Guardian climate feeds

I was delighted to read of the government's strong commitment to support UK industry in developing offshore wind power (Nick Clegg defends wind power subsidies in face of Tory attack, 7 February). This exciting form of clean, low-carbon energy is a real "win-win" for our energy needs and economy. Germany has created over 350,000 jobs in the renewable energy sector alone and Scotland is creating thousands of new jobs as well, so it's surprising that so many backbench Conservative MPs seem unwilling to support what could, and should, be a jobs bonanza in their recent letter on wind power to the prime minister.

So I'm pleased that both the PM and the deputy PM have firmly rebuffed this letter. But I'm disappointed to hear the new UK energy minister Ed Davey do the same as Chris Huhne and repudiate his long-held opposition to nuclear power by supporting the proposed UK nuclear new build programme.

I urge Ed Davey, as the architect of the Lib Dems' anti-nuclear pre-election policy, to challenge whether nuclear new build really stacks up, and where on earth the nuclear industry or the government will find the money to finance it when the industry is debt-laden and the radioactive waste bill soars. There is still time to think again
Cllr Brian Goodall
Chair of UK and Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities

• Ed Davey has got off to a good start in his new job (Report, 3 February) firmly backing an agenda for green growth, jobs and defending wind power. His visit with Nick Clegg yesterday to a home energy-saving technology centre is a clear indication that they intend to put household bill payers and cutting-edge UK industry at the heart of their energy policy. Davey should have vocal support from the prime minister too. He will face a tough battle against the Treasury, the gas and nuclear industry, and the politicians who are putting those interests above bill payers, industry and jobs.

Davey and the PM now need to provide the policy clarity and certainty on energy saving, renewables and decarbonisation of the energy system that shows the UK is a long-term good bet for green business. The test of Davey's success, and that of the government, will be if they deliver a timely boost to the economy, thousands of skilled jobs, and get a good deal for consumers.
Andy Atkins Chief executive, Friends of the Earth, David Nassbaum Chief executive, WWF, John Sauven Executive director, Greenpeace

• Environmentalists who oppose the use of geoengineering to tackle climate change should think again (Concern grows over role of scientists and billionaire backers urging climate fix, 6 February). To say that research into technological solutions "could undermine efforts to reduce emissions" ignores the fact that those efforts have already failed. International conferences and resolutions can't alter the political reality of electorates not supporting the radical changes to their lifestyles which would be required by significant emissions cuts. So we need to invest urgently in geoengineering, as well as carbon capture and storage, and ending deforestation.
Richard Mountford
Hildenborough, Kent

• We hope Mr Davey will rebuild the relationship with local government - based on mutual respect – which was severely strained and undermined by the Department for Energy and Climate Change deciding to prematurely cut the Feed in Tariff for Solar installation. It caused industry turmoil and job losses, forcing councils to reduce or abandon long-planned investment in cheaper, cleaner energy for tens of thousands of domestic homes and public buildings.

A major step in rebuilding the relationship between DECC and local government would be for Davey to instruct his department to abandon the farcical and humiliating appeal to the Supreme Court against Friends of the Earth's successful Judicial Review, and enter dialogue with councils, business, and the environmental sector on strengthening the future of solar and renewable energy, rather than undermining. This would immediately build trust and confidence between Davey and those partners who share responsibility for reducing carbon emissions, tackling fuel poverty and developing a low carbon economy with the jobs that will come with it. It is a chance not to be missed.
Cllr Clyde Loakes London borough of Waltham Forest, Cllr Tim Moore Liverpool city council, Cllr Ed Turner Oxford city council, Cllr Tracey Simpson-Laing City of York council, Cllr Tony Newman London borough of Croydon

• Your lead article (Report, 6 February) is cause for concern, but not primarily for the reasons voiced by the environmentalists you quoted.

As most of them (including, in particular, Clive Hamilton, whose book "Requiem for a species" provides a brilliant analysis of our collective failure to address the seriousness and urgency of climate change) will be only too aware, current global policies will, on present projections and despite high level assurances to the contrary, result in CO2 levels of at least 650 ppm and a global average temperature increase of 4-6c later this century — well past tipping points which will trigger uncontrollable climate change. Given the world's continuing obsession with economic growth at any cost, this is unlikely to change within the timeframe necessary to avoid such catastrophic consequences. Recourse to geoengineering may, therefore, be the only option available to buy time for the world to catch up with reality. At the very minimum, it is essential that we research such possibilities as a precautionary measure.

More fundamentally, the blanket rejection of all geoengineering as unwelcome needs challenging. Humanity has, by default, already been engaged for the last 200 years in a progressively disastrous experiment in geoengineering by virtue of its rapidly growing GHG emissions. A significant area of research supported by Bill Gates, Murray Edwards and Richard Branson is atmospheric carbon reduction, which offers the possibility of reversing history through permanently sequestering CO2 emissions as part of the natural carbon cycle, with none of the risks associated with other geoengineering options such as SRM (solar radiation management). Including such potentially valuable work under the same generic heading as other, understandably contentious interventions, is nonsensical.

For nearly 30 years, progress on dealing with climate change has been hampered by the undue influence of powerful vested interests. Environmentalists should be pleased that a new generation of influence is on the right side.
Nigel Tuersley
Carbon Order, Tisbury, Wiltshire

• Renewable energy
• Energy
• Ed Davey
• Green politics
• Wind power
• Chris Huhne
• Nick Clegg
• Geoengineering
• Climate change

The world most's profitable companies are valued by their carbon reserves – never mind the resulting ruin to the planet

If we could see the world with a particularly illuminating set of spectacles, one of its most prominent features at the moment would be a giant carbon bubble, whose bursting someday will make the housing bubble of 2007 look like a lark. As yet – as we shall see – it's unfortunately largely invisible to us.

In compensation, though, we have some truly beautiful images made possible by new technology. Last month, for instance, Nasa updated the most iconic photograph in our civilization's gallery: "Blue Marble", originally taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. The spectacular new high-def image shows a picture of the Americas on 4 January, a good day for snapping photos because there weren't many clouds.

It was also a good day because of the striking way it could demonstrate to us just how much the planet has changed in 40 years. As Jeff Masters, the web's most widely read meteorologist, explains:

"The US and Canada are virtually snow-free and cloud-free, which is extremely rare for a January day. The lack of snow in the mountains of the western US is particularly unusual. I doubt one could find a January day this cloud-free with so little snow on the ground throughout the entire satellite record, going back to the early 1960s."

In fact, it's likely that the week that photo was taken will prove "the driest first week in recorded US history". Indeed, it followed on 2011, which showed the greatest weather extremes in our history – 56% of the country was either in drought or flood, which was no surprise since "climate change science predicts wet areas will tend to get wetter and dry areas will tend to get drier." Indeed, the nation suffered 14 weather disasters, each causing $1bn or more in damage last year. (The old record was nine.) Masters again: "Watching the weather over the past two years has been like watching a famous baseball hitter on steroids."

In the face of such data – statistics that you can duplicate for almost every region of the planet – you'd think we'd already be in an all-out effort to do something about climate change. Instead, we're witnessing an all-out effort to … deny there's a problem.

Our GOP presidential candidates are working hard to make sure no one thinks they'd appease chemistry and physics. At the last Republican debate in Florida, Rick Santorum insisted that he should be the nominee because he'd caught on earlier than Newt or Mitt to the global warming "hoax".

Most of the media pays remarkably little attention to what's happening. Coverage of global warming has dipped 40% over the last two years. When, say, there's a rare outbreak of January tornadoes, TV anchors politely discuss "extreme weather," but climate change is the disaster that dare not speak its name.

And when they do break their silence, some of our elite organs are happy to indulge in outright denial. Last month, for instance, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by "16 scientists and engineers" headlined "No Need to Panic About Global Warming". The article was easily debunked. It was nothing but a mash-up of long-since-disproved arguments by people who turned out mostly not to be climate scientists at all, quoting other scientists who immediately said their actual work showed just the opposite.

It's no secret where this denialism comes from: the fossil fuel industry pays for it. (Of the 16 authors of the Journal article, for instance, five had had ties to Exxon.) Writers from Ross Gelbspan to Naomi Oreskes have made this case with such overwhelming power that no one even really tries denying it any more. The open question is why the industry persists in denial in the face of an endless body of fact showing climate change is the greatest danger we've ever faced.

Why doesn't it fold, the way the tobacco industry eventually did? Why doesn't it invest its riches in things like solar panels and so profit handsomely from the next generation of energy?

The answer is more interesting than you might think.

Part of it's simple enough: the giant energy companies are making so much money right now that they can't stop gorging themselves. ExxonMobil, year after year, pulls in more money than any company in history. Chevron's not far behind. Everyone in the business is swimming in money.

