Yet more on gas

Last week I posted about the dash for gas. The stimulus for that posting was Kevin Anderson's comments an article on the BBC News website giving the views of various commentators about fracking. I finished with a throwaway comment that there was an issue to be resolved between Kevin Anderson and Dieter Helm, whose book I recently reviewed.

Kevin Anderson's comments were not so much about fracking as such but about the principle of the UK expanding its production of fossil fuels. He says:-

"The UK's commitment to make our fair contribution to reduce emissions in line with keeping global warming below a 2C rise gives a very clear global carbon budget, and hence a UK budget: in other words, how much carbon we can put into the atmosphere over this century. Here the maths is unambiguous - we have insufficient budget for the carbon we are already emitting and by the time shale gas is produced in any quantity (five to 10 years), there will be no emissions space left for it."

He then makes another important point:-

"In a world that is hungry for energy, any UK shale gas used here will mean we import less gas and coal - gas and coal that will simply be burnt elsewhere."

If I understand Dieter Helm correctly, he is saying that the UK's commitments on reducing emissions arise from processes that are spectacular failures. We simply don't have any international agreements that are effective in reducing world-wide emissions. The UK's emissions are a very small proportion of world-wide emissions - less than 2% - so what we do about our own emissions is virtually irrelevant to the aim of limiting global warming to 2C. He doesn't think that providing leadership or setting an example to the world will be effective.

Helm's solution is for the major rich countries to introduce a carbon tax that covers the embodied emissions in their imports as well as their domestic production. In other words, the big issue is not how we reduce our own emissions but what we can do to reduce Chinese emissions. His proposed carbon tax would do this by reducing worldwide demand for the high-carbon goods and services.

Hence the difference between Kevin Anderson and Dieter Helm is that Anderson takes as given the UK's international commitments and Helm does not. They are arguing from different premises and in different contexts.