Martin Stott
Martin is a a sustainable development practitioner and supporter of Practical Action.
Recommended reading: http://martin-stott.com/
Posts by Martin
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Buried amongst the acres of coverage of the financial crisis and whether or not the UK is in the EU any more, it’s hard to tell exactly what the outcome of the Durban Climate Change Summit really is. That is the problem. Hardly anyone cares any more – or so you would be led to believe. Green house gas emissions are still shooting up despite this global economic crisis. According to the World Bank’s 2010 World Development Report, if all the coal-fired plants scheduled to be built worldwide in the next 25 years come into operation, their lifetime CO2 emissions will equal those of all coal burning since the start of the Industrial Revolution. It hardly bears thinking about.
Flooding in Bangladesh
Durban seems to have set us off on a journey towards a legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas in a decade’s time, but to get everybody even to start seems to have involved accepting delay and avoiding the key decisions about who should make cuts and when. This is in a context where even the International Energy Agency, reckons that we need to have got our investment in low carbon energy infrastructure sorted by 2017 at the latest to have any prospect of hitting the 2°C limit on global temperature rises.
The Durban agreement doesn’t look to me as if it has done anything to help us achieve that. Once again we have ducked the issues and planet and people will pay for it.
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After Saturday’s hugely successful Wave demonstration in London, a group of representatives from the Stop Climate Chaos coalition met with climate change Minister, Ed Miliband. He pitched up in jeans, t-shirt and sneakers, making a joke about how officials freak out if ministers don’t go to meetings in suits because they are afraid they will be lampooned for having no fashion sense and insisted on being called ‘Ed’ rather than ‘Minister’, ‘Secretary of State’ or ‘Mr Miliband’.
However relaxed his appearance, important and serious questions were to be put to him. Some asked about financing support for developing countries, particularly Bangaladesh in the light of his recent visit. His view is that most of the money should go for adaptation and that the money needs to distributed via the UN, not via existing institutions- a position he recognised might not find support in the USA.
The coalition is broad so the questions were diverse, ranging from how to get local councils involved (‘need to introduce carbon budgets’) and the health dimension (he seemed genuinely surprised when a medical student expressed the view that the NHS simply didn’t get the issue) to why the DECC website says nothing about eating meat being a major source of carbon emissions (he said he would make sure it was amended to point out that eating less meat was a good idea planet-wise, but wasn’t prepared to be any more prescriptive than that) and what to do about state-owned bank RBS investing millions in the exploitation of the Alberta tars sands, the question which provoked the longest round of applause. He said he had been lobbied on this before and would try to take action – whatever that means.
I managed to pose a question to him on behalf of Practical Action on the debate about ‘cap and trade’. I asked if he subscribed to the view held, amongst others, by leading American climate scientist James Hansen, that C&T was simply an excuse for developed countries to continue ‘business as usual’ by giving money for carbon offsets to developing countries. Ed said he was depressed by James Hansen’s view and his approach was ‘a futile recipe’. The reaction from the floor was clearly more supportive of a healthy scepticism of cap and trade.
All in all a passionale and well informed discussion. ‘Ed’ is very much on top of his brief – none of the question in the hour or so session fazed him. A very impressive performance which hopefully will carry weight in Copenhagen.
See also: 50,000 people Waving not drowning | Practical Action in Copenhagen
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