Still, they could theoretically invest all that cash in new clean technology or research and development for the same. As it happens, though, they've got a deeper problem, one that's become clear only in the last few years. Put briefly: their value is largely based on fossil-fuel reserves that won't be burned if we ever take global warming seriously.

When I talked about a carbon bubble at the beginning of this essay, this is what I meant. Here are some of the relevant numbers, courtesy of the Capital Institute: we're already seeing widespread climate disruption, but if we want to avoid utter, civilization-shaking disaster, many scientists have pointed to a two-degree rise in global temperatures as the most we could possibly deal with.

If we spew 565 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere, we'll quite possibly go right past that reddest of red lines. But the oil companies, private and state-owned, have current reserves on the books equivalent to 2,795 gigatons – five times more than we can ever safely burn. It has to stay in the ground.

Put another way, in ecological terms, it would be extremely prudent to write off $20tn-worth of those reserves. In economic terms, of course, it would be a disaster, first and foremost for shareholders and executives of companies like ExxonMobil (and people in places like Venezuela).

If you run an oil company, this sort of write-off is the disastrous future staring you in the face as soon as climate change is taken as seriously as it should be, and that's far scarier than drought and flood. It's why you'll do anything – including fund an endless campaigns of lies – to avoid coming to terms with its reality. So, instead, we simply charge ahead. To take just one example, last month, the boss of the US Chamber of Commerce, Thomas Donohue, called for burning all the country's newly discovered coal, gas, and oil – believed to be 1,800 gigatons-worth of carbon from our nation alone.

What he and the rest of the energy-industrial elite are denying, in other words, is that the business models at the center of our economy are in the deepest possible conflict with physics and chemistry. The carbon bubble that looms over our world needs to be deflated soon. As with our fiscal crisis, failure to do so will cause enormous pain – pain, in fact, almost beyond imagining. After all, if you think banks are too big to fail, consider the climate as a whole and imagine the nature of the bailout that would face us when that bubble finally bursts.

Unfortunately, it won't burst by itself – not in time, anyway. The fossil-fuel companies, with their heavily-funded denialism and their record campaign contributions, have been able to keep at bay even the tamest efforts at reining in carbon emissions. With each passing day, they're leveraging us deeper into an unpayable carbon debt – and with each passing day, they're raking in unimaginable returns. ExxonMobil last week reported its 2011 profits at $41bn, the second highest of all time. Do you wonder who owns the record? That would be ExxonMobil, in 2008, at $45bn.

Telling the truth about climate change would require pulling away the biggest punchbowl in history, right when the party is in full swing. That's why the fight is so pitched. That's why those of us battling for the future need to raise our game.

And it's why that view from the satellites, however beautiful from a distance, is likely to become ever harder to recognize as our home planet.

• Climate change
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• US politics
• United States
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• Meteorology
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• Energy
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• Activism

The deposed president is famous for his efforts to fight climate change, but his lifelong struggle has been for democracy – and now I fear for his safety

In the never-ending battle for democracy and civil rights, sometimes democracy loses. So it was today, with the visit by the Russian foreign minister to Damascus to shore up the murderous Assad regime, and the sudden fall of President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives. These two events are related, for Nasheed has a claim to have started the Arab Spring. The first democratically elected leader of a 100% Muslim country, he swept away the 30-year dictatorship of Maumoon Gayoom in national elections back in 2008. Now the Maldives sadly sees its spring being rolled back: a leader elected through the ballot box has just been deposed by street violence and intimidation.

I doubt that Russia, China or other autocratic regimes will shed any tears for Nasheed, but those governments of the world that do value democracy and the rule of law should not be under any illusions about what has just taken place. The former dictator Gayoom and his forces never accepted the outcome of the 2008 elections, and their networks of power and influence were increasingly threatened by Nasheed's campaign against corruption in the judiciary. Indeed, this crisis was sparked by the arrest of senior court judge who had repeatedly refused to prosecute corruption cases in order to protect powerful allies from the former regime. Recently the opposition had begun to use inflammatory antisemitic and jihadi hate-speech to falsely accuse Nasheed of undermining Islam.

Using violence and then taking over the TV station, as well as recruiting converts among the police, the anti-democratic opposition faced Nasheed with a choice – to either use force or resign. Ever the human rights activist, he chose the latter option and stepped down to avoid bloodshed. Even as I write, his whereabouts are still unknown, and though he is supposedly in the "protection" of the military I fear desperately for his personal safety and that of his family. I have heard that he is currently being held against his will under military house arrest, in which case he must be immediately released. All I can do is take comfort from the fact that the struggle can only continue for a man famous in the west for his outspokenness on climate change, but whose real lifelong cause has been his commitment to bringing democracy to his Indian Ocean island homeland.

Over two decades of campaigning against the Gayoom regime, Nasheed set up the Maldivian Democratic Party in exile, and was imprisoned 16 times. He spent six years in jail, and 18 months in solitary confinement in appalling conditions, also suffering torture at the hands of Gayoom's thugs. Nasheed's resignation speech says a lot about the man: "I don't want to run the country with an iron fist," he said. I can only imagine what he must be going through now, and what he has gone through already in the past. He was declared an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience in 1991. I don't think I have ever met a braver or stronger person.

I was lucky enough to work for president Nasheed over the last two years, as his climate change adviser. His commitment to turning the Maldives into the world's first carbon-neutral country was typically ambitious, and – although all bets are now off – serious progress has already been made. He personally stood up to bullying by China at the ill-fated Copenhagen talks in 2009, helping secure a better deal for vulnerable island nations like his own.

I do not want this to sound like Nasheed's political obituary. If I know the man at all, this coup will not be the last word. We do not yet know whether democracy and freedom of expression will be safeguarded in future in the Maldives under the new government, but if it is not, I am certain Nasheed will be at the forefront of any effort that is needed to protect these universal values. I pledge to stand with him, and I hope others will, too.

• Climate change
• Maldives
• Mohamed Nasheed
• Arab and Middle East unrest

An 18m tonne rise in climate-warming gases is due to the nation's dreadfully draughty homes and fickleness of nuclear power: new boy Ed Davey must deal with both

The big jump in the UK's carbon emissions has two searing lessons for energy and climate secretary Ed Davey, newly installed in the hot seat.

First, he must prevent his department's flagship "green deal" plan to boost the warmth of the nation's ageing and draughty homes from self-combusting in a blaze of apathy, as it is currently on course to do. Secondly, he must pour a little cold water on the UK establishment's burning love affair with nuclear power, to take better account of its unreliability.

The biggest single cause of the first rise in the nation's carbon footprint since 2003 was from the increased heating of homes during cold weather at the start and end of 2010. People faced a choice when winter's chill began to bite: they could turn up the heating, despite the soaring cost of energy, or tackle the draughts through which the heat escapes. The 12 million tonnes of carbon dioxide added to national emissions from home heating alone - two-thirds of the entire rise - shows the people of Britain overwhelmingly chose the former.

Yet almost half of all lofts in the UK - 10 million - remain poorly lagged or completely bare, while 8m homes have empty cavity walls. Installing this type of insulation instantly cuts bills and some energy companies, driven by soon-to-end regulation, will do it for free.

The government has trumpeted its green deal as the solution to this woeful state of affairs, calling it a world-leading programme set to transform 14m homes in a decade. Homeowners will be able to take out loans for refurbishments, with the repayments guaranteed to be lower than the energy cost savings.

Warm words, but sadly adrift from reality. The government's own impact assessment shows that loft lagging will plummet by 93% when the green deal starts. Instead of 2m lofts a year being stuffed with plump, cosy fibres, as is needed to curb carbon emissions in line with legal targets, just 70,000 will be done. People have been reluctant to let in the workmen even when the work was free, so why would they do so when they have to take out a loan?

The good news for Davey is that all is not yet lost ahead of the green deal's October launch. He already has £200m from the Treasury to shower on early adopters, but many more incentives are needed. Council tax rebates and cuts in stamp duty are on the table and getting them will be an early test of his ability to win cabinet arguments.

Virtually all of the rest of the leap in the UK's carbon emissions comes from technical problems forcing nuclear power stations to shut down. The biggest reactor in the country, Sizewell B, was offline for six months, meaning more coal and gas had to be burned to fill the electricity gap, pumping more climate-warming gases into the air. Other reactors had problems too in 2010 and more recently events as varied as a rogue school of jellyfish and winter tornadoes have closed atomic energy plants.

When a wind turbine explodes, as in a recent storm, a megwatt of power is lost. When a nuclear plant falls off the grid, 1000 megawatts is lost. The comparison puts the lie to the sceptics charge that wind power is "unreliable".

