[LINK] Post-Copenhagen

[Birch, Jim]

Stephen Wilson wrote:
>... The failure of the conference...

I'm not so sure about that.  Sure, the conference failed to produce a
binding emissions control program but that was always a Big Ask.  It did
acknowledge the problem unequivocally and make an agreement to agree.
It's still not obvious what the workable formula is, though we have
moved down the track a bit.  Charging for externalities is difficult
conceptually for a lot of people and demonstrably difficult to institute
within a country (eg: Australia) but the difficulties of imposing the
real costs of CO2 on different countries with radically different levels
of GDP, per capita GDP, CO2 emission and industrialisation is enormous.
There's a real measure of pain involved and it impacts countries
differently.

Someone said that this is the century of the planet, and it is clear to
me that in a hundred years the dump-your-gunk strategy that has kinda
worked from the year dot will be over so we need a new way of doing
things.  The current requirement is a CO2 emission control agreement,
but this is actually a new model for managing the whole earth,
indefinitely.  (Previous agreements like CFC abatement are economically
and technologically trivial compared to CO2.)  This isn't natural or
habitual and we should expect the change to require some serious ongoing
effort.  And time.

Jim

    

  


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