It’s been a good month for climate-sceptics. Following the failure of the Copenhagen summit to deliver a global treaty, they have revelled in the discomfiture of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as it admitted it was wrong to say that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.  Critics have seized on this admission, using it to call the entire credibility of the IPCC and the science of climate change into question. 

There is a lesson in this for those who think global warming is worth worrying about. And counter-intuitively perhaps, I would suggest that the lesson is not to try to prove global warming is a fact and simply show that it is a significant risk – because that should be cause enough for action.

Well, so much for 'Hopenhagen' - the idea that the Copenhagen climate talks would lead to a new treaty on climate change and usher in a bright new green dawn. Despite all the hope and energy invested in it, the event fell way short of what had been expected. So what happened? And what next?

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper’.

 

 

The market purist argument is that the system should regulate itself; because if climate change really is a material risk for businesses, it should be built into the way companies are valued. Companies whose factories or plantations could be destroyed by climate change-induced floods or droughts should be less attractive investments than ones making wind turbines or hybrid car engines.

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The 40th anniversary of the moon landings has inevitably prompted comparison with the current effort to preserve Planet Earth from global warming. As Ed Miliband has noted both missions involve combining political will with examples of technological leapfrog.  

One sobering contrast, however, is that although serious resources are now being deployed in green investments, the central co-ordination of the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and overcome climate change is still pitifully resourced compared to what was spent on Houston.   The world lacks an ‘e-mission control’.