Davey has stridently opposed nuclear power in the comfort of opposition, but now has to back it. An even more difficult test of his political skills will be to win the argument on the clear benefits of wind power, in particular with the 100 Tory MPs and their supporters who greeted his first day in the office by demanding drastic cuts to onshore windfarms.

Keeping energy bills down, keeping the lights on and keeping the world safe from global warming was never the easiest brief in Whitehall. The new leap in carbon emissions means Davey is set for a baptism of fire.

• Green deal
• Energy
• Energy bills
• Energy efficiency
• Energy industry
• Renewable energy
• Nuclear power
• Gas
• Gas
• Carbon emissions
• Carbon footprints
• Climate change
• Green politics

University of Illinois wind farm researcher responds to how his paper was reported in the media and on the internet

Such is the viral nature of information flow on the internet, we can sometimes see myths and memes developing before our very eyes. Just such an example has occurred over recent days with the rather irresistible news that wind farms can "increase climate change".

The article that really gave this idea a push online was published on Sunday evening on the Daily Mail's website. It was delivered with the headline: "Wind farms can actually INCREASE climate change by raising temperatures and causing downpours, warn academics."

Somewhat predictably, that headline quickly attracted attention and was being disseminated with particular gusto on climate sceptic sites such as Climate Depot and JunkScience. The news was also reported on Dallasblog.com ("Wind Farms Cause Global Warming, some Scientists say") and then on the Orange County Register website with the headline: "Another Global Warming Oops Moment." The article itself was clearly rejoicing in being able to ladle big dollops of schadenfreude:

More windmills to fight global warming = more global warming. You have to love it.

But if we reverse up a bit, we can actually see how this new myth was born. The Mail – which has a long track record of running stories hostile to wind farms, and more, widely, climate science - was clearly picking up on a story that day by Jonathan Leake in the Sunday Times. This story is behind a paywall, but it ran with a headline that fairly summed up the thrust of the article: "Giant wind farms can alter weather." However, the Australian - yet another climate sceptic paper - has since republished Leake's article, albeit with a new headline: "Big wind farms 'alter climate', but could be used to control the weather."

The Leake article, which attempts to summarise some of the research being conducted into how wind farms might affect localised weather conditions, led with the findings of a study published by Somnath Roy, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. But Roy's study was published in 2010. So why has the Sunday Times – again, another paper that is hostile to wind farms - run it as a news story now? Could it be a way for the paper to frame the news, contained within the article, that some Tory MPs have expressed their own hostility to wind farms?

The germ of this current interest in Roy's study can most likely be pinned to an article in the New Scientist published on 30 January, entitled: "Power paradox: Clean might not be green forever." It covered a lot of very interesting research, including a passing mention of Roy's 2010 study. (Interestingly, the New Scientist itself got into a spot of bother last year over a headline covering similar research.) But it was an article - as you might expect given it was reflecting the state of fledgling research into this topic - peppered with words such as "could", "possibly" and "might". It also made it clear that Roy's study was focused on how wind farms can affect their local climate (within an area 300 metres "downwind" from the turbines), not, as might be interpreted from the Mail's headline, the much wider phenomenon of "climate change". In fact, Roy's study can be read in full here. (A curio: it appears to be one of the very last paper's edited by the late climate scientist Stephen Schneider of Stanford University.) From the abstract:

Utility-scale large wind farms are rapidly growing in size and numbers all over the world. Data from a meteorological field campaign show that such wind farms can significantly affect near-surface air temperatures. These effects result from enhanced vertical mixing due to turbulence generated by wind turbine rotors. The impacts of wind farms on local weather can be minimized by changing rotor design or by siting wind farms in regions with high natural turbulence.

Yesterday, I asked Roy himself to summarise his paper. He said:

My Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper is on local-scale processes where we find that wind farms may make the nights warmer and days cooler in their immediate vicinity. Climate change is a longer-term phenomenon involving process that operate at larger spatial scales…My expertise is in small-scale (what we call atmospheric boundary layer and/or mesoscale) processes, not climate. Additionally my paper does not talk about precipitation. The impacts of the wind farms that I have studied are confined to the lowest part of the atmosphere. To affect rainfall, the wind farms have to reach pretty high into the troposphere where clouds are formed. I am familiar with research done by others on this topic. At this point there is no agreement. Some global scale studies (pdf) show that extremely large wind farms covering millions of sq km will affect rainfall. On the other hand, a recent study (pdf) of a approximately 500 GW wind farm showed that the impact on rainfall would be about 1%.

I then asked him if he felt his 2010 study had been fairly represented this week in the media. He said that Leake had interviewed him for the Sunday Times article and that "the 2-3 paragraphs on my research discussed in the body of the article are a reasonable representation of a PART of our paper". He added: "The headline probably reflects the work of other scientists rather than mine."

We then moved onto the Mail's article. He said:

I am already getting emails on this. I will have to categorically say that the headline is not an accurate representation of my work. But I guess there is little I can do now.

I then showed him how the Mail's headline was starting to get picked up elsewhere. He replied:

Wow! Actually I also heard from some colleagues. Strangely, nobody has read the Sunday Times article or the Nature editorial [from 2010], but everybody knows about the Daily Mail piece!

And, lo, a myth was born.

• Wind power
• Climate change
• Climate change
• Climate change scepticism
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• Renewable energy

A new energy secretary means a new chance for David Cameron to mend fences with the coalition and reaffirm his commitment to making 'the greenest government ever'

It was, Ed Davey says, his strong views on the environment that pushed him into becoming politically active – and following his sudden promotion to energy and climate change secretary last week, he now has a fantastic opportunity to act on his concerns and play a crucial role in developing a cleaner, safer future.

The initial signs are encouraging. In his first outing in his new job on Monday, he was keen to emphasis the impact of our overdependence on fossil fuels imports "where the price is high and variable", and the need to develop "our own energy production that's clean and green".

This hits the nail firmly on the head. If we want to escape soaring fuel bills that have plagued families and businesses over recent years, we must become far more energy-efficient and properly develop the nation's abundant home-grown sources of clean power. Exploiting the UK's wind, wave and solar potential will not only get us off the fossil-fuel fix, it will also create exciting new business opportunities and tens of thousands of jobs.

But there are significant hurdles to negotiate in the race to develop a low-carbon economy.

Despite David Cameron's promise to lead the greenest government ever, there are those in the coalition who appear to be peddling a distinctly anti-environmental agenda.

Once again, the main stumbling block is the Treasury. Chancellor George Osborne's speech last autumn to the party faithful blaming "a decade of environmental laws and regulations" for "piling costs on the energy bills of households and companies" shows the scale of the challenge facing Davey and other progressive voices in government.

The new energy secretary must become a strong voice at the cabinet table, persuading his colleagues that protecting the economy and the planet are two sides of the same coin. If the rumours of a personality clash between Osborne and the previous energy secretary are true, the fact that Davey isn't Huhne could be a distinct advantage. The prime minister should tell his chancellor to use Huhne's exit to mend fences within the coalition by collaborating with Davey.

Another powerful challenge comes from the "big six" energy firms, who have effectively controlled our energy system for decades, keeping the nation hooked on gas and coal while raking in bumper profits for shareholders. Their power and influence must be curbed so we can fix our broken energy system.

This Thursday, Davey has a fantastic opportunity to take decisive action on building a cleaner economy when he publishes the results of a public consultation into the government's controversial solar subsidy proposals.

Everyone agrees subsidy payments should fall to reflect falling installation costs. But the government's cack-handed approach has left solar firms fighting for their future, jeopardised up to 29,000 jobs and undermined business confidence in the coalition's commitment to a clean economy.

Following a legal challenge by Friends of the Earth and two solar firms, Solarcentury and Home Sun, one of the proposals – to cut subsidy payments by 12 December 2011, 11 days before the consultation closed – has been declared illegal by both the high court and court of appeal.

Davey could draw a line under this unfortunate episode by announcing amended proposals that would safeguard the industry, protect jobs and allow more people to plug into clean power.

During the last parliament, Cameron and Nick Clegg played prominent roles in the passing of the Climate Change Act. This truly ground-breaking piece of legislation commits the UK to legally binding cuts – 80% by 2050 – in its greenhouse gas emissions.

It established the UK as a genuine leader in tackling climate change, the greatest challenge the planet faces. But in recent years our leadership has waned.

The prime minister and his deputy must show they are still committed to cutting emissions by backing the new energy secretary in his crucial job of transforming our expensive, dirty and inefficient energy system.

They must join him in re-establishing the UK as a major global voice, by pushing the EU to make more ambitious emission cuts in the first half of this year, under the amenable Danish presidency. This would give a much-needed ambition boost to the woefully weak agreement reached at Durban in December last year, and help deliver progress in the next round of climate negotiations coming in a few months' time.

