Building Back Greener

by Tony Cooper

“Build back Better” has become a trendy buzz-phrase. “Better” is very vague, so let’s twist it and talk about building back greener.

Covid-19 has forced previously unimaginable changes in the behaviour of people, governments and organisations - including the AAC(UK). Drastic changes have been accepted as necessary. Many individuals and organisations have suffered severely. Luckily not the AAC(UK) as we have some very loyal members. As a positive, everyone, including us, now has a chance to build back greener. And we must! The climate crisis, which threatens the survival of civilisation, has not gone away, and that's just the worst of numerous global environmental challenges that we face. However, there are, unusually, two really good pieces of news on the climate front. Firstly, as we've seen, we, the world, the British people, have all made these huge changes in our lifestyles: so it's reasonable to assume that further equally big, and rapid, changes are possible in ways that we couldn't conceive of back in 2019. Such very rapid changes, within, say, five or ten years, are almost certainly necessary to avert the collapse of civilisation. Such prognostications have been made before, but as modelling becomes better so do the forecasts.

Secondly, the climate science community have recently made a seismic shift in these forecasts. In particular, they now think that if greenhouse-gas emissions decline to net zero soon enough, the warming process will stop within a few years, whereas until recently it was universally believed that warming would continue for several decades or more after the cessation of emissions. “Net zero” here means that there can be some remaining emissions, which must be balanced by CO2 absorption measures. Many, if not most, in the field, including me, have been afraid to say how dire the situation really was. Now, over twenty governments as well as the EU have legally committed themselves to net zero by specific dates. These are all likely too slow, but it's a fair start. So where does that leave the world? Still in an awful mess but with possible escape routes. A good semi-popular account can be found at cleantechnica.com/2021/01/04 which also stresses the extreme urgency of making the drastic changes required.

In the mountaineering world there is an Austrian organisation called “Climbers for Future (CfF)”, which is campaigning as hard as they can on the climate. There was a spread about them in Bergauf issue 4/20, which is available online at www.alpenverein.at/bk/bergauf/bergauf2020/Bergauf_4_2020/ (pp18-21). In that article, Stefan Gatt, extreme climber and founder of CfF, says: “Everyone can do something.”. He has until the last few years regularly travelled to the world's mountaineering hotspots. He adds “Every kilometre flown is 30 x more damaging than if using a train. For my part, I have decided that I will never again make a short-haul flight of less than 1500km, and also definitely not go to the Himalaya. If I wanted to go there again, I would go by train, other public transport or bicycle. I shall postpone my planned tours to Patagonia until there's a flight to Buenos Aires that isn't powered by fossil fuel.”

CfF are calling for their supporters to reduce their personal carbon footprint by 10% year on year – it is a very tough target, but a good one for us all to aim at. This organisation needs all the support that it can get, as many will consider its ideas to be unacceptably radical. But most probably they are necessary.

How should this affect the AAC(UK)? Well, we live on the same planet as everyone else, and some kinds of mountaineering are, in practice (as implied by Gatt) pretty much only possible for now with air travel. So, painfully, a large number of people who currently (or, pre-Covid, did) fly, need to cease to do so very soon, or at least drastically cut back on their flying... It's not just the CO2. The water vapour produced by burning jet fuel is also a potent greenhouse gas at cruising altitudes, and the ubiquitous contrails have a large warming effect too.

So, it's now even more important for all environmentally aware people and organisations to work their socks off and reduce their own climate impact and that of everyone that they can influence: individuals, national governments, local governments, companies, trades unions, NGOs, not forgetting mountaineers. All need to urgently make big changes.

For example, take fewer but longer trips. Eat local and sustainably produced food whenever possible, both in the mountains and at home: food miles are a big climate problem. Personally, I’ll travel a lot less, often Zooming instead. Going to London from my Home Counties home will become an occasional luxury, as will foreign travel, by train or ferry (I haven't flown for several years). And why not set a net zero target for your family or household, the website familyclimateemergency.net can help. I shall also try to insist that if/when I organise an event in the Alps, no participant gets there by flying or in a single-occupancy car.

But the mountains are only part of our lives. Whether your thing is greening the local road verges or greening your political party – any of them – get on and do it. Review and improve the insulation of your home. Walk or cycle everywhere you can. Get an electric bike or an electric car; the recharging industry is expanding rapidly and at last moving towards standardisation. Even the Daily Express is joining in: see its Feb 8 issue or Google “Time for a Green Britain”. They're campaigning for a cut in VAT rates on climate-friendly activities.

Whatever you do, you’ll be helping build back a greener and more optimistic future!

Tony Cooper is Nature Protection Representative, AAC(UK).

Editor’s Note: By coincidence there is a nice article in this quarter’s issue of Bergauf (02/2021, p60) on traveling to the Alps without a car. The Bergauf issue can be downloaded from www.alpenverein.at/bk/bergauf/bergauf2021/Bergauf_2_2021/, and amongst other things includes a link to a useful website to help with planning trips www.bahn-zum-berg.at/, again in German.

Solar panels on the Ischlerhütte (1365m), located on the western edge of the Totes Gebirge.Thirty new panels were installed during recent renovations which were partly funded by a contribution from the AAC(UK) Hut fund.
Photo by Georg Unterberger

Eurostar at St Pancreas Station, London - the green way to get to the Alps.
Photo by Younjoon Choi (downloaded from Pixabay)

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