Could carbon defaults put you on a par with North Korea?
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.
Is India getting lost on the road to Copenhagen?
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.
Business community? What business community?
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.
It's time to arm ourselves with proper carbon targets
A week on from "End of the World Conference" and the implications of the climate scientists' latest findings are beginning to sink in.
Not the physical implications of rising sea levels, deadly heat waves and malfunctioning carbon sinks, nor the social implications of mass migration, resource shortages and climate wars - that sunk in pretty sharpish, as horrifying news is wont to do. More the immediate implications of what the accelerating rate of climate change means for current carbon reduction strategies.
The simple fact is almost all the current goals that have been adopted or are in the process of being adopted by both governments and businesses are woefully inadequate.
Factor in the latest scientific findings and emission projections and it soon becomes plain that well meaning targets to cut global emissions 50 per cent by 2050 and rich nations emissions 80 per cent by the same date are like bringing a knife to a gun fight. Actually, they are more like bringing a water pistol to a nuclear showdown, but let's not argue over similes.
As the new report from the Tyndall Centre makes plain, the carbon budgets currently being considered by the UK government were based on "naively optimistic" projections for global carbon emissions even before the latest science revealed climate change is happening even faster than first thought. While the government looks set to adopt targets to cut emissions by 34 per cent by 2020, the Tyndall Centre reckons it should be aiming for 42 per cent as a minimum if it is to have any hope of making an equitable contribution to limiting temperature rises to two degrees above pre-industrial levels.
The longer term targets being discussed as part of the Copenhagen process look similarly inadequate.
A few years ago agreeing a target to halve global emissions by 2050 and cut emissions from rich countries by 80 per cent would have been a cause for celebration (given the possibility we may not yet get a deal perhaps it still should be). But the science moves on, and all the latest evidence suggests such cuts simply won't limit warming to safe levels any more.
According to Professor John Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, we should be now aiming to cut global emissions by 80 per cent to give ourselves even a "Russian Roulette" chance of limiting warming to two degrees. Given the developing world has next to no chance of delivering such deep cuts that means the developed world should be aiming for nothing less than the complete decarbonisation of its economies by mid century and may even have to develop means of removing carbon from the atmosphere as well.
It doesn't take an intimate knowledge of international climate change negotiations to understand that such targets are extremely unlikely to be adopted. A few governments - Iceland, Norway, New Zealand, Costa Rica, and now the Maldives - have made bold commitments to achieve carbon neutrality, but most countries are not even close to countenancing cuts on such a scale.
In an ideal world governments would allow their climate change strategies to be dictated by climate change science, would revise their existing targets upwards as quickly as possible, and use the new targets to justify levels of investment in clean technology that would make the recent wave of green stimulus packages look like spare change from down the back of the sofa (in the case of the UK this is already exactly what it looks like, but that's a topic for another day). Sadly, this is not an ideal world and everything about the current stand off between China and developed economies over carbon targets suggests this is not going to happen any time soon.
However, the equation is slightly different for businesses.
With growing numbers of large firms now having emission reduction targets of one form or another, there is a real commercial opportunity for those businesses willing to be amongst the first to say "the science has changed, so we are changing our targets".
For many companies 50 per cent cuts in emissions by 2020 and complete decarbonisation of their operations by 2040 are entirely realistic goals. Those businesses that come out and say so will not only bolster their environmental credibility they will also distinguish between themselves and rivals who they will be able to reasonably accuse of ignoring the latest climate science.
As the sixty energy companies that this week announced a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050 have realised, the scale of the fight is greater than we first thought, so the scale of our response must become greater as well.
The good news from Copenhagen
First the bad news, and please bear with me as this may take some time.
The impact of climate change, existential in its nature and all consuming in its scope, will be far more severe and felt far earlier than previously thought.
The latest scientific research presented at this week's meeting of climate scientists in Copenhagen confirms what many had privately feared: we are on track for the worst case scenario set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change two years ago, and the instabilities in the climate system coupled with the fact that many natural carbon sinks are beginning to fail mean that it could be worse still.
