Ask the experts: Averting climate change
Financial Times
Europeans are overwhelmingly convinced that human activity is contributing to global warming, and a majority would be prepared to accept restrictions on their lifestyle to combat it, according to a poll for the Financial Times.
Fly less, pay more: what are individuals really prepared to do to prevent climate change, and how effective are these measures? A panel of experts answer your questions below.
Tony Juniper is executive director of Friends of the Earth, the environmental campaign group.
Professor Dieter Helm of New College, Oxford, a noted expert on climate change economics, says that the costs of decarbonising the world’s economy by 2050 would be much higher than 1 per cent of GDP. “It is a great mistake to tell people costs are low and they can continue their lifestyles, while solving climate change,” he says.
(23 Nov 2006)
A similar point is made by Ted Trainer in the article below.
The Stern review; critical notes on its abatement optimism
Ted Trainer, Energy Resources
My concern in these notes is with Stern’s claim that sufficient remedial action on the greenhouse problem would not cost much, indeed only 1% of GDP p.a. From my previous investigation of energy issues it is my firm view that industrial-affluent-consumer societies are grossly unsustainable and that they cannot adapt to the coming energy and other major global problems. I have therefore been very interested to see how Stern could come to his surprising conclusion, (which is so very consoling for business, governments and consumersŠno need to think about abandoning affluence and growth.)
Following are some brief notes deriving from a superficial reading of sections of the Review. I am not confident about the views presented below but they raise issues people need to settle before the Review’s discussion of abatement is accepted.
(26 Nov 2006)
Trainer points out that the 550ppm target is too high, by other scientific standards, and that even that is not achieved by 2050 in the proposed scenario.
The handwriting on the greenhouse wall
Energy firms coming to accept regulation of warming gases as inevitable
Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
While the political debate over global warming continues, top executives at many of the nation’s largest energy companies have accepted the scientific consensus about climate change and see federal regulation to cut greenhouse gas emissions as inevitable.
The Democratic takeover of Congress makes it more likely that the federal government will attempt to regulate emissions. The companies have been hiring new lobbyists who they hope can help fashion a national approach that would avert a patchwork of state plans now in the works. They are also working to change some company practices in anticipation of the regulation.
“We have to deal with greenhouse gases,” John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Co., said in a recent speech at the National Press Club. “From Shell’s point of view, the debate is over. When 98 percent of scientists agree, who is Shell to say, ‘Let’s debate the science’?”
(24 Nov 2006)
Emission credit market heats up
Fiona Harvey, Financial Times via LA Times
Trading in allowances for producing carbon dioxide has doubled in the last year, the World Bank says.
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The international market in trading carbon dioxide credits has doubled in the last year, the World Bank said, in spite of high-profile failures such as the crash in prices in Europe.
About $22 billion of carbon dioxide credits was traded in the first nine months this year compared with $10 billion during 2005.
According to a report by the World Bank, London has cemented its position as the leading location for international carbon dioxide credit trading.
The market in trading pollution credits was formed under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which requires developed nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5% relative to 1990 levels. Among developed countries, only the U.S. and Australia have rejected the treaty.
Under the protocol, rich countries may reach their reduction targets by funding projects, such as wind farms or solar energy generators, that reduce emissions in poor countries.
(27 Nov 2006)
