All Quiet On The Policy Front

Where’s Climate Change at ?

Behind closed doors. Swept under the mat.

I think a number of people are coming to terms with the fact that carbon pricing cannot possibly sort the problem of emissions. The only way forward is regulation, legislation, rules, laws.

So, where are the policymakers ? And what are they saying ?

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America Finally Might Actually Do Something

[ UPDATE : America might not actually, finally, do something - check the resistance dinosaurs. ]

We have waited long enough for serious action States-side on Global Warming.

The bankers (apparently largely Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan with lashings of Tony Blair) had their chance to talk up the idea of Carbon Trading. What a dead duck that turned out to be !

Carbon Taxation looks like it’s a non-starter with the global economy being a whisker from utter, utter, collapse.

The Clean Development Mechanism isn’t.

(Plus, the CDM hasn’t helped those it was principally promoted to help – Africa).

The global Biofuels targets are reducing rainforest to logpiles.

The Coal Kings have been pushing the idea of Carbon Capture and Storage for well over fifteen years and persuaded…no one.

The nightwalkers from the dark, radioactive side are still scaring people and luring them at the same time. If Iran wanting Nuclear Power was tricky enough, now Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait want it too, and I don’t expect the international dialogue tightrope act to get any easier.

The Congress and the Senate have seen filibuster and deal-breaking and lobbyist handshakes in dark corridors and reneging in bars.

But, at long last, it seems like Barack Obama is going to do what he hinted at, and regulate the bottom line out of Carbon Dioxide emissions, regardless of whether there’s any elected representatives passing bills :-

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-14/epa-issuing-u-s-carbon-limits-guidance-soon-agency-administrator-says.html

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Fiat Lux, Fiat Solar

Video Credit : Journeyman Pictures

Big green energy news of the month : President Barack Obama of the United States of America has announced direct investment into solar :-

http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/04/obama-solar-pv-csp/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jul/04/obama-hands-solar-firms-2bn

Let there be light in the soul, and solar energy in the land.

This looks like a tipping point. Let’s flip some more trip switches in our personal networks and get the oil-producing bloc in the Middle East to see the value of going wind and solar (instead of expensive, risky Nuclear) :-

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/591358-qatar-awaits-new-solar-wind-tech-before-investment

http://www.uaeinteract.com

http://www.gizmag.com/shams-1-concentrated-solar-power-plant/15389/picture/116110/

“The largest concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in the Middle East is to be built in Madinat Zayed, approximately 120 km (75 miles) southwest of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). When it becomes operational in 2012, the plant, dubbed Shams 1, will feature some 6,300,000 square-feet of solar parabolic collectors, cover 741 acres of desert and will produce enough electricity to power 62,000 households.”

What ? That soon ?

Sceptic Backlash : Questions Answered

Last Wednesday’s “Sceptic Backlash” meeting ended with a lively Question and Answer session. Here it is as I recorded it :-

http://www.campaigncc.org/scepticsmeeting

Q. (from Christian Hunt, a plant in the audience from Greenpeace)

- You say it’s just the journalists who are the sceptics. What happens if another Government comes in and scepticism gets political footholds ? [ reference to Conservative Party Climate Change sceptics ]

A. (Phil Thornhill, Campaign against Climate Change)

- People shy away from the problem if they can’t find solutions. We propose a million Climate jobs – there are lots of ways of dealing with the crisis. That’s the kind of thing we should be emphasising.

Q. Andrew Neill interviewed Caroline Lucas and asked her about the Phil Jones interview with the BBC where he said there had been no “statistically significant” warming in the last 15 years. Has there been no statistically significant warming or not ? Why wouldn’t Caroline Lucas, head of the Green Party, say “you’re wrong” ?

A. (Phil)

- I wrote her a rather long e-mail. You can’t really debate Science in the popular Media. Most people don’t understand.

- The tip for answering this kind of question is – in 15 years, it’s hard to spot a trend against the background noise. It’s a difficult thing to explain.

- It’ a clear case of how once you start debating the Science it gets twisted. She should have said “this is a typical case of the misrepresentation of Science”.

A. (Ben Stewart, Greenpeace Media)

- She was fine to say “I’ll take a pass on that”.

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Media Gets Obama Bypass

It seems like Team Obama will be bypassing the mainstream Media in their Climate Change communications :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/12/us-document-strategy-climate-talks

“…A document accidentally left on a European hotel computer and passed to the Guardian reveals the US government’s increasingly controversial strategy in the global UN climate talks…Top of the list of objectives is to: “Reinforce the perception that the US is constructively engaged in UN negotiations in an effort to produce a global regime to combat climate change.” It also talks of “managing expectations” of the outcome of the Cancun meeting and bypassing traditional media outlets…”

There you have it. I’m not surprised, given the appalling behaviour of some of the Gentlepersons of the Press in recent months… Read the rest of this entry »