All the latest climate science suggests global average temperatures are rising in line with expectations, but carbon emissions are rising faster than anticipated and natural systems are responding more dramatically than expected to even modest temperature rises.
For example, sea levels have risen an average of 3mm a year since 1993, an increase of 50 per cent on the average rate of sea level increase during the 20th century. The rise is faster than expected because previous models failed to anticipate the rate at which glaciers would move into the sea. Based on the current trends sea levels will not rise by between 18cm and 59cm by 2100 as predicted by the IPCC, but by more than one metre putting a tenth of the global population at risk of coastal flooding.
Similarly, new evidence reveals that the world's major carbon sinks, the tropical rainforest, Siberian permafrost and the oceans, are all much more sensitive to even small average temperature increases than previously thought. According to one model a temperature increase of just two degrees would result in 20 to 40 per cent of the Amazon dying off, releasing yet more CO2 into the atmosphere. The worst case scenario predictions that rising temperatures will result in more warming gases being released triggering runaway climate change are already being realised.
All this means that we are currently on track for warming of around five to six degrees by the end of the century.
What does that mean?
Well, one of the themes of the conference was that climate scientists have not adequately communicated the severity of the situation to political and business leaders. If they did choose to put aside their rigorous scientific terminology for a moment, they would likely settle on a one word assessment of our prospects, Anglo Saxon in origin and not to be used in polite company.
At five to six degrees below pre-industrial temperatures we were in the midst of the last ice age; at five to six degrees above we would be facing the end of civilisation as we know it.
That might sound like hyperbole, but at five to six degrees warmer vast swathes of the tropical and sub tropical regions would become uninhabitable, sea levels would rise by at least a metre putting coastal cities and entire countries at risk of inundation, the rainforests would be effectively wiped out, acidification of the oceans would create giant dead zones, and mass migration would spark near unprecedented levels of global conflict. One scientist predicted the global population could crash to just one billion people - between 2050 and 2100 the world could be literally decimated.
And the really scary thing is that most previous climate studies have been far too optimistic in their predictions. This time, if they are even half right we are on a path towards utter devastation.
For many people, 2100 may be too distant a prospect for these threats to register, even given the fact that modern life expectancies mean that a child born today in one of then lucky northern countries has a fair chance of being around to see it. But another scary component of these warnings is that we won't wake up in 2100 and everything will suddenly change. Based on the current emissions and warming trends the climate change impacts already being felt in many regions could become unmanageable within the next 20 to 30 years.
How should we feel about these predictions? Anxious, angry, and energised to take action, ought to cover it - though you'd be forgiven for opting for just plain terrified.
The bigger question though is where do we go from here?
Scientists at this week's meeting divide into two camps: those who believe it might just still be possible to limit warming to around two degrees above pre-industrial levels - a scenario that would still put the climate system under extreme stress. And those who believe the best we can hope for is to limit warming to three or four degrees and pray this does not do so much damage to the carbon sinks that it triggers runaway global warming. "Hope" and "pray" might not be particularly scientific terms, but after three days in Copenhagen this seems to be the crux of it.
To give us the slightest chance of avoiding catastropic levels of climate change we need a far greater sense of urgency than has been displayed to date. Political and business leaders need to act, and they need to act now.
To this end, the scientific, political and business community need to instigate an immediate change in the terminology they are using to describe global warming. Environmental campaigner George Monbiot's suggestion this week that we should substitute the passive "climate change" for the more accurate "climate breakdown" might seem like a semantic side issue, but if adopted widely enough it could have a huge impact.
If the full scale of the threat can be accurately communicated then there is a chance that a meaningful international deal can be reached later this year in Copenhagen, built around deep and binding emission reduction targets and the rapid mobilisation and adoption of clean technologies.
We also need to increase the focus on the short term benefits that accrue from a low carbon economy.
Talk of saving our grandchildren has not worked so far and sadly humanity is too short sighted for that to change any time soon. Unfortunately, by the time we realise, sometime in the 2030s, that it is our lives and livlihood at risk it will be too late to do anything.
