10 Key Questions for Climate Change Initiatives
As environmental policies come into sharp focus - with the continuation of negotiations initiated in Bali last year, US Presidential Elections, British Nuclear Power decisions, new European initiatives on renewable emission and carbon trading, and a host of other initiatives – we’ve uncovered some useful guidelines for validating environment policy decisions.
In a paper titled “Strategies for Adapting to the Greenhouse Effect”, author James G. Titus sets out ten qualifying questions in an attempt to provide some criteria by which to sense check new policy decisions.
- Economic Efficiency: Will the initiative yield benefits substantially greater than if the resources were applied elsewhere?
- Flexibility: Is the strategy reasonable for the entire range of possible changes in temperatures, precipitation, and sea level?
- Urgency: Would the strategy be successful if implementation were delayed ten or twenty years?
- Low Cost: Does the strategy require minimal resources?
- Equity: Does the strategy unfairly benefit some at the expense of other regions, generations, and economic classes?
- Institutional feasibility: Is the strategy acceptable to the public? Can it be implemented with existing institutions under existing laws?
- Unique or Critical Resources: Would the strategy decrease the risk of losing unique environmental or cultural resources?
- Health and Safety: Would the proposed strategy increase or decrease the risk of disease or injury?
- Consistency: Does the policy support other national state, community, or private goals?
- Private v. Public Sector: Does the strategy minimize governmental interference with decisions best made by the private sector?
- We think this is one of the more sensible things we have seen so far, making a refreshing change from the regular due diligence process which usually involves sniping at supporting evidence and dreaming up ways for initiatives to fail.
Well done Mr Titus, we are fans.
These are the same guidelines anyone would use now for any economic venture. Only a fool would plan a project near the sea and not look at the effect of sea-level rise regardless of GCC. I am a great fan of critical thinking but the problem here is not methodology.
The problem is the underlying precepts and overall goals, they are not clearly defined. That is the real problem in the mitigation issue. The outcomes of any action or no action at all are so amorphous that it is hard to rationalize the risk vs benefits of the issues. This means we are left with what you believe, or take on faith, from either side.
I really do not want to knock Mr Titus here, but there is nothing new here, but kudos to him as it is something that bears repeating until some dreamers and critics look at the issue objectively.
IMO there needs to be some frank and open discussion of what will be the real outcome of mitigation and if the goals are actually GCC mitigation or just adgenda driven shifts in the realm of economics to a vision of humanity’s future.
I have been accused of being overly critical by saying this will not work, that will not work, mainly because they won’t, but I have not heard anything that I can say, hey that makes sense!
Because there is no goal, no destination and no solutions when things like 20% reduction in GHG by 2012 is tossed out and left on the doorstep of Industry and the general population to actually deal with without any sort of plan to achieve the goal, or what the final goal really is. That makes the issue much worse and leads to decisions being made, products rushed to implementation all using poorly concieved ideas and most explicitly from not using Mr. Titus’s parameters.
Here are several examples of things that do not make any impact on the GHG problem without creating a whole new set of issues or actually increasing GHG emissions;
Bio-Fuels
Hybrid Vehicle
CFLs
Public Transit
Infrastructure Reconstruction
Green Collar Jobs
CO2 Sequestration
Plastic Bags
Wind/Solar Power
Alternative Energy
Carbon Off-Sets