SOMETIMES I despair about what I read in the JEP about the views of normally sensible people on what is commonly termed ‘global warming’. These are people who appear to have what economists call a very high personal discount rate, based on the assumption that we shall be richer tomorrow and should not incur high costs now to avoid a future disaster – usually with the rider that ‘it may not happen anyway’.

These very same people are nonetheless careful to keep their car and house insurance up to date, and even reduce their drinking and weight with an eye to life expectancy. They often disguise their real or pretend ostrich views with references to cost/benefit analysis and the current cost of living. But we face uncertainties for human life that rival those of quantum physics, full of weird mathematical functions which many believe will defy computerisation despite the many billions being spent on research.

What are the effects of a mass ‘push’ migration of a hundred million people subject to unbearable heat? Do we use an equation projecting the effects of the immigration of a few thousand boat people? No. This is a unique challenge, the components of which are highly unlikely to be solvable using only conventional techniques. Nevertheless, we need to take practical decisions affecting our small island on what the size of our effort should be, and bearing in mind that our financial services industry needs to pay attention to ESG, if only for presentational reasons.

The direct contribution to global warming physically coming from Jersey is small.
The United Nations uses country-of-origin emissions to allocate desired contributions to greenhouse expenditure, and this is helpful to us. We use emissions-free electricity from France, on the one hand, and export our emissions to China when we import their goods using our Amazon accounts on the other. As an island we use a lot of air travel per head, but there are no major airlines based in Jersey. So, in a system designed for large countries, we look much better statistically than we really are from an emissions standpoint. We have encouraged electric vehicles, although no doubt our infrastructure for these, as elsewhere, is inadequate and the question also arises of how long French electricity will be available.

Moreover, as Sir Mark Boleat notes in a recent JEP article, we have no scrappage scheme. The point is that we do not so much want electric cars (which pollute with brake dust and tyre particles, especially as they are heavy, and emit and pollute a lot in their manufacture), as to get rid of old internal combustion ones that emit and pollute in lots of different ways. We badly need a scrappage scheme, and also need to improve our buses and bus system, to make sure, for example, that there are adequate services to health facilities. Otherwise, people will push for transport ambulances, which are not a good use of resources.

Aside from cutting down on air travel and using electric cars, central-heating boilers also need to be abandoned unless they use green hydrogen, a scarce commodity.The expensive full monty of heat pumps may be used, but in our three-bedroom house we use three night storage heaters to provide the ‘welly’, topped up by four Rointe modern electric heaters. This system does not break the bank for either capital or operating costs and does not require super insulation. Moreover, some Rointe models are controllable remotely over the internet to warm the place up a little before arrival. Again, thanks to France for the electricity and to Spain for the Rointe heaters.

One of my foibles is that I insist on the distinction between conventional pollution and greenhouse emissions. The ULEZ controversy in London is about pollution and not emissions. Pollution, such as nitrogen dioxide, exhaust particles, carbon monoxide, is toxic. Carbon dioxide, the main emission, is so non-toxic that its use is a preferred method of food preservation.

15 Douet de Ste Croix, St Helier.