Washington, DC — British scientist Jeremy Leggett's life has traversed the field of energy from diverse points: as a scholar at the elite Royal School of Mines at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London; as an oil industry consultant; as a technical advisor and spokesperson for the radical environmental group Greenpeace; and now as the founder of Solar Century, the largest solar energy production company in the UK.
It was his scholarship that frightened him into becoming an activist against global warming. While cautiously welcoming what he sees as signs of corporate progress in coming to terms with the threat, including investment in renewable energy technologies by oil companies, he worries that governmental policies risk - in a worst-case scenario - a point of no return that could spell the end of civilization on earth.
"We're watching a global environmental crisis unfold before our eyes," he warns, in this interview with Tamela Hultman and Jim Cason.
Can we ask what you are currently doing with Solar Century?
We're the largest independent solar solutions company in the UK. We've been in business now for two-and-a-half years and we're installing solar power plants, mostly on buildings, all over the country.
How does what you're doing provide some way forward for a continent like Africa? Are you modeling what can happen in poorer countries?
First, we try to be the practical embodiment of the slogan 'think globally, act locally', or in this case, 'act nationally'. What we're doing is kind of independent of what government might be doing. We're just getting on with the job of trying to replace fossil fuels with solar electricity.
It's obvious what the driving factors are for that -- it's global warming and other environmental issues like air quality. But it's also social drivers -- being able to provide services, like health-care and water, away from the electricity grids in developing countries. Plus all the other benefits you can get from electricity that are best provided by solar, when there aren't grids already present in developing countries.
And then, finally, why are we working in the UK? Because so many people, so many diplomats, from developing countries have said to me over the years at the climate negotiations that you can't expect developing countries to be the guinea pigs for these new technologies. 'We are not going to take them up until we see the developed countries taking them up and replacing their fossil fuel supply with solar and other renewables.' So, at least on the personal level, that's very much a motivation for doing the type of work that I do in Solar Century.
What would you say to African policymakers, who try to deliver power in poorer countries, to the difficulties they face between long-term sustainability issues and short-term delivery of services issues?
Well, it's obviously very difficult to answer a question like that in general terms. I fall back every time on the tragedy of abrogated responsibilities on the part of the developed world to deliver channels to provide the channels of credit and distribution that would make this technology available as a choice to all people in developing countries.
This stuff is affordable. Relatively expensive as it is now, it's going to become a lot cheaper when we get manufacturing economies-of-scale as the market grows. It's certainly less expensive than what's currently being used -- if the channels of credit are there. But the way forward has been blocked by the fossil fuels theocracy, and the World Bank is a wonderful example of that.
Where are we now, in your assessment, on the issue of widespread recognition of the problem of global warming?
It's bizarre that the world isn't set alight with concern, because there isn't a government laboratory studying this issue anywhere in the world that says anything other than that -- at best -- we are in deep trouble if we keep emitting emissions at anything like the levels we do at the moment. Look at all the places this is studied in all countries. Most of these are government labs, led by the meteorological office in my country, NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) in the United States. It beggars belief that this threat is not taken for more seriously than it is!
If, 10 years ago, anyone had said to me that we would be going into an earth summit without specific groundbreaking goals for legally binding targets and timetables to continue the quest for emissions reductions -- I wouldn't have believed them. That's the truth of it.
Where are we then? If you had access -- through the BBC, CNN, and all the media that could provide a global forum for influencing popular opinion -- what would you say? How close are we to what you've called the 'tipping point', where climate change becomes a feedback loop, beyond anyone's control?
We don't need to talk in hyperbole. We're watching a global environmental crisis unfold before our eyes. Ten years ago in Rio, the warnings were bad, but the evidence wasn't in. Now it's in. It's happening, and we're asleep at the wheel.
What are the worst-case scenarios now?
It's possible that, as bad as the best-guess scenarios of the world's climate scientists are about global warming, it could be a lot worse. If the feedbacks gang up on us, it could be that there's a point of no return out there. And the maddening thing about the whole problem is that it's so uncertain. It's a game of risk assessments in the face of massive uncertainties -- but with incalculable risks, including a point of no return that could spell the end of civilization.
What does the kind of warming we've been seeing in the last decade mean for a continent like Africa? As you know, Africa is low on the greenhouse-gases emissions side but is very high on the vulnerability side. What does Africa face concretely in the next 10 years?
Well, simply stated, the unmitigated march of global warming -- if we're stupid enough not to cut emissions deeply -- is going to make many of the existing problems far worse, particularly water problems. Here, paradoxically, I don't just mean drought. I mean the kind of horrific flooding fact we saw recently in Mozambique, the kind of flooding that is capable of wrecking a country's economy in a few days. And drought is capable of wrecking a country's agricultural productivity in a matter of a few months. All these things are going to get worse if we don't deal with the problem.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was formed by the world's governments. Its reports are written in scientific language. They don't spell it out with bells and whistles. But anyone who is in any way technically literate is going to read those reports, understand them, and feel very depressed indeed about the future.
