The Big Ask Climate Debate comments_9

28 April 2008

It seems to me that all the discussions continue to support the 20th century economic model of ever increasing growth. Efficiency and performance are vital and in reality have in the future to be linked to sustainability not growth.

In Tony Blair's and Jan Peter Balkenende's letter to Matti Vanhanen last month they say that climate change and fuel security are the two most important issues facing the EU.

They go onto state; 'We are faced with a shared dilemma, both here in Europe and elsewhere in the world. To ensure well being for a growing world population with unfulfilled needs and rising expectations, we must grow our economies. Should we fail, conflict and insecurity will be the result. To grow our economies we will continue to need energy. Much of that energy will be in the form of fossil fuels. The logic of this dilemma is that we must treat energy security and climate security as two sides of the same coin.

Gordon Brown was also recently crowing about the unexpectedly high level of growth over the past year at 2.5%. A 2.5% growth is a doubling of our economy every 28 years. Surely our politicians understand the relationship between percentage growth and exponential growth? The constant emphasis on economic growth just perpetuates the myth in the publics mind that the only measure of success is how the economy is growing. It might be very welcome for big business and the finance institutions but the reality is that this is what is leading to long term deterioration of the world's environment, depletion of resources and the ability to of the world to sustain our wellbeing.

The growth in world populations and the exceptional economic growth in other countries principally China and India, all wishing to have the same standard of living as the west, adds to an already strained environmental system.

Does every politician think that the world can sustain this, or I am just cynical again and think that the short term retention of power is what matters?

Why don't we have any visionary leaders who challenge the old concept of continual growth. The mirage of growth this is one of the major problems we face. A system can not keep growing in a finite environment particularly one of dwindling resources, principally oil which has underpinned the rapid growth in the west over the past hundred years (including food production). Conflict occurs when aggressive competition for scarce resources takes place as 'the' solution for the feeling of insecurity. The mantra of growth is fast becoming a delusive and hollow cry of an economic system that is not sustainable in a 'one living planet approach', to quote David Miliband.

Technology has a part to play but the biggest change has to be a system one. We have to put resources to better use and focus success on more that increasing GVA. I know that means challenging the current economic paradigm as Einstein said "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them".

Even PriceWaterhouseCoopers said that a year of no growth would solve climate change but do not go on to mention the impact of peak oil on growth. (http://www.pwcglobal.com/extweb/ ¬
pwcpublications.nsf/docid/ ¬
DFB54C8AAD6742DB85257 ¬
1F5006DD532

Again please understand what growth does in a finite system, see http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/ ¬
lectures/461

I fear for the future as it has been shown in psychological test that people can tend destroy scare items if they think that others will not share things with them equally. I hope our leaders have a maturity to see that continual desire to chase after ever more scarce resources will lead us into a very destructive blind alley.

Ian Jones

Combating global warming and various torrential currents associated with flooding and disaster in various parts of the world must involve a concerted effort by scientist, politicians and govermental agencies . There is a need to provide funds for researchi8nto climatic changes and train scientist on early detection and equally to ensure that goverment of the developed world have a specific fund for climatic and global warming to harnass it s benefits and prevent its disasters.ensuring that torrential floods can be prevented in endemic parts of the world is also important

Olawumi Korede

I understand that the government has a suggested target of reducing by 60% carbon emissions by 2050.

I recently applied for planning permission to convert a large house into several smaller units, in order to create more housing as well as affordable housing in my part of East London. As a contribution to the greenhouse issue, I intended to install two domestic wind turbines, an array of solar panels and use the latest in insulation materials with a net result of a reduction of carbon emissions, in the region of, 50% by NEXT YEAR.

It was turned down by the local authority planning department, and, on appeal, by the Planning Inspectorate. There was no mention anywhere of the above technology in the rejection received.

As a consequence there will be no wind turbines and no solar panels.

While we have a layer of administration that appears trapped in a time warp, and refuses to meet head-on the challenge of global warming or even accept that there is a problem - there is no hope.

