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Andrew Casebow is the States of Guernsey Agriculture and Environment Adviser. He is also a researcher on climate change and sustainable island development at Cambridge University and he was the main speaker at a J-CAN public meeting held on Monday 22nd June at St Paul’s Centre, St Helier.
Dr Casebow began his talk by making the point that climate change is not a new thing. There have been numerous ice ages and warm interglacial periods over the last million years. At the moment, according to the usual 100,000-year cycle, we should be just starting to head back towards another ice age, the worst of which is perhaps 80,000 years in the future.
However, even here in the Channel Islands, our local airport met offices have been able to note significant increases in local average temperatures, especially since the 1960s. Changes directly related to this warming have also been noted in the prevalence and behaviour of various local plants, insects, agricultural diseases (such as blue-tongue in cattle), birds, plankton, fish and intertidal species. These are local symptoms of worldwide trends—everywhere climatic regions and everything that depends on them are measurably moving polewards, while parts of the tropics and equatorial regions become desert. The Channel Island climate is now like southern Brittany's was within living memory. DEFRA says that by 2080 it will be more like that of Portugal.
This, however, is not good news. It is not simply time to get out the sunblock and plant some Mediterranean crops. This climate change is happening very much faster than other natural cycles have happened in the past. In this case there are examples where important local species including pollinating insects are unable to adapt or migrate in time. For example, if the hatching of an insect species and the coming into leaf of a plant species upon which the larvae depend usually coincide, there are cases where the timing has gone wrong leaving the insects or caterpillars to starve.
This process is going on worldwide, at a time when the earth's population is also increasing dramatically. It is not hard to see that large populations of people from countries that are suffering desertification are going to want to migrate polewards along with the changing climate. Even if they don't, their needs are going to place increasing demands on the resources of other regions.
Living on islands at the end of long and complex supply chains and food chains, we Channel Islanders are, more than most, vulnerable to shortages in food, energy and fuel. Such shortages are increasingly likely in the next 50 years.
Due to sea-level rise, the storm flooding that occured in Jersey on 10th March 2008, may look like the result of a normal spring tide by 2080.
Apart from simply trying to adapt to these changes as they happen, there may still be things that we can do to reduce the effects of greenhouse-gas-generated global warming. To have any realistic effect, we are going to have to reduce our energy use in the island by more than 60%, probably 80%. In order to achieve this, we are going to have to adopt electric cars, reduce all car use (by increased walking, cycling, public transport etc), insulate all our buildings, reduce, reuse and recycle much more than at present and change our diet by consuming much less meat and dairy produce. We are going to have to obtain energy from alternative energy sources such as solar, wind, tidal, wave etc, reduce food miles, compost or 'methane digest' our waste and increasingly join the current popular movement toward allotment gardening.
Considerable discussion had started in the room by this point in the talk. There were those who had said earlier that they were personally sceptical about the scientific basis for human-generated global warming at all, who later agreed that many of the measures proposed were good sense anyway - real costs can be saved by insulating a house and money can be made by generating energy locally. Dr Casebow made the point that there were many, many opportunities for entrepreneurial activities as a result of the points made in his talk, and that a great deal of new industry and income are likely to be created by those who grasp these opportunities.
Local businessmen talked of the commercial sense in reducing energy and electricity consumption. Pay-back periods as short as two years were mentioned for such measures. With the recent high oil prices and the threat that external suppliers could alter such prices at their will at any time in the future, many agreed that it becomes wise to reduce dependency on such external factors.
Coffee and biscuits were served and it looked like the discussions going on within groups and circles of chairs could continue long into the night. But the evening was drawing to a close, so we had to be sensible about it.
Hopefully these discussions will continue, as these are the very debates that need to take place in the island at this time.
Dr Casebow left us with two web addresses that provide very useful information and background data:
Dr Casebow is a contributor to TURNING POINT: The ECO-ACTIVE guide to the science and impacts of climate change in Jersey, published in 2009 by the States of Jersey and of PLANET GUERNSEY: Towards a Sustainable Future (2007)
