It’s the same everywhere. Governments are simultaneously seeking to minimise the demand for fossil fuels and maximise the supply.

In its Low Carbon Transition paper, for example, the UK government makes elaborate plans for cutting the consumption of oil, gas and coal. It then reveals that “[We will] maximise the economic production of oil and gas from the North Sea“.

The 2007 energy white paper says it intends to “maximise economic recovery of the oil and gas from the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) and from remaining coal reserves“.

The contradiction is shocking and ridiculous. But nowhere is it starker than in Scotland.

The Scottish government boasts of setting the world’s most stringent target for greenhouse gas reductions: 42% by 2020.

This beats the Westminster target (34%) and leaves all other administrations standing. If you knew nothing more about Scotland, you would conclude that it had become the rich world’s greenest nation.

But at the same time the Scottish government has been trying to squeeze every last drop out of both the North Sea oil reserves and its substantial coal seams. Take a look at the opencast mining stats here.

As you can see, Scotland accounts for the great majority of all opencast coal produced in the UK (which is another way of saying all coal, as deep-mining is more or less dead here) and for the majority of the permitted reserves waiting to be dug. More importantly, as it reflects current Scottish government policy, it also accounts for almost all the new coal workings that were granted planning permission in the UK in 2008. Out of 6.29m tonnes of new production, Scotland will account for 5.75m tonnes, or 91%. The new workings will dig up 1,200 hectares of land. Seven new pits were given planning permission last year and none were refused.

So if you were to describe Scottish government policy as hypocritical, contradictory and counter-productive, you wouldn’t be stating the half of it.

But while the government undermines its own targets, some people in Scotland are putting its climate change policy into effect. The Scottish camp for climate action has declared war on opencast coalmining. Yesterday people associated with it did what the government should have done years ago, and cut the conveyor belt used to carry coal from the Glentaggart pit in Lanarkshire to the local rail terminal.

Now they propose to take on other pits, as well as Scotland’s biggest coal-burning power stations.

They have chosen the right targets. Coal is the dirty word that threatens to destroy attempts at Copenhagen in December to prevent climate breakdown. If governments won’t take it on, we must.

monbiot.com

A composite image showing South Cascade glacier in Washington state (year 2000, left, 2006, right). A new study today found a sharp rise in the melt rate of three key American glaciers over the last 10-15 years. Photograph: USGS

Climate change is melting America’s glaciers at the fastest rate in recorded history, exposing the country to higher risks of drought and rising sea levels, a US government study of glaciers said today.

The long-running study of three “benchmark” glaciers in Alaska and Washington state by the US geological survey (USGS) indicated a sharp rise in the melt rate over the last 10 or 15 years.

Scientists see the three – Wolverine and Gulkana in Alaska and South Cascade in Washington – as representative of thousands of other glaciers in North America.

“The observations show that the melt rate has definitely increased over the past 10 or 15 years,” said Ed Josberger, a USGS scientist. “This certainly is a very strong indicator that climate change is occurring and its effects on glaciers are virtually worldwide.”

The survey also found that all three glaciers had begun melting at the same higher rate – although they are in different climate regimes and some 1,500 miles apart.

For South Cascade, the average surface loss rate grew to 1.75 to 2m a year from about 1m a year.

USGS researchers have been measuring the three glaciers for more than 50 years, drawing on photographs and a network of stakes driven into the glaciers to gauge the accumulation of snow during winter, and the resulting melt each spring. It is the oldest such record of glacier activity.

In a sign of the Obama administration‘s focus on climate change, this year’s survey was promoted by the interior secretary, Ken Salazar, who called it an important contribution to dealing with climate change. “This information is helpful in tackling the effects of climate change and it is exactly the kind of science we need to invest in to measure and mitigate the dangers impacts of climate change,” he said.

Shrinking glaciers have led to a reduction in spring run-off which is intensifying the effects of drought in California and other states, especially later in the summer when other water sources dry up.

Glacier loss has also contributed to rising sea levels, which has put low-lying coastal areas – such as New Orleans – at greater risk of storm surges.

Another mouth to feed, another gas guzzler, long-distance traveller, consumer … and future parent

There are already 6.8 billion people living on this crowded planet and the figure is expected to rise to 9 billion by 2050. How can we expect to reduce global carbon emissions by 50 per cent or more if populations continue to grow exponentially? Family planning is often regarded as taboo by environmentalists, but many are now coming round to the view that curbing population growth will be crucial to combat climate change.

The Optimum Population Trust (patron, David Attenborough) runs a campaign urging parents to “Stop At Two”. Gordon Brown’s green adviser Jonathon Porritt and Science Museum director Chris Rapley have also spoken of the environmental importance of tackling population growth.

Ed Miliband, the UK’s secretary of state for energy and climate change, addressed the issue recently at a town hall meeting in Oxford. “There’s no question that population growth is part of the reason why we have growth in carbon emissions … but I’m not sure that there’s an easy or necessarily desirable solution once you’ve stated that fact.”

There are plenty of reasons why reducing birth rates might not be desirable. No country wants to end up with a situation in which the workforce is too small to support the elderly – as Japan and China are experiencing.

Most of the projected global population increase will happen in the developing world, but the impact of each extra person on the climate is less in poor countries because emissions per capita are lower. Can we quantify the extra emissions that result from each child born?

Statisticians at Oregon State University have done just that. Paul Murtaugh and Michael Schlax calculated that every child in the US adds 9,441 tonnes to each parent’s carbon footprint. This is assuming that emissions per capita continue at today’s levels. Compare that with 1,384 tonnes of carbon dioxide for each child in China, or 56 tonnes in Bangladesh.

To arrive at their estimates, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, Murtaugh and Schlax started with the basic premise that a person is responsible for the carbon emissions of their descendants, weighted by their relatedness. So a mother and father are each apportioned half of their child’s emissions, a quarter of each grandchild’s emissions and so on. The researchers used UN projections of fertility to simulate 10,000 family lineages in each of the world’s 11 most populous countries, and estimated what the “carbon legacy” of an individual would be in different scenarios of future emissions levels.

“Many people are unaware of the power of exponential population growth,” Murtaugh said. “Future growth amplifies the consequences of people’s reproductive choices today, the same way that compound interest amplifies a bank balance.”

The perceived right to start a family is a sensitive topic, so it’s hardly surprising that some have reacted badly to Murtaugh’s research. “However new-sounding the language about ‘carbon footprints‘ may be, what we have here is the same old Malthusian view of people breeding themselves to destruction,” wrote William McGurn, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, in an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal. The Baltimore Reporter went further, calling the authors “reproduction Nazis”.

Needless to say, Murtaugh and Schlax are not advocating eugenics. They “simply want to make people aware of the environmental consequences of their reproductive choices”.

So now that you know that becoming a parent could lead to a legacy of 262 times more carbon emissions than failing to convert to energy-saving light bulbs, are you still keen to start a family?