Sent to the BBC early in 2007

Have Your Say- Climate Change and Drought.... Melvyn Smart

Dear BBC, I have been intrigued for some time by the repeated assertion (once again today) that climate change and global warming will produce more drought. It makes me think of the Portuguese explorers rounding the coast of West Africa for the first time, who thought that the sea was boiling and that the people were turned black by the baking heat. As they were to discover the type of vegetation that is most associated with the tropics and with 'equatorial' regions is rainforest?

In fact the idea that a warmer Earth will be a drier one seems to fly in the face of basic physics and climatology.

The melting of the polar ice caps means that more and more of the Earth's water is being released to become part of the water-cycle. Normally rain-cloud formation takes place over the oceans or other large expanses of water, and is a function of the surface area of the water and the air temperature that turns the water into water-vapour. It is surely illogical, therefore, to argue that this process of vaporisation will be diminished when the surface area of global water is increased by the rising sea levels. This alone should increase cloud formation even without any increase in air temperature. But with air temperature increasing by up to 3 degrees there should be a further significant increase in cloud formation. Of course, cooling is necessary for the vapour in the clouds to turn to droplets; and with a warmer atmosphere the vapour may have to be carried by warm air-currents up to a much greater altitude before this can happen, but this would still happen before the vapour reaches the freezing temperatures of the upper atmosphere. Nevertheless droplets falling from a great height may turn into the heavy rain that one associates with tropical downpours. And, moreover, the greater energy that is contained within a warmed-up atmosphere may produce a general increase in the damaging violence of the climate. What one might expect then is shorter bursts of more intense rain rather than the drizzle that is so familiar to us in Britain.

The probable changes, therefore, will make water management of one kind or another increasingly necessary. But humankind has a long experience of this going right back to the World's great ancient river valley civilizations. From Egypt through to China they all had to cope with floods and droughts, and did so successfully. We should note, however, that water management, was often a crucial factor in the emergence of authorities that were vested with the power necessary to deal with the problems of massive scale. Chinese history began with God-emperors, who came down from the Heavens to organise the waters, and there was a general connection between 'other-worldly' authority vested in highpriests or semi-divine monarchs. Times have changed, but there are new prophets, seers and priestly leaders. This is most evident to us perhaps in those Islamic states that have turned back to clerical rule, but even in China the Communist Party is not ready to abandon Chinese traditions of power and prerogative, with the traditions of obedience and submission that went with them.

Western rationalism, however, has increasingly looked to science and technology rather than religion for its answers since the eighteenth century. Unfortunately, just as the weakness of religious authorities is the tendency to speak for God with absolute and infallible wisdom and judgment, the weakness of scientists is the constant temptation to ignore the basic fact that, as Dr Bronowski put it, 'science is a tribute to just how much we can know, given the fact that we can really know nothing'. The ability to predict the future has become the scientist's modern equivalent of the alchemists dream of turning base materials into gold. But then it is very attractive to believe that it is possible to 'save the world' by means of pursuing the personal 'struggle' that you have undertaken. Apart from anything else it helps to justify your existence when you have chosen to dedicate yourself to your own interest and obsession. It also strengthens the case for the kind of funding that is usually necessary in order to achieve 'cutting edge' breakthroughs.

We should remember, however, that those seeking power or influence over people frequently try to terrorise and alarm them with the prospect of some great evil that they can protect them against. What Eric Hobsbawm has called "The Age of Catastrophe" 1919-1945 was full of such terrors and the 'World Chaos' of the Thirties produced a trend towards strong leaders who would have the strength to plan for the future and the will-power and courage to do whatever was necessary. For an eminent British scientist like Dr. Julian Huxley there was an evident logic and rationale in the way that the states that became the Axis powers became so powerful because their totalitarian regimes were able to really exploit modern science and technology, including economics in a way that democratic states found difficult. But as an Oxford 'don' he was too much surrounded by English humanism to fall down and worship prophets of darkness.

