Future scenarios and strategic choices - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 407

Politically the hazards of uncertainty provide reason for avoiding commitment to
any particular long-term strategy. (Individual schemes and developments continue to
be approved, but on an incremental basis.) 'Muddling through' enables flexibility to
be retained. It also avoids having to present populations (hence voters) with costs
or other disbenefits which are designed mainly to safeguard the interests of future
generations.
These technical and political stances tend to encourage an approach to planning
which is executed through successive 'roll-forwards' of existing programmes, rather
than engaging with the more difficult and potentially controversial matter of where
these are leading. (In effect the 'where would we like to be?' question posed earlier is
never arrived at.) It therefore implies an extremely conservative pattern of change over
time. Not only does the pattern tend to follow the same trajectory but the longer it is
maintained the more it reinforces and 'legitimises' established and dominant practices.
These in turn generate a sense of inevitability about where we are heading. Even if
the future consequences of 'business as usual' appear profoundly unattractive we seem
to find the possibility of engaging with the changes needed to avoid it even more
unpalatable. The prospect of global climate change however places such 'challenges'
on to a wholly new plane.
24.3 The Stern Review and the Climate Change Programme
The Review of the Economics of Climate Change conducted by the Treasury's Chief
Economist Sir Nicholas Stern was published in October 2006 (HM Treasury 2006).
Although the Review says relatively little about transport directly it is nevertheless
likely to have profound implications, both through the DfT's own response and because
of the high public profile which the Review has brought to an already controversial
subject. (Sir Rod Eddington's study overlapped with Stern's and his interpretation of
the Review's transport implications formed part of his report which we consider later
in this chapter.)
The Stern Review broadly reported the international scientific consensus on
global warming and mankind's contribution to it. However its pioneering work lay in
estimating the global costs of climate change over the very long term (as far as 2200)
and in making an economic case for taking action to abate it in the next few decades.
Its immense policy significance lay in its far-reaching implications for all sectors of the
economy and government in Britain, coupled with the fact that its central argument
was immediately accepted by all three main political parties.
Stern's main conclusion was that if the world follows a 'business as usual' path of
greenhouse gas emissions this would result in an average loss of consumption of 5%
a year over the next two centuries. This can be presented more graphically as risks of
economic and social disruption later in this century and the next on a scale similar
to those of the two world wars and the Great Depression in the first half of the 20th
century. However much of these costs could be avoided if countries took urgent action
to deliver dramatic cuts in carbon emissions. He envisaged that this would cost the
equivalent of 1% of global GDP each year. Seen in this light, tackling climate change
deserved to be seen as the 'pro-growth strategy' with greater benefits the sooner action
was taken.
It is this proposition, rather than the climate change estimates themselves, which
generates greater controversy. Stern's analysis acknowledges that the bulk of disbenefits
from global warming arise in the 22nd century and that the economic case for early