Mixed messages and looking ahead...

Governments in democracies have a tough job.  They have to balance priorities - which leads to them taking actions that are frankly illogical.  If they do things that are unpopular they don't get voted back in.

If one believes man-made global warming is a serious threat - and the warnings of those doing the science should be taken seriously - as the British government at least professes to - then surely one should be taking rapid and urgent action.  That would mean educating the population and above all legislating to force us to stop burning fossil fuels without at least capturing all the carbon.  This would mean dramatically reducing private car use as well as building large amounts of renewable energy generation and almost certainly a number of nuclear power stations to bridge the gap.  In the absence of that we would have to reduce the amount of energy we're consuming for both domestic and industrial purposes.  These are likely to unpopular moves until the large majority of citizens are convinced of an impending crisis - by which point it will probably be too late.  Even then, they will be unlikely to vote for such measures unless the rest of the industrialised world follows suit or leads the way.

This is a classic prisoner's dilemma - if the UK acts in isolation then our economic prosperity will suffer - and our overall effect on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will be negligible.  This is the justification for the Kyoto agreement - but if the biggest CO2 producers - in particular the USA - don't sign up, then nothing will happen.  Countries in the west (or anywhere else for that matter) don't have a great record on altruism.  There is also a great deal of distrust - how do you make sure that everyone is playing by the rules?

The car scrappage scheme is an example of just how illogical things can get.  Ideally we want to reduce the number of fossil fuel burning cars on the road to reduce CO2 emissions, pollution and congestion - but the economic prosperity of the country is suffering in a deep recession - so the government wants to stimulate economic activity in an area that has been hit hard.  They also need the vehicle duty paid on the 30 million vehicles in the country in order to balance their budgets.  Their response is to introduce a scrappage scheme whereby one can trade in one's vehicle, providing it's more than 10 years old, to get a discount on a new car. The argument is that newer cars produce less CO2 than old ones.  That might be true depending on what one trades in compared to what one buys to replace it - but the difference is pretty small in the overall scheme of things.  If one was forced to buy an electric or even a hybrid vehicle then the argument might be valid - but that's not required.  This is just one example - there are plenty of others where government policies conflict.

Looking ahead to when the oil price becomes ridiculously high and we don't have enough bio-fuels to replace it, one can foresee a shift in economic activity.  As the cost of transporting goods and people by ship and plane becomes too high, globalisation will be replaced by localisation.  Electronic communications links and the internet will stay in place, but countries will regenerate their manufacturing and agricultural industries to bring the supply of goods closer to the consumers.  Whether we will be able to generate enough electricity from renewable sources to provide for this industrial need is another question!