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Managing director of Ebono Institute and major sponsor of The Generator, Geoff Ebbs, is running against Kevin Rudd in the seat of Griffith at the next Federal election. By the expression on their faces in this candid shot it looks like a pretty dull campaign. Read on

  • Green energy scheme is a fraud

     

    The threat highlights the risks hanging over $30 billion of expected investment needed to reach a target of obtaining 20 per cent of power from renewable sources by 2020.

    The managing director of AGL, Michael Fraser, said the Government’s approach was a fraud that threatened the industry’s ability to meet the target.

    To encourage investment, energy companies receive renewable energy certificates in return for building green power stations. But the value of these certificates has almost halved, from near $60 to about $30 since the Government began issuing them to consumers who install solar hot water systems and other products that do not generate power.

    Because of the price fall, Mr Fraser said, plans to build the $800 million Macarthur wind farm in Victoria were under enormous pressure. The project is expected to create 500 jobs during construction and Mr Fraser said up to seven other wind farms being considered were also under threat.

    The only new wind farms AGL would definitely build were those required under contracts to supply power to desalination plants for the Victorian and South Australian governments.

    ”Beyond that, you simply won’t see us invest until this issue gets resolved,” Mr Fraser said.

    A spokeswoman for the Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, said a Council of Australian Governments review of certificate prices was expected this month. The spokeswoman acknowledged prices had been affected by the uptake of solar water heaters but said uncertainty about the ETS was understood to be lowering prices.

    Yesterday Mr Rudd ruled out boosting reduction targets to more than 25 per cent, which might enable the Government to reach common ground with the Greens’ more ambitious goals.

    Amid calls from the Australian Aluminium Council and Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry for more delays to a scheme, Mr Rudd said the Government’s approach had not wavered. ”Some will oppose it, others will support it. But it’s clear cut,” he said.

    The Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, has written to Mr Rudd, asking him to commission and release further Treasury modelling on the impact of an ETS, after previous modelling had assumed a global trading system.

    Mr Abbott appeared to signal that the Opposition would oppose attempts to increase emissions reductions targets beyond 5 per cent.

  • A CLIMATE CON- ANALYSIS OF “COPENHAGEN ACCORD

     

    QUOTE: “I think that our prime minister has played an outstanding role … He’s been working very hard for the last few months… and he’s just been fantastic all the way, he just shines at it… he’s been really important through these meetings”. Tim Flannery, ABC News, 19 February 2009

    WHAT IS IN THE ACCORD

    The Copenhagen Accord could not be further from what civil society, along with most developing countries sought to achieve at this conference. There is no Fair, Ambitious and legally-Binding deal.

    Instead it is a non-legally-binding three page document, drafted by United States, China, India, Brazil, Ethiopia and South Africa that says little beyond what had been discussed at previous international meetings.

    Yet US President Obama and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd both held press conferences announcing the accord before it had been completed and attempted to spin the document as a historic achievement.

    But the Conference of the Parties [COP15] at Copenhagen decided only to “take note” of its existence and some countries including Tuvalu strongly repudiated the document. The COP15 agreed to continue negotiating on an extension to the Kyoto Protocol and a new agreement on “long-term cooperative action.” The next full meeting is scheduled for late November in Mexico.

    The specifics of the accord include:

    Dangerous support for two degrees “We agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required according to science, and … with a view to reduce global emissions so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius, and take action to meet this objective consistent with science and on the basis of equity.” It entrenches further the dangerous goal of two degrees, with the goal of 1.5 degrees, now supported by over 100 countries, only given lip service in the final paragraph which discusses a review of the accord.

    No peak emissions target: just says emissions should “peak as soon as possible”.

    No 2020 targets: the accord will just list voluntary targets by developed and developing countries, in Annexes to the accord. Countries are asked to provide their target by February 1. So there are no binding targets, just a totting up up of country promises and not even a target or goal for 2050. Based on current assessments of country promises the 2020 targets will head us towards 3.5-4 degrees, which would be a catastrophe.

    No 2050 targets: there is no reference to any 2050 targets.

