So we’re off, with a promise from Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House, that the conference is going to take us beyond the conventional wisdom on the economics of climate change. Our current energy systems reflect the subsidies, tax incentives and policies of the past. What will a low carbon economy cost? What impact will future policies have on these costs? Answers to these questions, we are told, are to come…
Back from a brief radio silence (me on honeymoon, David doing public diplomacy stuff in Nigeria), we’re off today and tomorrow to Chatham House‘s two day conference on climate change, from which we’re going to be live blogging.
We’re also jointly doing the wrap-up speaking slot at the end, during which we will attempt to sum up 2 days and 45 speakers in seven and a half minutes each… As Woody Allen once said:
“I took a speed reading course and read ‘War and Peace’ in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.”
It’s been many years coming, but there are signs that, at last, George Bush is getting serious about climate change:
In a nationally televised address reminiscent of President Kennedy’s historic 1961 speech pledging to put a man on the moon, President Bush responded to the global warming crisis Monday by calling for the construction of a giant national air conditioner by the year 2015.
“Climate change is real and it demands a real solution,” Bush said. “Therefore, I am committed to dedicating all of the technology, all of the brainpower, and all of the resources we need in order to keep America cool and comfortable well into the 21st century.”
Last week actually, but still top of the charts:
DER SPIEGEL: Mr President, former Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder
called you a ‘pure democrat’. Do you consider yourself such?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: (laughs) Am I a ‘pure democrat’? Of course I am,
absolutely. But do you know what the problem is? Not even a problem but
a real tragedy? The problem is that I’m all alone, the only one of my
kind in the whole wide world. Just look at what’s happening in North
America, it’s simply awful: torture, homeless people, Guantanamo, people
detained without trial and investigation. Just look at what’s happening
in Europe: harsh treatment of demonstrators, rubber bullets and tear gas
used first in one capital then in another, demonstrators killed on the
streets. That’s not even to mention the post-Soviet area. Only the guys
in Ukraine still gave hope, but they’ve completely discredited
themselves now and things are moving towards total tyranny there;
complete violation of the Constitution and the law and so on. There is
no one to talk to since Mahatma Gandhi died.
Guy Kawasaki on his Web 2.0 start-up, Truemors:
did the work. Honestly, I wasn’t a believer in remote teams trying to work together on version 1 of a product, but Electric Pulp changed my mind. $399 to design the logo. Of course, this was before HP bought the company. Not sure what it would charge now. 🙂