by Alex Evans | Jun 25, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development
Our second speaker: Bert Metz, the co-chair of the mitigation working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Metz regaled us with various numbers about the affordability of climate mitigation before noting parenthetically that, um, the figures didn’t take into account the costs of damages.
An analysis showing that stabilising at lower greenhouse gas levels is more expensive, but that doesn’t make any assessment of the damages?
Er… hello?
What you don’t usually get told in these kinds of presentations is why the damage costs have been left out. The short answer: because the mitigation ‘experts’ all remember what happened with IPCC’s second assessment report, back in 1995. It wasn’t pretty…
(more…)
by David Steven | Jun 25, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity
Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup – Chief of the UK’s Defence Staff – opens the conference, pitching for a frontline role for the military in the response to climate change.
Key questions for military planners. Is the pace of climate change likely to be quicker than the world can respond to safely? In the most unstable parts of the world, will the consequences of climate change ‘pour petrol onto a burning fire’?
“Although hard power cannot solve climate change,” Stirrup argues, “military power may be needed to respond to the consequences.”
by David Steven | Jun 25, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity
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…
by Alex Evans | Jun 25, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity
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.”
by David Steven | Jun 25, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity
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.”
