If we are truly past the point of no return and are now playing a game of damage limitation, then targets that create “sides” in what should be a global co-operative movement, and help to create an environment of fingerpointing rather than problem solving, are not going to get us to where we need to be going very fast.

If the outcome of the Bali conference is that people feel more comfortable to work together then this is a positive step forward…because let’s face it, even if the US was on board with Kyoto it would have missed its targets just like the rest of us and we’d still be sitting here looking at an article by Ross Gelbspan telling us we’re too late.

The time for the blame game really is over now, it’s time for environmentalists and politicians alike to mature a little on this subject.

The real difference however is that ‘genocide’ - as an ‘economic externality’ - is obvioulsy the prelude to something much worse - conflict and overall failure to prevent dangerous rates [runaway rates] of climate change. True - some people die in a famine. The point now is all of us are vulnerable to runaway rates of climate change.

Even Sir Jock Stirrup [RAF top-man] lectured in Whitehall to climate-change bureacrats saying that Osama bin Laden ‘had a point’ [about the George Bush refusal to get serious about climate change] and that the military was not up to managing the security implications of runaway climate change.

Nicholas Stern described climate change as the biggest market-failure in history. To me his analysis under-reads the seriousness of the situation we are going into which is why his economic prescriptions are so frail - we can make it all go away for one percent of GDP.

Mega-Extinction events have happened before [Permian], without the trigger of fossil fuel combustion.

The key problem with market solutions was summed up by Amartya Sen, referring to food supplies: “famine is a market solution to food shortage.”

And so with climate change, widespread death and destruction is a market solution to the problems of climate change. Avoiding that requires departing from market solutions, but it’s hard to see how we have (even now) either the evidence or the persuasive narrative to create a shift of those proportions.

His challenge, that it is already to late, puts us all on the spot because in writing this piece he is formally changing his position and citing much evidence to back up this decision.

Can we solve the problem faster than we are creating it? This is ‘the battle of the rates’.

It helps to resolve this challenge with reference to the actual numbers [rates of contraction and convergence - C&C] that are relevant.

As shown here, it incorporates the latest coupled modelling of the Hadley Centre as published in the IPCC AR4: -
http://www.gci.org.uk/Animations/BENN_C&C_Animation_Tower_&_Ravens.exe

Variously described as: -

“brilliant and scary”,
“awesome”,
“very beautiful and very instructive”

it gives nonetheless the numerate but painful truth of our climate change dilemma and what it takes to beat the battle of the rates.

Rates of C&C that are still relevant sadly don’t provide the amount of time that is needed to conduct all the fruitless allopathic argument that academics, bureacrats and [even still] some campaigners imply is still available and still needed for the detailed arguments they still make.

Aubrey Meyer

GCI

see simpol@yahoogroups.com