The one good thing about a log jam of any persuasion is that when it breaks it tends to be pretty spectacular.

That will certainly be the hope for growing numbers of clean tech firms, who after 18 months staring at an IPO window that has been frozen firmly shut are beginning to wonder if floatation may once again represent a good way of financing expansion plans.

According to figures from the Cleantech Group, globally there were just four clean tech IPOs during the first quarter of this year, but since then there have been definite signs that the IPO market could be warming up once more.

As reported today, Canada-based geothermal specialist Magma Energy has raised double the C$50m it originally anticipated through its Toronto IPO, while energy efficient lighting outfit CRS Electronics also completed an IPO on the increasingly popular Toronto Exchange back in May.

SolarWinds, the US-based networking software specialist with sizable smart grid interests, also raised over $150m with an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in May, and The Clean Tech Group has reported that a further 11 clean tech firms are currently undertaking IPO application processes on Canadian exchanges.

Meanwhile, across all industry sectors Morgan Stanley has predicted up to 40 firms could float in Europe over the next two years, Thomson Reuters reckons there are nearly 150 IPOs now being planned globally, and everyone is anticipating a surge in IPO activity in emerging markets such as China and Brazil.

It is as safe bet as Andy Murray choking in the Wimbledon final, that there are plenty of clean tech firms amongst those companies preparing to be in the first wave of IPOs that will mark the true onset of economic recovery.

The recession may have dealt a major blow to clean tech firms looking to scale up their operations, but for those planning an IPO the recovery could yet come at the perfect time.

It is easy to envisage a (perhaps optimistic) scenario where the IPO markets start to really hot up early next year, just as clean tech firms are in the perfect position to release compelling prospectuses detailing increased demand for low carbon technologies and the roll out of tough new environmental legislation in the wake of an international climate change agreement.

Given how long it can take to plan a well executed stock market floatation, any firm interested in following the IPO route would be wise to get their skates.

Posted by James Murray on June 30, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's time for action stations.

It is one of immutable truths of the court of public opinion that you can not hold people's attention for more than six months. So, with six months to go to the Copenhagen culmination of the UN's seemingly never-ending climate change negotiations the various political, public, and corporate campaigns surrounding the talks have finally slipped into top gear.

In the past few weeks we have seen a flurry of climate change activity on both sides of the Atlantic (and some typical heel dragging from Australia's government, but we'll put that aside for a moment): both the US and UK released bone chilling climate impact reports painting the bleakest picture yet on the likely effects of global warming on the two countries; the White House launched an orchestrated campaign to secure support for the proposed US climate change bill, culminating in a direct appeal to action from Barack Obama; the UK announced plans to power 20m homes using offshore wind; the US issued $8bn of green car loans; the UK launched the world's largest electric car trial and kicked off its carbon capture strategy; and green groups the world over released more studies projecting a boom in green jobs than you can shake a wind turbine at.

And this is just the start. As the UK government confirmed last week, six months of high profile activity is planned in the run up to Copenhagen, all of which is designed to hammer home the message that aggressive and ambitious measures will be required to avert planetary disaster.

Meanwhile, arguably the most compelling stimulus for greener business models has quietly re-emerged with the realisation that oil prices are on the rise again. They may not be anywhere near the record highs of last year, but with the first green shoots of recovery slowly emerging economists are deeply concerned that oil supplies will not be able to keep track with the rising global demand that will come with any recovery.

Add in the fact that investment in carbon capture and renewable energy, coupled with expansion of carbon cap-and-trade schemes, will inevitably drive up long term energy prices and it becomes clear that energy efficiency initiatives still make a great deal sense regardless of the economic climate.

All of this presents a huge opportunity for green businesses - and an enormous headache for those firms yet to embrace more sustainable practices.

On a purely tactical level, the public awareness campaigns being orchestrated by governments and NGOs offer a one off opportunity for those businesses offering green products and services to push their message to a ready primed audience.

