TalkClimateChange

The Bali Climate Summit in early December promises to be a significant milestone in the fight against climate change and the search for a more sustainable future.But just what can we really expect from this meeting, and what will the resulting legislation or treaty frameworks really mean?

 The TeamLeaders from the TalkClimateChange forum offer their views on the likely outcome:

From the TalkClimateChange Green Team leader (man-made Climate Change is real and must be stopped):

In a little over two weeks, world leaders will meet in Bali for the most significant climate summit since Kyoto. Following last week’s IPCC report, which unequivocally states the risk of climate change, what can we expect from Bali?

Probably not a lot. Greens who may be hoping for radical policy changes in response to a clear threat will be disappointed because the overwhelming priority for governments today is economic growth, even if the priority for tomorrow may be something else. And economic growth today is more or less entirely dependent on fossil fuels. More growth = more Co2.

Voters may care about the environment, but they are not going to vote for governments who make them poorer.

What governments can do instead is to start moving economic dependence away from fossil fuels and towards alternatives. They can do this by creating improved market conditions for green technologies by offering incentives and signaling the eventual end of cheap fossil fuels. This sounds obvious, but there is still some way to go: as the IPCC report states, vested interests in the fossil fuel industry are likely to prevent this from happening quickly enough.

Instead, what we will likely see from Bali is an increasing acceptance of the problem along with unbinding promises to reduce emissions. Growth is still King.

The required changes will happen, but over time. In the past years we have made progress in that governments now accept climate change is real, and slowly the changes are starting to happen. What is now needed is government acceptance that the pace of change has to be increased by us, or otherwise we allow nature to control the pace of change: to reduce warming to only 2°C we need to peak emissions within 10 years - which still means a risk of one third of all species becoming extinct, widespread destruction of corals and decreased cereal production in the tropics.

We may be pleasantly surprised by Bali’s outcome, but we believe there is still a long way to go before we reach a true worldwide consensus on climate change action.

From the TalkClimateChange Red Team leader (man-made Climate Change is nonsense):

In a little over two weeks, world leaders will meet in Bali to take part in what will be the most significant climate summit since Kyoto. But what will be the outcome? Will we see another multibillion dollar treaty which will achieve next to nothing? Or will we see some sensible actions which will address potential impacts of climate change whilst providing practical and tangible benefits to ordinary people today?

Commonly proposed climate change action plans today involve taxing ordinary citizens on their quality of life, and forcing industry to focus not on productivity but on Co2 emissions which may or may not have an impact on climate change.

But there are simpler and smarter alternatives. Björn Lomborg writes in The Guardian today that urban heat islands - increases in temperature due to the heat absorbing effect of tarmac and concrete - which account for temperature increases of up to 10°c in some cities could easily be reduced by painting buildings and roofs in lighter colours and by planting more trees. In a city such as Los Angeles this could reduce the energy cost of air conditioning by $170 million, and provide a more pleasant environment for the city’s occupants.

Earlier this year, the then British chancellor Gordon Brown imposed additional aviation taxes on travellers in the name of global warming. Nobody knows exactly where the money went, but it didn’t stop anybody from flying and it wasn’t invested into our environment. Far more practical would be to invest some of the money extorted from passengers in improving archaic air traffic control practices. This would lead to fewer flight delays, the burning of less fuel, less noise, and a far happier life for air travellers and those that live near airports.

Sadly, practical solutions for real world problems are likely to be forsaken in Bali for more politically correct measures which will also act as convenient excuses for hijacking billions of dollars in taxation from ordinary citizens. Our environment won’t improve, but many will feel more assured that they are paying for a better world.

What’s your view?