As explicitly as economists, scientists and politicians warn of the catastrophe that will be reaped in the second half of the century, they need to highlight the cost savings, health benefits, risk reduction, job creation and investment returns that will accrue today for low carbon economies. It needs to become self evident that low carbon growth is not just the only long term option, but better in the short term too.
Most of all, it is critical that the temptation to succumb to despair is resisted. The challenge may be even more daunting than previously thought, but, as numerous speakers at the conference pointed out, it can be overcome.
One of the most compelling observations offered up by Professor Dan Kammen of the University of California, Berkeley, was that the US could save energy equivalent to its entire annual fuel imports simply by replicating the level of efficiency attained by New York and California across the rest of the countries. Time and again the point was made that the technologies needed to decarbonise economies are here now, tried and tested and ready to go.
Moreover, the price tag for deploying them really is remarkably small. One study suggested that subsidies of just €10 to €20bn a year would allow the solar and wind energy industry to account for around 40 per cent of the global electricity mix by 2050. Similarly, £50bn could make the ambitious plan to generate Europe's energy from solar farms in the Sahara a reality, while there is growing evidence that such investments would actually deliver a net increase in GDP.
The upfront costs might sound large, but they are miniscule compared to the amount governments have spent propping up failing banks. Many of the stimulus packages being rolled out around the world already have a green hue, but if we made them greener still we really could deliver deep cuts in emissions while restoring economic growth.
Finally, while the change in the climate might be terrifyingly fast, rapid cultural and economic changes are possible too.
Speaking at the conference, Lord Nicholas Stern noted that his generation had in just a few decades moved from a position where drink driving was widely seen as a basic right to an acceptance that it was the height of irresponsibility and should be severely punished.
A session at the conference on green cities, featured two photographs of a road in Dubai taken from the same point. One of the photographs was taken 13 years ago and featured a vast expanse of desert; the other was taken this year and showed a teeming metropolis dominated by skyscrapers and highways. It might be an example of the kind of unsustainable growth that has contributed to the current climate crisis, but it also serves as a reminder of how quickly societies can change if the ambition and will is there.
And that is the only good news we have left.
Climate change - is it all the climate scientists fault?
Chastising a scientist for not being a great orator is a bit like moaning at a footballer for not giving enlightening post-math interviews - it's not really their job.
Inherently, scientists don't do rhetoric. They do facts, cold hard facts that can be tested, re-tested and tested again, and what's more we would not have it any other way. It is only through the rigourous application of scentific processes, of hypotheses proposed, tested and refined, that we end up with reliable, accurate evidence from which to make decisions.
Bold predictions, made without a correct assessment of variability and uncertainty are anathema to this process, handing easy wins to those who for whatever reason wish to discredit your research.
And yet, when the research you are undertaking points to a planetary emergency is there not an obligation to frame it in the manner that garners the most attention?
This, in a nutshell, was the argument made yesterday by John Ashton, climate change special envoy to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who warned that if we are to ensure carbon emissions peak within the next six years then there "has to be much better communication between the world of science and politics".
Describing the inability to communicate in a language policymakers understand as an "existential threat" that undermines science's very position within wider society, Ashton said climate scientists had consistently failed to get there message across to politicians, had been occassionally guilty of downplaying threats that they thought would prove politically unpalatable, and had struggled to challenge the perception amongst some policymakers that they are just another lobby.
He advised that climate scientists should increase their focus on time scales that resonate with political leaders, focusing assessments on how people will be impacted over current average lifetimes, and also address the way in which the numerous caveats attached to scientific reports can be used to delay action by including the kinds of "reasonable worst case scenarios" that politicians feel more comfortable acting upon.
After a day with the 1,600 climate scientists at the Climate Congress in Copenhagen you have accept that Ashton has a point.
At one point, one of the panel of scientists behind the latest research showing sea levels could rise by over a metre by 2100 was invited to take up Ashton's challenge and provide a "reasonable worst case scenario". He responded, not unreasonably, that scientists did not do reasonable worst case scenarios, before adding that sea level rises of over one metre were entirely feasible given current rates of ice melt and expected increases in temperature.
