I lobbied the Prime Ministers Special Inquiry on Climate Change promoting an investment based scenario, evidencing the trillion$ of bricks and mortar players… and why C&C is the vehicle for effective climate management.

Kyoto is to little to late. It is a poor metaphor for a problem’s solution. It will not serve to fix what is broken. (and hasnt so far, the candle keeps on burning)

C&C, (see http://www.gci.org.uk) is the only tractable solution put up so far that can at least model realistically ‘alternative scenarios’. Now thats a start.

If intergenerational equity is the destination then C&C is the roadmap.

Tom (and Mark):
Kyoto is one part of the solution to the environmental impasse we have reached. It was never intended as the be-all-and-end-all. Kyoto stops at 2012 by mandate. Nobody expects the problem to be sorted by then.

Last year France promoted a proposal by Brasil to tax “rich” nations for the ecosystem services provided by a group of “poor” nations. The Coalition for Rainforest Nations (http://www.rainforestcoalition.org/eng/) is a formal organisation that takes this concept a little further. The concept makes sense. Its a means of leveraging (some) developing countries into climate negotiations.

But as Brian Cohen said, “you’re all individuals”. It IS up to each of us. Maybe we can all seek a little more happyness and read the “Happy Planet Index”.

Doing this also provided an incentive for polluters to migrate to countries that didn’t have to cut pollution levels.

The EU are giving away more carbon credits than there industry can use.

I think technological solutions need to be looked at - nobody is going to cut there standard of living.

Very well stated.

The problems which come from people (and countries) who say things like:

“What I do won’t make any difference.”
“I’ll make the most of it while I still can …”
“Why should I (have to) do this when others don’t ?”
“They won’t notice if I just … ”
“I don’t have time to … ”
“It’s too late anyway so it won’t matter if I …”
“There is no proof that …”
“God won’t allow this to happen.”
“This is just a natural cycle. The world is coming out of an iceage.”
“We have a responsibility to our shareholders to… ”
“Our customers need … at an affordable price.”
“If we … jobs will be lost.”
AND the wonderful “one track mind” comment of sagenz (above)

are going to take a lot of (patient) education, thought and resources to deal with.

This is an ongoing job for all of us, collectively and individually, at all levels in all areas and in a variety of ways … often/always leading by example.

eredwen

Theye should be paying for the costs and inconvenience incurred by others (e.g. increased insurance costs, reloaction and other mitigation).

Perhaps you need to get a grip on reality. business will adjust. the world will still boom. and environmentalists will still cry wolf.

Perhaps you need to get a grip on reality. business will adjust. the world will still boom. and environmentalists will still cry wolf.

I have a question, for any helpful and informed person: during the negotiation of the Kyoto protocol, were any ideas were mooted around inviting developing countries in and simultaneously compensating them? ie compensating them in recognition of their development status and for the hardship of more expensive energy, fuel, material etc.

Because it seems that a major downside (in terms of CO2 emissions, not necessarily in terms of goals for poverty, development, wealth, etc) of leaving out developing countries is their impending industrialisation and development along the same energy- and environmentally- inefficient lines as the Western countries. Sure, not exactly the same path (since oil will be more expensive than the Western countries grew up on) but an inefficient path nonetheless in terms of carbon emissions. We all agree that adjustment to a cleaner more efficient way of living will be difficult for NZ, and by adopting Kyoto and thus influencing price signals could the developing countries not avoid this trap? Perhaps some contract of compensating them in exchange for joining Kyoto would be the best way to get them (and thus possibly the USA) on board and provide the best chance of making real cuts to CO2 emissions.

One, more general question - does anyone know where to find a good ‘potted history’ of the Kyoto protocol? eg who the early drivers were, what arguments were tossed around, etc

(In more somber moments) it strikes me that this whole process - the realisation of the Co2 problem, and the evolution of the international response to it - would be fascinating to watch, (from a social-science, political, economic point of view)… were it not so deadly serious.

