Patrick Vallance has warned MPs that the world is about to be plunged into even deeper turmoil than it was during the Covid pandemic due to the impact of climate change.
The government’s chief science adviser gave an emergency briefing to 70 MPs this week, warning of the dangers of the climate crisis and urging them to act.
He was joined by Prof Stephen Belcher of the Met Office, Prof Emily Shuckburgh of Cambridge Zero and Prof Gideon Henderson, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. They all showed MPs slides – like those they may have been used to during the Covid lockdowns – which you can see in full at this link.
Vallance warned MPs: “We have had two and a half years of global crisis in the form of a pandemic. We are facing 50 years of really big climate-related problems and the nature of this threat to countries around the world means that this should be one of the things that should be on the agenda of every government. There’s no way we can pretend it’s not happening.”
Although the scientists did not make policy recommendations, as they were there simply to present the science, they told MPs that action was needed now to stop the worst effects of the climate emergency.
“To give three observational facts … the world is warmer than it has been, levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are higher than they have ever been, and extreme weather events are more frequent than before all this happened. That’s what we’re facing, and the purpose of this briefing is to talk about the science,” Vallance said.
The slides are similar to those shown to Boris Johnson ahead of Cop26 by Vallance, which the Prime Minister said was his “road to Damascus” moment on climate change.
Belcher’s data from the Met Office makes uncomfortable reading, showing that widespread changes in the ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred since the emergence of Homo sapiens. The diagrams in his slides dramatically highlight this. It also showed that the Arctic ice sheet is shrinking by 12 per decade, and in 40 years we could lose enough to cover an area larger than India, Bhutan and Bangladesh combined.
He also pointed to recent extreme weather events in the US, Europe and Bangladesh to show that the effects of climate change are already being felt, predicting worse to come.
Shuckberg’s message was a little more upbeat, showing how emissions could be reduced while increasing GDP. However, it also showed that while we have made some progress, emissions need to be reduced faster and across a wider variety of sectors to reach net zero. This includes ground transport and buildings as a priority.
Henderson made his presentation even more topical by pointing to a predicted heat wave that could see temperatures reach record highs in the coming days. He focused on the threats of extreme weather and how they could affect food production by increasing problems including potato blight and livestock heat stress.
The briefing also showed parliamentarians that the way we live our lives now will have to change, as new technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere will not be enough to offset emissions in time.
Vallance warned: “Technology will be an important part of dealing with this, but it’s not a magic solution and it’s not going to deal with it alone. If we take 2050, any technology you can’t see already working won’t save us the bacon because of the scale at which these things have to be introduced.
The briefing was organized after campaigner Angus Rose staged a 37-day hunger strike outside Parliament calling for the information to be made available to all MPs. It was backed by 79 of Britain’s leading climate scientists in an open letter, who said a briefing similar to that given during the Covid pandemic would be useful for MPs.
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