This exchange followed a presentation of the latest data that was delivered with such urgency that if you drifted off for a moment, and you'd be forgiven for doing so, you'd be hard pushed to tell from the panel's voices whether you were listening to a discussion of impending global disaster or the launch of a new accountancy standard.
It was only in response to questions that the panel remembered to confirm that the real world implications of their research meant that vast swathes of south east Asia and Africa as well as countless island states were at far greater risk of catastrophic coastal flooding than previously thought. And it was only in the accompanying press release that it was revealed that a sea level rise of one metre would put 600m people or 10 per cent of the global population at risk.
It is slightly unfair to chastise scientists for not having the oratorical skills of Barack Obama, just as it is unfair to ask a profession often dedicated to focusing on minute and complex detail to place their data in a global political, social and economic context - that is ultimately the job of politicians, the media, and wider society.
But while political and business leaders must take the bulk of the blame for ignoring their warnings for so long, climate scientists also need to ask themselves some hard questions over precisely why their warnings have been allowed to go ignored.
It seems Ashton's diagnosis is right, and unless something is done quickly to close the communication gap between scientists and politicians this farcical level of misunderstanding could soon end as tragedy.
Carbon regulation - it's only natural
I have just listened to the most eloquent and convincing defence of the case for carbon regulation that I have yet heard.
It was delivered by Professor Katherine Richardson of the University of Copenhagen at the opening of the International Association of Research University's Climate Congress, and it goes, in abbreviated form, like this.
When mankind first worked out that it could grown and harvest crops it did so wherever it liked in an entirely subsistence manner. At this point it was impossible for our ancestors to conceive that at some point this activity might have to be managed and regulated.
It was only generations later, when population growth meant competition for agricultural land, that societies realised agricultural activity needed to be regulated and property laws and boundaries emerged.
Similarly, there was a time when it was only natural to discard waste whereever we liked. Again, it was only when society realised that this posed a threat to health and social coherence that the practice became tightly regulated by both formal laws and informal mores.
The parallels with carbon regulation are obvious. As Richardson puts it:
"When our ancestors traded animals for machines and put the model T on the road no one dreamed we would have to regulate these activities. But people have always reacted to issues that are seen as a collective threat to our species by developing regulations to manage those actions... it is that which gives us hope."
So there we have it. Carbon regulations are not just necessary they are a natural part of social evolution. Try arguing with that.
Some thoughts on the snow
In case you haven't noticed the weather has been somewhat inclement this past week or so.
With more blizzards forecast overnight fears are mounting that we could see a repeat of last Monday when the southern half of the UK effectively ground to a halt, costing the economy anywhere between £1bn and £3.5bn depending on which guestimate you choose to believe.
Cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the UK's battered transport infrastructure, the absence of government leadership, the shirking culture of staff hoping for a day off, and, thanks to the ever-lovable Richard Littlejohn, the suggestion that climate change can't really exist on the scientific grounds it's a bit nippy out.
Leaving for another time the impossibility of engaging with wilfully moronic rabble rousers such as Littlejohn who are incapable of telling the difference between climate trends and weather events and are happy to dismiss the increased incidence of deadly heat waves and summer floods as one offs, while citing the fact the "sea is freezing over in Wales" as evidence the "eco-loonies" are all wrong, there is a counter-intuitive case for arguing that the recent snow should be sparking a serious debate over how the UK plans to cope with a warmed world.
The most obvious fact highlighted by last week's snow is the UK's continued inability to respond effectively to weather-related disasters.
Government ministers were quick to trot out the entirely rational argument that there is no point investing in snow ploughs that would gather dust before being rolled out for one week every two decades.
But the fact remains that both culturally - witness the huge numbers of people in London who did not make it into work last Monday when even with the public transport system struggling all that stood between them many of them and the office was a bracing walk in the snow - and structurally the economy is too vulnerable to freak weather events.
There is now a compelling case for investment in more resilient infrastructure capable of coping with the increased incidence of freak weather events that climate scientists now predict. Even if we can't justify spending on snow ploughs, we surely can justify investment on improved response planning and resilient resources that can keep rail and road networks clear come flood, fire or snow. The government did last year pledge to invest around £800m in improved flood defences, but it is hard to disagree with the Association of British Insurers view that the sums involved still look pretty paltry compared to the scale of the problem.
