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The air that makes up our Earth’s atmosphere is a mixture of a number of gases.

These figures relate to dry air. As we all know water vapour - clouds for instance - is also present in normal air and accounts for between 1% and 4% depending on location, altitude, and weather.

There are also small amounts of many other gases in our atmosphere, one category of which are the so-called ‘greenhouse’ gasses, of which carbon dioxide is one.

Greenhouse gases are gases that prevent 100% of the suns rays and heat from escaping straight back into space once they arrive on the Earth’s surface. They trap a proportion of that sunlight – in the form of heat - in our atmosphere. As we will see later, this on the whole is a good thing.

Since industrialisation – but particularly over the last century – the proportion of these greenhouse gases in our atmosphere has gradually increased. This is largely due to the burning of coal, natural gas and oil, but also through the cutting down and burning of large areas of natural forest across the world. Coal, oil and wood are all largely made out of carbon. So when oil, coal and wood are burnt lots of carbon (and a number of other pollutants too) is released into the atmosphere – mainly in the form of carbon dioxide.

In effect, carbon has been stored up by the Earth over millions of years in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas. What we have done since industrialisation is by burning coal, oil and gas and burning down huge areas of forest, to release all that carbon back into the atmosphere in the period of a little over 100 years; a large proportion of it over the last few decades.

As we all know by our own experience when we wake up in the morning, there is a continuous stream of light and heat from the sun. So with an increasing proportion of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere the effect is one of gradually increasing the heat because greenhouse gasses are an increasing proportion of the atmosphere and therefore retaining an increasing proportion of the sun’s energy here on Earth.

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What are the greenhouse gases?

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is not the only ‘greenhouse’ gas, in fact some of the others are far worse in their effect on global warming than carbon dioxide. The point about carbon dioxide is that there is now so much of it produced that it has a far greater effect than all the others put together. There is a measurement of the greenhouse power of gasses, with carbon dioxide having a power of ‘one’.

But we shouldn’t forget that greenhouse gases are generally a good thing – if they weren’t there and all the sun’s energy was immediately reflected back into space the world’s average temperature of around 15 degrees C, would plummet to minus 20 degrees C, a temperature drop of some 35 degrees C! This would not be good for mankind!

The problem is not their presence but their increasing proportion of our atmosphere.

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The growth of carbon dioxide levels

The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was fairly constant in the 1000 years before the industrial revolution (as shown in Antarctic ice cores), and stayed that way until around 1800.

Amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

Today 375 parts per million, and growing by 1.5 ppm every year

This growth has caused an average 0.78 degree C increase in global temperatures since 1850.

A general target that might be realistic is to prevent the carbon dioxide concentration to go above 550 parts per million, which it is estimated would eventually lead to a stabilisation of temperature increases at around +2.5 degrees C.

There are also a lot of lags in the system. Even if we started reducing carbon emissions drastically immediately it would be many years – possibly into the hundreds – before temperatures stabilised. This is why it’s even more important to change things now.

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The international agreements around climate change

A really important body in the climate change debate is the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which was set up in 1988 by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization. This body was set up as the world authority on climate change and undertakes periodic reports on the state of the planet. Its first published assessment was in 1990, there were also assessments in 1995 and 2001.

2007 is also a big year for the IPCC. It is the year of its 4 th Assessment. It published a summary of this most recent assessment of climate change in February during its meeting in Paris (see below). It will publish more detailed reports during the rest of the year.

The second (1995) assessment acted as the key input for the Kyoto Protocol.

Meanwhile the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted in 1992 and entered into force in 1994. It provides the overall policy framework for addressing the climate change issue. It is an international treaty that was agreed at the Rio de Janeiro so-called ‘Earth Summit’ or the ‘Rio Summit’ in 1992 to combat global warming.

The UNFCCC did not at first set any targets – this was to be done at a later date – and happened when the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change was born in 1997. Kyoto is a protocol to the UNFCCC.

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The Kyoto Protocol

It was in the Kyoto Protocol that the nations of the world finally, 10 years after the IPCC had been set up, committed themselves to actual emissions targets after very tough negotiations. The targets covered not just CO2 but 6 different greenhouse gasses.