In an article in The Times in 1942 Dr. Huxley commented on the way that the Tennessee Valley Authority Scheme had shown just how a massive plan to tame wild waters, and achieve significant regional regeneration, could be managed through schemes of democratic planning participation and cooperation. Dr Huxley observed - "In such a situation, the planner's temptation is to believe so much in his plan that he insists on imposing it from above, as it stands, and as quickly as possible. This is the temptation which leads to "beneficient dictatorships". The planner, remembering that power corrupts, must resist it, as Christ did when the devil offered him power over all the kingdoms of the earth."

Huxley went on to develop in other articles his belief that democracy- using as it does the qualities, intelligence and capacities of all the people- would eventually overcome the totalitarian regimes. And in the same way, just as it is the aggregate impact of the World's expanding human population that is degrading the planet, it will require the willing, active and intelligent cooperation of us all in order to move our forward-trajectory on to a different course. We should not forget, however, that the special wartime conditions that handed immense power to our leaders, even within our democratic systems resulted in our complicity in the scientists and technologists way to end the Second World War- Hiroshima and the nuclear age that it initiated.

So it is not enough for new self-appointed prophets to preach a sermon of blame to the affluent western world calling for us to follow their lead in

‘renouncing the world’ and withdrawing to some monastic life-style. Obviously the western world can be shown to have the most immediate impact on the current change in the state of Earth because it is the main motor of the world economic system. It is a system that, during the nineteenth century, in the interests of the kind of peaceful world envisaged by Adam Smith's “Wealth of Nations”, had most of the countries of the World producing primary products and raw materials to supply industrial and domestic demand in 'western economies'- in so far as they sought economic growth at all. That was a flawed and imperfect economic system, but it has given birth to both for :- (a) the dream of the abolition of world poverty and ( b) the nightmare of the destruction of our global environment.

Dreams and nightmares, however, are always part of the human condition, and we should not allow ourselves to be blinded to reality by either one or the other. Unfortunately the Earth is paying the price for the fact that during the Age of Revolution Great Britain became dominated by Scottish rationalism and with it Adam Smith's brand of what I have called non -sustainable "potato-patch economics" at the expense of the English traditions that were championed by William Cobbett. The seduction of power was too great and we have become power-junkies, rejecting English common sense and real life experience.

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Sent to 10 Downing Street and other places in 2006- including the BBC for it was inspired by a BBC documentary series on China that featured the “Three Rivers Scheme”.

4 July 2006

Dear Mr.Blair,

A recent TV programme on China highlighted their current ‘Three Rivers Scheme’. It is a massive project very much in keeping with the work of ‘the ancestors’, since the Chinese start their history with the descent of God-Emperors who began taming the waters. One of the engineers involved in this new effort to take water from the south to the north explained that they were merely trying to restore an imbalance created by God.

It may be that the Chinese have been obliged by their circumstances to think in such sweeping terms by the extremes of Yin and Yang, to which they have always been exposed. But surely our current fears over global warming and the almost certain degradation of our living environment suggest that we too should be thinking in such broad terms.

The ‘Three Rivers Scheme’is not only in keeping with the works of the ancestors, it is actually incorporating the 2,500 year old Grand Canal into the system. Which raises once again the question of our own canal system that was built only some 250 years ago.

The Oil Crisis of the Seventies ended a 200- year era of cheap fossil fuels. The dawn of that era was signalled around 1760 by the opening of the Bridgewater Canal. When it was later extended as far as the Mersey cheap coal could become the main power force for the dual Lancashire monarchies of King Steam and King Cotton. Their economic difficulties after the French Wars of 1793-1815 encouraged investment in the Liverpool-Manchester Grand Experimental Railway, and soon the combination of cheap labour, much of it from Ireland, and cheap coal helped to produce the Railway Revolution. This was an age of ‘laissez-faire’ economics, which meant not freedom but slavish observance to the ‘Laws of Political Economy’. In that spirit people observed the new Commandments like ‘buy cheap and sell dear’, ‘time is money’ and ‘do not meddle with market forces’. In such a light the very English canal system that had kicked off the more humane and gentle phase of the first industrial revolution, could be made to appear muddled, varied and DIY. The mechanised technology of the railways swept Britain, and then the World, into a new competitive age in which China, and her European mini-equivalent France, tended to lag behind. In both cases they were held back by the slower and more natural rhythm of water transport, and their attachment to the land, works, and genius handed down from ancient times.

