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An Appeal to Reason

No need to panic — probably

Nigel Lawson
Duckworth, 149pp, £9.99,

Graham Stewart

Tuesday, 8th April 2008

When there is so much data suggesting the world’s climate is heating up, some may find it presumptuous of Nigel Lawson, who is not a scientist and has undertaken no original research, to hope to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy. Would we take seriously an appraisal of his time as Chancellor of Exchequer written by someone whose only expertise was in oceanography?

Indeed, contrary to the Stern Report’s claims, Lawson argues that the current costs of the proposed actions may be greater than the notional savings centuries hence. Even the generally gloomy Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change extrapolates that the cost of global warming will mean that in 100 years’ time living standards in the developing world will be 8.5 times higher rather than 9.5 times higher than today. As doom-laden predictions go, this one leaves Lawson musing whether ‘Save the Planet’ might be ‘a strong contender for the most ludicrous slogan ever coined’.

Lawson’s case is not an appeal to do nothing, but to avoid doing something stupid. The giant leap towards subsidy-devouring and highly inefficient wind farms or the vast replanting of the Earth with biofuels are but two panic responses we may come to regret. From the threat to species diversity caused by deforestation to the clogging-up of landfill sites nearer to home, many of us are rightly fearful of the effects man is having on the environment. A focussed response to these and other crimes of our times may provide a better return on our investment rather than unilateral attempts to make the cost of energy prohibitive in Europe while China and India chug along the smoky path to prosperity. Hope of a binding worldwide agreement is a chimera.

Lawson asks us to accept that global warming will have positive as well as negative consequences for the planet and that a sensible response involves constant if piecemeal adaptation rather than prohibitively expensive and possibly futile grand gestures. Practical measures will involve improved flood defences in some areas and bringing new crops into cultivation in others. With vastly fewer resources, earlier generations of Europeans dealt with greater changes in climate than are predicted for our future.

The adaptation approach has generally been overlooked in the great panic. Outright mitigation, through carbon cutting, has been proclaimed, and those wishing to investigate alternative paths cannot expect funding. Bombarded with the zealous certainties of those deaf to reasoned argument on this most important of issues, it is intensely refreshing to find in Nigel Lawson someone who, without claiming to have all the answers, is at least brave enough to ask eminently sensible questions.

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