No 'resolute leadership' on climate

FILM MAKER and adviser to the British government David Puttnam has accused Irish politicians of being afraid to show leadership on issues such as climate change.

Speaking in Dublin yesterday, the Labour peer said dealing with climate change was a moral imperative, but he said politicians here had failed to show “resolute leadership” on the issue. Lord Puttnam is a member of the British parliamentary committee on climate change and adviser to the British government on global warming.

He said politicians everywhere were afraid of long-term decisions, because of short-term effects. In Ireland, despite notable success with an early ban on smoking in the workplace and the plastic bag tax, he believed the political establishment was afraid of sudden change. He said he had seen this attitude reflected “at national, regional and local level”.

Lord Puttnam (67), who is a former chairman and chief executive of Columbia Pictures in the US and a former chancellor of the University of Sunderland, also criticised US vice-presidential contender Sarah Palin for not believing human activity was causing climate change.

“Contrary to what Sarah Palin and her moose-hunting friends believe, every scrap of peer-reviewed science is pretty much unanimous in support of the view that we human beings are the ‘accelerators of our own destruction’, ” he said.

Lord Puttnam was speaking at a breakfast meeting hosted by Cawley Nea/TBWA, the advertising agency behind the government’s Power of One climate change campaign.

He also criticised media coverage of global warming and climate change issues, remarking that “99.9 per cent of scientists now accept climate change as fact. Just 0.1 per cent don’t believe it, and the media give massive time to the 0.1 per cent in the name of balance”.

Lord Puttnam said he had suffered “pain and indignity” as deputy chairman of Channel 4 in 2007 when he had to endure the screening of The Great Global Warming Swindle, a film by the documentary-maker Martin Durkin. The film presents the arguments of scientists and commentators who don’t believe that CO2 produced by human activity is the main cause of climate change.

Lord Puttnam compared the challenge of climate change to the challenge of abolishing slavery. He said that 200 years ago people believed freeing slaves would result in economic meltdown.

“I find it fascinating that, two hundred years apart, we find ourselves faced with the same timeless question – do we have a duty of care towards our fellow human beings – ‘are we, in fact, our brother’s keeper?’ And in both cases, the same economic question, ‘What is the real cost – the true cost – of the energy we use to drive our economy?’

“Climate change is unquestionably the single greatest challenge facing the whole of mankind . . . going it alone, or opting out, is not an option for any country . . .” he said.