It is not often said that oil companies have a hard time of it. In the public imagination they’re somewhere up there with bankers. They make too much money, they pollute the environment, they exploit natural resources and they support continuing climate change.

The evidence is everywhere. Consider Exxon Valdez, Deepwater Horizon, or the myriad of less well-publicised spills like them. Think of the Niger Delta, the hegemonies that oil allows to flourish in countries like Saudi Arabia, the civil wars it perpetuates in areas like South Sudan. Oil is a major cause of evil, ergo oil companies are evil. But amidst all the talk about Shell or BP, what are we doing?

Fossil fuels are getting harder to reach. Twenty years ago, we didn’t need to drill so deeply or in such inhospitable areas as the Gulf of Mexico.  Today, oil companies are going to fantastic technological lengths to maintain supply. The infamous Deepwater Horizon was a structure working in 4,000ft of water, drilling over 6 miles down. That is a phenomenal feat of engineering and it comes with risk. No matter what, accidents happen. There will always be another spill.

Still, we fly to far-flung places on holiday. We charge our iPads, iPods, mobiles and laptops. We complain about our heating bills and petrol prices, and also of new drilling projects nearby or in unspoilt landscapes like Alaska. We can’t have it both ways. The oil companies are the suppliers that meet our demands. If they are evil, they are our evil. The effects of Deepwater Horizon, the unrest in the Niger Delta, the building of pipelines in Alaska: these are all for our benefit. We are addicts, blaming the corner shop owner for continuing to sell to us.

The questions of energy security are big, difficult ones, without simple answers. But we are not helpless. We live in a democracy. We can email our MPs without leaving the comfort of our warm rooms. We can ask what they’re doing to support the shift away from oil. We can argue for support of renewable industries and we can call for the building of a base of green engineers and scientists to create those industries. We can demand renewable energy.  We can call on the government to create a long-term plan for the fundamental shift in our energy infrastructure. We can make this an issue that does not get left behind in the rush for austerity.

Oil companies are well aware of the need to shift to renewables. Few industries know better the increasing difficulty in satisfying our demands for energy. If we create the move away from oil, they’ll still be there, just in a healthier form.

Needless to say, we’ll have to find another industry to vilify. Another round of banker-bashing, anyone?

What stage are climate change talks at?

Climate change talks are dragging. After more than 20 years of negotiations, countries have agreed that we must keep global average temperatures from increasing more than 2 degrees Celsius, but they have not been able to agree a plan that would achieve that goal. They have made voluntary commitments to begin reducing emissions, and they’ve agreed some of the building blocks for a global deal. But we see neither the urgency nor the ambition that will be required.

Why has it been so difficult to reach an agreement on climate change?

This may be the most difficult diplomatic challenge we have ever faced. The problem is hugely complex – the causes and effects of climate change implicate every facet of the global economy. Every country has a stake in the issue, and success will demand bold action by all the world’s largest countries to achieve both sharp reductions in emissions in industrialized countries and an aggressive shift to low-carbon development paths in emerging economies. And of course we are trying to negotiate a solution with 194 parties around the table.

Which countries are most reluctant to take serious action?

The US is most often singled out for its reluctance and appropriately so. It is stunning to see national political leaders asserting that the science of climate change is somehow in doubt. There is no question that leadership from the US would yield a breakthrough in the negotiations. It is also important to note, however, that other countries – Canada, Japan, Russia, to name a few – have also been resisting action.

How will any agreement be enforced?

The short answer is that we don’t know. One can be sure that before the parties agree to a binding deal, there will be intensive negotiations on how it is to be enforced.

Given the difficulties of getting an inter-governmental agreement, could action in the private sector act as a substitute?

It is still vitally important that we establish a global regime that ensures a concerted effort to reduce emissions. Given the pace of negotiations, however, it is also clear that we must find other ways to spur action. We need leadership both from companies and also from individual governments at all levels.  

Companies can reduce emissions from their own operations, of course, and many have already done so. They can also help drive down emissions across their entire value chains, and by making products such as electric cars that help consumers reduce their own emissions.  Already you see some companies stepping up to this challenge, because they recognize that the future belongs to businesses that are leading the way to a low-carbon economy.

Governments can also act without waiting for an international agreement. Last year, Denmark announced that they would meet all of their energy needs with renewable sources by 2050, and mapped out a detailed road map for achieving that goal. China, the world’s second largest economy, is investing very intensively in developing renewable energy and driving greater efficiency into its economy.  Some states in the US are taking action, despite a political stalemate at the national level. And many of the world’s largest cities are expanding transit systems, discouraging car use, and establishing strict efficiency standards for new buildings. There are many compelling reasons to get much more out of the energy we use, and to shift from fossil fuels to energy sources like sunlight and wind that are clean, abundant, and free.

