FT.com / Global Economy - Business chiefs hit at climate agreement.
Global energy businesses are disappointed and confused by the climate deal agreed in Copenhagen, saying it does not provide enough certainty to justify the huge investments needed to cut carbon emissions.
That's the nub of it: world leaders failed to give the one industry that really needed a stimulus the incentives needed to address a real need.
So we'll go on consuming to an early grave instead.
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It’s not necessarily depressing. I think a lot of people in the green movement wanted to see Copenhagen fail, on the basis that “success” was never going to make any material difference. The crux of the matter is surely that, if the scientists are correct, we need to be moving to a sub-zero carbon economy as soon as possible. Perhaps a compromise that politicians would have thought was “ambitious” wouldn’t have done much good anyway.
What we need are leading politicians articulating that the mantra of growth is what has got us into this mess. The truth is that our standard of living does not increase in tandem with our GNI (or whatever the preferred calculator of wealth is). There is no reason why Britain needs to be a global power: Belgium isn’t, for example, and it seems to do just fine. What we need t concentrate on is being happy and sustainable, and I suspect that if a politician can articulate that and get beyond the incredulity of the media, they will strike a note with the public.