Most industrialised nations agreed to legally binding reductions in greenhouse gas emissions of an average of 6 to 8% below 1990 levels between the years 2008-2012. The United States would be required to reduce its total emissions an average of 7% below 1990 levels. The protocol was signed by the USA – by Al Gore as Vice-President, however neither the Clinton administration nor the Bush administration sent the protocol to Congress for ratification – which is what counts. The Bush administration explicitly rejected the protocol in 2001.

The rejection by the USA and also later by Australia obviously made the whole protocol pretty meaningless – but as is always stressed: it took ages to get even to that position, and it is all the world has got in terms of actual hard agreement. In fact the protocol only came into force in 2005 after Russia became the 55 th nation to ratify the agreement.

Weaknesses of the Protocol are that the reductions it calls for will not actually stop climate change, and that developing countries especially China and India are not included. China is widely expected to become the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses within the next 10 years.

One of the fundamental debates in the Kyoto bargaining was how emission cuts would be achieved. The key method decided upon (ironically with a lot of American pressure) was ‘emissions trading’ schemes also known as ‘cap and trade’ schemes. The current EU scheme is the most significant of these. They are a way of reducing carbon emissions through the marketplace theoretically allowing emissions to be cut in the most cost effective and efficient manner.

However Kyoto also included other mechanisms such as the Clean Development Mechanism which allow developed countries to meet their targets in part by investing in carbon saving schemes in developing countries (which don’t have Kyoto emission reduction targets). Another of these so-called flexible mechanisms is Joint Implementation.

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The 2007 Paris meeting of the IPCC

The main headline from the Paris conference this year was that the Panel now judges that it is 90% certain that climate change (which is not itself disputed) is being caused by mankind’s actions.

However papers from the IPCC are always agreed by member states before they are published, and there is sometimes considerable negotiation over what is included – not least by the United States. Therefore the conclusions of the IPCC are often regarded by the scientific community as being very conservative and cautious.

Among many other conclusions the Paris reports stated

For further information look up on the web IPCC Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, Summary for Policy Makers

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Next stage for Kyoto

The protocol comes to an end in 2012. There are already lots of questions about what should be next. At the moment Kyoto is the only game in town, and imperfect though it is (these things take so long when there is not lots of time available) using the Kyoto Protocol as the basis for future agreements is seen as essential.

In the next round the USA has to be brought in to the agreement plus the big developing countries, especially China and India. The most recent inter-governmental negotiating conference was in Nairobi at the end of 2006. Very little progress was made.

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Who produces the carbon?

Global emissions of carbon dioxide, 2003

The UK figure is 2%, China has been predicted by the IEA as potentially being the largest emitter as early as 2009.

In terms of emissions per head of population, the situation looks substantially different

Tonnes of carbon emitted per head of population, 2003

Another way of looking at this is globally by sector -

Global greenhouse gas emissions by source, 2000

Source: Stern Review from World Resources Institute data

* 30% of these land use emissions from deforestation come from Indonesia and another 20% from Brazil!

In general the amount of energy required for a unit of output has declined, as has the amount of carbon needed per unit of energy. So despite this double improvement in efficiency the reason that total global emissions are still rising is down to income and population increases.

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The airline industry

The airline business has been greatly in the news in terms of the global warming debate. In fact it currently airlines only account for 2% of global emissions. The problem is that

Airplanes burn some 130 million tonnes of fuel a year. A flight across the Atlantic uses 60,000 litres of fuel, creating 160 tonnes of CO2.

There have been big increases in the fuel efficiency of aircraft over the decades, but without radical changes in design these fuel efficiencies are now relatively small. All this means that in the future the airline industry could become one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.

The other factor is that due to the fundamentally international nature of the airline industry there is no fuel duty on the kerosene that is burnt by the industry. So there is also a question of unfair tax advantage where there are alternative forms of transport e.g. high speed trains.

The solution put forward in Europe is to include the aircraft sector in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme from 2011

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UK ’s position on climate change

The UK is responsible for 2% of global carbon emissions.

