blindness is threatening an even bigger crisis. In my book , I argue that the energy industry’s leaders are guilty of a risk blindness that, unless action is taken, will lead to a global crash – and not just because of the climate change they fuel.

Let me begin by explaining where I come from. I used to be a creature of the oil and gas industry. As a geologist on the faculty at Imperial College London, I was funded by BP, Shell and others, and worked on oil and gas in shale deposits, among other things. But I became worried about society’s overdependency on fossil fuels, and acted on my concerns.

In 1989, I quit Imperial College to become a climate campaigner. A decade later I set up a solar energy business. In 2000 I co-founded a private equity fund investing in renewables.

In these capacities, I have watched captains of the energy and financial industries at work – frequently close to, often behind closed doors – as the financial crisis has played out and the oil price continued its inexorable rise. I have concluded that too many people across the top levels of business and government have found ways to close their eyes and ears to systemic risk-taking. Denial, I believe, has become institutionalised.

As a result of their complacency we face four great risks. The first and biggest is no surprise: climate change. We have way more unburned conventional fossil fuel than is needed to wreck the climate. Yet much of the energy industry is discovering and developing unconventional deposits – shale gas and tar sands, for example – to pile onto the fire, while simultaneously abandoning solar power just as it begins to look promising. It has been vaguely terrifying to watch how CEOs of the big energy companies square that circle.

Second, we risk creating a carbon bubble in the capital markets. If policymakers are to achieve their goal of limiting global warming to 2 °C, 60 to 80 per cent of proved reserves of fossil fuels will have to remain in the ground unburned. If so, the value of oil and gas companies would crash and a lot of people would lose a lot of money.

I am chairman of Carbon Tracker, a financial think tank that aims to draw attention to that risk. Encouragingly, some financial institutions have begun withdrawing investment in fossil fuels after reading our warnings. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should spread appreciation of how crazy it is to have energy markets that are allowed to account for assets as though climate policymaking doesn’t exist.

Third, we risk being surprised by the boom in shale gas production. That, too, may prove to be a bubble, maybe even a Ponzi scheme. Production from individual shale wells declines rapidly, and large amounts of capital have to be borrowed to drill replacements. This will surprise many people who make judgement calls based on the received wisdom that limits to shale drilling are few. But I am not alone in these concerns.

Even if the US shale gas drilling isn’t a bubble, it remains unprofitable overall and environmental downsides are emerging seemingly by the week. According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, whole towns in Texas are now , having sold their aquifers for fracking. I doubt that this is a boom that is going to appeal to the rest of the world; many others agree.

Fourth, we court disaster with assumptions about oil depletion. Most of us believe the industry mantra that there will be adequate flows of just-about-affordable oil for decades to come. I am in a minority who don’t. Crude oil production peaked in 2005, and oil fields are depleting at more than 6 per cent per year, according to the International Energy Agency. The much-hyped 2 million barrels a day of new US production capacity from shale needs to be put in context: we live in a world that consumes 90 million barrels a day.

“The mantra is that there will be adequate flows of just-about-affordable oil for decades to come”

It is because of the sheer prevalence of risk blindness, overlain with the pervasiveness of oil dependency in modern economies, that I conclude system collapse is probably inevitable within a few years.

Mine is a minority position, but it would be wise to remember how few whistleblowers there were in the run-up to the financial crash, and how they were vilified in the same way “peakists” – believers in premature peak oil – are today.

But I do believe that there is a road to renaissance, especially if we make the right decisions in the wake of the IPCC’s latest warnings. We have to nurture clean energy industries and strategies, and accelerate them as though mobilising for war. Emerging experience in Germany and elsewhere gives increasing credibility to the view that modern economies can be powered on a mix of renewables. My parents’ generation amazed themselves at how fast they could mobilise tanks, fighters, bombers and warships. If we were to repeat that level of application, we could avert much of the horror that the IPCC warns of.

