Climate emergencies and luxury beliefs

This article was prompted by an article in The Economist issue of 17th May 2025 discussing the solar geo-engineering projects supported by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) - the UK government’s imitation of DARPA – which has the brief to fund “high risk, high reward” research. Any comparison between DARPA and ARIA highlights how fundamentally unserious the UK government is in its approach to developing and applying new technologies, since its projects are little more than an indulgence of academic and NGO whims.

I first became involved in dealing with practical aspects of climate policy nearly 34 years ago when I was invited to join the core team writing what became the 1992 World Development Report (WDR) on Development and the Environment. Alongside other responsibilities I was co-author of the chapter on international environmental issues which dealt with climate change. The WDR was a key part of the preparations for the Rio de Janeiro Environment Conference (the Earth Summit) at which various international conventions on environmental issues were finalised. Among these was the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Prior to our work on the WDR, issues of environment and development, and especially climate change, were very much a niche concern. Even in preparing for the Rio Conference more attention was given to other global issues including biodiversity, desertification and loss of tropical forests than climate change.

I regard some of the research and policy work that we carried out in preparing the WDR as having been of fundamental importance in showing how environmental issues could be integrated into the formulation and implementation of development. In particular, the emphasis on human health and urbanisation shifted the focus of environmental work in developing countries from impacts on natural environments to human populations.[1]

With respect to climate policy, the main themes which characterise international and national discussions today rapidly became clear. There was almost zero willingness to discuss adaptation to climate change. That was seen as conceding the principle the climate change was inevitable, a position that those who expressed strongest concerns about climate change were adamantly unwilling to accept. This is merely a modern variant of the debate about whether sinners should be condemned and cast out or human frailty should be recognised and forgiven. As we know, the strong puritan position of ignoring adaptation has achieved little other than leaving most developing countries more exposed to climate impacts.

The options for mitigation were also clear. There were strong advocates for renewable energy, who made the familiar argument that costs would fall by orders of magnitude. As now, they were never able to explain how solar power (the preferred option) or wind power would work in large electricity networks.[2] However, the obvious low carbon option was nuclear power, as everyone could point to the success of the French nuclear program.

While some countries had a poor record for cost and time overruns in building nuclear plants, this was not inevitable. Everyone could see that with coherent policy and good engineering practice it was possible to build and operate nuclear plants at reasonable cost over decades. Nuclear power was, in effect, an immediate solution to the problem of reducing greenhouse gas emissions at moderate cost.

In purely commercial terms, nuclear power was less attractive than gas generation from combined cycle plants (CCGTs), a technology that developed rapidly through the 1980s and 1990s. The great advantage of CCGTs was that they were cheap and quick to build, so they provided flexibility for power systems. In addition, the average emission of greenhouse gases per MWh of power generated from CCGTs was much lower than for coal plants, so switching from coal to gas reduced overall emissions.

The obvious way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions at moderate cost over 10 to 20 years was a strategy based on replacing base-load coal plants with nuclear power supplemented by gas CCGTs to cover mid-merit requirements and gas turbines for peaking capacity. As Sergei the meerkat would say: “Simples”.[3]

Still, even before the Chernobyl accident, green lobbies in Europe and North America were more strongly opposed to nuclear power than they were concerned about acid rain (the climate emergency of the 1980s). The Chernobyl accident reinforced those concerns, even though (i) the final toll was much lower than initial claims suggested was likely, (ii) it was obvious to everyone that the accident was caused by sheer stupidity on the part of the plant operators, and (iii) the Chernobyl plant design, which exacerbated human failings, had long been rejected everywhere outside the Soviet Union. Less well-known, the major earthquake in Armenia in 1988, which led to the temporary closure of the Yerevan nuclear plant, reinforced green opposition to nuclear power.

I recall a very heated conversation with the Vice President of the World Bank responsible for Sustainable Development. Without any preparatory work, he wanted to make a public commitment to close all nuclear plants in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union as well as denying all funding for nuclear power worldwide. This was what his green friends and lobby groups in OECD countries wanted, but he had no understanding of the consequences both for the environment or the well-being of people around the world. I was able to dissuade him from making the public commitment, but he never forgave me for my temerity in challenging what would now be called his luxury beliefs.

A complementary form of mitigation would be geoengineering. For at least three decades it has strongly been suspected that small particles in the upper atmosphere, either emitted directly by burning coal or formed by chemical processes in the atmosphere linked to emissions of sulphur dioxide and other gases, tend to reduce global temperatures. The strongest evidence is the lower temperatures in periods from one to ten years following major volcanic eruptions, which emit large quantities of both particles and precursor gases.

Statistical analyses of trends in temperatures and emissions of both particles and precursor gases are consistent with this hypothesis. What are known as estimates of radiative forcing take account of the role of such emissions. In climate models, reducing radiative forcing by increasing such emissions will reduce average temperatures, though the effects may not be immediate or one-to-one as the climate is a chaotic system.

Such an intervention, whether by deliberate simulation of volcanic emissions or simply slowing the reduction of emissions from power plants and other sources, would have costs. Particles in the atmosphere eventually contribute to dispersed pollution at ground level, which cause or exacerbate respiratory and cardio-vascular conditions. However, emissions from low level source such as particles from tyre wear caused by heavy electric vehicles are relatively more important because they are not dispersed in the atmosphere.