Do you feel somewhat vindicated after your years of work trying to forge an alliance between environmentalists concerned about climate change and businesses, when you see what's happening now? At the Summit, groups like Greenpeace and industry alliances are holding joint press conferences, expressing common goals on sustainable development.
Yes, it's interesting, very encouraging. Ten years ago, the World Business Council was launched at the Rio Earth Summit. I was in the press conference masquerading as a journalist with a bunch of other Greenpeace people. We were doing our best to disrupt the whole thing. We believed that what the companies who founded the Council were saying was complete 'greenwash.' Things have changed dramatically. Most of those companies have changed.
Scott Sawyer of Greenpeace, in an interview we just did with him in Johannesburg, said that companies have moved beyond greenwash.
Yes, it's gone beyond greenwash. I don't want to overstate it. Most of those companies are in a category of behavior that I categorize as 'useful tokenism'. BP and Shell are examples of this. What they're doing on global warming is useful tokenism. It's useful, because it sends signals that legitimize survival technologies like solar and the other renewables. Also it's useful because it gets investors interested in those technologies on the ground. They say, 'Hey, if BP and Shell say these have got a brilliant future, we should be investing in them.'
But it's tokenism because those efforts are still a fraction of what they're doing. They're still locked into expbanding production of gas and oil, despite everything we know. Not even freezing -- expanding.
And the way they use solar! For example, BP says it's the biggest installer of solar PV (photovoltaics) in the world. And it is. But where do they primarily install it? On petrol filling stations to power the pumps. If that isn't tokenism, I don't know what is.
If we were to look to things that are encouraging one would be the rise of socially and environment mentally screened investment now. Facts are potentially a very powerful lever on this whole process. That's one of the reasons so many companies are represented in Johannesburg. Fake can't afford to ignore these issues anymore.
So I don't subscribe to the view of many environmentalists that the whole thing is greenwash and any company, by definition, is disingenuous in its presence and in its agendas around the Earth Summit. I don't subscribe to that view. I think many of these companies are doing quite a lot in this area, and it is useful to us. It needs to be supported and encouraged, if for no other reason than the ten-year history of where they come from and where they've gone to. They've changed their approach far, far more than governments.
Both governments and corporations have to be responsive to people as villagers and consumers. Why have governments, if anything, gone backwards since Rio, while companies have gone forward so much. I choose to be cautiously encouraged by that.
Why have the major environmental groups, those who feel the problem is dire, not devoted more resources to mobilizing public opinion?
I'm not sure that I accept the premise. Since I've been running a company and stepped aside from that world, I've been totally focused on trying to make something work, as it were, locally, while being motivated globally by the problem. So I'm not fully up-to-date, but my impression is that the big groups -- World Wildlife Federation, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth -- have been trying really hard to get this issue out there, to get it understood, to get it popularized.
It's an incredibly difficult thing to do. It's a diffuse threat. It's so easily kicked out of the news by political squabbles, by the kinds of things we're seeing in Afghanistan and Iraq now. It's so much easier for those kinds of issues to dominate the news. A creeping threat to the planet to that doesn't provide daily developments is a very difficult thing.
The other issue here is denial. I think when people look at the magnitude of the problem, they have a tendency to say, 'I don't want to think about that today. That's just too depressing. I want to get on with my life.' There's a lot of denial, apparently, that goes on around the issue.
What about a company like Exxon Mobil, which is to said by environmentalists to be particularly recalcitrant against recognizing global warming as a problem? I remember the anti-apartheid days when large demonstrations and protests were organized against companies seen to be supporting apartheid. And, of course, once demonstrations gather momentum, media coverage follows. Do you see any similar prospects in this case?
Yes. Already, the 'Stop Esso' campaign is attacking the Exxon/Esso brands. That campaign is really very interesting and has the potential to turn them around and get them on the same course as BP and Shell and Texaco and pretty much all the other oil companies now. It doesn't even have to affect their sales. If it affects their brand -- or if the regular drip of bad publicity impinges upon the consciousness of Exxon shareholders, it will force the senior management to change course. That would be a very significant development.
The former head of Shell, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, has founded a group called Business Action for Sustainable Development and has emerged as a major voice for corporate responsibility and for sensitivity to global warming issues. Given what you have said about industry tokenism what do you make of that trajectory by a onetime leader of the fossil fuel industry?
It's no mystery. People have huge constraints when they're in corporate roles. They're not their own bosses, even if they are chief executives or chairmen. They have to toe the corporate party line. It's easy to understand why so many people, once they're free of that yoke, can begin to speak their minds more forcefully.