If the prime minister and deputy prime minister give firm backing to the new energy secretary, this could still be the greenest government ever.

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• Energy
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• Ed Davey
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Caroline Flint says George Osborne believes 'environmental policies are a luxury that can only ever be afforded when times are good'

Labour has accused the chancellor of the exchequer of "actively revelling in contempt for environmental protection", in the latest broadside in the row over green policies that has consumed the coalition since the resignation of Chris Huhne on Friday.

Caroline Flint, shadow energy secretary, warned that the Tory right was breaking apart the cross-party consensus on climate change, thereby endangering the UK's economic health as well as threatening the planet with untrammelled global warming. Her intervention follows days of controversy as more than 100 Tory MPs wrote to the prime minister to call for wind farm subsidies to be cut, in the most serious attack on green policies yet.

Ed Davey, who replaced Huhne after the former minister resigned to face criminal charges on an alleged driving offence, tried to regain the high ground on Monday by insisting the government strongly backed renewable energy, but the impression was left of a coalition in disorder on the issue.

Tensions over green policies have been simmering for months, after last year in a series of speeches the chancellor, George Osborne, earned cheers from the Tory right by attacking environmental regulation as "costly" and a "burden". His words were echoed by claims from free-market thinktanks that green policies would add hundreds or even thousands of pounds to energy bills, claims the government has refuted.

Flint laid the blame for the coalition's disarray firmly at the chancellor's door: "The likes of the present chancellor not only believe that the green agenda is bad for business, bad for jobs and bad for growth, but actively revel in their contempt for environmental protection. According to this view, environmental policies are a luxury that can only ever be afforded when times are good."

Flint rejected that view, arguing instead that green growth was the best way to revive job creation. "Investing in the green economy is not just a route out of recession, but a necessary and urgent adaptation to the economy and society we will need in the decades ahead," she said. "This is not a journey of economic altruism, but a battle for economic survival."

Flint accused the coalition of destroying the long-running political consensus on climate change, by which all of the UK's main parties agreed on the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions and pursue a green economy, though they differed on how to achieve this. In a speech on Tuesday morning to the Aldersgate Group, made up of companies with an interest in green technologies, she said: "We are fortunate in the UK that one of the legacies of Labour's period in office was broad acceptance of the need to tackle climate change. Today, the question marks over the government's green credentials have proliferated and raise genuine scepticism over whether the government is sincere in its support for that consensus."

She called for "an active industrial strategy" to promote green growth. Without it, she warned, other countries would forge ahead in the quest to lead the world in clean technology. Renewable energy is already worth billions to the Chinese economy each year.

But Flint also rejected the "extreme eco" argument, put forward by some greens, that would force people to accept a lower standard of living, for instance by driving less and taking fewer holidays abroad. She said: "Both the extreme eco view and the Tory right share one central premise – that economic growth and environmental sustainability are inherently irreconcilable. [But] here is a path between untrammelled growth at all costs, and a sustainable zero-growth world. We can grow our economy and benefit the planet. We can provide for our citizens and meet their aspirations without ruining our planet. It is not a zero sum game."

She warned that this opportunity must be grasped now, without waiting for the recession to pass: "The longer we delay action, the costlier mitigating and adapting to climate change will become – and the economic opportunities will slip through our fingers."

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• Energy
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• Caroline Flint
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The 8.7% fall in carbon emissions as industry activity slumped during recession was a blip, figures show

• Comment: Leaping UK carbon emissions deliver two red-hot lessons

The dramatic fall in the UK's greenhouse gas emissions caused by the recession has proved to be a blip, with national emissions rising 3.1% in 2010. The new energy and climate change secretary, Ed Davey, attributed the rise, the first in almost a decade, to increased home heating during a cold winter and shutdowns at nuclear power stations after technical problems.

"One year won't knock the UK off meeting its long-term emission reduction targets, but it serves to underline the importance of the coalition's policies for insulating homes to cut bills and emissions and moving to greener alternative forms of energy," said Davey, a Liberal Democrat who took over from Chris Huhne, who resigned on Friday after being charged over an alleged attempt to avoid prosecution for a speeding offence.

On Sunday, a letter to the prime minister from over 100 Tory MPs was made public, which advocated cutting subsidies to renewable energy, despite renewable energy's role in reducing emissions. But environmental groups see the rise in emissions last year as a warning and said the sharp jump in home heating emissions showed the government had to increase the ambition of its home insulation plans, dubbed the "green deal". "This was meant to be the decade when we slashed our emissions and sparked a green jobs bonanza, but instead we're seeing progress stalling," said Louise Hutchins from Greenpeace. "The fact that rise is partly down to the cold snap in 2010 is no excuse, after all Sweden has colder winters but their bills are lower because they have better insulated homes. To copy their success the government's flagship green deal will need more resources, and that requires greater political ambition."

Keith Allott, head of climate change at WWF-UK, said: "If the government ever needed a wake-up call on greenhouse gas emissions here it is.

"It is alarming to see emissions from homes rising when people are struggling to pay their energy bills. The UK's overreliance on gas has pushed up emissions along with people's energy bills. It's a clear sign that the government needs to back investors in renewable energy and get us off the fossil fuel hook once and for all."

The UK's carbon dioxide emissions, which are the tenth largest of any nation in the world, have been falling over the past 20 years as power stations used less coal and more gas to generate power. The rise in 2010, of 18m tonnes of carbon dioxide, follows a steep year-on-year fall of 8.7% in 2009 when the financial crisis hit as economic activity.

The department of energy and climate change statistic, published on Tuesday, showed 11.8m tonnes of carbon dioxide came from the increased heating of homes, mainly by gas. Problems with the country's biggest reactor Sizewell B reactor in Suffolk, which meant it was shut down for six months in 2010, led to more coal and gas being burned. That added 5.6m tonnes to the UK's emissions of climate-warming gases. Other sectors, including business, agriculture and transport, remained all but unchanged.

Despite the rise, the UK's emissions are about 23% lower than in 1990, the benchmark year for the nation's international commitments to tackle global warming under the Kyoto protocol, meaning the current Kyoto pledge has been comfortably met. A legally binding domestic target of cutting emissions 35% by 2020, compared with 1990 levels, also remains likely to be met. However, since 1990 manufacturing taking place in the UK has fallen sharply and goods imported from elsewhere have filled the gap. When the emissions linked to those imported goods are included, the UK's national carbon footprint has risen by 20%, though critics argue that the exporting country, which benefits from the employment, rightfully is responsible for these emissions.

The Nasa climate scientist James Hansen has calculated that, in order to keep the global temperature rise within the 2C limit accepted by the world's nations, industrialised countries would have to cut their emissions by 6% a year from 2013 onwards. Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation said: "The market set up to give incentives to cut carbon is not delivering in anything like the speed or scale necessary. The UK's 3% rise is so wrong, it takes the breath away."

Historically, greenhouse gas emissions have move in lock-step with GDP, as higher economic activity uses more energy, which generates more emissions. The Stern review in 2006 of the economics of climate change calculated that a 1% change in GDP brings a 0.9% change in emissions. However, the 2010 data for the UK shows that the 3.1% in carbon emissions occurred with just 2.1% of GDP growth.

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First major study of practicality of planetary-scale solar radiation management concludes it is a potentially cost-effective option

Dimming the sun by engineering the effects of an artificial volcano is a feasible and potentially cost-effective option to reduce temperatures on Earth, the first major study of the practicality of planetary-scale solar radiation management (SRM) concludes.

The authors, US aerospace company Aurora Flight Sciences, consider the challenge of lifting and releasing 1-5m tonnes a year of sulphur dioxide to altitudes approaching 100,000ft. This would create sulphate particles in the thin air and provide a partial shade to the sun's rays, potentially reducing temperatures 1-2C. But no attempt is made to quantify the potential benefits or the risks involved in the likely disruption of weather patterns on earth.

The easiest, but by far the most expensive, way to launch vast quantities of sulphur dioxide into the upper atmosphere would be via batteries of 16-inch naval guns, says the report. But to lift 5m tonnes of particles a year 100,000ft into the stratosphere might need 70m gun shots a year and could cost an astronomical $700bn a year. Over 20 years, considered by many scientists the minimum needed to have a lasting effect on earth, this would be more than Africa and India together earn in a year.

Instead, the authors consider a far less expensive but technically more challenging way to lift and disperse 1-5m tonnes of sulphur particles to around 100,000ft. This would be to design and build a fleet of massive helium-filled blimps, costing $8-10bn a year to run, with each blimp costing possibly $500m. However, the technology of airships operating at this altitude is not developed.

