The Stern Report

CA should just secede from the rest of the country anyway.

however george monbiot's climate change article in the observer sports monthly was insane. the man needs to be locked in a cupboard and is mouth duct-taped shut.

really good tactics by the climate change lobby (such as it is) (ie this isn't so much tactics as luck) to pump up the issue with the public to the level it's now at - ie basically unignorable - and then turn around and sock it to business with the economic arguments.

Not really, but there are plenty of politically powerful and economically influential ones which don't seem to be going anywhere.

fuckin "red states"

http://energy.ca.gov/2006publications/CEC-999-2006-022/CEC-999-2006-022.PDF

Well, I dunno bout that. ExxonMobil of course is a big exception to this, but there was a study published recently (by the Pew Charitable Trust, maybe?) that showed quite a lot of big American companies are already voluntarily taking steps towards reducing emissions, partly because it's good PR, but also 'cause they figure that non-voluntary reductions are going to be legislated sooner or later, so they might as well start doing it NOW.

There seems to be a real urgency in the debate and prominent presence in the public sphere like never before; maybe the tide is starting to turn, especially when previous denialists start to alter their views. But yeah, the whole economic apocalypse thing is probably what's going to be the real catalyst.

Add to that, implement a decent international rail service from the UK to tempt people out of planes.

Yes, I think finally the ball is rolling, how fast we accelerate is key here. There seems to be a consensus in the UK body politic that something must be done, this is not the same as making hard political choices and actually doing something but it is a start (ten years too late at least but it is still a start)

China and india, to a great extent, know that they can grow in the same way as the west grew over the last two centuries, this is partly because they know that there just isn't the cheap fossil energy available any more. There is no way that china or india, with their populations could even fit a car for every family even if they wanted to. China especially is using the best available technology for fossil fuel electricity generation, but the huge growth rate is growing emissions, and china will keep growing as cheaply as possible. So pressure needs to be put on them from outside with some big carrots as well. What might sell it to them is some technology transfer so that China can become a world leader in producing wind turbines or photovoltaic cells.

India I'm less sure about in terms of how this plays but India will get hit earlier and harder by the effects of climate change as weather in the tropics becomes more severe.

Monbiot favours coaches because they produce less carbon per passenger kilometre and the infrastructure is already in place to support them (the motorways) The railways are already at capacity but if you take private cars off the motorways there is space for coaches. Producing the concrete required to build a new high speed railway would produce a lot of CO2 and it would take 10 years to build one and thus gain any significant capacity improvements son the railways.

You mean they have committees, reports, tough words and lots of hand wringing, while in the meantime we have more road congestion and cheapo airline snobs than practically anywhere on earth? I can really see Blair, Brown or Cameron taking tuff measures to change people's behaviour. I can see Blair strutting around the world on some pseudo-messianic mission telling everyone else to change. While he continues to concrete over Britian with airports and retail parks.

aka "eventually get around to doing something"

"I am not prepared to lead Australia into an agreement that is going to betray the interests of the working men and women of this country and destroy the natural advantage that providence gave us."

"As you clean up coal, you make it dearer, and as you make coal dearer, you make nuclear power economically more feasible."

lol, we are fucked.

the graph on slide 11 is per capita usage.

Let's get rid of, right now:

Non returnable bottles
Shop doors that don't close
Open fridges
Airfreighted food (sorry africa its this or you won't be able to grown anything in 30 years time)

open refrigerators indeed.

pa
CLIMATE change could usher in a golden age for the Arctic as melting ice opens up new sea routes and access to natural resources, experts predict.
But safeguards will be needed to ensure one of the world’s last pristine environments is not over-exploited and ruined, they warn.
Tapping huge Arctic reserves of oil and gas could also add more carbon to the atmosphere at a time when urgent action is needed to reduce the effects of greenhouse gases.

see also: behind the newsreaders at the BBC even whilst reading out reports about climate change and how we should all switch things off rather than leaving them on standby.