But perhaps the bigger lesson to be gained from the last week is that our businesses are simply too reliant on the transport network. It is inevitable that the economy will take a hit when snow or floods close roads and rail lines, but should it really be to the tune of several billion pounds when we increasingly live in a knowledge economy where the majority of the population now have internet access.
Effective home working technologies have been at a reasonable state of maturity for at least five years now, but still too many businesses are set up in a manner whereby they can't operate unless staff are reporting, present and correct, to work each morning.
While their rivals were complaining about lost revenue as a result of last week's snow, truly flexible businesses where staff can access the systems they need over the internet were suffering minimal disruption.
What is more, a flexible home working business model is not only resilient to freak weather events, it is also low carbon.
With the government committed to cutting emissions from a transport sector that accounts for about a quarter of the UK's carbon footprint and analysts predicting long term fuel costs will only rise the enabling of home working helps address both legislative and cost risks as well as the risk of climate-related disruption.
And it is not just office-based businesses that can benefit from home working. As a recent report from the NHS on its low carbon future showed, huge numbers of support staff could cut their carbon emissions and improve their work-life balance if only they had access to the right online systems at home.
In many respects, investment in laptops, home offices, fast broadband connection and secure intranet connections are likely to prove more effective in the long term than spending on grit wagons and snow ploughs.
"We need four Katrinas in one year"
If I worked for a tabloid I would, at this very moment, be putting the finishing touches to a front page scoop - after all what else is there to write about, besides more moaning about the snow.
Earlier today, Jonathon Porritt, former director of Friends of the Earth, co-founder of Forum for the Future, chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, and arguably the government's most important green advisor, said that what we needed to shock us out of our complacency over climate change was at least "four Katrinas in one year".
In fairness, he did qualify his comments to say that they should not all hit America, but did argue that it would be handy if at least two hit the developed world as Europe and the US had an unfortunate habit of ignoring disasters in poorer nations.
He then admitted to occasionally dreaming of Miami getting wiped out - you can kind of see why the guy so often finds himself mired in controversy.
Taken out of context, Porritt's comments are just the kind of thing that gets environmentalists their reputation as callous doom-mongerers who take a perverse delight in natural disasters that vindicate their world view.
Like I say, a tabloid hack would have gone to town on Porritt's speech, delivered at a conference on carbon management hosted by business software company SAS (not content with talk of deadly hurricanes, he also touched on the need for huge cuts in aviation and meat consumption and declined to distance from his controversial view that there is an environmental case for seeking to limit population growth).
But taken in context, Porritt's comments follow an indisputable, if slightly morbid, logic.
The point he was making (and elaborated on in an interview with BusinessGreen.com which we will post tomorrow) is that all the climate change models now point to an era of "radical discontinuity" characterised by increasingly frequent "climate-induced shocks".
Be they devastating events like Katrina or slower-moving shocks such as droughts or carbon feedback loops there will be increased pressure on societies, governments and businesses to somehow prepare for the unpredictable.
As Porritt puts it: "There are businesses working on models that are not worth the paper they are written on. Whether you are talking from the perspective of demographics or technology change or the environment or changing consumer expectations the reality for business now is one of radical discontinuity. So smart management teams are already thinking how do we proof our business against that discontinuity? How do we build resilience in the company so we are better equipped to deal with all that?"
This resilience will have to take two forms. Firstly, there is the urgent need to make businesses and their supply chains more physically resilient to climate change threats, but secondly there is the need to create resilience against the legislative and market changes that will accompany any increase in the frequency of climate shocks.
Porritt noted that while carbon cap-and-trade schemes may have their flaws one advantage they do boast is flexibility. As a result governments are in a position to lower emission caps as soon as public opinion becomes fully aware of the need for greater action on climate change - most likely in the wake of a flurry of climate-related disasters.
Consequently, businesses need to prepare for not just increased climate instability, but also potentially sharp changes in the legislative environment that would drive up energy prices and require dramatic reform of business models. As with any such systemic changes, it is those firms that prepare earliest that will prove the most resilient and best equipped to prosper in the new low carbon economy.
