Solve climate 'whatever it costs'
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By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Climate change will compromise food supplies, John Ashton believes

Climate change is "potentially the most serious threat there has ever
been" to security and prosperity, according to Britain's new climate
ambassador.

In an article for the BBC News website - his first since taking the post
in June - John Ashton says climate change must be tackled "whatever it
costs".

He argues that the costs of not solving it will inevitably be larger.

Environmentalists welcomed Mr Ashton's appointment, but warned the UK
position is undermined by its rising emissions.

Greenhouse gas production is increasing in virtually every country, and
it is this that Mr Ashton believes makes climate change a real and
urgent threat in Britain and around the globe.

"We need to treat climate change not as a long term threat to our
environment, but as an immediate threat to our security and prosperity,"
he writes.

"We need to see the pursuit of a stable climate as an imperative to be
secured whatever it costs through the urgent construction of a low
carbon global economy, because the cost of not securing it will be far
greater."

Depending on diplomacy

As special representative on climate change for the British foreign
secretary, John Ashton's main role is to build a new international
consensus on climate change.

Consensus and diplomacy are, he writes, the only ways to tackle climate
issues; unlike more traditional security concerns, the "hard power"
option of solving a problem by force is not available.

"You cannot use military force to make everyone else on the planet
reduce their carbon emissions. No weapon system can halt the advance of
a hurricane bearing down on a city, or stem the rising sea, or stop the
glaciers melting," he writes.

If we don't deal with it now, the reality is we will have to use
military means to secure water, food, and energy security
Felix Dodds

He believes that climate change, if it is not tackled effectively, will
bring conflict through its impacts on societies and economies.

The lawlessness of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and the
horrors of Darfur, exacerbated by changes to rainfall patterns,
"...illustrate how an unstable climate will make it harder to deliver
security unless we act more effectively now to neutralise the threat."

According to Felix Dodds, co-editor of the recent book Human
Environmental Security - an Agenda for Change, diplomatic failure on
climate change may well lead to conflict.

"John Ashton is right in his analysis, and international discussions are
critical to solving this issue," he said, "because the alternative is
you do end up with military solutions.

"There is a time window, and that window is 10 to 15 years - if we don't
deal with it now, the reality is we will have to use military means to
secure water, food, and energy security."

Interconnected world

John Ashton does not indicate which model of diplomacy he will pursue.

Traditionally, governments negotiated climate agreements through the
United Nations, an approach which produced the UN Climate Change
Convention and later the Kyoto Protocol.

The technologies to avoid an even more unstable climate are already
available
John Ashton

More recently, Tony Blair spearheaded another initiative, pursuing
energy security and climate change simultaneously in talks with G8
member states and a number of developing countries; a third forum, the
Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, claims to
combat climate change through technology alone, even though its own
forecasts predict it will fail to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Neither of these initiatives involve binding targets and timetables for
cutting emissions as the Kyoto treaty does.

While British and European Union officials say they are working towards
a post-Kyoto global treaty with targets and timetables, Mr Blair
indicated last year that he believes such an outcome is unlikely.

And in its climate change review, launched in March, the government
admitted it is likely to fail to meet the target of reducing carbon
dioxide emissions by 20% by the year 2010 which it set a decade ago.

Against this mixed backdrop Mr Ashton will need all the diplomatic
skills he acquired during his long Foreign Office career if he is to
create a new consensus able to bring real emission cuts.

But his commitment to that end is clear in his article.

"If we fail to see this threat to security very soon for what it is and
make our dispositions accordingly, we will end up paying far more and
experiencing more insecurity," he writes.