The Government set itself a goal when it came to power in 1997 of reducing CO2 emissions by 20% by 2010, as it had stated in its election manifesto. But in March 2006, Margaret Beckett, the then Environment Secretary, said that it was unlikely to be met. 15% was thought more likely.

The Government has now set a general target of reducing UK carbon emissions by 60% by 2050, with ‘real progress’ by 2020. It also has a target of 10% of electricity generation coming from renewables by 2010.

On the broader Kyoto basket of greenhouse gases the UK is targeted to reduce its emissions based on 1990 by 12.5% by 2012 (for the EU-15 the figure is 8%). In fact even by 2004 the UK had reduced GHG emissions by 15% and so had met the target.

However in the last couple of years our emissions have started to rise again – so we could still miss the target. The big reduction in emissions was caused by the move away from coal and oil to generate electricity to natural gas which is a fuel that causes a lot less emissions. This was known as the ‘dash for gas’.

In 2004 the UK produced 153 million tonnes of carbon equivalent, it came from the following areas

 Source: BBC website/Netcen

In domestic terms lighting and heating of homes account for 27% of all emissions in the UK – so our individual actions can have a major effect nationally. For buildings as a whole the figure is 40%.

The road transport sector is the highest growing sector for emissions in the UK having grown 10% between 1990 and 2004. They are now approaching 24% of all emissions (rather than the 21% above), and are seen as the main reason why the UK will not reach its 20% emissions reduction on 1990 by 2010 (source: Financial Times 5-3-07)

As far as electricity in the UK is concerned this is generated from the following sources

Electricity generation in the UK

In October 2006 the Government published the Stern report (The Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change). This was a Treasury (Gordon Brown) sponsored study and was widely acclaimed globally.

The Government announced that it would introduce a Climate Change Bill in the 2006/7 session of Parliament which was expected, amongst other things, to embed emissions targets into legislation. A draft bill was published in March 2007 – see below for details.

The Government was also planning to publish an Energy White Paper in Spring 2007. However this has been postponed due to the High Court ruling that the Government had not consulted properly in terms of its nuclear strategy especially in the area of waste disposal and overall costs. The court case was brought by Greenpeace. The white paper is still expected to be published in the first half of 2007.

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The Stern Report

The Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change, was published in 2006 and was well regarded globally. Sir Nicholas Stern was previously the Chief Economist of the World Bank with an excellent personal reputation.

Although the report is very harsh in terms of its conclusions around climate change – it is also very positive in terms of the World being able to do something about the problem, but only if it acts now.

Here are a number of its key messages:

It is well worth reading the whole of the Executive Summary of the Stern Report which is available on the web.

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Draft Climate Change Bill, March 2007

The Government decided to go down the less usual legislative route of publishing a draft climate change bill followed by a process of ‘pre-legislative consultation’. Basically the Government is asking for feedback to its proposed bill – which is published in detail – by 12 June 2007. At the same time Parliament is setting up a joint committee of the House of Commons and the House of Lords to give additional feedback.

The Government is still saying that the proper bill will be published this session (the Parliamentary session will end in November 2007) – so the timetable is tight.

There are four key parts of the bill

The targets relate to carbon only and reflect the existing goals set by the Government, most importantly a 50% reduction in the 1990 level of carbon emissions by 2050. The Government is also committing to meet five yearly emissions targets on the way to 2050 e.g. for the periods 2008 – 2012, and 2013 – 2017. These targets will become statutory obligations. If the Government fails them it is open to judicial review.

The Government is proposing that the Committee on Climate Change is made up of top experts and is independent of Government and its departments. It has three key roles –

The enabling powers are rather vague, but is particularly aimed at setting up emission trading schemes beyond the scope of the European one, through secondary legislation.

So is the Climate Change Bill good news for the planet? Well it could be something important or hardly anything at all. The bill will not achieve anything in its own right, but could provide a vital framework that is beyond being purely voluntary. However as has been said by Chris Huhne – if success was achieved by the setting of targets, Britain would be the best governed country in the world. Our hope must be that it really will provide that foundation of international leadership and a UK carbon efficient economy.

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The European Union

The EU was a major player in the Kyoto Protocol negotiations and EU member states largely negotiated as a single bloc. Under the Protocol the EU was targeted as a whole to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 8% below their 1990 levels by 2012.