    Markets: statement supports using a variety of methods for pollution cuts, “including opportunities to use markets”

    Adaptation and deforestation: General statements about need for adaptation, development and end to deforestation. There is no concrete deal on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, although this may be a good thing as the direction was towards offset loopholes.

    Financing for Developing world: “commitment by developed countries is to provide new and additional resources, including forestry and investments through international institutions, approaching US $30 billion for the period 2010 – 2012.” “A goal of mobilizing jointly US $100 billion dollars a year by 2020”, “Funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance.” Statements by US negotiators including Hillary Clinton implied that you needed to “associate” yourself with the accord to be eligible for funds. The funds could also explain why many countries subsequently and prior to the accord very critical have acquiesced in its creation.

    The promises of finances are woefully small, much lower than the demands of developing countries and civil society groups. For example, the African countries had sought sought $400 billion in short term financing, with an immediate amount of $150 billion. In the longer term they say 5% of developed country GNP is needed (approx. $2 trillion)

    Governance of finance: Creation of a Copenhagen Green Climate Fund. The accord also suggests funding can be delivered through “international institutions” possibly code for the World Bank and IMF and the promise of a new fund. Civil society had campaigned for funds to be administered by the UN.

    Technology: decided to create a Technology Mechanism to accelerate technology development, but with no further details.

    1.5 degrees delayed: assessment of accord by 2015 including scientific need for 1.5 degrees.

    The only possible concrete achievement of the whole conference was the refusal to include carbon, capture and storage within the Clean Development Mechanism, staving off another loophole for rich countries to keep on polluting.

    ANALYSIS

    The United States won. Killing the Kyoto Protocol (KP) as the primary international climate policy instrument has been their intent for years, so the impasse which flared at COP15 has deep roots on the long road to Copenhagen .

    In early October, US climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing announced: “We are not going to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. That is out”.

    The USA set out to destroy it at COP15, actively supported by the Annex 1 bloc, with Australia in the lead behind close doors. Obama’s climate position was described by Bill McKibben of 350.org as a “A lie inside a fib coated with spin”.

    Developing nations accused Australia of “trying to kill Kyoto “. Australia appeared to be saying one thing in public and another privately, with the chief negotiator for China and the small African nations accusing Rudd of lying to the Australian people about his position on climate change.

    Months ago the G-77, a loose coalition of 130 developing nations, accused the US and other developed countries of trying to “fundamentally sabotage” the Kyoto Protocol (KP).

    They were right in their fears. Instead of enforceable targets in an updated KP, the Copenhagen Accord (CA) contains only voluntary, non-binding, self-assessing targets which amount to “pick a figure, any figure, and do what you like with it” because you will face no penalty for blowing it.

    COP15 failed because the US and the major economic powers did not want the KP renewed and the climate action movements within those nations did not have the power to stop them behaving this way. China appeared not to care too much what happened one way or the other. With central planning of their booming green/climate sector, they have no need of global agreements or carbon prices to drive their industry policy; they may even have a competitive advantage in seeing the process fail.

    Climate multilateralism may already be dead. It is reported that US officials were boasting privately that they are “controlling the lane”. Most developing nations are deeply unhappy that the CA is outside the climate convention framework, but they were bribed to sign on by the USA with threats that poor nations who refused would loose their share of the $100 billion that rich countries have (theoretically) pledged to compensate for climate impacts the rich countries themselves have caused. Unless every country agrees to the US terms, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton explained, “there will not be that kind of a [financial] commitment, at least from the United States.”

    The majority COP participants — the world’s small and poor nations — were well supported by the activist movement in making heard their views about historic responsibility and the scientific imperative for deep emissions cuts, undertaken first and foremost by the developed world. At COP15, those poor nations embarrassed the rich, who have a powerful interest in a new voluntary international climate agreement without the need of the formal support of the developing nations, who will not accede to a suicide pact.

    So the big polluters have reason to move the real decision-making out of the UN forums, and with the CA having exactly that status, the major emitters have an opportunity to keep it there (while leaning on the UNFCCC Secretariat to do the office work).

    What happened at Copenhagen is probably the start of a process where the real politics of international climate policy-making becomes the perogative of the G20, and similar forums, where the big developed and emerging polluters can pretend to save the world (by talking 2-degree targets) while acting for 3-to-4-degree targets, and selling that as a success at home without those pesky developing nations causing trouble.