As always there are trade-offs between the risks of climate change vs the risks of nuclear power and exposure to dispersed particles. However, if there is a real climate emergency, the risks associated with nuclear power and geo-engineering are trivial by comparison with the potential benefits of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

Following the standard advice to look at what people do rather than what they say, the rhetoric about a climate emergency was and remains hot air. It has been possible – and not even outrageously expensive – for any government to take effective action to limit emissions of greenhouse gases at any point in the last three decades. Indeed, several groups of energy and climate economists elaborated strategies to do this between 1995 and 1997 during preparations for the Kyoto Conference at which the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC was signed in 1997.[4]

The core element in such a strategy was to phase the transition to low carbon energy over 30-40 years to match the regular replacement cycle for capital equipment and infrastructure. The UK illustrates how little effort was made to implement any sensible strategy. Instead, attention and money were expended on expensive and mostly pointless policies to promote various types of renewable energy. This was a consequence of the EU’s obsession with the exhaustion of oil together with the strong resistance to nuclear power among green lobby groups.

The archetype of this frame of mind is the current UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero when he held the equivalent position from 2008 to 2010. At the time it was obvious to any energy policymaker that approximately 8 GW of AGR nuclear plants due to retire in the 2020s should be replaced by at least double that capacity to meet the government’s announced climate change goal of reducing emissions by 80% relative to 1990.

Despite vehement opposition from Greenpeace et al, a decision to proceed with a program of new nuclear plants was announced at the beginning of 2008. However, the government proceeded to dither for several years, notably after Ed Miliband was appointed Secretary of State of the new Department of Energy and Climate Change in October 2008. The luxury belief at the time was that somehow a combination of energy efficiency and renewables could replace the need for reliable and large-scale generating capacity.

Instead of committing public funds to commission a series of plants using an established Gen-3+ PWR design – either the US AP-1000 or the Korean APR-1400 - the Department played games with potential builders and operators. For a while it pretended that a carbon tax should be sufficient to ensure private investment in new plants, even though it had bankrupted British Energy in the early 2000s due to regulatory and market changes. For political reasons both Labour and Conservative governments favoured the French EPR design, even though its track record of cos overruns and delays was known to be awful. Eventually an agreement in principle to fund two reactors at Hinkley Point was made in 2013, but that too was delayed by legal challenges and regulatory delays.

The process of obtaining planning consent and regulatory approval for new infrastructure projects in the UK is notoriously baroque and slow. However, there is a way of accelerating the process, which is to obtain explicit Parliamentary authorisation for necessary action. As was seen during the Covid Pandemic and in response to the problems at British Steel Scunthorpe Steel, this can be done very quickly in an emergency. While such haste would not have been necessary to implement a program of nuclear plant-building, there is no doubt that any government willing to act in a decisive manner and spend the necessary political capital could have proceeded without substantial delays.

The truth, of course, is that neither politicians nor the bureaucracy have ever regarded the issue of climate change as anything approaching an emergency. It is merely an opportunity to engage in self-indulgence, stroking their egos and responding the luxury beliefs – and sometimes self-interest – of well-connected lobby groups. Even today, when rhetoric of a climate emergency is regularly deployed by the UK government, its management of plans to commission new nuclear plants has been dilatory and incompetent.

In Europe, many of the most active members of such groups would rank their opposition to nuclear power well above their commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The claimed virtues of renewable energy are little more than a mirage which allow them to pretend that they need not make any difficult trade-offs. Such views are promoted heavily by commercial interests whose goals are more mercenary.

This should not excuse the foolishness and cynicism of promoters of nuclear power. The British nuclear industry is dominated by academics and research organisations whose goal is to secure funding for their projects. This is reinforced by a strong not-invented here syndrome which has obstructed the capacity of the industry to adopt a standard design that can implemented quickly and offer real economies of scale. Thus, any genuine commitment to nuclear power would require a serious level of political commitment to knock heads together.

One of the lessons of the Covid Pandemic and other episodes over the last two decades is that the British state has almost completely lost the capacity to act effectively to deal with civil or economic emergencies. Yes, it can pass legislation and act in a thoroughly authoritarian manner, but it has no ability to formulate or implement effective strategies. That is why governments over the last two decades have been so vulnerable to lobby groups promoting luxury beliefs.[5]

The consistent preference for expensive and often ineffective “green” options such as renewable energy over alternatives which would be both less expensive and more effective undermines any claims about climate or other environmental emergencies. The self-indulgence of luxury beliefs is reinforced by choosing to believe what the believer wishes were true rather than accepting the necessity of coming to terms with real choices and their consequences.

We are offered endless repetition of the claim that solar and wind generation in the UK are cheaper than alternatives, despite the weight of real evidence - rather than invented numbers - which shows that is both misleading as a general proposition and untrue in detail. No-one should take the rhetoric of a climate emergency seriously until it is backed by decisions that give priority to policies which are demonstrably effective, and which are based on engineering reality as well as economic common-sense.

[1] This was far from popular within the World Bank. The main group of environmental specialists within the organisation were primarily concerned with what is now called ecological economics. Their overriding focus was on population growth and protection of biodiversity. They were very much within the Limits to Growth tradition, who took a strongly Malthusian view of natural resources and economic growth dressed up in the verbiage of “sustainable development”.

[2] There was little disagreement about the potential value of solar power for off-grid communities, which represented most of the rural population in low-income countries at that time. Rather than promoting such uses the advocates of renewable energy were dogmatic in insisting that electricity grids should switch to solar and wind as the primary source of generation. Hydro-power (big dams) was classed as being evil along with nuclear power.

[3] For readers outside the UK, a well-known comparison website based in the UK uses puppet meerkats heavily in their advertisements. Sergei is the family’s head of IT, who is presented as the ultimate computer nerd.

[4] The results of this work were published in a Special Issue of the Energy Journal, Volume 20, Special Issue, 1999.

[5] The best definition of luxury beliefs that I have come across was formulated by Rob Henderson. He says: "Luxury beliefs refer to ideas or opinions that signal status or privilege to those who hold them, often with little personal cost, while potentially inflicting negative consequences on others, especially those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The term is often used to describe beliefs that appear progressive or morally upright but can have detrimental real-world effects.”