Owning a pizza parlour is the best investment in an economic downturn. It is a well known fact that in times of hardship we abandon the organic root weed compotes and go straight for the processed dough, in the vain hope that our cheese induced delirium will distract from our other problems.

Never has this analogy been more apt than when considered in relation to the problem of climate change. The middle class supposedly has more concrete problems to deal with than those gnawing environmental guilts, so easily pushed to the back of an already full conscience. We are responsible for enough disasters as it is: war and poverty, to name but two. We do not need to be saddled with another.

The impetus for change has been dealt an almighty blow by the growing backlash against the very notion of climate change. It has become increasingly fashionable to deny global warming’s existence altogether, by appealing to dubious scientific assertions and cheerful American guys with questionable scruples telling us everything is going to be OK. And so we buy into this cross Atlantic “can do” spirit and we tell ourselves that contaminated oceans and encroaching deserts are God’s problem, not ours.

But everything isn’t going to be OK. Whilst we sit twiddling our thumbs and watch as Rome burns, we ignore the great big footprint that we’ve trodden into the planet. Unconcerned by humanity’s disproportionate contribution to the Earth’s deteriorating condition, we turn the other cheek to rising consumption of almost every one of the planet’s resources. The government’s promises to foster a more sustainable society by banning plastic bags and increasing taxes on gas guzzlers seem to have fallen on deaf ears. The vogue is for living for the present and not worrying about the future. So long as the tree has a healthy exterior now, we can worry about the deadly disease festering in its roots later.

Soon we’ll look in the mirror at our bloated, distended reflection, and regret ever having eaten that pizza. And we’ll wish we had chosen the healthy option instead.

Those who braved the frosty cold and slippery paving stones of central Oxford in order to attend the second ever Oxford Climate Forum on Friday and Saturday of 3rd week, were welcomed by a host of speakers with a range of diverse ideas. Talks spanned the full gamut of issues: from macro-level discussions about where the responsibility falls for rectifying the mistakes of environmental neglect, on the one hand, to micro-level explanations of the role of specific technologies in beating global warming, on the other. Extolling the virtues of green technology, and lambasting the political world for its failure to appreciate the urgent need to sever dependence on non-renewable energy, was Jeremy Legget, whose speech marked the end of the two day forum.

Jeremy Leggett is the intelligent face of the green movement. He has written books on peak oil and the environment – ‘Half gone: oil, gas hot air and the Global Energy Crisis’ and ‘The Carbon War: global warming and the end of the oil era’ – and now heads the UK’s biggest solar energy company, Solarcentury. He has also been chief campaigner for Greenpeace.  But Leggett did not always fight as a representative for the environmental cause.

“My research was on the history of the oceans”, Leggett tells me, speaking over the chatter that fills the Oxford town hall after the close of the forum. “At Oxford”, he adds. After completing his DPhil, Leggett was on the faculty of Imperial College, an expert in the field that he now opposes, and whose controlled demise he campaigns for. “I was a creature of the oil industry”, Leggett tells me. “Fully paid up.” So what caused him to turn his back on oil and embark on a career that was so diametrically opposed to it? “I got worried about global warming mid-eighties,” says Leggett, “long before it was fashionable. I quit on grounds of conscience, thinking that many other people would do the same. But not many did.”

Leggett is vehemently opposed to our reliance on fossil fuels for two reasons. On the one hand, he thinks that governments have grossly underestimated the threat posed by peak oil. “It’s not that there isn’t enough oil”, Leggett insists. “It’s that the flow rates are unsustainable.” In the event that peak oil turns out to be a fantasy, would he then be unconcerned by dependence on fossil fuels?  “There are people who are worried about peak oil who aren’t worried about climate change,” Leggett responds. “And vice versa. I’m worried about both.” Although he acknowledges that “both of these are issues of complex risk assessment in the face of massive uncertainty,” he is insistent that the stakes are too high in both cases. “With both of them, at a minimum it’s about wrecking the global economy. A lot more in the case of climate change. These are high stakes issues. And both are high risk. In fact, climate change isn’t just high risk. It’s odds on certainty.”

So Leggett advocates a wholesale move to renewable sources of energy because, as far as he is concerned, the cost of staying with traditional fossil fuels will be cataclysmic. Whether it’s the effects of global warming or the economic calamity associated with peak oil, we need to move to renewables. And the timeframe is not a large one. “I think we’ve got a matter of years before we get to that inflection point,” he warns.