So far we have found ways to collectively bury our heads in the sand in the face of dire scientific warnings. If we fail to heed the report and all its implications, the next great crisis of capitalism will force us to act. It won’t be possible to ignore lights that go out and tankers that fail to arrive.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Burn and crash”

The Montreal Protocol is supposed to protect the ozone layer, which
in turn protects life on Earth. Instead, the revisions agreed at the London
meeting achieved the opposite: by the time CFCs are phased out in 10 years,
there will have been a 30 per cent increase in total global production of
the major ozone-depleting substances, CFC-11 and CFC-12.

Production of these substances is set to increase from the 18 million
tonnes produced between 1930 and 1990 to 24 million tonnes by the end of
the next decade.

This licence for the world’s chemicals industries to play ecological
roulette with the atmosphere is completely, dangerously – almost unbelievably
– contrary to the scientific evidence and advice placed before the decision
makers.

Eminent climate scientists warned the conference of the dangers of allowing
any further damage to the Earth’s already-ragged ozone layer. A report by
Ivar Isaksen of Norway’s Institute of Geophysics said balloon observations
in the lower stratosphere show a 10 per cent reduction in ozone since 1967
over the middle latitudes of Europe and North America. This suggests ozone
depletion may be even more rapid than previously thought by NASA’s scientists.

The United Nations Panel on the Environmental Effects of Ozone Depletion
(1989) has stated that each 1 per cent decrease in ozone layer protection
will lead to a 3 per cent increase in non-melanoma skin cancer. It will
also cause cataracts, resulting in 100 000 additional blind people worldwide.

UNEP scientists have also voiced fears that the biggest impact of ozone
depletion could be on the world’s food supply, through damage to crops and
marine ecosystems. Those who know how limited the research base is in these
areas can only marvel at the extent of the roulette we are playing. And,
paraphrasing the leading doctors and surgeons who wrote to The Times in
dismay last week, God knows what will result if immune systems are appreciably
suppressed by the lowered ozone shield.

Countries such as the Soviet Union, US and Japan, all with large CFC
production industries, were instrumental in blocking moves for an early
phase-out date. These were also the countries which claimed they could not
phase out CFCs because of their ‘essential uses’. By comparison, Australia
and New Zealand, two countries most affected currently by ozone depletion,
have phase-out targets of 1995.

Companies such as ICI have often chosen conveniently to ignore the case
for ozone depletion. Since 1984, the Department of the Environment has stated
there is unequivocal evidence that CFCs deplete the ozone layer. Yet as
recently as April this year, ICI claimed there is no conclusive proof that
CFCs do this. ‘The effect of CFCs on the ozone layer is by no means easy
to understand. Nor is the connection entirely proven . . .’ stated ICI Chemicals
and Polymers in its April 1990 edition of Environmental Issues.

Despite the self-serving circumspection of their corporate mouthpiece,
ICI scientists Hugo Steven and Andy Lindley boasted in a recent article
in ��è����Ƶ of ICI’s ‘Race to heal the ozone hole’

(16 June). There was no mention of the fact that ICI is the largest
producer of ozone-destroying chemicals in Europe, and lobbied hard to prevent
non-CFC ozone depleters like methyl chloroform from being phased out under
the Montreal Protocol.

No mention was made either of the environmental problem which will be
caused by the ‘substitutes’ which ICI is developing for CFCs. You may not
have noticed it in their self-congratulatory piece about ICI’s new substance
HFC-134a, but the fact is it is an extremely powerful greenhouse gas.

The recently published scientists’ report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC), compiled by more than 300 of the world’s most
respected climate scientists, indicts CFCs and many of their ‘substitutes’
because of their contribution to global warming. The IPCC scientists, many
from government institutions, report that a kilogram of CFC-12 is 5750 times
as effective as a greenhouse gas than a kilogram of carbon dioxide, while
a kilogram of HFC-134a is 4130 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon
dioxide.