    The suicidal assumption of the rich nations is that those with money can adapt to 3 degrees or more. This delusion is strongly built into the current debate at every level, from government and business to many of the NGOs in their advocacy and support for actions that are a long way short of what is required for 2 degrees, let alone a safe climate.

    What has happened exposes the smouldering contradiction at heart of the international process: while the science leads to 0-to-1-degree targets , the large emitters refuse to commit to actions that will leads to less than 3-to-4 degrees because it challenges their “business-as-usual”, corporate-dominated approach. The best commitments on the table at COP15 would produce a 3.9-degree rise by 2100.

    For years, the “2-degree fudge” has been developing: countries could (and continue to) talk 2 degrees so long as they don’t have to commit to enforceable actions consistent with a 2-degree target (and they haven’t had to do that since 1997!). This contradiction has been obvious for years: from Stern to Garnaut, who were both explicit in saying that 3 degrees was the best that could be achieved politically, because doing more would be too economically disruptive. Even at Bali two years ago, the supposed 2 degree emissions reduction range for Annex 1 nations of 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020 was relegated to a footnote.

    Even as they propose actions which will lead to 4 degrees, they still talk 2 degrees. That is Rudd’s strategy.

    And we know that 2 degrees is not a safe target, but a catastrophe. The research tells us that a 2-degree warming will initiate large climate feedbacks on land and in the oceans, on sea-ice and mountain glaciers and on the tundra, taking the Earth well past significant tipping points. Likely impacts include large-scale disintegration of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice-sheets; sea-level rises; the extinction of an estimated 15 to 40 per cent of plant and animal species; dangerous ocean acidification and widespread drought, desertification and malnutrition in Africa, Australia, Mediterranean Europe, and the western USA.

    As Postdam Institute Director Schellnhuber, who is a scientific advisor to the EU and to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, points out, on sea levels alone, a 2 degree rise in temperature will be catastrophic: “Two degrees … means sea level rise of 30 to 40 meters over maybe a thousand years. Draw a line around your coast — probably not a lot would be left.”

    Recently-published research on climate history shows that three million years ago — in the last period when carbon dioxide levels were sustained at levels close to where they are today — “there was no icecap on Antarctica and sea levels were 25 to 40 metres higher,” features associated with temperatures about 3 to 6 degrees higher than today.

    COP15 shows that international processes cannot produce outcomes substantially better than the sum of the national commitments of major players, and in the present case a lot worse. On the latest science and carbon budgets to 2050, none of the Annex 1 countries have committed themselves to actions consistent with even a 2-degree target, so it is unrealistic to think/hope they would do so collectively in the short term, and until the domestic balances of forces change.

    It is a challenge to see how they could come back in a year and make serious, legally-binding 2-degree commitments at COP16 in November in Mexico, since on equal per capita emission rights to 2050, the carbon budget for 2 degrees demands Australia and USA go to zero emissions by 2020, Europe before 2030. By dumping the multilateral approach, they have a way of avoiding that embarrassment.

    We cannot blame the COP15 process for this disaster. Australia did not go to COP15 with even a 2-degree commitment on the table, for which we share responsibility. Those NGOs who tied Australian action (and the CPRS) to a successful COP15 outcome have shot themselves (and us) in the foot. The struggle now returns to the national stage.

    There are disturbing parallels in the approaches some advocacy groups took to both the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) and Australia’s role at COP15: deliberately and systematically avoiding the conclusions from the most recent science and instead advocating a soft, incremental, ‘business-as-usual” approach to policy-making. And that’s what we got from Obama. By continuing to play the game of the 2-degree fudge, the talks were structured to fail, even with a “good outcome”.

    Urging world leaders to get together again ASAP is pointless at present with the current framing of the debate and the balance of forces, because we will only get more of the same. The dilemma is as gross as it is simple: the G77 will never accept a 3-degree deal, Annex 1 won’t commit to actions consistent with a 2-degree enforceable target, and only a a safe climate target of close to a zero-degree increase will keep the planet liveable for all people and all nations.