But on a broader level the next six months offer a great opportunity for green businesses to really open up a gap on their carbon-intensive rivals.

Regardless of how the US climate change bill goes in tomorrow's vote and regardless of how the Copenhagen talks eventually resolve themselves, the fact is that more environmental legislation is on the way, along with more low carbon incentives, higher energy bills, and ever increasing investment in low carbon infrastructure and technologies.

Those firms that seize on the opportunity presented by this six month long "perfect storm" and act now to prepare for the post-Copenhagen settlement will be the same firms that are rewarded with higher profit margins and lower risk profiles over the next decade.

Like I say, the time for action stations.

Posted by James Murray on June 25, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

For years, the mantra of every bizarre campaign to discredit scientific thought and rationalism has been to "teach the controversy" - to hammer away at any tiny fissure of contention attached to a theory or policy and keep going until you have brought down the entire building.

The phrase was first driven into the mainstream by Seattle-based Christian think tank the Discovery Institute, which appropriated the term for its campaign to discredit evolution by presenting it as a theory that was still open to debate.

It is an ingenious and in many ways successful approach.

Avoiding the need to prove or disprove anything, hardly the strongest suit of creationists, you instead ask people to make a far smaller intellectual leap and believe that there is a degree of doubt surrounding the conventional wisdom. Establish that doubt, even if it is based on blatant falsehoods or outdated data, and the rational position becomes massively weakened and easy to paint as the preserve of arrogant elitists guilty of attempting to crush any dissent.

The audience is then softened up and more willing to investigate an entirely reasonable alternative, which in the case of the Discovery Institute happened to be intelligent design.

It is hardly surprising that the "teaching the controversy" tactic has become a central component of all the anti-science campaigns that blight our culture, featuring in everything from the reports linking the MRI jab with autism to almost every argument put forward by our old friends the climate change sceptics.

And now it looks set to be adopted by a new alliance of anti wind farm groups that was launched earlier today with the express intention of further mobilising opposition to wind farm developments.

Speaking to the group's Chair Jon McLeod, himself an experienced lobbyist employed by one of the UK's largest PR firms, I was struck by how he repeatedly stressed the idea that there is a "debate" surrounding wind energy and renewables policy.

For example, he argued that there were doubts over whether wind farms even lead to reductions in carbon emissions given that fossil fuels are still required to provide a base power load.

No matter that there are no such doubts amongst the government, energy industry or grid operators, nor that the vast majority of research suggests an increase in wind energy capacity will allow the UK to significantly reduce its reliance on fossil fuels. The National Alliance of Wind Farm Action Groups (NAWAG) knows that peddling the myth that there are doubts over wind energy's effectiveness will make it far easier to oppose new developments.

The next stage of the "teach the controversy" playbook is to present the opponent as some kind of uncaring elite, something McLeod does effectively by arguing that wind farm developers are guilty of bullying local communities by repeatedly lodging planning applications for new developments until they are successful.

What he failed to mention is that this apparently controversial practice is also adopted by opponents to wind farms who are equally guilty of attempting to "wear down" developers by appealing planning decisions at every turn.

McLeod then completed the three pronged attack, by offering the entirely reasonable alternative to the current conventional wisdom, namely a "more balanced" support mechanism for renewables. This is a clever approach as who can oppose a call for "balance"?

But again, NAWAG's position is based on misleading information. Onshore wind farms already receive the same or lower levels of financial support through the government's Renewables Obligation mechanism than other forms of renewable energy. The reason they are popular with developers is not because they receive the most generous level of financial incentives as McLeod suggests (in fact the opposite is true, they receive less support than marine energy and offshore wind farms), but because they are the most cost effective form of renewable energy currently available.

The most frustrating aspect of this three-pronged "teach the controversy" model is that it is maddeningly effective, and in McLeod the new lobby group has a canny and experienced PR operator pulling the strings.

