Climate change beyond ‘belief’

There is an assumption that “non-believers” do not want to forego their cosseted, privileged existence benefiting from unlimited cheap energy.

The subject is multi-faceted and the component parts regularly become mixed up in these debates:

• Using as little energy as possible makes sense. Its use should be more evenly distributed around the world.
• It has to make sense to minimise or eradicate pollution.
• There is no question that we should be very careful with the finite quantities of natural resources available on earth.
• The debate about cause and effect seems to be less objective — it is the one where emotions run high.

I go along with all the points above but I am confused about the last one. How can I obtain meaningful statistics? We all know how easy it is to prove anything with carefully presented numbers.

I cannot be exactly sure of my facts, but the consensus seems to be that buildings are responsible for somewhere between 45% and 50% of all carbon emissions. The new energy-efficient buildings our profession has been creating over the last few years represent a tiny percentage of the total building stock so, clearly, the biggest problem we have — bigger than cars and planes put together — is the older building stock.

I am at a loss to imagine what the profession finds to talk about at the various sustainability conferences that take place each year; the science of making buildings use little energy is junior school stuff.

The problem is that our world finds itself in a terrible mess because of the monetary values we assign to our natural resources. The rare, finite ones should be the most expensive — we have got it right with diamonds!

Surely, we should stop having “beliefs” and start being scientific. For example, why is it taking so long to develop the hydrogen fuel cell? Maybe it goes back to the value systems argument: there are too many people who still want to sell us oil, or take the tax from it.

Roger Stephenson, Manchester