The study, commissioned by the University of Calgary in Canada, was published 15 months ago but has received little attention so far. However, it shows how advanced SRM advocates are in their attempts to persuade governments to license large-scale experiments.

It was managed by the leading geoenegineering Harvard University scientist David Keith, one of two administrators of Bill Gates's Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (Ficer) which contributed $100,000 to the study.

By far the most effective way to lift the sulphur, the study concludes, would be to adapt, or to build, a fleet of Boeing 747s aircraft. About 14 of these planes working round the clock from bases on or near the equator, might cost about $8bn a year.

The study supports the views of scientists who argue that more experiments should be done into geoengineering to prepare a "plan B" if politicians and industry fail to find a way to reduce emissions in climate talks.

"The primary conclusion to draw from this feasibility and cost study is that geoengineering is feasible from an engineering standpoint and costs are comparable to quantities spent regularly on large engineering projects or aerospace operations.

"Aeroplane geoengineering operations are comparable to the yearly operations of a small airline, and are dwarfed be the operations of a large airline like FedEx or Southwest," says the study.

Critics of political attempts to reduce emissions have long argued that it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in low-carbon energy to achieve the same results.

To date, the uncertainty and inherent riskiness of large-scale solar radiation management have not been quantified.

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Bank's willingness to consider fossil fuel exposure as a risk to financial stability will serve as an important test of whether anything has been learned from the sub-prime crisis

The depth of the financial system's exposure to high carbon and environmentally unsustainable investments could be a systemic risk that threatens economic security. In a letter sent to Sir Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, a coalition of investors, politicians, and academics recently urged the bank to investigate these issues in order to prevent the profound harm that could be wrought by an over-exposure to high carbon assets and a rapid shift in their values.

In an important reply, the governor has now accepted that there is a need for further evaluation and it is encouraging to see the bank willing to consider the levels of fossil fuel exposure as a potential risk to financial stability. We believe this process will serve as an important test of whether anything has been learned from the sub-prime crisis.

The Bank of England has set out its criteria for what constitutes a threat to financial stability. First it questioned whether "the exposures of financial institutions to carbon-intensive sectors are large relative to overall assets". Recent analysis of coal that is listed in the UK shows how nearly one-third of the market capitalisation of the FTSE 100 is now made up of natural resources companies. Most mainstream UK equity funds will follow that.

With new extractives companies continuing to come to London to raise capital through issuing shares, the FTSE indices are becoming ever more carbon intensive. For example, Glencore completed a partial listing in London in 2011 and is now due to merge with Xstrata to create a massive mining and trading entity headquartered in Switzerland, but listed in London. Some of the largest and most commonly held shares are those of the oil majors and mining conglomerates.

The exposure of institutional investors such as pension funds in these blue chip firms was highlighted by BP's Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010. It should be noted that the exposure is not limited to the UK, with 38% of BP's shares held by US investors at the end of 2010. This means the fallout of a carbon bubble bursting would be felt beyond these shores.

Secondly, the bank asked whether "the impact of policy and technology working to reduce returns in high-carbon areas is not already being priced into the market". The response from the vast majority of conventional energy analysts to the idea of climate risk has been largely negative, with one recently saying publicly: " I think it's a bollocks subject. I'm not interested in this kind of subject. I think this is complete hot air." To us, this doesn't sound like someone who is factoring in climate change risk.

Christiana Figueres, the UN climate chief, observed in October 2011 that climate change is not factored into the value placed on companies. Lord Stern reiterated the failure of markets to align with policy during the Durban climate negotiations in December 2011, when he said: "There is therefore a profound contradiction between declared public policy and the valuations of these listed companies, based on their fossil fuel reserves, which appear to assume that the world will not get anywhere near its targets for managing climate change."

Whether global warming reaches 2C or 6C this century, there will be profound implications. If there are climate policy and technology developments which mean fossil fuels have to stay in the ground, then fossil fuel companies will need completely new business models. Alternatively, if we burn all existing fossil fuel reserves, then imagine the staggering negative impacts that resulting climate change will have on assets throughout every economy. This is why our coalition is warning of stranded assets.

Finally, the bank asks whether "any subsequent correction would take place over an insufficiently long period of time for the relevant financial institutions to adjust their portfolios in an orderly manner". We would simply observe that the market is not known for its gentle deflation of bubbles - the dot.com and housing booms are two of many examples.

We believe it is more relevant to ask whether the financial institutions are set up to respond to any such signal, whether rapid or gradual. Surely this is why the government has set up the Kay review, to "assess to what extent equity market participants are excessively focused on short-term outcomes". Andy Haldane, the Bank of England's executive director for financial stability, has warned several times that the financial sector's "myopic" approach could be having a damaging effect on infrastructure and high-tech capital projects. Here is an opportunity for the Bank of England to demonstrate it is taking action to tackle this market failure.

• Ben Caldecott is head of policy at Climate Change Capital & James Leaton is project director at Carbon Tracker Initiative

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Other wealthy individuals have also funded a series of reports into the future use of technologies to geoengineer the climate

• What is geo-engineering?
• Scientists criticise handling of geoengineering pilot project

A small group of leading climate scientists, financially supported by billionaires including Bill Gates, are lobbying governments and international bodies to back experiments into manipulating the climate on a global scale to avoid catastrophic climate change.

The scientists, who advocate geoengineering methods such as spraying millions of tonnes of reflective particles of sulphur dioxide 30 miles above earth, argue that a "plan B" for climate change will be needed if the UN and politicians cannot agree to making the necessary cuts in greenhouse gases, and say the US government and others should pay for a major programme of international research.

Solar geoengineering techniques are highly controversial: while some climate scientists believe they may prove a quick and relatively cheap way to slow global warming, others fear that when conducted in the upper atmosphere, they could irrevocably alter rainfall patterns and interfere with the earth's climate.

Geoengineering is opposed by many environmentalists, who say the technology could undermine efforts to reduce emissions, and by developing countries who fear it could be used as a weapon or by rich countries to their advantage. In 2010, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity declared a moratorium on experiments in the sea and space, except for small-scale scientific studies.

Concern is now growing that the small but influential group of scientists, and their backers, may have a disproportionate effect on major decisions about geoengineering research and policy.

"We will need to protect ourselves from vested interests [and] be sure that choices are not influenced by parties who might make significant amounts of money through a choice to modify climate, especially using proprietary intellectual property," said Jane Long, director at large for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, in a paper delivered to a recent geoengineering conference on ethics.

"The stakes are very high and scientists are not the best people to deal with the social, ethical or political issues that geoengineering raises," said Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace. "The idea that a self-selected group should have so much influence is bizarre."

Pressure to find a quick technological fix to climate change is growing as politicians fail to reach an agreement to significantly reduce emissions. In 2009-2010, the US government received requests for over $2bn(£1.2bn) of grants for geoengineering research, but spent around $100m.

As well as Gates, other wealthy individuals including Sir Richard Branson, tar sands magnate Murray Edwards and the co-founder of Skype, Niklas Zennström, have funded a series of official reports into future use of the technology. Branson, who has frequently called for geoengineering to combat climate change, helped fund the Royal Society's inquiry into solar radiation management last year through his Carbon War Room charity. It is not known how much he contributed.

Professors David Keith, of Harvard University, and Ken Caldeira of Stanford, are the world's two leading advocates of major research into geoengineering the upper atmosphere to provide earth with a reflective shield. They have so far received over $4.6m from Gates to run the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (Ficer). Nearly half Ficer's money, which comes directly from Gates's personal funds, has so far been used for their own research, but the rest is disbursed by them to fund the work of other advocates of large-scale interventions.

According to statements of financial interests, Keith receives an undisclosed sum from Bill Gates each year, and is the president and majority owner of the geoengineering company Carbon Engineering, in which both Gates and Edwards have major stakes – believed to be together worth over $10m.

Another Edwards company, Canadian Natural Resources, has plans to spend $25bn to turn the bitumen-bearing sand found in northern Alberta into barrels of crude oil. Caldeira says he receives $375,000 a year from Gates, holds a carbon capture patent and works for Intellectual Ventures, a private geoegineering research company part-owned by Gates and run by Nathan Myhrvold, former head of technology at Microsoft.

According to the latest Ficer accounts, the two scientists have so far given $300,000 of Gates money to part-fund three prominent reviews and assessments of geoengineering – the UK Royal Society report on Solar Radiation Management, the US Taskforce on Geoengineering and a 2009 report by Novin a science thinktank based in Santa Barbara, California. Keith and Caldeira either sat on the panels that produced the reports or contributed evidence. All three reports strongly recommended more research into solar radiation management.

