UAE residents choose cheap petrol over climate

The National's survey prompts warning by top environment figure that 'the cost of doing nothing is very high indeed'.

The National's survey showed almost three fifths of residents would be reluctant to pay higher prices for electricity and petrol.

ABU DHABI // If people living in the UAE do not make changes to their carbon-intensive lifestyles, their children may face a dark future, one of the world's leading figures on climate change warned yesterday. "A child of five or 10 now, if we go on business as usual, is likely to live to see the kind of very, very difficult circumstances we are talking about," said Lord Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Scientists warn that if humanity continues to burn large amounts of fossil fuels, global temperatures will rise and trigger catastrophic changes to weather patterns and sea levels. Lord Stern was responding to the results of a survey The National commissioned from YouGov, the international research organisation, to coincide with the World Future Energy Summit. It showed almost three fifths of residents would be reluctant to pay higher prices for electricity and petrol to help combat climate change.

Lord Stern, who in 2006 authored the most comprehensive report on the economics of the issue, said he was not surprised by the results, based on attitudes in other parts of the world. "It is not only here that people are resistant to prices going up," he said. "The only way we can have a good discussion is if we lay out what the consequences are of carrying on the way we have been carrying on, and to ask people to imagine the lives of their children."

If current trends remain unaltered, humanity faces a "50-50 chance" of global warming exceeding 5°C. "We have not been there as a planet for 30 million years," he said. Should this happen, millions of people will be displaced by droughts and rising seas, leading to "severe extended conflict". "The cost of doing nothing is really very high indeed," he said. "It is almost too high to express economically."

The YouGov survey showed that while overall awareness of climate change was high, UAE nationals were less aware of the issue and its potentially serious consequences. Nationals were also least in favour of raising prices to try and reduce energy consumption. Seventy-three per cent of Emiratis opposed any increase in the price of petrol, while 74 per cent opposed a hike in electricity prices. Lord Stern advised residents to adopt the views of Sheikh Zayed, the late founder of the nation, who supported a range of environmental initiatives in confronting the threat to the climate.

"I think Sheikh Zayed was a visionary on this," Lord Stern said. "He saw very clearly the balance between humans and the way they live and the environment, how important that is." Dr Rima al Sabban, an assistant professor of sociology at Zayed University, said the Government could do more by launching programmes aimed at improving environmental awareness in schools. "I agree, there's a lack of concern," she said. "The lack of concern stems from education, because environmental awareness does not just come by itself.

"In the West, they start teaching little kids about the environment and they've been doing it for 20 years. Now they have many generations of people who are aware of environmental issues. Here the environmental [awareness] has just started, but it's not really socially embedded." Media should also play a larger role, she said. "I think we need to start educating aggressively. Papers are doing OK in terms of these campaigns, but Arabic newspapers are lagging behind."

The YouGov survey indicated that opposition to taxes on energy was widespread across all demographic groups. Only 32 per cent of those surveyed approved of a tax on cars with standard engines over a certain size, with Westerners (47 per cent) most enthusiastic and Emiratis (14 per cent) least so. The survey proceeded to show decreasing support for a range of measures, including taxes on air-conditioning in commercial premises (21 per cent) and on petrol and commercial use of water (both 16 per cent). Less than 10 per cent supported taxing all flights leaving the country, as well as domestic water and electricity supplies.

The survey of 799 respondents was conducted online during and after the 11-day United Nations' conference on climate change in Copenhagen in December. The National, with additional reporting by Daniel Bardsley