Given the success small scale local opposition groups have already had at delaying and blocking wind farm developments, the emergence of an organised national body with a clear and coherent PR strategy should be a cause of considerable concern for the wind energy industry. It urgently needs to get the facts surrounding wind energy across loud and clear, not to mention quickly, if it is to torpedo the myths touted by this newly formed anti-wind alliance.

Posted by James Murray on June 16, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (11)

I never thought I'd end up writing about sewage for a living, but increasingly that is what appears to be happening.

While the rapid expansion of the solar and wind energy industries has attracted miles of column inches and billions in venture capital, the biogas sector that is in many ways more mature, cost effective and environmentally friendly than its high profile rivals has quietly operated on the margins of the renewables sector.

Like a sewage works stuck out on the edge of town, everyone accepts that it is pretty important, but no one wants to pay it too much attention.

In many ways this is understandable. Regardless of whether you dress the underlying feedstock up as organic waste, compost, or manure, these systems are typically powered by a combination or rotting food and sewage - and no one likes to talk about that.

And yet, if people can get over their distaste for the world of sanitation, biogas technologies represent a great environmental and commercial opportunity.

The technology is remarkable simple, usually involving little more than anaerobic digestion plants and combined heat and power systems, both of which are now relatively mature. All you need to do is shovel in the waste, add some enzymes to speed up the natural break down of the material, capture the resulting gas and burn it off to create heat and power. It's obviously a little bit more complicated than that, but not much.

The fuel source is also entirely renewable and all but free, while the technology is capable of producing both energy and fertiliser, creating a sustainable closed loop system.

Moreover, it has the ability to kill two birds with one stone, cutting carbon emissions by replacing fossil fuel based energy, while also capturing methane - itself a potent greenhouse gas.

When you look at these advantages it is surprising that it has taken so long for people to realise that there is a huge commercial opportunity for those that can stand the smell, but slowly that now seems to be changing.

Plans for the world's first urban biogas pipe network in the German city of Lünen were recently unveiled and a number of UK councils are said to be watching the trial closely to see if similar projects could work over here.

Meanwhile, German biogas firm Agri.capital recently announced it had secured 60m in equity funding - no mean fit in the current climate - to help fund expansion plans.

But what is most exciting about the technology is the sheer scale of the opportunity. A study earlier this year from the UK government, which has somewhat belatedly signalled its support for the sector, calculated that deploying anaerobic digestion technologies across the UK's farming sector could generate enough heat and electricity to power two million homes.

A similar study for National Grid went further still, estimating that harnessing all the UK's organic waste streams, including farm, food and wood waste, as well as sewage, could generate enough biogas to heat half the homes in the country.

It calculated that a UK-wide biogas network could be developed for £10bn, which might sound a lot but is likely to be significantly cheaper than generating a similar amount of energy from other forms of renewable energy such as wind power.

When you consider the construction costs associated with building offshore wind farms miles from population centres and then connecting them to the grid, compared with the cost of installing an anaerobic digestor at a sewage plant - which by definition is close to centres of population - and then laying down some new pipes to connect it to a small scale CHP system, you start to see bbiogas networks have the potential to be a far cheaper and simpler option.

Whether the strength of this commercial case can encourage the power brokers in Whitehall and the City to step up investment in the less than glamorous world of sewage remains to be seen, but, as they say in Yorkshire, where there's muck, there's brass.

Posted by James Murray on June 2, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (6)

When does compromise become appeasement?

One is at the heart of all good negotiation, the other is so loaded with historical allusions that it has the capacity to destroy careers at a single mention - and yet the dividing line between the two is both vanishingly slim and subject to change.

The debate surrounding the two terms was thrown into sharp relief this week at the World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen, where the organisers were criticised by green groups for inviting along some of the world's most carbon intensive firms in the form of BP, Shell and Duke Energy.

Any attempt to win round detractors with the release of a statement calling for a meaningful climate change deal to be reached at the UN talks in Copenhagen later this year was quickly undermined by a disclaimer revealing that while the document reflected much of the debate at the three day event it did not "not necessarily reflect the views of all participants".

