There’s news from the Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) quarter.
A whole bunch of Aid and Development, charity, Third Sector and green groups got together today and were instilled with their responsibility to “hold politicians’ feet to the fire” by Ed Miliband, who just happens to be a politician.
Not just any old politician, no. Only the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in the United Kingdom.
The Circle Line can get a bit stifling in the evening. Not as much as the Central Line, which is often only a few tiers from the fires of Hell itself, but the Circle Line is often clammy in Summer, long after the Rush Hour home. Global Warming ? Global Steamy Clammy Heat !
So, I’m trying to maintain my personal cool and composure on the London Underground by not moving very much and reading a self-styled “pamphlet” I acquired at the 5th June 2009 conference “The politics of climate change : from economic crisis to business revolution”.
Bjørn Lomborg has been struggling to suppress action on Climate Change for some time now. He has reasoned that it is not such a big deal, and we would be better spending our resources and attention on other global ills.
Now, however, he’s proposing a universal Carbon Tax, in order to promote Renewable Energy – both Wind Power and Solar !
What’s gotten into the economist-man ? Has he been poisoned by teeth-whitening chemicals ? Has he finally seen the light ? Or does he think that anything is more workable than Cap-and-Trade ?
In the best Private Eye style, I will merely present to you two statistics and let you deduce the relationship between the two.
If you really don’t understand what I’m driving at, do get in touch :-
Everywhere you look this week there’s news about Coal, and how we need to pay to clean it up, and how wonderful this idea is.
I don’t buy it. But I’m going to be forced to pay for it through my electricity bills regardless :-
[ UPDATE : Some of you have mentioned that you thought this piece was rather biting. So I put it under Bryony’s nose and offered to change anything that she felt was inaccurate, personally distressing, or that she disagreed with or objected to on professional grounds. Changes are bolded. ]
At the The Guardian Climate Change Summit in London’s Russell Square’s Hotel Russell on Monday 15th June 2009, there was a large banner marked out with the name of the key sponsor of the event, E.On, but nobody at the large table underneath it to schmooze the attendees.
Perhaps they thought that the info pack in bright friendly red, orange and yellow colours would suffice in terms of communications. Perhaps they thought that they had enough of a hold on the event’s messaging by having their Chief Executive Officer Paul Golby speaking at one of the morning sessions.
You can take the soul out of an engineer with a boring, stressful or ethically suspect career, (like the Manhatten Project), but you can’t take the engineer out of a soul.
I have a persistent interest in things engineering, and some say I waste too much of my time thinking about systems engineering and the Laws of Physics.
I also have a persistent interest in the minds of engineers. How do we work ? What makes us tick ? And do we have an overview on social organisation that could be useful ?
David Kennedy, the chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change announced today, almost in passing, at the The Guardian Climate Change Summit, that the “Summer Strategy” regarding all the Government’s choices on Climate Change technologies, as articulated by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) will be published within the week.
I have been reading Nicholas Stern’s book “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet : How to Manage Climate Change and Create a New Era of Progress and Prosperity”, and I feel that it is somehow my role to be making some rather critical remarks about it.
As some of my more regular readers will be aware, I have been re-reading Nicholas Stern’s book “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet : How to Manage Climate Change and Create a New Era of Progress and Prosperity”.
He signed the book for me : “zero carbon or bust”, at his Book Launch at the London School of Economics, which, I think, shows his commitment to the “Defining Challenge of our Age” (now, who exactly said that first ? And about what ?)
I always thought it was a bit strange that the The Guardian’s Environment pages were confined to the Wednesday Society section of the “print edition” of this national newspaper.
Did that mean that the cranky, obsessive, possibly mentally unhinged eco-hippies should be shovelled in with the Social Workers, Educationalists, Housing Associations and Trades Unionists ?
Terry Leahy, the CEO of Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in Britain, spoke at the 5th June 2009 conference “The politics of climate change : from economic crisis to business revolution”. His mood was ebullient, it seemed to me.
“We’re going to miss all the targets we set ourselves.” I think he might have been referring to both the Kyoto Protocol and the UK / EU 2020 targets, so I don’t know why he seemed so buoyant about it.
At the conference “The politics of climate change : from economic crisis to business revolution” on 5th June 2009, Stelios Haji-Ioannou ended up flying by the seat of his pants.