    Here in Australia, the problem we face is obvious. In 2010, much of debate is likely to be framed between no action (federal opposition/deniers) and incremental action (Labor/some eNGOs), and it is murky because both the CPRS and the Copenhagen Accord which are indefensible will be used by the opposition to whack Labor, while the Climate Institute and its NGO associates will dutifully spend the year mine-sweeping for Rudd.

    How do we define and move the debate to occupy the space between incrementalism and the large, urgent, economy-wide transformations that the science demands? We can only start by putting the science first and not negotiating with planet, recognising that politics-as-usual solutions are now dead and that only heroic, emergency action has a chance of succeeding. The time for dinky, incremental policy steps has run out: it’s not all or nothing, and we must be saying so loud and clear at every opportunity and organising and gathering popular support around the only strategy that can actually succeed.

    It’s the 1936 moment in Britain: appeasement or urgent mobilisation, Chamberlin or Churchill.

    http://climatecodered.blogspot.com/2009/12/climate-con-analysis-of-copenhagen.html

    CarbonEquity www.carbonequity.info info@carbonequity.info 0417070099 –^^————————————————————— This email was sent to: gothic@johnjames.com.au EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?b1dufG.cc1RLt.Z290aGlj Or send an email to: carbonequityproject-unsubscribe@topica.com

  • The Copenhagen farce is glad tidings for us all

     

    Watts was reporting a conversation she had had with an unnamed “European negotiator” after South Africa decided to join the quartet of America, India, China and Brazil in putting its name to a statement rejecting any binding emissions targets, and thus comprehensively sabotaging the entire conference. “South Africa has signed up to this!” the delegate told Watts. “They’re going to fry — and they’ll deserve it.”

    One’s heart does not warm to anyone expressing such sentiments, but it’s easy to understand the fury that must have overcome this delegate. Here was Europe offering to impose vast costs on its own industries and peoples to save Africa from the alleged perils of runaway CO2 emissions — and that continent’s most powerful international voice says, thanks very much for the offer, but we think we can best provide health and prosperity to our people by being free to expand our economy exactly as you did in the industrial revolution, by using the wonderfully cheap forms of energy that nature affords: fossil fuels. After all, why is it that in the US many fewer people die as a result of very high temperatures than used to be the case a hundred years ago? Air-conditioning.

    I know that for those thousands of “climate activists” who descended on Copenhagen, the idea of air-conditioning in African homes is something almost too revolting to contemplate; but then they have never understood that, for the real inhabitants of the developing world, the American example of achieving health and comfort through technology and subverting harsh nature for human ends is something to be emulated, not shunned.

    The climate catastrophists naturally insist that if the developing countries — notably China and India — follow the American path, the planet will become uninhabitable. The most quoted expression of this came in 2004 from Britain’s chief government scientist then, Sir David King, when he said that if we did not act to reduce our carbon emissions, by the end of the century Antarctica would be the world’s only habitable continent.

    Even if you share King’s view of what some of the climate models project in terms of anthropogenic CO2’s effect on global temperatures, his apparent belief that man is completely unable to adapt to a changing environment suggests that, whatever his claims as a scientist, he knows next to nothing about either human nature or history.

    Unfortunately for those in the same camp as King, the leak of lethally embarrassing emails from the world’s foremost academic climate research unit, at the University of East Anglia, confirmed the suspicions of roughly half the British population, that too much political faith had been placed in the omniscience of a small group of scientists.

    The most interesting of those leaked emails came from Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. After observing — this was an email dated October 12, 2009 — that in freezing Boulder, “We have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record … it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F”, Trenberth turned to the fact that the planet’s average temperature over the past 10 years seemed to have been static and wrote: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of global warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” Two days later he reiterated: “We cannot account for what is happening in the climate system.”

    Asked last week by the BBC about these emails, King would say only that their leak and publication in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit had to be the work of some malign national agency (the CIA? The Russians?). Since we know that a Briton with Asperger’s syndrome, working on a domestic dial-up internet connection, managed to hack into the Pentagon’s most secret codes, King’s insistence that only a national agency could have hacked into a non-secure academic research unit’s emails seems as sensible as the assertion that we must all plan to settle in Antarctica. Even if he is right that UEA’s emails were put in the public domain as a result of theft, he deserves as much respect for his reaction as any MP whose only response to the leak of Commons expenses claims had been that the newspaper that bought the disc with all the information had broken the law. As a matter of fact, no MP was quite so arrogant.