Under the Kyoto Protocol the EU Emissions Trading System was set up – this is the world’s largest carbon trading scheme, which while operational is still finding its way forward. More details are given below. At the moment it doesn’t include aircraft emissions – but the Commission proposed at the end of 2006 that airlines should start to be included from 2011. It is estimated that this would increase the cost of a trans-Atlantic flight ticket by around £25 per person.

The European Union has really only recently involved itself heavily in energy policy as such. The reason for this recent interest is as much energy security as the issue of climate change. A key strategic energy policy document was published by the Commission in January 2007. It had three key themes

The Commission said that the EU should aim for a reduction of 20% in greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2020. The Commission is saying that the EU should achieve this even if it has to do so unilaterally. However it is offering a 30% reduction if other developed countries in the developed world also take part – something aimed especially at the USA.

This proposition was agreed by the European Council (heads of government) which met in March 2007 and was a major success for the German Presidency and Angela Merkel in particular. However, although a big step forward there is no agreement about how these targets will be divided between member states – and this will be a major stumbling block for the future.

The March 2007 summit also made a binding agreement that renewables should account for 20% of total EU energy consumption by 2020. How this will be divided up will probably be even more contentious with every nation claiming to be a special case. This will be a trebling of current levels of renewables.

There was also agreement that bio-fuels should account for 10% of transport energy, and there was also an intent to end the sale of incandescent light bulbs by 2010.

One of the reasons that the enlarged EU has had a relatively good record in terms of carbon emissions was that following the disintegration of the Soviet Empire at the end of the 1980s, the vast changes in eastern Europe meant the failure and closing down of much of that region’s inefficient heavy industry nearly all of which was powered by the inefficient use of coal. So carbon emissions went down on account of vast sectors of heavy industry disappearing in eastern Europe.

However despite a big reduction in GHG emissions of around 4% for EU-15 between 1990 and 1993 they have been up and down a great deal since and are now only some 1% below 1990 levels. This is despite a reduction by the UK of 14% (the dash for gas), and by Germany of 18% (closure of dirty East German heavy industry). So there are still big challenges in meeting the Kyoto target of 8% by 2012. (Statistics source: European Environment Agency)

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The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS)

The EU ETS is the largest carbon trading system in the World. It was founded as a result of the Kyoto Protocol. Its first phase started operating at the beginning of 2005.

The second phase will start in 2008, and ends in 2012. There is already a strong demand for a post 2012 regime – if there is no long term guaranteed market for carbon then business investment will not reflect such a cost and so the whole system will be undermined.

The EU ETS is a ‘cap and trade’ system meaning that businesses have fixed allocations of carbon emissions (the cap). If a business needs more it has to buy them, if it needs less it can sell part of its own allocation (the trade). If a business exceeds its allocation and fails to buy allocations from other companies then it is fined €40 per tonne of carbon.

A trading emissions system is designed to allow the market to find the most efficient way to reduce carbon emissions – investing in low carbon technologies means that a business can sell unwanted allocations. The market finds the best and cheapest way of reducing carbon emissions.

The main criticisms of the current regime are that

The EU ETS covers CO2 emission from the major industrial sectors across 11,500 industrial sites in the EU. The sectors include cement, iron and steel, paper, glass, oil refineries etc. It covers some 45% of total EU CO2 emissions

Since its start the price of a tonne of carbon has reached €30. But in later 2006 and 2007 the price reduced considerably due to over-allocation of credits. More recently the price has been around €1 a tonne.

The EU ETS is by far the largest emissions trading scheme in the World – it just has to get a lot better.

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The USA

The USA primarily objected to the Protocol on the basis that it did not place any targets on developing countries – especially China, and that it was likely to hinder US economic interests.

Following the USA’s effective rejection of the Kyoto process, it moved down the alternative strategy in conjunction with a small number of other Kyoto sceptic nations, including Australia, of stating that the problem should be solved through better technology i.e. researching and implementing much more energy efficient ways of doing things. Although important, this approach on its own is generally seen as completely incapable of solving the problem of climate change within timescales available.