A cynic would argue that once again some of the world's most polluting firms were able to give themselves a green hue and gain access to key negotiators in the Copenhagen process without actually signing up to any tangible commitments.

It is easy to understand the criticism. For years, many of the world's most carbon intensive firms and given lip service to the idea of cutting their carbon emissions, while continuing to increase their carbon footprint and lock themselves ever more tightly into unsustainable business models.

Green groups have become understandably frustrated at seeing attempts to appease carbon intensive firms through voluntary targets and lax regulations fail to deliver the required emission cuts and are now calling for far more stringent legislation.

They have a point and there is no doubt that Copenhagen will be judged a failure unless it ushers in much more demanding climate change regulation and an unwillingness to compromise on deep emission cuts.

But at the same time Copenhagen will also fail if it can't secure support from many of those firms that will be required to drastically change their operations as the result of a global deal.

Like it or not, the oil, energy and aviation companies that helped get us all into this mess have much of the expertise that is required to get us out of it. Moreover, they have the political and economic clout to undermine any treaty through legal challenges, non compliance, and extensive lobbying of those governments that are already sceptical about the prospect of a global deal.

Tempting as it can sometimes seem to ban Shell et al from the negotiations there is little to be gained and a lot to be lost by doing so.

Commitments from big businesses to support any global deal and the tougher regulations that ensue might be littered with get out clauses, but they all help shore up support for an international treaty and give politicians the visible support they need to drive through a meaningful deal.

Many of the world's most polluting firms may still be locked into carbon intensive strategies and some are undoubtedly still sceptical about the seriousness of climate change. But politicians, environmentalists and greener businesses are much more likely to win them round with a combination of tougher regulations, generous incentives and on-going engagement, than they are by simply excluding them from the debate over how best to build a low carbon economy.

Posted by James Murray on May 27, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sometimes, industries die.

Like cherished pets, faltering relationships and bad jokes, entire sections of the economy and their associated ways of life can occasionally just give up the ghost.

It's sad, at times heart-breakingly so, but it is a fact of economic life as old as civilisation itself - there isn't much work for cave wall painters anymore.

Two events this week put me in mind of this sad reality. The first was the news that the US fossil fuels industry is outspending green campaigners by "10 to one" as it becomes increasingly desperate in its attempts to block US climate change legislation. And the second, somewhat bizarrely, was a trip to my local theatre to see a revival of Michael Frayn's 1970's comedy Alphabetical Order.

Characterised by a particularly English mix of comedy, pathos and unrequited love, the play is set in the cuttings library of an unnamed provincial newspaper. Consequently, the most remarkable aspect of the performance is the sense that you are watching a world that in less than 30 years has simply disappeared from the face of the Earth.

At a time when the outlook for local newspapers has never looked more ominous, it is strange to remember that once, not so long ago, every newspaper had a comprehensive library and employed librarians to manage them. A sizable chunk of a global media industry was killed at a stroke with the advent of Google, and one of the many interesting components of Frayn's play is his accurate prediction of its slow decline and eventual demise.

I doubt he took pleasure in being proved right. There is nothing particularly edifying about watching the slow death of an industry. The biggest emotional punch of the play (and if you can spoil the ending of a 30 year old play, this is a spoiler alert) is reserved for the announcement that the paper is to close. Whenever industries become outdated, people lose jobs, communities are damaged; some take decades to recover, others fall into permanent decline. It is undoubtedly tragic, but that will never stop it happening.

Which brings us neatly to the fossil fuel industry's increasingly desperate attempts to head off climate legislation in the US.

You can't really blame them, when you consider how many livelihoods are on the line, but at the same time the whole exercise is a Canute-like denial of their inevitable decline.

The simple fact is that if carbon intensive industries accept the scientific realities of global warming (and if they don't can they just come out and say, so that the rest of us know where we stand) then they must also accept that they are doomed in their current form. They might give birth to cleaner offspring before they expire, but they can not expect to survive in their current guise.