Leggett focused in his talk on inflection points in renewable energies as they progress towards commercial viability. But now he tells me that “there are inflection points in the climate system too.” To you and me that’s ‘irreversible climate change’, beyond which we can’t prevent the effects of global warming on the planet and on human life. It’s for this reason that Leggett is so opposed to nuclear energy. Nuclear power takes ten years to go from the drawing board to the national grid, according to the nuclear industry itself. According to Leggett, we simply don’t have this time. Renewables, contrary to popular belief, are ready to go straight away. “We could be one hundred percent by 2030”, says Leggett.

His area of expertise – solar energy – is said to have reached its inflection point in 2004, and has been an increasingly viable option ever since. Although Leggett advocates a reliance on multiple forms of energy – and firmly believes that a mixed approach is the only sensible way to attack dependence on fossil fuels – he is keen to sing the praises of solar energy. His company, Solarcentury, has been responsible for some of the more eye-catching feats of solar panel engineering, such as the CIS tower in Manchester. Photovoltaics is now becoming an increasingly viable method of electricity production. It ticks all the boxes that any source of energy, renewable or not, must. For starters, homes fitted with solar panels can become not just carbon neutral, but actually providers of energy to the national grid. This excess of electricity created is something for which the homeowner is compensated – this has prompted residents of Solarcentury’s solar powered chalets in France to refer to them as their pensions.

On top of this, solar energy is not constrained in its potential to provide significant amounts of electricity. In the fantastical scenario in which solar panels are fitted to every rooftop in rainy Britain, the subsequent amount of electricity generated would be sufficient for the country’s needs.

Leggett has explained the necessity of moving from fossil fuels to renewables, both out of concern over peak oil and concern over climate change. Why, then, is there not a greater exodus from non-renewable energy? He identifies sheer lack of political will as the main culprit. He bemoans a culture that is “desperately resistant to change”. In particular, he is sceptical about the credentials of this government. “There are some actors in the government who get it”, he says. “But they’re losing the battle and they’re not fighting very hard. They’re going to end up looking ridiculous. The greenest government ever? Give me a break.” He is a little more sanguine about the prognosis globally. “A lot depends on what happens in Germany and Japan, especially Japan. They’re probably going to be getting rid of 54 nuclear reactors in Japan.”

While a move away from nuclear energy is welcome, provided the hole is plugged by renewable energy, does he think that this is the direction that the Japanese and Germans are going in? “If stupid decisions are made about tar sands and fracking, perhaps not.” But he has faith that this is not going to happen. If his appraisal of the world’s predicament with respect to both fuel and the climate is anything close to being correct, let’s hope he’s right.

We have had our fun. For over a century the West has drained the world of its coal and oil, torn down its forests and clogged its atmosphere for the sake of wealth. No one but the odd recalcitrant Texan even tries to deny this anymore. We might protest that we cannot be held responsible for the ignorance of our predecessors; still, try as we might to repent by reusing plastic bags and powering the occasional speed camera with a solar panel, we cannot change the fact that the cumulative prosperity we have inherited was built on generations of environmental neglect. 

We might be tempted to point out that the West’s carbon emissions have levelled off in the past decade, and even begun to decline in a few countries, at least per capita, but our apparent restraint is more likely a result of our tendency to outsource grubby businesses like manufacturing to developing countries that are generally more concerned with putting food on the table than keeping noxious gas out of the air. What’s more, we still manage to put out several times more carbon per head than global workshops like China and India. 

Despite the fairly obvious moral imperatives, too often the developed world shirks its environmental duties, arguing that any serious attempt to cut emissions through a carbon tax or large-scale adoption of clean energy sources would bring about instant economic chaos. That this basic assumption is so rarely questioned can only be down to a dearth of political will, though the tendency of environmentalists to portray global warming as an inevitable apocalypse does not exactly help. 

Such assumptions do not stand up to much scrutiny. A carbon tax could quite easily be offset by cuts in taxes elsewhere. Managed well, such a move would create an incentive to purchase low-carbon products and fuels without being too much of an impact on the economy’s overall tax burden and unduly aggravating voters. Green fuels may be uncompetitive at the moment, but the cost of solar power halves every few years and so may be cheaper than coal within a decade while the price of fossil fuels can only rise in the long term. 

The developed world is in a unique position to take these sorts of steps. Our consumers still provide the bulk of global demand for carbon-producing goods and our universities and companies have most of the knowledge and capital needed to make green energy commercially viable. Only the developed world is in a position to both funnel investment into green technology and create an embryonic market for it through a carbon tax. The developed world should act now. Not just out of moral obligation, but because we can where others cannot.