This agreement which was announced in 2005 is called the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. It includes the USA, Australia, China, India, Japan, and S Korea. It is also known as AP6. These members account for some 50% of world population and emissions. The agreement has no mandatory targets on emissions cuts and relies on technology transfer as a means to reduce emissions.

The Bush regime has started to change its tune on energy issues – but mainly because of his weaker position on Capitol Hill following the mid-term elections at the end of 2006, and mainly around the issue of ‘energy security’ rather than climate change itself.

In January 2007 Bush had at the centre of this energy security announcement the aim of reducing petrol usage by 20% within a decade. This would be achieved partly by increasing the fuel efficiency of cars – but mainly by the use of ethanol in fuel. However the carbon cost of producing ethanol is not as good as might be sometimes seen, and the targets set out were seen generally as unattainable. At the same time Bush did describe climate change as a “serious challenge”.

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The energy security issue

A separate issue to climate change, energy security has become a major policy area both in Europe and in the USA. In Europe with the run down of North Sea oil and gas, and the declining importance of nuclear power, Europe is becoming very dependent on Russian oil and gas.

This was particularly thrown into focus when at the end of 2005 Russia cut off the supply of gas too Ukraine, and used similar tactics against Belarus this winter – Russia was no longer seen as a reliable supplier. Middle East oil is also dependent on political stability in the Middle East.

The USA is concerned about being increasingly dependent on oil and gas imports and the stranglehold of the Middle East states including Iran.

The good news is that the energy security issue is more immediate and demands a more urgent political response – and one of the practical ways to solve the security problem is to heavily increase the use of non-fossil fuels. This would also have a major effect on reducing carbon emissions.

% of oil imports from Russia

Gas supplies have similar issues in terms of Russia.

Sweden is particularly notable in that it has drawn up and is implementing a 20 year ‘post-oil’ strategy.

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Which energies do not create climate change?

The quick answer to this is that either the energy sources that do not create significant carbon dioxide emissions when they are produced, or ones that are renewable i.e. like wood for burning - having chopped down a tree and burnt it as fuel you grow another one to take its place – which absorbs the same amount of carbon that you generated from burning it. Clearly this does not include deforestation as in the Amazon and Indonesia (and of course Western Europe some 7000 years ago).

Low carbon sources include

Renewable sources include

There are also all the combined heat and power technologies from waste facilities too.

Some states now have a target level of bio-ethanol to be used by road transport ( Germany is a good example), and the USA have just suggested targets too. Brazil is the world leader in this technology and use – it has lots of land to grow energy crops.

The big drawback of bio-fuels is that you need huge amounts of land to grow enough of them – land that is also used for growing food. It would be impossible to grow enough crops in Europe to feed our need for oil. There is also the risk of effectively encouraging more global deforestation to create more land for growing energy crops.

The other current draw-back of bio-fuels is that currently in North America they are largely produced from corn. These crops themselves require a great deal of irrigation and manufactured fertilisers. Fertiliser production is itself energy intensive.

The worst sources of power are fossil fuels. When we use a fossil fuel we are effectively releasing all the carbon that has been stored in them since they were created millions of year ago over hundreds of thousands of years from ancient plants that have died. These fuels are

Of these, coal is a lot more carbon polluting than the other two, and gas is better than the others – some 20% lower emissions than coal. The main reason for the UK’s reduction in carbon emissions during the late 90s was the so-called ‘dash for gas’ when a huge amount of electricity generation moved from coal to oil. Gas was cheap at the time. Now things are different and coal is making a comeback with emissions again rising.

Coal is still extremely important for the future as there are far greater reserves of coal worldwide than any other of the fossil fuels – and it is relatively cheaper in the market place.

There are a number of technologies to make coal much better in terms of carbon emissions (called Clean Coal Technology) but these are at an early stage.

Recently there has been a lot of excitement about a technique called ‘carbon capture’. This is where the carbon dioxide that is produced at coal power stations is extracted before it is dispersed into the atmosphere, is liquefied, and then pushed deep down into the ground – classically into the space that has been left by the extraction of oil and gas e.g. under the North Sea. This is a great concept – but it has never yet been tested for a power station. Moreover at current levels of technology producing power from coal is 50% less efficient if you need to capture the carbon dioxide. There is a long long way to go here. It is not the silver bullet that sometimes claimed – it could be, but it is not a proven technology.