The process of asset-stripping the Earth will have its natural consequences if we continue. But before we reach that particular end-game we may well have destroyed the Natural Environment that has sustained human life.

Already in the Sixties and Seventies people like Dr. E.F.Schumacher were pointing to the lack of sustainability in our way of life, and soon the question of fuel costs was changing the economic considerations that had worked against water transport. In the Eighteenth Century it was obvious that the application of horse-power to barges was much more efficient than to wagons on such roads as existed. Modern roads and rails no doubt have better surfaces. But boat technology has also improved. Moreover the Victorian laws of ‘free trade’ political economy no longer hold sway. Ours is an age full of ‘market distortions’ from railway subsidies, through heavy taxation, and on to massive government expenditure on our road system. However, the decline of the canals was not due to market forces alone. In many cases it was artificially accelerated by the practice of railways companies buying up small stretches of canal and, in effect, sabotaging the competition by allowing them to fall into neglect and disrepair.

Now, climate change is producing a new north-south divide in Britain to mirror what is happening in China. In our case there is plenty of rain in the north, with major outbreaks of localised flooding, and water shortages in the south. But our canals covered the whole of England and, in order to be able to float barges, had to move water from river -system to river system. So the infrastructure exists, and we should be encouraged by the Chinese example. As in China any consideration of the costs involved in setting up effective water management should be counterbalanced by the thought of the legacy that is bequeathed to successive generations probably for thousands of years to come.

Against the costs of a properly engineered refurbishment of at least a part of the canal system one can place these benefits.

It could help to solve the water problems of both the South-East of England and the North of England. But it would not necessarily mean even more of a population shift towards the south because much of the most important investment, work and changes would be in the North. Realising the project would create new opportunities, as would lower transport costs and the leisure possibilities offered by ‘messing around on the water’. The mill towns of the north belonged to the age of canals. The terrible Victorian cities to the railway age.

The system could make a positive contribution to our energy supply. Canals need to pump water up and let water down; and the best solution to the problem of pumping water into canals was that developed by the Dutch and used to drain the English Fens in the Seventeenth Century- windmills. As water can be stored at minimal cost the intermittent nature of the wind would not matter. When there was wind a suitable quantity of spare water could be pumped out of the northern rivers. At the same time the windmills could also pump surplus electricity into the national grid, especially when enough water had already been pumped into the system. Thus a string of windmills all along the route would allow us to make good use what Nineteenth Century sailors called ‘free coal’. Furthermore, the cost of building windmills could be recuperated. We could return to the old tradition of making them habitable as purchased, rented, or leasehold accommodation. As for the down-flow of water, it would be possible to replicate the Eighteenth Century world of water-wheels by fitting sluices and water-driven turbines into lock gates, inclined planes etc.

Much less predictable is the sense of shared purpose and national renewal that could come from a scheme that would bring elements of unity and commitment. People might feel that they were really doing something for the future and learning to respect the past, rather than scrabbling around merely coping with an unsatisfactory present. Such a scheme, in fact. would not have to be circumscribed by conventional business or governmental economics, because environmentalists, enthusiasts and schools could find ways to turn it into a regeneration of more than rather stagnant tracts of our waterscape.

Looking to our own ancestors we could do worse than emulate the way that the Anglo-Saxons created the infrastructure of fields, commons and water-management that became the foundations for English prosperity. Like those pioneers a new generation of ‘copyholders’ might be prepared to work hard as part of a community that was setting up the future. Those ‘investors’ gained a family right to a share in the commons they created. In the same way, with household energy costs at more than a thousand pounds a year, any right to a proportionate allowance of ‘free coal’ in perpetuity would be a very tangible asset. As with those ‘common rights’ that endured for a thousand years it would be well worth both the initial effort and the ongoing commitment needed to maintain the system in working order. Such copyholders might, of course, still have to live alongside Mr. Brown’s ‘stakeholders’, who are born with basic rights to draw on public assets but no enforceable obligations and duties. But it would be much easier for people of goodwill and honest endeavour to show their mettle as part of communities that might once more find some function, vitality and value.