Taking into account the shorter lifetime in the atmosphere of HFC-134a,
every kilogram of the gas which ICI produces will have a global warming
potential more than 3000 times that of carbon dioxide (compared with CFC-12’s
7100 times) over the next 20 years, and more than 1000 times over the next
century. These new chemicals could account for 10 per cent of global warming
by the next century.

Is this out of the frying pan and into the fire? ICI’s solutions are
short-sighted and reveal a questionable attitude to the health of the planet
and future generations.

The company’s recent national advertising campaign chose to ignore or
misrepresent the views of the great majority of world climate scientists.
ICI’s full-page advertisements claimed that the ‘substitutes’ to CFCs would
contribute less than 1 per cent of overall global warming. The IPCC estimates
the contribution to be up to 10 times as much over the product lifetimes.
But what is an order of magnitude to a world-class advertiser? Global warming
hardly raised its head at the Montreal Protocol conference. Unbelievably,
politicians are choosing to mortgage our children’s future to the narrow
interests of chemical companies.

Though the Montreal Protocol, in the form agreed last week, will commit
the ozone layer to still deeper levels of uncharted erosion, ICI’s Pounds
sterling 1.5 billion profits will presumably not be depleted. Neither –
it seems – will its HFC operation feel the heat. Money talks; shame about
the environment.

Jeremy Leggett is Director of Science at Greenpeace UK

FEW PEOPLE can honestly claim not to have been taken by surprise by
the rapidity with which the greenhouse effect has leapt onto the international
stage in the past three years. Notwithstanding the many changes in the modern
world, global warming seems set to become a major theme for the 1990s. Policy
makers, scientists, industrialists, environmentalists: all will face unprecedented
challenges. For ordinary folk, the details can seem bewildering, but the
grounds for concern are sufficiently clear to make public angst grow apace.

The first crop of popular books on the bandwagon hit the shelves last
year. Two of the country’s finest science writers and a scientist at the
cutting edge of climate research have joined the fray. In their different
ways, John Gribbin, Fred Pearce and Mick Kelly have risen to the task splendidly.
Between them, these two books cater for a huge market among interested parties.

Gribbin and Kelly’s book was written to accompany the excellent documentary
Can Polar Bears Tread Water?, screened last year. Beautifully illustrated,
it is a work of advocacy as well as a comprehensive – though accessible
– analysis of science and policy. The advocacy should not deter educators,
for this is an ideal book for use in sixth-form and undergraduate work.
After all, where global warming is concerned, advocacy has been coming from
the strangest quarters in the past year. To name but three: queens (Beatrice
of the Netherlands in her Christmas speech), nuclear weapons scientists
(��è����Ƶ, 16 September 1989), and Tory MPs (Sir Ian Lloyd’s comment
to The Sunday Times on 30 July that ‘we have, at the most, a quarter of
a century to make the assessments and take action. The life of the planet
may be at stake.’) Gribbin and Kelly choose to begin with an introductory
chapter that covers the basic problem in its entirety: the origins of the
greenhouse gases, through the effects of climate change, to population growth,
military expenditures and massive debt. Images of traffic jams, missiles,
floodwaters and the like are interspersed with colour graphs and figures.
The text is broken into blocks, with helpful subtitles. The second chapter
takes us into climate modelling in more detail. A third chapter, headed
‘Second only to nuclear war’ using the much-quoted Toronto statement, introduces
us to the specifics of a greenhouse world where there has been no effective
global policy.

Gribbin and Kelly are clear that climatic apocalypse is not far off
if humankind does not change its ways. They skilfully marshal the evidence
from the many scientists who share this view.

Pearce is more cautious, without being complacent about the future.
His is a view of ‘a fundamental crisis for the life-support systems that
sustain our living planet,’ but one we can survive by understanding it better,
reorganising ourselves, and deploying technological fixes if necessary.
We see interesting contrasts in their interpretation of the greenhouse threat.
For example, Gribbin and Kelly say of the world’s tropical rainforests:
‘This vital ecosystem is being destroyed at such a rate that it may well
cease to exist within the next 50 years.’ Pearce differs: ‘The idea that
the Amazon rainforest could disappear within a decade or so is nonsense.’
In this manner, the two books offer a microcosm of how difficult scientists
find it to say where the greatest threats to the changing atmosphere lie,
and how long it will be before we might pass a point of no return.

