Category: Climate politics

There she goes, my beautiful world

IanMcEwansmall.jpg Ian McEwan is one of my favourite writers. By chance, whilst reading George Monbiot’s latest offering in the Guardian this morning, I stumbled on a link to an essay by McEwan welcoming Barack Obama, outlining the considerable climate policy challenge he (and we) face. The world’s last chance is a superb summary of the current situation, and a masterful piece of writing. Any article that starts like this deserves a read:

‘I refute it thus!” was Samuel Johnson’s famous, beefy riposte one morning after church in 1763. As he spoke, according to his friend James Boswell, he kicked “with mighty force” a large stone “till he rebounded from it”. The good doctor was contesting Bishop Berkeley’s philosophical idealism, the view that the external, physical world does not exist and is the product of the mind. It was never much of a disproof, but we can sympathise with its sturdy common sense and physical display of Anglo-Saxon, if not Anglican, pragmatism.

Still, we may have proved Berkeley partially correct; in an age of electronic media, where rumour, opinion and fact are tightly interleaved, and where politicians must sing to compete for our love, public affairs have the quality of a waking dream, a collective solipsism whose precise connection to the world of kickable stones is obscure, though we are certain that it exists.

His take on the state of play echoes mine (and Monbiot’s), but he puts it much better than I (or Monbiot) ever will:

Within the climate science community there is a faction darkly murmuring that it is already too late. The more widely held view is hardly more reassuring: we have less than eight years to start making a significant impact on CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, eight years to move from Berkeley’s solipsism to Johnson’s pragmatism. Thereafter, as tipping points are reached, as feedback loops strengthen, the emissions curve will rise too quickly for us to restrain it. In the words of John Schellnhuber, one of Europe’s leading climate scientists and chief scientific adviser to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, “what is required is an industrial revolution for sustainability, starting now”.

If you read nothing else today, read this. And the Monbiot’s worth a look too, as is the Nick Cave title reference…

[Title reference]

Woodman, spare that tree (foresters attitudes to the ETS)

pine.gif As one would expect from a rurally based sector, foresters are a conservative lot. I don’t say that disrespectfully, because societies – for the sake of stability – need a balanced mixture of change-makers and change-resisters. But it did mean that, when in 1989 I started work on Climate Change and forestry, I met with considerable opposition: “what bullshit is this? The climate has ALWAYS changed. Nature is self-balancing.” And so on, you’ve heard it all before.
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Knock on wood

pine.gif Rumblings about the forestry industry’s disappointment with the “suspension” of the ETS have not been slow to surface, but as I’m no expert on the business (though I do like trees) I asked well-known forestry consultant Piers Maclaren if he could provide Hot Topic’s readers with an overview of what’s going on. I must have asked nicely, because within hours he’d supplied an excellent – and forthright – article to post (see above). For those who don’t know Piers, here’s a brief (self-penned) CV:

Piers Maclaren remembers the time he first became aware of the issue of global warming: it was at a student meeting in 1970. Over the years, he came to realise how intractable this problem was, but it wasn’t until 1989 that he had the opportunity – as a scientist working at the Forest Research Institute, Rotorua – to actually work on it. He devised a way to calculate the nation’s carbon budget for forestry, and this yielded a figure that overwhelmed carbon from other sectors.

He has written over 100 scientific papers, attended numerous international meetings, and reviewed all four IPPC reports. He was science advisor to the Minister for the Environment (Hon Simon Upton) at the first Conference of the Parties in Berlin in 1995. He now works as an independent forestry consultant dealing with a wide range of issues, including climate change. He’s read – and strongly approved of – Gareth’s book on climate change “Hot Topic”.

In other words, he speaks with some authority.. 😉 His take on forestry and the ETS is essential reading.

Two worlds collide

On the one hand, we have Brian Fallow in the Herald providing a cogent analysis of the new government’s decision to do a deal with ACT and put a carbon tax back on the table:

In any case it represents further delay and uncertainty to follow the three years wasted as the previous Government failed to muster the parliamentary numbers for a carbon tax, and the three more as it designed and finally passed an emissions trading scheme. Act’s proposed terms of reference, perhaps deliberately, are a recipe for interminable further delay and uncertainty.

On the other, we have former ACT MP Muriel Newman explaining her thinking in the NBR:

First, the move to pass legislation to delay the implementation of the emissions trading scheme and to repeal the ban on thermal electricity generation is sensible.

Second, while the plan to hold a select committee inquiry is a good step in the right direction, it is crucial that it allows the opportunity for a wider debate on the scientific evidence in support of, or against, the existence of anthropogenic global warming. The review must also, as a priority, hold a proper investigation in the way that the Kyoto Protocol deals with agriculture.

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Care of environment could be good for jobs

When the Greens announced Labour as their preferred partner for any post-election negotiations John Key was quick with the accusation that the Greens in government would mean environmental policies would have precedence, that jobs would be sold down the river and that economic growth would be on the backburner.

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