The fund also gave $600,000 to Phil Rasch, chief climate scientist for the Pacific Northwest national laboratory, one of 10 research institutions funded by the US energy department.

Rasch gave evidence at the first Royal Society report on geoengineering 2009 and was a panel member on the 2011 report. He has testified to the US Congress about the need for government funding of large-scale geoengineering and, according to a financial statement he gave the Royal Society, also works for Intellectual Ventures. In addition, Caldeira and Keith gave a further $240,000 to geoengineering advocates to travel and attend workshops and meetings and $100,000 to Jay Apt, a prominent advocate of geoengineering as a last resort, and professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Apt worked with Keith and Aurora Flight Sciences, a US company that develops drone aircraft technology for the US military, to study the costs of sending 1m tonnes of sulphate particles into the upper atmosphere a year.

Analysis of the eight major national and international inquiries into geoengineering over the past three years shows that Keith and Caldeira, Rasch and Prof Granger Morgan the head of department of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University where Keith works, have sat on seven panels, including one set up by the UN. Three other strong advocates of solar radiation geoengineering, including Rasch, have sat on national inquiries part-funded by Ficer.

"There are clear conflicts of interest between many of the people involved in the debate," said Diana Bronson, a researcher with Montreal-based geoengineering watchdog ETC.

"What is really worrying is that the same small group working on high-risk technologies that will geoengineer the planet is also trying to engineer the discussion around international rules and regulations. We cannot put the fox in charge of the chicken coop."

"The eco-clique are lobbying for a huge injection of public funds into geoengineering research. They dominate virtually every inquiry into geoengineering. They are present in almost all of the expert deliberations. They have been the leading advisers to parliamentary and congressional inquiries and their views will, in all likelihood, dominate the deliberations of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as it grapples for the first time with the scientific and ethical tangle that is climate engineering," said Clive Hamilton, professor of Public Ethics at the Australian National University, in a Guardian blog.

The scientists involved reject this notion. "Even the perception that [a small group of people has] illegitimate influence [is] very unhealthy for a technology which has extreme power over the world. The concerns that a small group [is] dominating the debate are legitimate, but things are not as they were," said Keith. "It's changing as countries like India and China become involved. The era when my voice or that of a few was dominant is over. We need a very broad debate."

"Every scientist has some conflict of interest, because we would all like to see more resources going to study things that we find interesting," said Caldeira. "Do I have too much influence? I feel like I have too little. I have been calling for making CO2 emissions illegal for many years, but no one is listening to me. People who disagree with me might feel I have too much influence. The best way to reduce my influence is to have more public research funds available, so that our funds are in the noise. If the federal government played the role it should in this area, there would be no need for money from Gates.

"Regarding my own patents, I have repeatedly stated that if any patent that I am on is ever used for the purposes of altering climate, then any proceeds that accrue to me for this use will be donated to nonprofit NGOs and charities. I have no expectation or interest in developing a personal revenue stream based upon the use of these patents for climate modification.".

Rasch added: "I don't feel there is any conflict of interest. I don't lobby, work with patents or intellectual property, do classified research or work with for-profit companies. The research I do on geoengineering involves computer simulations and thinking about possible consequences. The Ficer foundation that has funded my research tries to be transparent in their activities, as do I."

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Connie Hedegaard says GDP model of growth causes overconsumption, drives up commodity prices and ignores the environment

The world must use a landmark environmental summit this year to change forever the current damaging model of economic growth, Europe's climate chief has warned, or face future crises as severe as the one currently enveloping the eurozone.

Overconsumption of critical resources, and the rising prices of key commodities such as food, energy and natural materials as a result, risk derailing the world economy – but these problems will not be tackled unless today's economic models are overhauled, according to Connie Hedegaard, EU commissioner for climate action. That is because judging economic growth purely on the basis of production and consumption, as happens now, encourages rampant overconsumption and fails to value the natural environment.

"The 21st century must have a more intelligent growth model, or else it's really difficult to see how we feed 7 billion people now and 9 billion people [by 2050]," she said. "Resources were cheap before, but it seems we are in for a period where resources become more and more expensive. Oil is coming up in price, so many other commodities are coming up in price. Food prices are rising. We need to deal with this."

Heads of state and government from around the world will gather in Rio de Janeiro this June, two decades on from the 1992 Earth Summit that kickstarted the process of a global treaty on climate change. But there is a risk the Rio+20 gathering will fail to come to any solid conclusions, according to Hedegaard. If this year's summit is to have the far-reaching consequences of its predecessor, countries must seize the chance to sign a firm resolution to change the way growth is measured, she said.

That could involve moving away from GDP to broader measures of wellbeing, and putting a value on natural resources rather than regarding important assets such as clean water, clean air and biodiversity as free, as current economic models do.

"This is an opportunity to rethink [how we measure growth]," Hedegaard told the Guardian. "The knowledge is out there, the analysis has been done. We can take this decision in Rio."

Current models of growth prize only consumption and production, rating countries' performance according to their GDP.

However, there is a growing belief among some economists that this long-standing model has outlived its usefulness, and provides no protection for the natural world. The Nobel prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz has been one of the leading voices calling for a change, and world leaders including David Cameron, the UK prime minister, have heeded the call, promising moves towards a broader definition of economic value.

"This has a lot of relevance to the euro crisis," said Hedegaard. "We're trying to make it clear that the climate change crisis is an economic crisis, a social and a job crisis – it should be seen as a whole. If we do not tackle these, we will be in crisis mode for many, many years."

Recent fears over many key commodities have heightened as prices have failed to drop despite the financial crisis gripping most of the developed and some of the developing world. For instance, the tightening supply of rare earth minerals may threaten the future of renewable energy technology, business leaders were told at the World Economic Forum in Davos recently.

Hedegaard was one of the signatories to a report last week from the UN secretary-general's high level panel on global sustainability, which will feed into the Rio+20 summit in June. In the report, the panel urged the UN to put in place sustainable development indicators that would help to ensure growth does not come at the expense of the environment.

The report, called Resilient People, Resilient Planet, was given a mixed welcome by development charities. Sarah Best of Oxfam said: "The panel's report is a welcome rallying cry for the vision of a sustainable, fair, and resilient future that Oxfam fully shares, but... it's weak medicine for such a life-threatening diagnosis. World leaders will need to do better when they meet at the UN summit in Rio in June."

She said the panel had failed to make concrete recommendations on reforming food supply, and had little to say on finance.

Alison Doig of Christian Aid said: "The report describes the enormous and unsustainable exploitation of planetary resources underpinning the last decades of economic growth, and also shows that this is only half the story. The other half is the astonishing inequality in the distribution of the benefits of this irresponsible natural asset-stripping. The wealthy 20% of the world currently consumes 80% of natural resources while the poorest 20% do not have enough for a decent standard of living. It is critically important to deal with these twin crises – unsustainability and inequality – together."

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Beijing hardens line against European Union emissions levy that is also opposed by the US and India

China has banned its airlines from paying the new European Union carbon charge, state news agency Xinhua has reported – stepping up the international battle over the scheme.

The levy applies to all airlines flying to and from EU countries. Companies that do not comply face fines and ultimately could be banned from using EU airports.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said on Monday that airlines were not allowed to pay the EU charge, increase freight costs or add other fees, according to Xinhua. It cited authorisation from the state council, China's cabinet.

Hinting at possible retaliation, Xinhua added: "China will consider adopting necessary measures to protect interests of Chinese individuals and companies, pending the development of the issue."

The EU's ambassador in Beijing, Markus Ederer, told a press briefing it hoped to resolve the issue through negotiation. Beijing's announcement came one week before a China-EU summit.

Although the scheme came into force from 1 January, fees do not have to be paid until March 2013. Supporters believe including aviation in the emissions trading scheme is crucial because the industry's carbon output is soaring.

China, the US, India and others are bitterly opposed to the scheme, leading to fears it could spark a trade war.

A US attempt to overturn the scheme was rejected by the European court of justice in December.

Chinese airlines have already vowed to ignore the scheme. China argues it is unreasonable to apply the levy to developing nations and wants the costs of reducing carbon to be passed on to aircraft manufacturers.

Critics also argue that regulation of the industry should be negotiated at the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organisation. But European leaders say they have been waiting for years for the ICAO to act.

Connie Hedegaard, the EU's climate action commissioner, has stressed the scheme allows for "equivalent measures" – other forms of carbon reduction – to be taken into account.

Chai Haibo, the deputy secretary of the China Air Transport Association, told Bloomberg: "I believe all sides will negotiate again and find a solution … I can't imagine that the worst case, such as the EU grounding Chinese flights, could happen."

