PowerSwitch

If anyone feels qualified and is interested to send any in. I'm not doing it myself, but thought others may be more politcally minded...

The main points they want addressing are:
1. Areas of agreement/disagreement on climate change. Is further convergence between political parties needed, and is it inevitable?

2. Mechanisms. What is the best way to arrive at a consensus? Are there
areas that are unlikely to be resolved through scientific research?

3. Outcomes. Would a consensus approach result in good, high-impact policies, or would it lead to "lowest common denominator" policies. Should adaption to climate change be covered, as well as mitigation?

Is climate consensus possible?

28th March 2006

THE All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group (APPCCG) has invited
voters to give their views on climate change and tell them what role they
want party politicians to play in dealing with it.

Three independent specialists ? Dr Helen Clayton, Professor Nick Pidgeon
and Professor Mark Whitby (details below) ? will assess the inquiry
evidence from the public, and their conclusions will be published in July.

Colin Challen MP, the chair of the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change
Group, said: ?Climate change has raced up the political agenda in the past
few months and most of us know big changes are required in the way we
behave if we are to deal with it......It?s too important for petty party
squabbling and point scoring, yet at the same time voters do need to know
exactly where the different parties stand. The first APPCCG public inquiry
is asking: Can we deal wi

th perhaps the most urgent issue on the human agenda in a cross-party way??

Challen said there were examples of cross-party working in other countries.
?In Denmark, both government and opposition parties signed a formal
agreement on energy conservation. In Finland, normal party divisions were
overridden by a free vote in parliament on whether or not to build a fifth
nuclear power station......This inquiry, the first to be undertaken by the
APPCCG, asks whether political parties could and should work more closely
together on their approach to climate change, and seeks to identify the
possible scope and limitations of a consensus approach.?

Dr Helen Clayton, one of the inquiry?s evidence assessors, said: ?I hope
the inquiry will encourage people to think constructively about how best to
develop and implement effective policy on climate change.?

Professor Nick Pidgeon, another evidence assessor, said: ?This inquiry is
both timely and important. There is an urgent need for a proper level of
political debate in Britain on the dangers we all face from climate change,
and the many difficult decisions which will need to be addressed in order
to combat this threat.?

Notes:

1: Colin Challen MP can be reached at ChallenC@parliament.uk. His
researcher, John Booth, is at BoothJ@parliament.uk.

2 : Evidence, preferably in electronic form, is sought from anyone who
wishes to submit it. The closing date is May 9 2006. Evidence may be sent
to ChallenC@parliament.uk or posted to Colin Challen MP, House of Commons,
London SW1A 0AA, marked ?APPCCG Inquiry?.

3: Colin Challen, Labour MP Morley, Rothwell and Middleton, founded the All
Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change last year (2005). To date, 50
MPs have joined him in making the 25/5 pledge to cut personal carbon
emissions by 25 per cent by the year 2010.

Mike -

it's good to see news of this enquiry posted here.

While I'd certainly like to contribute to it, any serious efforts re GW are of course inextricably tangled with responses to PO,
so I'd really like to see a PowerSwitch submission that provides an integrated perspective.

This is something that few if any other NGO will provide, and so, apart from any useful influence on the enquiry,
it could also raise the profile of PowerSwitch among the official participants.

Thus before developing an individual response, I'd be glad to hear your thoughts.

regards,

Bill

Billhook wrote: While I'd certainly like to contribute to it, any serious efforts re GW are of course inextricably tangled with responses to PO,
so I'd really like to see a PowerSwitch submission that provides an integrated perspective.

That's certainly a good idea, but I won't have the time myself due to pressures from my course. If someone wants to put together a submission from us as a group, then I'd be very pleased. I only ended up getting a letter from Collin Challen about it because I've been in touch with him in the past - he's not my local MP.

Oh, and another point for everyone - please don't turn this thread into a discussion on whether anthropogenic climate change is real or not - we've already done that more than enough. If you have strong views one way or another, you can of course submit them directly to Colin Challen as evidence for why we can/can't get a cross-party consensus.

Mike -

I'd be glad to write a draft but I'd want others' input from the outset for it to fairly represent a PS perspective.

My starting point is that such an supra-party consensus is useful to the extent that :

it reflects the parties' highest common factor, as opposed merely to a lowest common denominator,

and thus to the extent that it is proactive:

- In implementing - the UK's carbon budget under C&C as a de facto reality, with UK negotiating numbers as the de jure constraints,

with those negotiating numbers being predicated , as a matter of prudence, on the assumptions that

a/. atmospheric carbon should not be allowed to exceed 420ppmv, and

b/. the peak of global oil & gas supplies will be reached within (say) 5 and 10 years respectively,
after which dates supplies' annual decline at unknown exponential rates is predictable;


- In reforming - the criteria by which new energy supplies are selected for national & international official support to reflect three critical factors:

1/. - Sustainability - by which future generations will not regret either the ecological or social or financial impacts of present energy developments;

2/. - Local Legitimacy - by which local communities enjoy positive net full term benefits of local energy resources being developed,
(thus maximizing both rate of uptake & social equity in worldwide deployments);

3/. - Global Relevance - by which energy options' applicability worldwide to address local resources & risng needs is prioretized
(again maximizing the rate of uptake, but via export demand);


- In seeking - C&C as the formal EU negotiating position, and as the EU's de facto operating carbon budget;


- In seeking - the wholesale reform of the crucial practice of Carbon Trading's standards of transparency & probity,
whose current shortfalls greatly discredit this vital mechanism both in popular and in Annex II nations' perceptions;

- In seeking - the launch, with other Annex I (industrialized countries) & Annex II (LDCs) of a Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons,
being structured as "Contraction & Convergence",and needing ratification by only a core of states from most continents to be enacted,
with laggard states acceding to it when their populations demand it.
_________________________________________________________

Notes.

Various desiderata might be added to or subtracted from those above, and amendmends made to the results, and I hope others will contribute their views.

OAwaiting Consensus, of all of the umpteen reasons for inaction that have been promoted by the oil-based status quo over the last 30 years,
the 'pointlessness' of taking action until all nations agree to do so
has proved the most durable and the most insidious.

This disablement by awaiting consensus has been notable within the UK parliament,
where nobody has seen fit to challenge the absurdity of Mr Blair's 60%-by-2050 target,
nor to demand, on camera, that C&C be adopted as the UK negotiating position.
Given, as a comparison, that there has been some strident critique of the paucity of credible Bird Flu preparations,
the downside of consensual politics on GW has thus far plainly predominated in the UK parliament.

In international terms, with the advent of an advancing recognition of PO, the obstruction of "disablement by awaiting consensus" is now being eroded,
in that the strategy of "the convoy moves at the pace of the slowest ship"
is plainly endangering rather than securing the convoy as a whole, as each vessel's individual fuel security is now threatened.
Thus those vessels who readily change course can now both do most to ensure their own fuel supplies and, potentially, to supply the laggards.

In addition, with recognition of PO emerging, and that of GW burgeoning even among US evangelicals,
the idea of a vanguard of states agreeing and implementing a treaty faces decreasing concerns over a significant period of free-loading by (say) the USA,
as such behaviour would predictably impact untenably on both national self-esteem and on rising concerns over climatic & energy security,
and also on their traders' desire for national participation in the global market in carbon trading.

I look forward to reading others' thoughts on these perspectives.

regards,

Bill