Europe’s chief scientist warns against climate delays

By Charlie Dunmore; Editing by Rex Merrifield and Jason Neely
16 March 2012 BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union cannot use the economic slowdown as an excuse to delay action on fighting climate change, the bloc’s first-ever chief scientific adviser has warned. Molecular biologist Anne Glover took on the newly created role reporting to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso at the start of this year, having previously served as chief scientific adviser to Scotland’s devolved government. Despite the fact that many EU governments are slashing their public budgets in an attempt to reduce debt levels, and industry is warning against the cost of climate policies, Glover said Europe cannot afford to postpone action to cut emissions. “It has been extremely disappointing to see many member states cut back on their emission reduction efforts because they say ‘we’re going through a recession’,” she said. “Make no mistake, if we had unabated man-made climate change, we would go through an absolutely horrible period of conflict and migration, until the world’s population started diminishing very rapidly.” As Europe’s leaders begin to switch their focus from spending cuts to boosting growth and jobs, constraints on natural resources also mean that the EU cannot just spend its way out of recession as it has in the past. “The simplest way to think about increasing jobs is to make more stuff and get people to buy more stuff. But my point is that we can’t do that, because we’re running out of resources,” Glover said. She pointed to estimates from scientists and campaigners that if EU consumption patterns were adopted globally, the equivalent of almost three planets would be needed to keep pace with the current rates of resource depletion. “We have to think about alternative ways of using science, engineering, and technology to live on the planet in a way that’s rewarding but that uses less resources. I think it’s the biggest challenge for humans.” […] Glover accepts that there is still significant uncertainty over the precise level of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere that would trigger dangerous global warming. But scientific evidence on the need to cut greenhouse gases is sufficient to compel policymakers to act, and Glover believes politicians should be forced to justify themselves whenever they choose to ignore clear scientific findings. “I accept that there will be times when that evidence is rejected for a number of reasons, they could be ethical, economic or social,” she said. “But when that happens, there should be an obligation to highlight that the policy differs from the one the evidence would suggest. “Evidence is quite a precious thing. It’s normally produced at a substantial cost, it’s peer-reviewed. So you have a very robust valuable resource, and people need to be very certain why they would reject it.”