Future sources of energy are expected to be

Both these technologies have been researched for many years, and progress has proved far more difficult that expected. They will not be contributing any practical level of energy in the timescales needed to prevent climate change.

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Nuclear power

There are some 450 nuclear plants in the world, and Europe has more than any other region. France has some 80% of her power produced by nuclear plants – and this does make her one of the most advanced efficient economies in terms of carbon emissions per person at some 30% less than the UK. Some 15 out of 27 EU member states have nuclear power. Most plants are quite old now as there has been very little nuclear build since the 70s and 80s. Many are coming to the end of their life.

This is causing in both Europe and the USA a problem in terms of carbon emissions. Just as we want to reduce those emissions a major source of carbon free generation is coming to an end. Germany has actually passed a law (when the Greens were a part of the Government) saying that no new builds can take place and stating a timetable for closure.

The UK is now considering starting a new programme of nuclear power.

The problems with nuclear power are especially the disposal of nuclear waste, uncompetitive costs (a large lump of which start at the end of the life of the plant in terms of decommissioning costs and on-going storage of the waste), and security issues – both the issue of stopping uranium being used for military uses, and power stations as terrorist targets.

For non-nuclear weapon states i.e. the majority of the world’s nations, there is also the non-proliferation issue of making sure that the uranium used to generate nuclear power is not then enriched to produce weapon grade materials. This is the current issue with Iran. The general principle is that all nations should have access to nuclear power for peaceful purposes, but the International Energy Authority under the authority of the United Nations has a strong safety and weapon non-proliferation inspection role to ensure that plants remain safe and that nuclear weapons programmes are not initiated.

In terms of nuclear waste no country world wide has implemented a solution for the long term (up to 250,000 years). Only Finland has started to build a permanent solution – which is deep underground long term storage.

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What tools can governments use to tackle climate change?

There are various things in the toolkit – in two categories known as ‘mitigation and adaptation’. The first four are examples of mitigation.

Technical standards and regulation
Government and Europe can legislate to increase the energy efficiency of such things as automobiles, electrical appliances, homes. It could even take regulation to an extreme and ban certain types of energy use e.g. the standard incandescent light bulb – forcing the use of energy saving bulbs. Australia took this step in 2007, the first nation apart from Cuba to do so. Australia expects to save some 4 million tonnes of CO2 annually through this change.

Research
Again Governments and the EU would be the main sponsors of general research into new technologies e.g. hydrogen cells, bio-fuels, clean coal technology, energy saving techniques

Pricing carbon
Getting companies and consumers to change their habits and actions through pricing carbon. This would be by either carbon trading systems (e.g. the EU Emissions trading scheme), or carbon taxation. Road pricing could come into a definition of a carbon tax – though this is primarily a congestion tax with carbon saving side effects.

Public opinion and education
Making people well aware of the issues and therefore receptive to other Government actions such a carbon taxation. And of course actions by individuals, families and single businesses can also have a big impact on climate change.

Adaptation
The first four points in this section are known as ‘mitigation’ of carbon emissions. The other approach to the issues of climate change is known as adaptation. Adaptation is all around preparing for the problems caused by climate change e.g. higher sea walls, not building on flood plains, flood defence etc.

The trouble is firstly that as shown in New Orleans, Governments do not get around to finding the money in time to prevent such problems. Secondly and more importantly adaptation schemes tend only to be affordable only by rich states whereas the biggest impacts of climate change are on developing countries such as Bangladesh who just can’t afford adaptation measures.

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What are the potential effects of climate change?

Many of these have been described in the Stern Report section. But here is the summary –

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Conclusion

But the issue of climate change can be solved – and with existing technology. But given the long time it takes to ‘change the course of the supertanker’ and a number of potential irreversible effects (e.g. Gulf Stream and Artic tundra) we have to act now. If we do the costs into the future are manageable. But these costs get rapidly larger the longer we ignore the problem and fail to implement a solution.

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