How to direct the continuing investments that will be necessary in buildings, transport, industrial processes and energy systems towards low carbon technologies?

Hard climate targets with firm dates

Tim Flannery nailed it when he reflected that one of the obstacles to decisive action on climate change is that the whole idea of global warming has become a cliché even before it has been understood.

There are many ways to interpret this, ...

In my last entry I took a page from the Weather Makers, and cited Tim Flannery’s observation that one of the obstacles to decisive action on climate change is that the whole idea of global warming has become a cliché even before it has been understood.

My example of a cliché was the Kyoto protocol, which people talk about without really paying attention to. Kyoto is largely just a symbol of our feelings about global warming, rather than an indication that we’re ...

No one can have failed to notice the shift in public perception of climate change in the past few months: the scientific debate, dangerously prolonged, is truly over. But this is not in itself a victory for those who are struggling to avert planetary disaster (as I’m sure most readers are well aware). Before there is anything to celebrate, we’ll ...

One of the biggest problems with offsetting is ensuring ‘additionality’ – proving that the offsets that you are buying in order to counterbalance your carbon emissions would not have happened without yours and other similar contributions. Often the projects sound intrinsically worthwhile – protecting threatened original forest, supporting conversion to renewable energy, installing low energy light bulbs, etc. – and ...

Something that worries many people about offsetting emissions with trees is how can you guarantee that they will last long enough? Trees take time to absorb carbon, extracting it slowly from the atmosphere as they grow. But saplings are vulnerable to bad weather, neglect and damage by animals. Older woodlands and forests face the risk of fire, pests and disease, ...

If climate change is primarily the result of burning fossil fuels isn’t offsetting with trees simply a distraction? Shouldn’t we focus on renewable energy projects that can replace the use of fossil fuel?

Every Thursday night, like every other householder in our neighborhood, I collect our waste paper, cans, bottles and plastic and put them out on the street outside our house. On Friday morning a local municipal truck comes by and collects it for recycling. I pay for this service through my taxes. Apart from some gripes about the efficiency of the ...