“I’m usually [cast as] the Devil. People are trying to find a high-profile industry [to target]…[they choose] airlines.”
Anthony Giddens spoke at the conference called “The politics of climate change : from economic crisis to business revolution” on Friday 5th June 2009.
For someone who is normally so high-falutin’ in his academic contortions, he was remarkably pragmatic.
Adair Turner must be a bundle of nerves, sitting, as he does on both the Financial Services Authority and the Climate Change Committee.
He’s often asked to speak on behalf of ideas that are shaky, like cracking down on the banks with stronger regulation, whilst avoiding blaming the banks themselves for the financial crisis :-
Everyone who is grappling with the Twin Terrors of Climate Change and Peak Oil, sooner or later comes across a graph like this one (which I hand-drew for a Transition Towns meeting this evening) :-
Last week’s conference “The politics of climate change : from economic crisis to business revolution” was a great opportunity to bump into people I only normally read about.
Trouble is, although they irritate me at a distance by what they have said, or spent, or decided, or spun, when I meet them my anger has subsided and I just can’t get the venom together to be rude.
Britain is not Fair. The division between rich and poor is getting wider, and the number of those at the bottom of the stack is rising. This is going to have a significant impact on the ability of people in Great Britain to adapt to Climate Change policy.
Social measures must surely include public investment in de-Carbonising each home. At costs 100 times less than the announced new Nuclear Power programme, and an order of magnitude cheaper than the Carbon Capture and Storage demonstration projects, I think this shows excellent value for money as well as ethical rectitude.
It has become fashionable, since the Financial Crisis was admitted to publicly, for high net worth individiuals to propagate Public Relations campaigns in support of their industry of choice. Normally the industry that makes all their money for them.
In the United States they call this process a “bailout”, making it sound like a worthy rescue of a valued affiliate. In the United Kingdom, it’s called “public support”. It all amounts to the same thing : tax revenue from the public thrown at the private corporations.
At the “The politics of climate change : from economic crisis to business revolution” conference on 5th June 2009, Peter Mandelson’s face was all puffed and pale. He looked rather like a middle-aged drag queen who’s had an allergic reaction to her démaquillant. Or it could be all those late night supposed emergency mini-conferences with Gordon Brown. Or Alan Sugar. You never know.
Tony Blair looked greyer than ever as he lightfooted it into the auditorium. “He still hasn’t had the surgery to pin back his ears”, I noted to the chap I had been talking to on my right, “I don’t meant to be rude, but he’s still got that sticky-outy look. I would have thought that would be the first thing he’d do with all the money.”
If you or anyone you know is young and unencumbered (you know, without kids or other dependents, like an employer for example) and living in London E17 (England), please, we need you to help us roll out the Transition Waltham Forest project :-
[ Comments on “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet” by Nicholas Stern ]
So, I might be promoting sales of Nicholas Stern’s book with this post, but actually I think we should all read this book, just to be conscious of how Neoliberal Economics hasn’t evolved to encompass reality, even if it thinks it has.
There are many statements, assertions and hopes about the progress and possibilities of technology in Nicholas Stern’s book “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet : How to Manage Climate Change and Create a New Era of Progress and Prosperity”.
[ UPDATE – part of my argument about Coal got garbled. I have bolded changes.]
Over the Late Spring Bank Holiday Weekend, I had the unintentional opportunity to spend some recreational time with someone employed by the Government of the United Kingdom. I am not going to divulge details.
This person had clearly been to Brainwashing School and was on-message consistently, even in the relaxed and non-formal setting. They repeated, almost verbatim, rationales I have been hearing for several years.
[ UPDATE : For increased clarity, I have bolded a little update. ]
After I posted my report on Peak Oil :-
https://www.joabbess.com/2009/05/26/peak-oil-contraction-the-truth-is-out-there
I e-mailed Aubrey Meyer asking for his opinion. Within the hour my telephone start vibrating annoyingly, and it was Aubrey Meyer himself on the line, the architect of the Contraction and Convergence framework, with his usual, welcome, non-stop advice and guidance about where the policymakers are at, or not. I’d only anticipated an e-mail in reply, so it was a veritable honour to get a voice-to-voice. He’s normally too busy dispatching political stupidity to call little old me.