Dominic Lawson: Global warming gurus set a bad example

Poor little hedgehog. "Born to die" was this newspaper's bleak headline yesterday accompanying the front page picture of a baby hedgehog. And it's all our fault: the little feller had emerged into this cruel world at the wrong time of year, because - allegedly - climate change had fooled mummy and daddy Tiggywinkle into copulating when they should have been hibernating.

What a tearjerking tale to inspire European Union heads of government as they met yesterday to agree a 20 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2020. They were encouraged in this, not just by the truly tragic Independent front page, but also Al Gore, fresh from his Oscar triumph, who told an audience in Portugal how vital this EU initiative would be in setting an example to the rest of the world.

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This would be the example that big Al has not yet had time to set as he flits by private jet from one environmental award ceremony to another. His local newspaper, The Tennessean, revealed last week that the presenter of An Inconvenient Truth had used 20 times more energy than the average American - the average American! - in keeping his Nashville mansion in the style to which it had become accustomed. Gore's spin doctors argued that the former Vice-President had bought "carbon offsets" to compensate for his home's use of "polluting" energy.

It turns out that Gore bought these modern equivalents of indulgences from Generation Investment Management--a company which he chairs. In other words, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out with its customary regard for the bottom line, "Gore buys his carbon offsets from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself".

In the Independent on Sunday, the philosopher AC Grayling argued that it was wrong to criticise Gore: he is "obviously well meaning" and "although saying one thing and doing another makes a person inconsistent, it does not automatically falsify what he says." Quite so, AC; but it does - or rather should - greatly diminish such a person's impact.

In an address last week to the US Media Ethics Summit Gore described climate change as "the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced." Not just moral, mind, but ethical as well. It must have crossed the minds of some of the media ethicists present that if Al Gore truly believed that countless future African babies will die as a result of excessive American use of electricity at this very moment, then he would behave in a very different way; and if he does not act as though the impact is as dreadful as his movie makes out, then perhaps the rest of us should not be stampeded into moral panic.

Anyway, we Europeans don't need to listen to an American hypocrite. We've got one of our own. The EU's president, Jose Manuel Barroso, is revelling in his new-found role as putative global leader in carbon-use reduction. According to yesterday's FT: "In the past few months it has been hard to keep track of the climate change initiatives pouring out of Mr Barroso's Commission." One of Mr Barroso's initiatives is called "You control climate change", which, he says "makes clear to what extent we are all responsible for climate change and what individuals can and need to do to limit this threat".

So what did Mr Barroso do "as an individual" when it was pointed out that while urging Europe's car manufacturers to produce vehicles which emit fewer than 130 grammes of C02 per kilometre, he nevertheless continues to drive a sports utility vehicle, the VW Touareg 4x4, which emits 265g/km? Mr Barroso said: "I never see myself as an example. A moralistic approach is not mine." Mr Barroso is obviously a keen student of AC Grayling.

The Birkbeck philosophy lecturer bases his moral endorsement on the assumption that these are people who care: "I would rather have an energy-wasting Al Gore fighting to save the planet than an energy-wasting Al Gore not caring about the planet." I couldn't give a solitary methane fart how much Al Gore cares about the planet. What matters is whether he is right in his claim that the planet is heating to an unsustainable level and that the cause is human activity.

Last night Channel 4 broadcast Martin Durkin's The Great Global Warming Swindle, in which an impressive line-up of scientists disputed every facet of this fashionable assumption. As I pointed out when previewing the film, the moral force of Durkin's argument is that while the likes of Al Gore claim to be acting principally in the interests of the Third World, it is the countries of Africa and Asia who have most to gain through global economic growth and rapid industrialisation - and most to lose through policies which seek to limit that growth.

If you want a vivid example of how Professor AC Grayling's "well-meaning" and deeply caring hypocrites damage the very people they purport to act for, you should read a piece filed for the BBC's website by its correspondent in Nairobi. Victoria Averill reveals how Kenya's farmers have been stricken by Tesco's sudden decision to "save the planet" by reducing the amount of fresh produce it air-freights.

Fresh fruit, flowers and vegetables make up 65 per cent of Kenya's exports to the EU, of which half goes into British supermarkets. The chief executive of the Kenya Flower Council, Jane Ngige, told the BBC: "One minute we are talking about fair trade, the next minute the issue is lessening the carbon footprint by cutting markets in Africa. It is so confusing." Stephen Mbithi Mwikya, the head of Kenya's Fresh Produce Export Association was less diplomatic: "This announcement from Tesco is devastating." Look, Mr Mwikya, can't you see that Tesco needs to impress the British middle-classes? It can't let them all defect to Waitrose.

I hope you watched Durkin's film last night, if only to get a proper explanation of the alternative view of climate change, that it is largely (though not entirely) caused by solar activity: I hope so, because my own explanation of it in this column a week ago was lamentably confused. It is with some trepidation, therefore, that I now pass on information gleaned from Nasa's Mars orbiter, Odyssey. According to a Nasa press release, "Odyssey is giving us indications of recent global climate change in Mars".

Yes, you've guessed it: Mars is getting warmer, and its polar ice is retreating. Blame it on little green men in Martian 4x4s if you want to, but I for one am relieved. It gives me even more reason to believe that we are not, after all, to blame for the premature life and death of that poor little hedgehog.

d.lawson@independent.co.uk

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