Flooding, fossil fuels and unpaid bills

There is a myth in circulation today - “expensive green energy”.  You know the story – green energy is fine but it is expensive.  Hard-pressed businesses have to pay “green taxes” to satisfy an ideology of green energy.  “Hard-working families” (that phrase so beloved of politicians) have to pay this unreasonable cost through higher fuel bills – because of the lobbying of overly influential green pressure groups.

There is no truth in any of this but it is part of a manipulation to resist change and stick to an old fashioned economy fueled by coal, oil and gas.

Whilst green taxes are mentioned in almost every other news bulletin, the cost of fossil fuels barely gets a mention.  Staggering ironies are generally completely missed in news reports; climate change, flooding and extreme events are detailed alongside news reports promoting new airports, roads and tax relief on energy intensive industries.  We despair at climate change and bemoan the effects of burning fossil fuels whilst at the same time promote activities that inevitably result in the burning of more fossil fuels.

But fossil fuels - coal, oil and gas – are cheap in comparison to wind, solar and tidal power, aren’t they?  Well they are only cheap for one reason – they don’t pay their bills.  I would be rich if I didn’t pay any of my bills!  Fossil fuels have an unpaid bill that all of us have to cover.  We may not pay it at the petrol pump, but we do through our tax system and, increasingly, in many other ways as well.  Even if we manage to avoid paying these bills, then future generations will have to pay instead.  However, the past is catching up with us; we are turning into the past’s future generations, paying the bills from the poor decisions of the past.

A classic case is flooding.  We are now as certain as we can be that climate change is increasing the likelihood of extreme weather events, and making those events worse than they would otherwise have been.  The billions of £ of flood damage, increased insurance bills and lost productivity is a cost caused by climate change, itself caused by burning coal, oil and gas.  It is an unpaid bill.  But someone has to pay – those people affected by flooding.

Wildlife issues are also central to the climate change debate – though often forgotten or misused.  Even the Prime Minister seems to imagine that these floods are down to the eco-fanatics desire to conserve a couple of water voles!  The truth, however, is that restoration of natural systems, with their rich wildlife, produces a landscape that is resilient and more able to adapt to the changes forced upon it.  In the process a living landscape can reduce flood risk, reduce erosion, improve water quality and more.   Fossil fuels are the problem and promoting natural systems are part of the solution – not the other way around.

Nevertheless, improving nature can only go so far in ameliorating the effects of climate change.  We should not over-claim and society should not over-expect – extreme weather events are going to have an impact, they will get more frequent and they will get worse.

If we remove the tax advantages for fossil fuels, pay the true costs of exploitation, pay the true and increasing costs of flooding, coastal defense, wind damage, increasing heat, drought, sickness and so on, then fossil fuels start to look rather like an expensive and old fashioned luxury.  Some say that a weakness is a strength over-played.  Maybe this is the case with fossil fuels.  They have been an enormous strength, creating the society we all live in today.  They are now way past their sell-by date and hugely over-played.  We need to move on.