It’s surely the biggest “collective action problem”, or prisoner’s dilemma, in the history of humanity. The costs to getting it wrong are so massive
*the destructiveness and costliness of more fluctuating weather patterns,
*the end of international stability as wars over resources and land intensify,
*sunset on potential progress on global poverty,
*the destruction of natural environments and species…
And the mix of actors is exceedingly complicated
*some with more to lose than others,
*each government guided by different internal political systems,
*each national population with different information about the parameters of the problem,
*each national population with a different capacity to take on board information about the problem, via different education systems, media systems, social structures, etc

And finally, our international institutions for solving collective action problems are weak, and have struggled to solve much simpler problems in the past. Take the invasion of Iraq as an example. One desirable goal which requires international co-operation is “peace between nations” - freedom from being attacked…. (I presume this is articulated officially somewhere, after all what is the security council for?), but the UN completely failed to prevent Iraq being invaded.

If I were running the Milky Way betting agency, I would have very short odds on
* virtually no CO2 reduction,
* small and very costly reductions when they do belatedly occur,
* massive increases in poverty and environmental problems,
* and a dispersal of citizens from powerful nations across the globe to wherever is comfortable to live.
And I’m sure many people agree with me. Of these many people, it seems that what separates Greens and spineless losers is their willingness to try and beat these odds. So I’d like to add my vote to Eredwen and Joy with “we must try”

Waste minimisaton would be a start.

Let’s get serious about understanding the over-consumption is the biggest part of the Kyoto committments.

If we decreased unneccessary consumption (at a cost to producers of unneccessary crap, but who cares…) there would be a lot less to be worried about on the homefront “coalface” of individuals trying to work out what Kyoto limits apply to them personally.

More public transport, efficent energy use and insulation of houses, more re-use and recycling, reducing waste in packaging and distribution of product to consumers, these are all aspects that no-one talks about becasue they want to do the whole “plant 5 trees so I can still use my SUV” trip.

During the school holidays, I drove around the country a bit with my kids. The contrast between leaving town and returning after the floods was enormous, and I found myself snorting “and these people deny climate change?” as I passed through borough and district council areas where there was definitely no impetus to call the unusual weather events of the past ten years a new trend, rather than a “100-year weather event”, for which changes in flood management techniques might be necessary.

Rebuilding homes in flood-prone areas is going to be impossible soon, as the insureres are starting to fight back against the inertia of climate-change denial. This is going to hurt a lot of small people far more than it hurts the government, the local bodies, the earthquake and natural disasters commission, or any other official entity. The powers that be need to start to get honest with the people living in their jurisdictions, and admit that the environmental situation has got away on them, and they’re not in control of the flooding potential of their districts.

It’s got beyond apocalyptic “people are gonna die” statements, to the level where people are seeing their re-built houses (from the floods two years ago) vanishing before their eyes into a similar lake of brown water. Farming in some marginal areas is going to be difficult, verging on “walk-off-the-land” impossible, under these conditions.
I am one of a generation of children who left their rural roots to qualify for city jobs, and I shudder to think how the families that stayed in my old district are coping, with roads compromised and sometimes electricity and telephone cut off or intermittent.

We have become a society based in urban experience, but this is not where 80% of the land is, despite 25-30% of the population living in Auckland. Rural services are stretched to breaking point by these types of weather events, but the answer from those in charge of budgets in the capital is more likely to be “get a committee together” than re-resourcing rural civil defense and rescue budgets as a matter of course.

Now, if one of our answers was not to plant forestry, but to re-generate native bush, as permanent reserve (ie: increasing the crown native forest reserves) then we might be starting to make a difference. How about starting with some of the slip-prone gullies that fall into rivers and create flooding in the first place?

Investing in forestry will only add to environmental problems as they will ultimately add to the increasing levels of carbon when they are eventually felled. Tree planting creats a short term solution and often has other environmental impacts through fast growing cash crops replacing indigenous forests, negatively changing soil conditions and damaging the economies of local communities by tying up land use.

Planting trees also provides an excuse for continuing environmental damage.

The only real course of action to have a lasting effect is for countries to bite the bullet and make the hard decisions to stop our depedence on fossil fuels!