    King’s old boss, Tony Blair, turned up in Copenhagen to give his take on the leaked emails. The former prime minister declared that they did not lessen by one jot what he called “the need for action” and added: “It is said that the science around climate change is not as certain as its proponents allege. It doesn’t need to be.” Blair is clearly not troubled by irony, since this approach is exactly the one that got us into such a mess over Saddam Hussein’s suppositious biological threat. The actual evidence was tenuous at the time — but to persuade the public of the need for action, Blair was prepared to say that it was watertight. For weapons of mass destruction, read weather of mass destruction.

    Blair now argues that even if the science is less clear than is claimed by the climate catastrophists, we have to act because of the risks to humanity if their worst fears turn out to be well founded. This would make perfect sense if there were no risks attached to what he calls “action”, just as it would if there had been no lives put at risk by attacking Iraq. In fact, there are vast costs involved in the war against weather, which could actually cost lives. The highly respected climate economist Professor Richard Tol, a senior member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has said that the CO2 tax required to bring emissions down to the levels demanded by the IPCC would reduce global GDP by an amount that would equate — in 2100 — to $40 trillion (£25 trillion) a year. It’s pretty obvious, really: just as cheap energy has transformed the lives of millions for the better, it follows that reversing the process would have an opposite effect.

    Carbon cap and trade, recommended by the EU as an alternative to tax, has its own malign effect. Just ask the 1,700 employees being made redundant at Corus’s steel plant in Redcar. The owners of Corus could receive up to $375m (£230m) in carbon credits for laying off those British workers. Then, if they switch production to a so-called clean Indian steel plant, Corus could also receive millions of dollars annually from the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism fund. The net effect of all that on the environment could be safely estimated as zero.

    Gordon Brown, who seems to be embarking on a scorched earth economic policy in his final months in power, evidently regards this as worth it — he wants to go down in history as the man who saved the climate. Yet this government — or the next one — has been given a golden opportunity by the farce in Copenhagen: to abandon the carbon witch hunt altogether. If India, China, America, Brazil (and Uncle Tom Cobley and all) carry on with “business as usual”, then anything Europe does to cut its emissions is irrelevant, at best: it will cause pain and hardship for its own citizens to no purpose whatever.

    So let’s toast the negotiators of Copenhagen. By failing so spectacularly, they have presented us with a wonderful Christmas present. All we have to do is open it.

  • What happens to us when the Earth is 2 degrees warmer

     

    • Most coastal cities such as London, Rome and New York would become uninhabitable for many. Metros would be flooded, sewage and stormwater flows would be overwhelmed, and most cable infrastructure would be affected. More drastically, most docks would be underwater so that food and oil could not be landed, even if it could be loaded onto the ships in the first place.
    • Enormous areas of the most productive agricultural land would be underwater. One thinks immediately of Bangladesh and the North Sea farms in Holland and Anglesea. In addition frequent floods, droughts and storms would cause sever losses every year. The reduction in food production would be so severe that half the world’s population would be hungry or starving.
    • The alteration in the cold water flow that drives the great deep-sea currents of the world would have a profound impact on the Gulf Stream, with completely unpredictable results. The eastern US and Europe may become hotter or colder or more storm-ridden. No matter which, the outcome spells serious changes for some of the most advanced cultures on earth.
    • Decreased availability and quality of fresh water bring hardship to between 1.2bn and 3bn people in almost every country. The Red Cross has said that it does not expect international aid to be able to keep up with the impact of climate change.
    • Suburbia would break down, for shopping and income are dependent on the motor car and the truck – to get to shops and offices and to transport food to centralised shopping malls.
    • Transportation will be limited as deliveries of oil become more difficult. Paved roads will go unrepaired and potholed and blocked by abandoned cars.
    • Repair of existing plant and machinery will become increasingly difficult as spare parts are used up and the industrial infrastructure declines. Those who can remember how they lived in the Depression years of the 1930s will be the experts.
    • The bankruptcy of the insurance industry would diminish replacement of industry and houses from fire and extreme events.
    • Lastly, and most significantly for a world that is now awash in guns, people, in their millions, will be on the move for survival. This would lead to economic and political instability, both nationally and internationally, and even to wars as refugees seek new homes and countries clash over scarce water and food supplies. The industrial countries would be under immense pressure from huge numbers of refugees

    This is the future that we are bequeathing our children and ourselves if any of us are younger than eighty. This is happening in our times, to our families and loved ones, and is no longer a distant scenario. It is here.