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Your article on the increased vigour of business lobbying in favour of Heathrow expansion (Report, 2 February) neglected to ask a simple question: does the UK need more airport capacity? We'd suggest no. A recent report by WWF and the Aviation Environment Federation shows that there is already sufficient runway and terminal capacity in the south-east and other regions to meet demand to 2050.

It's important to note too that the UK Climate Change Act has set a legally binding target to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050 and aviation is expected to contribute to the achievement of this target. The advice of the Committee on Climate Change is that aviation emissions return to 2005 levels by 2050. However, the spokespeople from BAA, British Airways' parent company IAG, and from London business lobby group London First all fail to mention climate change, or carbon emissions.
Jean Leston
Senior transport policy adviser, WWF-UK

• Stansted has land to accommodate a second runway, so why can't this option be taken seriously. And why can't Stansted become a hub airport? It is better placed to serve the Midlands and the north, and compared to Heathrow it sits in a relatively unpopulated rural area. Stansted must have a strong case on environmental and amenity grounds, which may not carry much weight with the Heathrow lobbyists but should make it a serious contender. It would need a new high-speed rail link to London and the east coast mainline, and would not come cheap, but to dismiss it would be a lost opportunity.
Bill Hunter
Holmfirth, West Yorkshire

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He must get to grips with energy suppliers and green campaigners – but the toughest challenge for the new climate and energy secretary is likely to come from cabinet colleagues

Ed Davey, the new secretary of state for energy and climate change, faces a daunting in-tray of policies that will create battles with industry, electricity consumers, anxious renewable energy investors and green campaigners – but the toughest challenge of all is likely to come from his cabinet colleagues.

Chris Huhne was one of the few heavyweight champions of the green agenda within the coalition government. His departure sparked immediate fears that without him, the voices within cabinet - and among the Tory rank-and-file - that have been calling ever more loudly for a watering down of environmental policies will prevail. Those calls have been led by George Osborne, the chancellor, who vowed the UK would do no more than the minimum to meet environmental goals, and could revise current targets downwards.

Andrew Simms, fellow at the New Economics Foundation, urged: "Davey must face down the economic and environmental self-defeating destructiveness of the Treasury, which is preventing the UK from becoming a world leader [in green industries]."

Matthew Spencer, director of the Green Alliance, said it was time for David Cameron and Nick Clegg to speak up: "This creates a moment for the prime minister and deputy prime minister to assert their ownership of the green economy, and for the new secretary of state to build a broader coalition for action across government. It's important that the top tier of government speak publicly to correct the misunderstanding that the leadership are giving up on this agenda."

Speaking in Westminster today, Davey said: "I've now got to take up the challenges, the challenge of climate change, of energy security and I'm particularly conscious of the impact on consumer households across the country of high energy bills."

He added: "I want us to have a green economy where there's lots of green jobs to help grow our economy."

Here are the key policies in Davey's in-tray:

The government's ability to influence bills, which have soared on the back of international fossil fuel prices, relies mainly on attempts to bully and shame the big six suppliers. Its answer has been to bring forward a new flagship policy, the "green deal", for cutting consumer charges by encouraging insulation and other low-carbon home improvements. The bad news is the green deal is in trouble, as several analyses show its appeal is likely to be limited when it launches this autumn.

Subsidies for renewable energy are under fierce attack, from free-market thinktanks and sections of the rightwing media. The government was humiliated when it tried to cut feed-in tariffs for small-scale renewables, in a hasty move that judges ruled unlawful, and that stirred up turmoil and job losses among solar companies. But the promise of hundreds of thousands of green jobs, billions of pounds in investment, and meeting our EU obligations on renewable generation all hang on a strong showing of government support for the sector.

For Liberal Democrats, nuclear power is always a tricky issue. Huhne tried to finesse his party's long-standing opposition to new reactors with Tory enthusiasm for them by pledging that they would receive no public subsidy. Critics pointed out that policies to aid "low-carbon" generation would also provide financial support to nuclear. As nuclear projects inch forward, Davey will have to walk a similar tightrope.

Under pressure on his green credentials, Cameron agreed last summer to carbon-cutting targets for the UK that will be some of the most stringent in the world when they take effect in the 2020s. Osborne wants to review them within two years. This will be a key test for Davey - if he is still around by then.

The next two years will see some of the toughest negotiations over climate change within the European Union and globally in the long-running United Nations talks. In Brussels, member states must thrash out the next set of renewable energy and carbon targets by the end of 2014. Under the UN, countries have committed to forge a new global climate change treaty by the end of 2015. Both these punishing forums require a combination of high statesmanship and low guile. Huhne was widely praised for his skilful performances - Davey will have a tough act to follow.

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Chris Huhne has resigned from the cabinet after being charged with perverting the course of justice. He remains an MP and will fight to clear his name after allegations surfaced that he asked his former wife to claim responsibility for breaking the speed limit on his behalf.

In the studio to discuss the implications: political columnist Michael White and environment reporter Fiona Harvey.

David Cameron resisted the temptation for a wider reshuffle, but Edward Davey of the Liberal Democrats replaces Huhne at the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

You can listen to the Thursday's full edition of Politics Weekly on bankers, Europe and the French presidential election here.

University cites its First Amendment commitment in supporting its climate scientist Michael Mann's right to give lecture

In an uncharacteristically angry post at the New York Times's Dot Earth blog, Andy Revkin has hit out at a "shameful attack on free speech". It relates to a Facebook campaign which is calling on Pennsylvania State University to "disinvite" Professor Michael E. Mann, the director of its Earth System Science Center, from giving a lecture next week entitled: "Confronting the Climate Change Challenge."

The Facebook campaign has been initiated by a seemingly conjoined group called the Common Sense Movement/Secure Energy for America Political Action Committee. Brad Johnson at ThinkProgress has investigated the people behind it and describes it as a "coal-industry astroturf group". Here's a video from the Common Sense Movement's "I Am Coal" campaign, which gives an insight into its worldview...

The group argues on its page:

At a time when Penn State should be doing everything possible to regain its status as a bastion of truth and integrity, the last thing they should be doing is supporting someone of such questionable ethics and motives with our tax dollars.
There is no place for this brand of extreme political activism, disguised as academics, at Penn State now or in the future. University leadership should be ashamed for continuing to provide Mann with such high visibility – at our expense.

Revkin is particularly angry – quite rightly - at the group's templated letter it is asking supporters to send to "daily newspapers near you", which includes the accusation that Mann, one of the world's most high-profile climate scientists whose private emails were among those illegally released online in 2009, is "conspiring with his left-wing cronies to intimidate and silence those who would dare to question his intentions".

Revkin even took to Facebook himself, posting: "Antidemocratic, hateful, and coal-backed smear campaign against a scientist I've sometimes disagreed with but who has every right to state his case at Penn State or anywhere else."

The efforts of those behind the campaign of intimidation against Penn State appear to have come to nothing, though. Common sense (of the real variety) reigns, as a spokesman has just confirmed to me:

Penn State has a deep and profound commitment to the First Amendment and the principles of free speech and expression. Our role as a university is to serve as a marketplace of ideas and by allowing this talk we are protecting the civil liberties of our students, faculty and staff. There are no plans to cancel his speaking engagement.
Michael Mann's research has undergone several rigorous national reviews and investigations and in each case his work has been upheld.
In 2011, the National Science Foundation completed a review and upheld Mann's work. The NSF review was the second major investigation at the national level of his controversial research into climate change. In 2006 the National Academy of Sciences completed an inquiry into Mann's findings at the request of Congress. Again, his research was confirmed.
In 2010, Penn State conducted its own four-month investigation into allegations of research misconduct against Mann and a panel of five University faculty members from various fields determined that the scientist violated no professional standards in the course of his work.

The spokesman added that such a lecture would typically attract 300-400 people. On the question of security, he said: "We evaluate every event on campus from a security perspective and will determine if additional steps are warranted."

He added: "We have received only a handful of comments [about the lecture], and the majority of those are supporting free speech."

• Climate change
• Climate change
• Climate change scepticism
• Hacked climate science emails
• Pennsylvania

Pointing out the similarities (and differences) between slavery and the use of fossil fuels can help us engage with climate change in a new way

In 2005, while teaching history at a French university, I was struck by the general disbelief among students that rational and sensitive human beings could ever hold others in bondage. Slavery was so obviously evil that slave-holders could only have been barbarians. My students could not entertain the idea that some slave-owners could have been genuinely blind to the harm they were doing.

At the same time, I was reading a book on climate change which noted how today's machinery – almost exclusively powered by fossil fuels like coal and oil – does the same work that used to be done by slaves and servants. "Energy slaves" now do our laundry, cook our food, transport us, entertain us, and do most of the hard work needed for our survival.

