China has been gradually improving their efficiency of energy use to create gross domestic product and, whilst their offer to continue to improve energy efficiency appears to be tokenism, it’s important to realise that major infrastructural changes would be required for China to achieve their projected reductions.

China may emit more pollutants more than they do now, but they will be producing items far more efficiently than others can, and it’s also very likely they will continues to reduce emissions with time and technology, for reasons such as reduced local pollution.

What China are offering would be a major improvement over existing practices, whilst still building their economy, just like NZ plans to.
It was too easy for other participants at Copenhagen to make China the villain, because they were a convenient scapegoat.

Consider national primary energy use in 1000BTU / GDP ( corrected to US$ in 2000 ) for 1980, 1993, and 2006…
China = 37.3, 19.5, 13 ;
USA = 15.1, 11.6, 8.8 ;
NZ = 11.0, 12.3, 9.0 .
Who’s making substantial progress?

With regard to “a climate change friendly society”, it would first and foremost, be a prudent and efficient user of renewable and limited resources with a stable population size. Prudent use may involve international electronic communication rather than visiting – depending on distance and transport type. Efficient use may involve public transport, light vehicles, sustainable agriculture, etc etc.

If we start thinking about options, individuals may justify making changes now – we don’t have to have global unanimity before we start.

Some of us may move to a lighter, energy-efficient vehicle when buying our next car, but others will not change until a plug-in EV out-accelerates their Ford or Holden V8 at the traffic lights. Humanity is diverse, and people will change habits at differing rates.

Global change will occur and, at the national level, competitive advantage will be a major driver, such as for China with their continuing drive to use energy more efficiently to create wealth – something that usually happens with most developing economies.

The mechanism of global change?. Simple really, common sense. If we can make desirable changes cost effective and convenient, they will happen. If we can also make them fashionable, they will happen faster .

As far as China is concerned, I know several people who have decided to avoid ‘made in china’ products as much as possible. You could do worse than to campaign for better ‘country of origin’ or ‘carbon footprint’ labelling on products. So even if ‘mass movement local action’ won’t work in places like China, the effects of mass movement action in the West may well impact on China.

As far as post-Compenhagen ‘mechanisms’, my guess is that ‘world wide agreement’ isn’t actually necessary – a handful of countries emit the vast majority of GHGs and even if only some of them undertook strong action to reduce emissions, there would quickly be immense pressure on others to go along. Any kind of politics that leads to a carbon price in one country (eg in the US) will have to restrict ‘freeloading’ by others. Call it a carbon tariff or whatever sounds good, but that is the alternative to the Copenhagen style ‘global agreement’ mechanism.

I don’t think we know in detail what a climate change friendly economy will look like. Nor do we need to at this stage. What needs to happen is for carbon to be made as expensive in monetary price as it is in the damage it is doing to our future. That, plus perhaps some regulation as necessary, will direct creative technological drive to alternative energy development. Precisely where that will take us remains to be seen, but there is plenty of evidence that we can make a decarbonised economy work. We would in any case have to some time in the future even if we could safely go on burning fossil fuels, since they are a finite resource. Activist energy is best directed at emphasising the urgent seriousness of global warming, opposing “siren voices” and insisting that governments do what they need to do to price fossil fuel energy out of the market, whether by cap and trade or taxation or both. I hope it won’t take major disaster to achieve a turnaround, but Rob’s fears may be justified.

The inundation of Miami and Shanghai might just do it, but many millions will have already died in the undeveloped world by then.

Of course there is all this legalistic discussion about binding targets of emissions cuts needing to be at this or that percentage and high-minded talk of moving to a low Carbon future (whatever that actually means).

I would like to see someone explain exactly what a Climate Change friendly society really means. For example would people likely be using aeroplanes to travel around the world as often as they now do?

I would also like to know what mechanism Climate Change campaingners believe will be successful in achieving the sort of world wide agreement necessary given the fact that Copenhagen has shown how the current approach is unworkable and mass movement local action won’t really work in places like China anytime soon.

It seems a big problem that needs to be overcome is China’s reluctance to deal with this issue.

What strategies do Climate Change activists have in dealing with this? The sort of a ‘Make Poverty History-style mass public campaign to pressure politicians’ that Miliband suggests tend to be frowned upon and actively ‘discouraged’ by the Chinese Communist Party.

I can only surmise why there is so much opposition to the science. I don’t share it and can’t say I understand it. I’m not a scientist, but ordinary intellectual respect requires me to take such widely supported science seriously. Evidently that is not the case with some. And I’m unrepentant in welcoming Milband’s warnings about denialism, however much his political practice may fall short.