Ghosts of the past and shadows of the future

Returning to work after an excellent fortnight in Catalonia (wonderful trip and I'd recommend the train journey), it takes a little while to readjust to 'normal' life and to the noise that surrounds environmental debate.  For example, I have been struck by the reaction to the news that the RSPB has objected to two fracking proposals.   While we have received many supportive comments about our position, which aligns with most other environmental organisations, some have accused us of "playing politics". 

In my detached, post-holiday view, I find this odd.  A wildlife charity objecting to a development which might have consequences for widlife and the environment? That's sort of what we do and have been doing for 124 years.  But, for some, fracking is seen as the answer to concerns about energy security, reducing fuel bills and rebooting the economy.  Any opponents are accused of not being relevant to the debate, a nimby or worse having ulterior motives for getting involved.

Economics aside, I cannot help wonder if there is a collective desire to suppress concern about the consequences of locking ourselves into an energy future that remains reliant on fossil fuels.  Even beyond the well-known climate deniers, the science of climate change and its impacts on humans and wildlife, seem to either to have been forgotten or to have been deprioritised.   I cannot help but draw a rather crude parallel with my holiday reading: the Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett which partly seeks to understand why Spain, for so many years, struggled to end its "pact of forgetting" the Civil War and the four decades of Franco's rule.

Four years ago, the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (both domestically and internationally) was at the centre of political debate led by David Cameron and by Ed Miliband.  It had been fuelled by the Nick Stern report on the economics of climate change which argued convincingly as to why it made economic sense to invest in reducing greenhouse gases today rather than pay to deal with the consequences of climate change tomorrow.  Now, there is a danger that debate about climate science and its impacts has been reduced to an entertaining sport between believers and sceptics.  I hope that the forthcoming Independent Panel on Climate Change reports (on the science in September this year, on impacts in March 2014 and on mitigation in April 2014) helps to shift public and therefore political opinion.  Only then can we move on to a more grown-up debate about the tough choices we face in wanting to maintain standards of living whilst guaranteeing a safe future for our children and the planet.  From the leaks that have been reported (see here), the climate crisis appears to be getting worse and the clock calling for action is ticking. 

As I have written before, there is a lot at stake.  A major review in Nature suggested that up to a third of species could be committed to extinction by 2050 as a result of climate change and the Climatic Atlas of European Breeding Birds highlighted the consequences of a warming world for wild birds.   But this isn't all about shadows of the future, there is already strong evidence that climate change is affecting UK wildlife now. 

Our collective "pact of forgetting" the climate science and its impact on widlife need to be abandoned so that we have a more rounded debate about our energy future and, yes, that must include an honest assessment of the risks of fracking.