This is not a particularly pleasant reality for the miners, factory workers and pilots whose jobs are on the line (and I write this as someone who is employed in a publishing industry where there are similarly grave doubts about the viability of current business models), but denying the poor medium to long term prospects for these sectors helps no one.

The best those carbon intensive industries lobbying against carbon legislation can ever hope for is to delay the inevitable for a few more years (perhaps for long enough to ensure that the rest of us are doomed to dangerous levels of climate change). Every dollar they spend on lobbying is a dollar that could and should be spent reinventing themselves to cope in a low carbon economy.

Ultimately, regardless of whether or not they are successful at watering down climate regulations, Darwinian forces will win out and it is those who that can't adapt to cope with global warming who will suffer most.

As the final scene of Alphabetical Order hammers home, the cutting librarians with flexible skills would have survived, while those who failed to adapt would have faced the axe.

It's sad, but any industry that refuses to adapt to the changing realities of a low carbon world is simply storing up a whirlwind of redundancies, bankruptcies and heartache for both its employees and the communities in which it operates. In the long term, even the people who the fossil fuel industries argue they are trying to save from unemployment will have no cause to thank the companies that seek to delay the advent of the low carbon economy.

Posted by James Murray on May 14, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

A few weeks back I reported on a talk by Labour MP Colin Challen at which he asked whether any country would really be willing to impose tough sanctions on the US in the event of it breaching any Copenhagen climate change deal.

It is arguably the singular most important question surrounding the entire Copenhagen process and will determine whether we end up with a real deal that promises to deliver deep cuts in carbon emissions or a symbolic gesture that paves the way for another two decades of diplomatic squabbles. And yet, up to now the issue of enforcement has been pushed so far to the sidelines of the UN negotiating process that it resembles little more than an inconvenient dot on the horizon.

Consequently, it was hugely encouraging to read this morning that the UK government has commissioned a study on precisely this issue.

It may be about 18 months too late given the glacial pace at which the UN negotiations appear to be moving, but it appears to clearly address the issue of what to do when a country breaches the emission targets that are expected to be agreed under Copenhagen. And even more significantly, it is unapologetic about the need for strong international carbon watchdogs and enforcement agencies to enforce the deal.

The report, An Institutional Architecture for Climate Change, recommends that the UN set up a new carbon watchdog similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency and imbue it with the power to carry out snap inspections and impose harsh penalties on those nations that breach the terms of any climate deal.

This might seem like little more than diplomatic house-keeping, but the reports' authors, Alex Evans and David Steven of the Centre on International Co-operation at New York University, are fully aware that what they are calling for has massive implications.

"Either countries play a full part in the system, or they sit outside the international system and are effectively barred from all forms of international co-operation," they say. "Carbon default, in other words, would become as weighty an issue as sovereign default, or failure to comply with a security council resolution. That this should currently seem inconceivable indicates the extent of the shift in understanding that is still needed."

You did read that right - breaching carbon targets should be on a par with "failure to comply with a security council resolution". Miss your targets and you join North Korea and Iran as the focus of the world's condemnation.

What that means in practice is that any country that consistently misses carbon targets or reneges on the deal should face pariah status and all the crippling economic sanctions that go with that.

It is an idea that sounds entirely right and proper in principle, but takes on a different hue when you consider the next US president could conceivably be the climate change doubting Sarah Palin, or that Putin's Russia has been one of the most vocal critics of the current negotiating process.

Ultimately however it is this issue of enforcement that will be the real test of political and business leaders' commitment to tackling climate change.

A nice and cosy deal at Copenhagen that sets out aspirational emission targets might well look good, and will certainly prove enough for politicians to claim success. But without an internationally feared watchdog we are doomed to repeat the mistakes that made the Kyoto Treaty such a failure.

Posted by James Murray on May 11, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Amidst all the encouraging reports of improved relations between China and the West in the run up to this year's crucial UN climate change talks in Copenhagen, something rather large and important seems to have been forgotten. It's called India.