Intriguing similarities between slavery and our current dependence on fossil-fuel-powered machines struck me: both perform roughly the same functions in society (doing the hard and dirty work that no one wants to do), both were considered for a long time to be acceptable by the majority and both came to be increasingly challenged as the harm they caused became more visible.

The history of slavery and its abolition shows how blurred the frontier between what is considered good and evil can be, and how quickly it can shift. We have a mental image of slave-owners as cruel, sadistic, inhuman brutes, and forget too easily the ordinariness of slave ownership throughout the world. To many, slavery seemed normal and indispensable. In the US, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. Lifestyles and healthy incomes were predicated upon it, just as we today depend on oil. Similarly, many slave-owners lived with the impression that they were decent people.

Obviously, there are differences between the use of slaves and of fossil fuels. Fundamentally, slavery is a crime against humanity. Fossil fuel use is not a moral evil, but burning coal or oil contributes to global warming, already causing widespread harm: it now directly or indirectly kills 150,000 people per year according to a 2004 World Health Organisation study. States and energy companies' lust for oil also leads to wars and the toppling of democratically elected governments. Our addiction to fossil fuel is increasingly destructive.

Unlike the harm caused by slavery, the harm in the use of fossil fuels is of course indirect, long range, even unintended. It seems at first glance to be a fundamentally different kind of harm, and the unintended consequences of ongoing use of fossil fuels have only recently become understood. Initially, their use was seen as positive and progressive. But now that we know the consequences, and continue, globally, to increase emission levels, how can we still consider these consequences "unintended"?

Consumers of goods made by slaves or absentee plantation owners who lived in Britain in the 18th century also benefited from the slave system without maintaining direct connections to it. Those beneficiaries can certainly be said to have committed a morally comparable sort of human transgression to that of people who benefit from fossil fuels today.

Why is all of this relevant for climate change policy? Our contemporary economies have become extremely dependent on fossil fuels, just as slave societies were dependent on their slaves – indeed far more than the latter ever were. As one scholar remarked: "That US Congressmen tend to rationalise fossil fuel use despite climate risks to future generations just as southern congressmen rationalised slavery despite ideals of equality is perhaps unsurprising."

It should thus come as no surprise that there is so much resistance to climate science. Our societies, like slave-owning societies, have a vested interest in ignoring the scientific consensus. Pointing out the similarities between slavery and the use of fossil fuels can help us engage with the issue in a new way, and convince us to act, as no one envisages comfortably being compared with a slave-owner.

Furthermore, because of the striking similarities between the use of slaves and of fossil fuels, policymakers can find inspiration from the campaigns to abolish slavery and use them to tackle global warming. For example, the history of the abolition of slavery, in the UK at least, suggests that an incremental approach and the development of compromises worked better at moving the cause forward than hardline stances.

The evidence also implies that slavery came to be challenged and finally abolished when people became aware of an alternative. This alternative – steam power – was of course a great moral improvement until we came to know the consequences of fossil fuel consumption. This, in turn, suggests that we will restrain our use of fossil fuels if we can favour a new energy transition and find clean sources of energy – and that we should concentrate our efforts on developing "green" technologies at the same time as reducing our consumption of fossil fuels.

If we do not change, the human family will pay heavily for the consequences of our reckless activity. Moreover, future generations will look back at us and wonder how our civilisation could have been so backward and have lived in such appalling moral blindness. Will the next generation have any awareness that industrialised societies had mitigating circumstances? Probably not. They are more likely to curse us for the irreparable damage we have done to the planet. Surely, they will say, we were a barbarian people.

• Jean-François Mouhot is a visiting researcher at Georgetown University. He is the author of Past Connections and Present Similarities in Slave Ownership and Fossil Fuel Usage, published in the journal Climatic Change, and the book Des Esclaves Energétiques: Réflexions sur le Changement Climatique.

• Fossil fuels
• Energy
• Climate change

Despite avoiding climate change in his State of the Union address, the Keystone XL pipeline and EPA regulations on power plants will make it hard to avoid

In his State of the Union address on January 24, President Obama largely avoided the topic of climate change. He talked about it once, in passing, as a topic on which "the differences in this chamber may be too deep" to enact new legislation. Its less-controversial cousin, "energy," on the other hand, got a whopping 23 mentions as an area where Republicans and Democrats should be able to find agreement.

It became clear well before that address that the president and his administration don't think that climate change is an issue that will carry them to a second term. In his public events following the speech, he's also focused on clean energy while avoiding the other "c" word.

But there are several reasons that Obama won't be able to avoid talking about climate change for too long—and well he shouldn't. The first is the ongoing battle over the Keystone XL pipeline. The proposed 1,661-mile pipeline from Canada to Texas probably would have been approved to little fanfare if environmental groups hadn't waged a lengthy campaign asking the White House to reject it. Similar pipelines hadn't faced much backlash, but this one drew ire from climate-change activists who called attention to the increased emissions stemming from oil from Canada's tar sands, and from local residents in the pipeline's proposed pathway. During two weeks of sit-ins in late August, more than 1,200 people were arrested outside the White House protesting the pipeline. Activists also held a massive rally on November 6 that ended with thousands encircling the White House.

Obama first sought to avoid the Keystone controversy by putting off a decision until after the election. But Republicans in Congress forced his hand, inserting a provision into a December tax bill that required the administration to decide by Feb. 21. And decide he did—to reject the permit application for the time being. While Republicans forced the definite answer, it was environmental groups that made him to say "no." This, they argue, should be an indication that climate is an important issue for Obama's base and one they'll turn out on.

"We've actually paved the way for the president to start talking about these issues in a much stronger way," said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth. FOE was one of the groups exerting pressure on the State Department and the White House to reject the pipeline. Not only were enviros able to they rally their own supporters against the pipeline, but they were able to reach out to broader audiences through coverage of the protests and participation in public comment sessions along the path of the pipeline, said Pica.

Author and environmental activist Bill McKibben, who led the Keystone work with the group 350.org, dinged other environmental groups for not talking about climate change, and thus not forcing the White House to push the issue. "For a long time, many groups driven by focus groups and polls have concluded it was easier to talk about 'clean energy' and 'green jobs,'" said McKibben. "But our experience at 350.org is that you can engage the science very directly and build a big movement. Clearly it was concern about climate that drew a large percentage of the people who made up the Keystone fight."

But it's not just Keystone protesters that are concerned about climate change. The most recent polling from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 63 percent of Americans think there is "solid evidence" that the earth is getting warmer (though only 38 percent think it's because of human activity). That also included 43 percent of people who identified Republicans and 63 percent of independents.

Furthermore, it's unlikely that Obama will be able to avoid the subject on the campaign trail—especially since the EPA is expected, any day now, to release new standards for greenhouse gas emissions that all new power plants in the US will have to abide by. (The rules were due out in January, but are now caught up in review at the White House Office of Management and Budget.) The new standards are "likely to spark unjustified outrage by conservatives, which will put it on the policy agenda regardless of whether or not people in the administration want it on that agenda," said Dan Weiss, director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. The Republican presidential candidate will probably make an issue of those rules, calling them anti-business and counterproductive to economic growth. Republicans will also harp on the administration's previous support for a climate bill in Congress. So too will political action committees backed by oil and gas interests. All this will make climate change harder for the Obama campaign to avoid, which is all the more reason, advocates of climate action argue, that the administration should take a proactive approach to talking about what they've done.

"It's hard to imagine it won't be part of the conversation, whether they want it to or not," said Weiss.

• Climate change
• Barack Obama
• State of the union address
• Green economy
• Renewable energy
• United States

Police hold man on suspicion of stealing five tonnes of ice from a glacier in Patagonia to sell as designer ice cubes for cocktails

• In pictures: The world's melting glaciers

Climate change sceptics have acquired a new explanation for why glaciers are retreating: it's not global warming, it's theft.

Police in Chile have arrested a man on suspicion of stealing five tonnes of ice from the Jorge Montt glacier in the Patagonia region to sell as designer ice cubes in bars and restaurants.

Local media reported that last Friday police intercepted a refrigerated truck with an estimated £3,900 worth of illicit ice allegedly bound for whiskies, rums and cocktails in the capital Santiago.

Authorities have accused the driver of theft and are considering adding violation of national monuments to the charge sheet.

Scientists say Jorge Montt, part of the Bernardo O'Higgins national park, is retreating by half a mile a year, making it one of the world's fastest shrinking glaciers.

Environmentalists have cited it as evidence that man-made climate change is warming the planet. Sceptics have cited other explanations for retreating glaciers, but theft – until now – was not one of them. It may be the only case in which both sides agree human activity was to blame.

• Glaciers
• Climate change
• Climate change scepticism
• Chile
• Americas