The great strength of Pearce’s book is that he tells a story. Where
it is possible, he adopts a historical approach that emphasises the scientists
behind the science. In a book with few diagrams, he brings the science behind
global warming alive with the craftsmanship of his writing. Students of
the history of science will particularly enjoy this book, whether they are
greenhouse pundits or not.

Pearce begins with the story of the ozone hole. He then takes us back
to the geological record as a vehicle for explaining the science relevant
to the Earth’s thermostat. Subsequent chapters offer us eclectic accounts
of the main scientific issues central to the greenhouse problem. Few people
have the ability to integrate varied scientific subjects as well as is done
here. Pearce’s impressions of the big picture flirt more heavily with the
Gaia hypothesis than many writers would have countenanced in such a book.
But this makes fascinating reading and actually strengthens the analytical
framework.

Along the way, there is a fair amount to raise the hackles of environmentalists.
In the final sentence of the book, Pearce confesses that his optimistic
vision of the future in the global greenhouse comprises ‘. . . a high-tech
Eden in which we took the apple and lived to tell the tale’. The aptly-numbered
chapter 13, ‘Turning down the heat’, is the only one on policy responses,
and in it Pearce’s fascination with high-technology is clear, and – at least
to this reader – somewhat inappropriate. Only 15 pages out of 209 on policy
responses to global warming sits uneasily with the jacket boast that we
are reading ‘the first handbook to the greenhouse age’. Pearce starts that
chapter with the statement that ‘technical fixes are beguiling,’ and then
uses five of the 15 pages to tell us about plugging the ozone hole artificially,
damming rivers and flooding depressions to keep down sea-level, decarbonisation
of power station emissions, burial of car bon dioxide in the deep oceans
and fertilising phytoplankton with iron compounds. The starting point of
a discussion of policy responses is surely anywhere but here.

Eventually we move on to reafforestation, energy efficiency and alternatives
to fos sil fuels, but for a mere four pages. Nowhere do we read about strategies
for reduction of agricultural emissions of green house gases, now – excluding
deforestation – some 14 per cent of the anthropogenic greenhouse problem.
Nor does he consider the North-South implications for policy or the institutional
means by which they might best be enacted.

Here Gribbin and Kelly come into their own. Fully 86 of their 162 pages
concern ‘Ways out of the heat trap’, the title of their fourth chapter.
They debate the relative merits of action and adaptation, and give a systematic
account of all the actions which have been considered to date. We read of
‘crazy decisions’, ‘obscene irony’, and so forth along the way. And why
not? That has been the international track record to date, and the more
scientists who say so in plain language, the better science will be serving
humankind. As Sherwood Rowland of the University of California, long ignored
when he warned about ozone depletion, has observed of the greenhouse effect:
‘What’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions,
if in the end all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them
to come true?’ Gribbin and Kelly spell out the remaining scientific uncertainties
clearly, and sell the obvious message skilfully: that, despite the uncertainties
– and indeed in all likelihood because of them – ‘wait and see’ is no longer
a viable option if we want to guarantee our grandchildren a future.

The good teacher will be able to generate superb material for discussion
using this book as a basic text. And concerned citizens interested in an
active role will find all they need in the fifth and final chapter, ‘Back
to Grass Roots’. A seven-page section on individual action is particularly
useful.

Dr Jeremy Leggett is Director of Science at Greenpeace UK.

In the 600 million years that metazoan life has inhabited the planet,
there have been five spectacular phases of mass extinction (and a few dozen
other impressive ones). One, 250 million years ago, involved the loss of
about 90 per cent of all species then living. Another, 66 million years
ago, involved the loss of 75 per cent of all species, including all the
dinosaurs. The sixth major mass extinction is just beginning. The palaeontologists
at the meeting at Interlaken agreed that it differs from the previous five
in several important ways.