    Those who live in the country will be better prepared than those who live in the city. A city is a place that consumes a great deal and produces little, at least in terms of essentials. A city without incoming food or water collapses rapidly, whereas a small community closely tied to the natural environment can more easily adjust to technological and economic change.

    It could spell extinction for most of us, and for the planet we love,
    and, of course it will be enormously worse when temperatures go above 2°C.

    We have very little time to act now. Governments must stop talking and start spending. We already have the technology to solve most of these problems and still meet our growing need for energy. We even have the money! We have to get government to act

  • Copenhagen climate conference: The grim meaning of ‘meaningful’

     

    The climate change summit had three big tickets on its agenda: emissions, financial assistance and the process going ahead. And on each of these counts the accord – which was effectively hammered out not by the whole conference, but rather by the US, India, China and South Africa – fell woefully short. There was no serious cementing of the positive noises on aid that had emerged earlier on in the week. On emissions, a clear-eyed vision for the distant future was rendered a pipe dream by outright fuzziness about the near term. And most alarmingly of all, there was no clear procedural roadmap to deliver the world from the impasse that this summit has landed it in. Outright failure to agree anything at all would have been very much worse, but that is about the best thing that can be said.

    The course of the summit as a whole – which moved from bold rhetoric, through blame games to eventual grudging concessions – was neatly epitomised in Barack Obama‘s flying visit. The newly-crowned Nobel laureate opened his brief speech in near-identical terms to those we recently deployed – in common with 56 newspapers worldwide – in a shared editorial which called on global leaders to do the right thing.

    Stating climate change was a frightening fact, the president pronounced his determination to act. Soon, however, he broke his own rhetorical spell by following his eloquent overture not with a magnanimous announcement, but with some none-too-subtle pointing of the finger at China. He may have been technically accurate in implying that it nowadays emitted more than the US, but this cheap point distracted from the reality that much of China’s – in any case low – per-head emissions are incurred in serving western consumers.

    Later on he stood back from the brink. First, by conceding some language on monitoring emissions which addressed China’s concerns about sovereignty, and secondly – at a late-night press conference – by making a nod towards UN scientists who have this week been warning that the offers tabled so far would set the mercury surging by a catastrophic 3C.

    Obama’s singular failure to raise the American game no doubt reflects his having one eye on the Senate, whom he still needs to persuade to enact his climate laws. Other leaders, however, proved equally unable to transcend parochialism when the crunch came.

    China’s premier Wen Jiabao used his own speech to harry the developed world to make good on the cash it has pledged to the poor, an important demand but one that would have carried more force if it had been married to the explicit acceptance that China will soon have to find the means to prove to a sceptical world that it will curb its emissions as it promises.

    Throughout the evening, Europe seemed bent on clinging to its trump card of increasing its emissions offer from a 20% to a 30% cut, refusing to think beyond the horse-trading that has been failing the climate for years.

    Only two years ago, the world’s leaders swore this would be the summit to build a new carbon order. The threadbare agreement thrashed out last night has not even laid the foundations. The progress on financial assistance over the fortnight is welcome, but with much of the money earmarked for climate adaptation, the global community is left resembling an alcoholic who has decided to save up for a liver transplant rather than give up drink.

    It is a sad tribute to collective failure that the all-important question at the end of Copenhagen is: what happens next?

  • Gutless,yes. But the planet’s future is no priority of ours.

     

    But it’s no use just blaming pusillanimous politicians. They should frighten their countries witless with the inconvenient truth – but there is a limit to how far ahead of their people any leader can go, elected or not. NGO protesters make much-needed noise, but they wouldn’t have to if most people were already with them.

