The market will do more to arrest climate change than veganism

Technology is key to us producing less carbon, and with proper investment, it will bring growth, too

It was designed to provoke guilt – that sense of having committed a crime – and it succeeded. As I tucked into a lunch of roast beef and cauliflower cheese, my conscience was briefly stirred. Not for the first time, we had been urged, by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to cease eating meat. Ideally, we should all become vegans.

Now, I’ve no problem with veganism, and somewhat admire those with the principles and self-discipline needed to pursue its dietary deprivations. But – like countless others, I’m sure – I won’t be lectured by proselytizing scientists on what to eat; I won’t be told that in order to save the planet, I need to not only stop eating meat and dairy, but also stop flying, driving and using all but the most vital plastics. It is no accident that the biggest remaining repository of climate change denial is the United States – for the almost religious zeal with which green lobbies now pursue their quest and, in particular, the unprecedented levels of state interventionism they demand, is in headlong conflict with America’s proud tradition of rugged individualism and consumer choice. For many Americans, Donald Trump included, the actions demanded by climate change scientists and their followers are still quite widely regarded as backdoor socialism.

As it is, there is something not quite right about the IPCC’S blood-curdling warnings this week. In order to avoid environmental catastrophe, its latest report concludes, we need to keep the rise in temperatures not just to the 2 per cent previously thought acceptable, but to 1.5 per cent. If we succeed, then some of the worst damage can be avoided; if we don’t, the consequences will be calamitous, with insects and plants twice as likely to lose their habitat, virtually all corals killed off, and 10 million people displaced by rising sea levels, never mind the increased incidence of extreme weather events.

Science based on observable fact is one thing, prediction based on extrapolation and questionable modelling quite another. Still more questionable is the IPCC’S almost laughably precise assessment of the “costs” of doing something about it. To keep within the 1.5 per cent limit, human-caused emissions would need to reach net “zero” globally by 2050. To achieve this would require “rapid and far-reaching” transformation in use of land, energy, industry, transport and cities. The necessary investment is costed at $2.4 trillion annually, or 2.5 per cent of GDP a year.

To reach this goal we must, according to the IPCC, consume less meat, milk and cheese, use more locally sourced seasonal food, throw away less, drive electric cars, or better still, cycle and walk, take trains rather than planes, and use washing lines rather than tumble driers. Basically, we are told to go back to the way we were before the advent of mass consumerism. This might be desirable to some, but it is also absurdly unrealistic for a world where billions of souls not only still aspire to today’s American lifestyle, but are also determined to obtain it.

But let’s for now accept that the science is right, and that even the projections of the investment needed to limit the damage are plausible. Where I think the IPCC lets itself down is in its suggestion that massive amounts of sacrifice and government intervention are necessarily required to correct the problem.

It’s true that incentives almost certainly need some further adjustment. Powerful vested interests that stand in the way also need confronting. But beyond that, the market already seems to be doing much of the heavy lifting by itself, such that we may be reaching a tipping point of technological change and take-up that will turbo-charge the required energy transition, and the investment needed to make it happen.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the electrification of our transport systems. For the moment, electric cars remain expensive and, given lengthy charging times, something of an indulgence. These are just the teething problems of infancy. Both in terms of performance and cost, electric vehicles promise rapidly to eclipse incumbent technologies. The internal combustion engine will soon be as much a relic of a bygone age as the dark Satanic mills of Britain’s industrial revolution. For a fast developing economy such as China, it makes no sense to chase the West into an obsolete technology. Straight to electric is the plan, and there are already literally thousands of Chinese start-ups to deliver the prize.

Traditional lithium-ion battery technology may already have gone as far as it is going to go in terms of output, cost, and charging speed, but cleaner, solid-state batteries may soon be with us, promising further exponential improvement as well as such delights as wireless charging. Battery improvement also provides a solution to the intermittent nature of much renewable energy.

The scale of investment needed to make all this happen is admittedly daunting, but the idea that it will lead us to a place where no one can make any money is just silly. The only way the transformation is going to happen is for there to be a business case for it. In a compellingly argued report this week, Goldman Sachs suggests that even the big oil companies can actually improve on current returns by transitioning to holistic low-carbon energy providers. To regard the required investment as a “cost” is in any case to mistakenly think of economics as a zero-sum game. Far from detracting from economic growth, investment on such a scale would greatly add to it.

“It is entirely possible for humans to produce less carbon,” Paul Romer said this week, when accepting the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, an accolade awarded mainly for his work on the transformative power of technology. “Once we start to try to reduce emissions, we’ll be surprised that it wasn’t as hard as we anticipated.” Quite so. We need to think of climate change not as a threat, but as an economic opportunity that can be cured by market forces. The IPCC needs to adjust its message accordingly. Even deniers might then come to accept the science.