Hugh Stewart-Smith

I know we British are proud of our heritage,(sometimes a little unjustly!)and still feel as if we lead the world,but the harsh reality is, we dont.As a contributor to pollution, and greenhouse gasses,and global warming, we are in the very small league.............lagging far behind the two big global warming superpowers, India, and China.............Surely, our noble aims to cut a little here, a little there are merely cancelled out by one of the big two players upping their industrial, (and therefore pollution)output . If we really want to make a big difference,on a global scale, we need to have a much closer dialogue with these two countries and to decide ways to help them increase efficiency,through our improved western technologies..........

Brian Woods

The Triple Bottom Line:

Economic Stability
Social Provision
Environmental Sustainability

As far as principles go we must now highlight that both Economic Stability and Social Provision are Social Sciences - Environmental Sustainability is the combination of the three primary sciences, Biology, Chemistry and Physics, it embodies science in every way and the rules therein.

Why does it take so long for our politicians to recognise the scientific communities voice?

Why are there less scientists and engineers involved in the highest level of policy making than there should be? They are the ones who truly understand the issues and historically have addressed the greatest problems, such as urban sanitation and infrastruture.

How do we justify spending so much on our winter olympic team in comparison to the LCBP, for example?

Will daylight saving cost the olympics a few hours of working time, how much is this valued at?

Have we lost concept of Opportunity Costs?

How can the free market be considered to be working if we now don't bother to use our economic, industrial strength and experience to fund and support the next generation of technology - what has happened to R&D in real terms?

If the stern report claims a 1% expenditure of GDP now will save us in the future why don't we cough up this year?

Why do we pay VAT on technologies that improve our environment, surely they should be exempt to compete with the existing technologies that are destroying our natural resources?

Does the government seriously believe that our alcohol guzzling, cheap flight taking, consumerist society will choose to spend their money on making the hard decisions, individuals appear to spend more money and time watching football than educating their children, what makes you believe they will insulate their homes, or demand their companies provide higher standards if given the choice to spend their money?

If we have a desire to achieve the environmental results of the Scandinavian countries why do we take these results outside of the context of their tax policies?

The Baseline:
Environmental Sustainability is the measure of performance of our natural resources, it is finite, and we will need to use the tool that is Economics to achieve our desired Social Provisions within the parameters and limitations of our Natural Environment.

Our financial services are the finest in the world, apparently, so why can't they get this right?

Adam Dawson

The UK emits only 2% of the world's CO2 emissions. UK vehicles emit only a small fraction of that 2%, yet vehicle users are seen as the easy source of revenue.

James Jameson

Sorry to spoil the party, but these good intentions will have no effect on global climate. This will doubtless continue to change in ways which we don't understand. In the 70s, the concern was about global cooling, now what was until recently global warming has been relabelled "climate change" to cover all eventualities. By all means we should invest heavily in energy efficiency and new technologies such as improved photovoltaics and nuclear fusion, while bearing in mind government's primary responsibility is to guarantee energy security. But don't expect China and India to jeopardise their development by cutting back investment in new generating capacity. And don't expect to be able to tune the climate to your liking.

Martin Livermore

Its important to appreciate the huge impact Tony Blair and Britain have had on global efforts to tackle climate change as many will only willing make sacrifices, like giving up air travel, if they know such sacrifices could be part of a successful solution.

There are quite literally dozens of world summits where Britain has took the lead in ensuring climate change is addressed. Some of the more notable one are the 1997 discussions in Kyoto , the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg and the 2005 G8 summit in Scotland where Tony personally ensured that climate change was one of the two main themes.

Johannesburg isn't talked about too much these days but thanks to efforts from Britain that led to the formation of the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP) , which consist of governments, business and civil society working on the creation of market conditions for sustainable energy , particularly in the developing world and emerging market. REEEP is ensuring that the annual spend on energy infrastructure (close to $1 trillion ) is spent as much as possible on sustainable energy.

Kyoto and in particular the resulting energy trading mechanisms are also having a huge impact. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) estimated potential annual green investment flows between developed and developing countries at up to $100bn.

There has already been 8 billion pounds of carbon trading in the first six months of this year alone!

These huge figures relate to actual projects on the ground which are resulting in verifiable reductions in the amount of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere. Details of the projects can be viewed at UNFCCCs website and they are closely scrutinised by accountants and environmentalists to ensure they are what they say on the tin. Note that most of these projects are hosted in places like China , India and Brazil : nations that sceptics would have us believe are doing nothing about climate change!!

Feyd Huxtable

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