First, it is the largest. One estimate predicts that the several thousand
species of plants on the planet will have been reduced by half by the end
of the next century, and that with them will have disappeared a similar
number of animal species. This estimate is based only on current rates of
extinction (which result from deforestation, environmental stresses on coral
reefs and islands and the like). It discounts the additional burden of global
warming, and so stands to be unrealistically conservative. With or without
the greenhouse effect, never before in the three-billion-year history of
life on Earth will so many species have disappeared.

Second, the current mass-extinction is the fastest. The effects of huge
meteorites crashing into the planet seem to have caused at least some of
the previous mass extinctions. Even so, the geological record suggests that
it took thousands of years or more for the total number of species to be
halved. The present reduction of biodiversity – 50 per cent of species lost
in less than two centuries, and more likely a matter of decades if the greenhouse
effect is considered – will be the largest setback to life yet.

Third, the modern mass-extinction has a single, unprecedented, cause:
man.

The geologists at Interlaken compiled a graphic catalogue of man’s impact
on the planet. He scrabbles 50 billion tonnes of minerals from the ground
each year, in so doing shifting the equivalent of three times the sediment
moved each year by the world’s rivers. This process leads to inevitable
leakage from the mineralsto-goods cycle, causing an exponential rise in
toxic metals in seas, lakes and soils. He mines and burns billions of tonnes
of coal each year, so venting a further Pandora’s box of wastes, including
carbon dioxide, the principal (current) contributor to the greenhouse effect.

Feeding himself with carelessness typical of his tenure, he causes the
erosion of 25 billion tonnes of soils each year, 0.7 per cent of the total
farmable soils, soils which took thousands of years to form. He lays down
30 kilograms of fertiliser per person each year to increase his crop yield,
so polluting the water he must drink. His accidents and spillages leave
their imprint everywhere. Dioxins from his chemical industries find their
way into the tissues of polar bears. Radioactive particles from his nuclear
bombs and reactors accumulate at the South Pole within days of their release.

This litany of misadventure is only partial. Yet man’s insults to the
natural rhythms of the planet are compounded as his population grows. After
the time of Christ, he took 1500 years to double his numbers. The most recent
doubling took 37 years. Greater numbers of people mean that more food must
be produced from the dwindling farmlands, more minerals scrabbled from the
ground, more wastes and spillages added to the environment. The geological
history of the planet preserved in rock strata – with its three-billion-year
chronicle of life – has been likened to the life of a soldier: long periods
of boredom interspersed with moments of terror. No terror has been greater
than that associated with the few moments man has been on the scene.

There were various opinions on offer in Interlaken as to what was mostly
likely to cause the demise of man unless he refashions his approach to the
environment. Some, for example, thought it would be reduction of biodiversity:
that we would not survive the collapsing ecosystems as the rainforests are
cleared and the greenhouse hots up. Others thought it would be pollution
of the oceans: that we would allow the build-up of toxins to a level that
would prove to be a critical threshold. Theories abounded One eminent geochemist
professed that it would be the microbiota, evolving deadly new strains in
the face of the barrage of toxic wastes.

Some of the scientists at the meeting proffered what I call the ‘Martian
view’, which holds that the demise of man is inevitable – and indeed that
the planet would be better off without its dominant species. Others preferred
the ‘optimist view’, which holds that man has it within him not just to
survive but also to stem the rate of extinctions; that the issue in doubt
is not his intelligence, but his collective will. The geologists all agreed
on one thing, however: that the geological record holds many lessons for
the present and the future, and that, for man, all of them are portentious.

As the evening sun reflected from the Jungfrau, and I sipped a beer
on the terrace with my friends, it all seemed vaguely unreal.

Jeremy Leggett recently left academia to become director of science
at Greenpeace UK.