    Consider the political problem here in the country we know – then multiply it by the world’s 193 sovereign states, all with their own internal rivalries and external foes. The question is whether governments have the power and consent to do the draconian things required. It is hard not to despair.

    Britain’s pollsters find people don’t list climate change among their top concerns. Many think the science is still in dispute. Why wouldn’t they when the maverick billionaires who control most of our press keep pumping out climate change denial day after day? The Mail, Express and Telegraph are unrelenting: “100 reasons why global warming is natural”; “EU and UN bosses have embraced environmentalism because it gives them the chance to undermine the nation state”. Ian Plimer, Richard Littlejohn, Lord Lawson and Christopher Booker churn out denial. This week the Taxpayers’ Alliance adds its own dose of Copenhagen poison, with tendentious allegations of green “rip-off” taxes costing £26bn. So how do you persuade only averagely interested voters that the mighty weight of scientific opinion believes calamity is almost certain?

    News editors yawned as Copenhagen failed: the good news that everyone can fly BA over the Christmas period knocked it off the lead. “Heavy snowfall causes disruption” took top slot above global warming talks yesterday on the BBC. So bored was the BBC with Copenhagen that an injunction not to give children watered-down wine knocked the talks off the top all Thursday.

    Walk around any supermarket noting the vegetables from Africa and South America. Feel the open fridges freeze you in the heat of the warm emporium, and it’s blindingly obvious that all this is not sustainable. Not the flying, not the city warmth billowing out so my geraniums no longer die in winter, nor the cars, nor the Christmas squandering and the sheer excess everywhere. Our grandchildren will not live like this – if they and their children survive. But cutting back looks beyond the power of politics.

    If politicians ask voters, “Do you sincerely want the planet to survive?” the answer is by no means obvious. Eat, drink, fly and be merry, hope for the best, cling to the comforting deniers. Imagining three generations ahead is a stretch. If voters cared about people drowning in Bangladesh, more aid would have been sent decades ago. If 20 million climate refugees arrive in boats, fend them off.

    Incoming Tory candidates when polled want less not more green action and less foreign aid. Hillary Clinton can promise £100bn a year by 2020 – but the OECD reckons that £23bn of the £50bn promised by rich to poorer countries at Gleneagles in 2005 will now never be paid. Cameron talks a bit green but with no sign of green taxes. Ed Miliband‘s seriousness has been admirable, saying openly that energy prices must rise. But Labour wasted most of its 12 years doing virtually nothing: neither Blair nor Brown as chancellor gave climate any priority.

    Look how hard it is to persuade our own country to change its ways. There are plentiful solutions. Energy prices should rise to make renewables profitable – but credits would have to go to half the population who couldn’t afford to heat their homes. Personal carbon trading was briefly promoted by David Miliband when in charge of environment, until slapped down by Chancellor Brown. That would be fair and transparent, giving every citizen a carbon quota to spend as they choose on heating, flying or driving.

     

    The well-off could buy unused carbon quota from the half of the population that never flies, so money passes from richer to poorer. The price would rise every year, as the quota shrank to limit emissions. Sensible, fair and redistributive, it would be easy to implement with plastic cards for energy and transport bills, compared with wartime rationing of everything all done on paper. But it would require a gigantic collective will to action and a will to redistribute to make it happen. No country as unequal as the UK, let alone the US, can have a collective will when citizens’ interests are diametrically opposed to one another. Inequality between and within nations may be the death of us.

    Fixing the climate is not a practical conundrum, it is a purely political problem. We could build the windmills, the solar, the nuclear and whatever it takes to be self-sustaining with clean energy for ever if we wanted to. But enough people have to want to change how they live and spend to make it happen. So far they don’t, not by a long chalk. What would it take? A tidal wave destroying New York maybe – New Orleans was the wrong people – with London, St Petersburg and Shanghai wiped out all at once. But cataclysms will come too late for action. Just pray for a scientific wonder or that Lord Stern is right and the market can fix it, as green technology becomes more profitable than oil and coal. As things stand, politics has not enough heft nor authority. It would take a political miracle to save us now.