This is not to suggest that recent statements from Chinese officials indicating that they are increasingly likely to sign up to a deal are anything other than encouraging. But in the rush to talk up the chances of a meaningful deal now being agreed, there seems to be a collective desire to ignore the fact that without a similarly sense of conciliation between Indian and the West the whole process could still be easily derailed.

The last reports I read on India's position in the Copenhagen process suggested that it was taking a significantly tougher line than China on the central topic of emission targets and climate adaptation funding.

Indian officials have said they too take climate change extremely seriously and have also hinted that they are willing to subscribe to some form of targets if developed nations sign up to deeper cuts. But they have also been pretty vocal in declaring that they will not to sign up to any deal that would undermine efforts to tackle poverty (and why should they?).

There is also an awareness that the retreat of Himalayan glaciers coupled with the potential inundation of Bangladesh means that India will require billions of dollars of assistance if it is to prepare for the inevitable impacts of climate change.

Equally, while China has made high profile investments in clean tech and rolled out a raft of new environmental regulations in recent years, progress in India has been far more patchy.

Even if China signs up to meaningful emission targets, there are no guarantees that India will simply follow suit.

You can understand the predicament faced by the Indian government.

Unlike its Chinese counterpart, it is democratically elected and will find it far harder to roll out climate change policies that might prove unpopular in the short term. Moreover, while China has famously spent much of the last two decades investing in the hard infrastructure that has underpinned its export-led economic miracle, India tended to focus more investment on the soft infrastructure of education. Consequently, it now boasts a world-renowned IT and outsourcing industry, but can not match the manufacturing expertise that should make it easier for China to build a clean tech sector.

You could not blame India if it decided that the financial support being offered by richer nations was insufficient to allow it to simultaneously meet emission targets while continuing to pull communities out of crippling poverty.

The problem for the Copenhagen process is that despite the understandable challenges India faces, any deal will be pretty much meaningless without its involvement.

The whole reason everyone is so desperate for a global deal is that without it some firms will simply relocate to countries without emission targets. I'd bet good money that there are already some morally and financially bankrupt governments calculating how much they would stand to gain by refusing to sign up to a deal and establishing themselves as "carbon tax havens" capable of attracting the world's most polluting industries.

There is a disproportionate focus on China given its status as the world's largest polluter, but India is not that far behind and as the second most populous country on Earth will almost certainly become the second largest emitter of carbon over the coming years.

Pressure will undoubtedly be brought to bear and any country that fails to sign up, even one as powerful as India, can expect to face carbon tariffs and sanctions, as well as international condemnation. But it would be far better for US and EU negotiators to now emulate the efforts they have apparently made with the Chinese, and ensure that India feels it will receive the financial support and realistic targets it needs if it is to sign up to a deal.

I don't doubt that the Indian government wants to see an agreement reached and it may well do so in the end, but there needs to be an acceptance that it could find it even harder than China to accept the terms currently being offered by developed nations.

Posted by James Murray on May 7, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've always found the idea of a "business community" rather strange.

Why, when the capitalist imperative requires that all firms are engaged in a permanent death tussle with their competitors, do we unquestioningly accept that there exists some kind of monolithic business community?

Surely, there are relatively few policies that are good for all businesses? You could argue that even something as uncontroversially "pro business" as a cut in corporate tax rates would spell bad news for those companies that rely on the public sector as their main customer.

Of course, as Margaret "there's no such thing as society" Thatcher observed you could make this argument about any form of community.

But I'd suggest that while we tend to accept that most social communities are made up of numerous individuals, we are much less inclined to accept that the business community is as loosely defined and prone to conflict and contradiction as any human grouping.

So it was a welcome surprise this weekend to see 13 of the UK's top business leaders come out and express categorical opposition to plans for a third runway at Heathrow.

As they noted in their letter to The Times: "To say that all those from the business community support the third runway is wrong. It is a misconception and one that we wish to put right."

For too long, the government and BAA were able to point to the economic advantages that would arise from airport expansion and suggest, unchallenged, that the "business community" was behind the proposals.