Mark Moody Stuart is a really decent person who has been far more worried for many years than his corporate responsibilities allowed him to say in public. Now we're seeing the results of that, and more strength to his arm!
When you say that companies are moving towards useful tokenism, what's the next step? How can business move beyond tokenism, even the useful kind?
I think a really hopeful potential intersection lies between this useful tokenism and the rise of corporate social responsibility and interest in socially responsible investing. When serious money starts lining up behind the steps that go beyond useful tokenism, we have the potential for real changes. As I said earlier, I'm a qualified optimist, with a small 'q'. I do think that there is potential for change.
What would you see as the markers that would indicate that the company has moved beyond useful tokenism?
Let's take a really critical example. In solar PV -- the industry that I'm in right now -- the manufacturing plants are tiny, and therefore the unit cost of manufacturing is relatively high. But the manufacturing economies-of-scale are huge.
As a rule of thumb, if you scale up a manufacturing plant by one order of magnitude, you can get to a point where you can generate solar electricity that is close to competitive with the retail price of electricity in most of the global markets. Now why don't BP just to do that? They could do it for about $150 million. That would be the capital cost of one of those plants. But they don't entertain it, because they say the demand isn't there, and other spurious arguments. But if they actually built plants, the argument about the demand would evaporate, because if it became cost competitive, the demand would be there.
So why don't they do it? When it comes to solar, BP is nowhere near exhibiting the kind of entrepreneurial zeal, the inventiveness, that it has in its 100-year history on the oil frontiers. Eventually it will happen. They'll go for it in the way they historically have for oil and gas. It's inevitable. The question is when it will happen and whether it will happen in time.
Are the profits there? Will BP make more money investing in oil and gas?
It depends on the time frame, and of course the price of oil. If you take a longer time frame, there are all sorts of risks that come into play by not having done it earlier. But $150 million is small change, less than a single day of a deep-sea drilling rig. The capital costs of those deep-sea rigs they use is up to $4 billion -- for a single rig.
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When they really go for the solar market, the whole thing could tip into a new state very quickly. I don't think most people realize just how quickly renewable technologies can be manufactured and deployed in the field. It's not like nuclear power plants that take a decade to get up and running. It can be done very quickly. It's very exciting what could happen. The speed with which it could happen could be bewildering.
Do you see it, then, as merely a matter of political will by the people who have the resources to make it happen?
Absolutely. It's getting to the critical point where there is so much pressure from so many directions that they just do it. Pushing in that direction are several factors.
The main one is global warming which has yet to translate into serious international policy. Issues of corporate social responsibility and socially responsible investing -- money in other words -- if money starts turning off from oil and going towards these new technologies in volumes, that will have a big impact. Public concern is a major factor.
And then you have wild cards. Something that could provoke a sense of international emergency about global warming akin to what America has been feeling since September 11th.
In your book The Carbon Wars you recounted your battles with a group called the Global Climate Coalition, an industry group that portrayed the threat of global warming as greatly exaggerated. The Coalition recently disbanded. Do you see that as a vindication of your work?
Well, yes and no. They were falling apart in recent years, as their positions and became less and less tenable. Unfortunately, they were able to deploy the argument that, 'Hey, we don't need to exist anymore, because we've got our man in the White House.'
So you believe that if public pressure can be orchestrated, the world might be able to escape the danger you see looming?
Well, as I've tried to say, my view is that it's not just a matter of public pressure. It's things acting in concert. Its public pressure alongside the mobilization of capital in the direction of survival technologies rather than suicide technologies. And it's the march of events. If a 'Category Five' cyclone hits Manhattan in this hurricane season, who knows what might happen in the United States? Already opinion polls show a high concern about global warming.
Already, the flooding in Europe is affecting the general elections. Right now in Germany there's a great drama playing out. You've got federal elections in September, and the floods have been responsible for getting the Social Democrats back up in the opinion polls, so much so that now they're challenging the Christian Democrats again.
To end this conversation, does it to bemuse you that there is so much media attention to what are perceived as grave threats in the political arena, when what you would argue is a larger survivability issue is largely ignored?
I think it's such a tragedy that the intransigence of the United States has forced the rest of the world to go into this kind of massive retreat from pragmatic discussions about the threat of climate change. I do think there is a case to be made for the following argument.
If the United States wants to be isolationist, let's play its game. Let's isolate it. Let it go its own route, because, for sure, domestic pressure will force the government to come back to the table. We should have gone into Johannesburg intent on saying, 'If you don't want to play, you're not part of it.'
I think we would have had a much better result from the Johannesburg Summit. And that might have sent a shock to the Americans to the extent that people would say, 'Well, look. We can't get on this way. We can't operate in the global markets this way. We don't want to be a pariah nation.' And they come back with a more civilized and responsible approach to multilateral associations and the rule of international law.