But who was this "business community"?

It certainly wouldn't contain Eurostar or any of the other train companies in the UK, nor would it be likely to feature those emerging green businesses who regard efforts to cut carbon emissions as their top priority. Many of those small firms in West London who would have to put up with increased noise and air pollution may also be reluctant to be counted as part of this "community", while an insurance sector that expects to see costs soar in the coming decades as a result of climate change may be similarly conflicted.

In fact, this "business community" always consisted of little more than the aviation industry, the CBI, and those Old School multinationals who bought the government's claims that Heathrow expansion would deliver net economic gains.

And now we learn that even that community is seriously fragmented.

The interesting thing about the 13 signatories of The Times letter is that they could hardly be described as the usual green business suspects. In fact, many of their businesses are heavily reliant on the aviation industry.

Taking just two examples, Justin King's Sainsbury's still ships in vast quantities of food each year using air freight, while James Murdoch's Sky must see thousands of man hours wasted each year with its reporters stuck in airport queues.

Yet these firms, along with 11 others, have clearly concluded that the business benefits that would arise from a third runway would be far outweighed by the costs. It would be interesting to know how many other firms have reached the same conclusion.

At a time when the Australian government is this week moving to postpone the introduction of a carbon cap-and-trade scheme at the behest of the "business community", it is important to remember that when it comes to climate change policies the global "business community" is far less coherent and united than the mainstream media suggests.

Posted by James Murray on May 5, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Colin Challen, MP is not in a particularly optimistic mood.

Speaking at an event in London last night, the Labour backbencher and founding member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change offered the most honest, and therefore pessimistic, assessment of the climate crisis I have ever heard from an elected official.

Unlike many MPs, Challen knows his climate science. He was at the End of the World conference in Copenhagen last month and heard the warnings about rising sea levels and soaring temperatures.

He knows talk of limiting temperature rises to two degrees above pre industrial levels is absurdly optimistic and that there must necessarily be a greater focus on adaptation. He knows that there remains a sizable gap between politicians' rhetoric and action on climate change (a disconnect he traces back to Labour's cataclysmic 1992 election defeat when voters told the party they supported its policies and then went into the polling booth and voted for the Tories in record numbers). And, worryingly, he knows the chances of a successful deal at the UN talks in Copenhagen later this year are vanishingly slim.

A deal will most likely be struck, Challen argues, but it will be fatally flawed by the UN's poor record of enforcement.

This is the elephant in the room at the UN talks. The scary question that looms over all the detailed negotiations is, even if carbon targets are agreed how will be they be enforced? Is any country really going to impose even symbolic sanctions on the US - or China for that matter - if come 2020 they overshoot their emission targets? No, thought not.

So what is to be done?

Challen is not short of ideas. An overhaul of the fiscal regime built around far higher taxes on carbon intensive activities, and clearer and more generous rewards for low carbon behaviour should be first on the agenda. Closely followed by clearer articulation of the threat we all face, better management of the market based mechanisms currently being used to reduced emissions, and increased willingness amongst politicians to address rampant over consumption, perhaps through a shift away from GDP and towards global well-being or happiness indices.

The key question though, is not what should be done, but how should it be done? How do environmentalists and green businesses drive climate change up the agenda of the main political parties and make some of these policies a reality?

The answer, according to Challen, is by taking them over.

He points out that years of centrist policies and falling membership numbers have left all the major parties hollowed out and ripe for a grass roots take over. And it is those who regard the environment as a top political priority who could and should lead that take over.

It sounds like a crazy idea, but with Labour Party membership at 170,000 people there are almost certainly more people signed up to various green groups than there are within the Party of government.

Could they mount a successful takeover? Almost certainly not. But Challen makes a valid point: real change has to be driven from the mainstream and if we want political and business leaders to take climate change seriously engaging with them and making life as difficult for them as possible is the only way to make them realise the true urgency of the threat.

Posted by James Murray on April 29, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2)