It might not grab as many headlines as hypothesising over the potential up-side of Katrina-scale disasters, but this is the message business leaders should take from Porritt's all too real warnings.
The Week in Green: climate change risks and the girls you should have kissed
I've always been intrigued by the concept of risk - not the board game for wannabe megalomaniacs with the indecipherable rules, more the idea of trying to work out whether to expose yourself to the possibility of unpleasant events.
Our understanding of, and attitude towards, risk is one of the defining aspects of our personality, distinguishing the confident from the shy, the fearless from the cowardly, the indolent from the motivated, and the astute from the just plain dumb.
It is also the raison d'etre of one of the world's biggest industries in the form of insurance and its management should form one of the cornerstones of every other private and public sector organisation on the planet.
And yet, our understanding of risk always seems to me to be curiously confused and under developed.
At an individual level most of us, myself certainly included, would probably regard ourselves as a bit too risk averse. As the old maxim goes, you always regret the girls you didn't kiss, far more than the ones you did. It is almost part of human nature to look back on opportunities where we wish we had taken more of a risk, moments when we were too timid for our own good.
Yet at a social level humanity's recklessness is at times little short of terrifying. There is barely an economic, environmental or humanitarian disaster that could have not been avoided, or at the very least minimised, through a better early appreciation of the risks involved.
Apologists will inevitably claim that 20:20 hindsight is a wonderful thing and that every decision is rational at the time it is made, which is undoubtedly true. But at the same time some of the worst self-inflicted traumas of recent years (I'm thinking, global economic meltdown, disastrous occupations of Middle Eastern states, etc) were the result of some blindingly obvious risks being wilfully ignored (giving mortgages to people without any income, invading countries based on completely flawed intelligence, that sort of thing).
Climate change is of course nothing if not a risk issue.
There are plenty of environmentalists who argue that if people truly understood the risks our societies and economies now face as a result of global warming then they would be taking to the streets to demand immediate action.
At the economic level, the rationale for rapid investment in low carbon technologies and an overhaul of green legislation rests entirely on the premise that the financial threat posed by climate change is so great that it makes more sense to act now to mitigate the risks than try to cope with them later.
From the Stern Report, through virtually every other government and academic study on how to respond to climate change, this thinking has become established as conventional wisdom and been endorsed by political and business leaders the world over.
And yet, as Gordon Brown hints he wants to build a third runway at Heathrow and the Tories apparently edge away from their green commitments, it remains a colossal struggle to ensure that this apparent understanding of climate change risks translates into the real world actions that will help alleviate the threat.
The question is how do you hammer home to business and political leaders that the risks are real and that urgent action makes sense regardless of the current economic climate?
The answer is to treat them like children.
My mother, an indisputable source of wisdom who also used to work as a primary school teacher, always used to say that the reason it was so tricky to instil a sense of discipline in children was that their otherwise admirable sense of youthful invincibility meant they rarely imagined bad things would happen to them. They were almost incapable of analysing the risks associated with their actions and imagining a scenario where their misdemeanours were both detected and punished - regardless of how many times it happened.
It is a reckless streak many business leaders continue to display in older age, be it through their refusal to act to combat climate change, or, more locally, many small businesses common inability to prepare adequately for entirely foreseeable risks, such as black outs or floods.
The only answer - as any teacher who has had to face down 30 boisterous eight year olds will tell you - is to try and make the promise of reward and threat of reprisal as real and consistent as possible, until the realisation dawns that the risks associated with breaking the rules just aren't worth it.
For those seeking to help people wake up to the threat of climate change that means framing the associated risks entirely within believable contexts that an audience can understand.
For example, unless you live in the Maldives rising sea levels are too sci-fi a concept for many to grasp, but floods, wild fires and deadly heat waves are far easier to envisage.
Equally, if it is businesses that will drive the development of a low carbon economy then it is business risks that we have to focus on to stimulate the necessary investment. Global warming will result in higher insurance premiums, rising energy costs, increased geo-political instability and business disruption, and those global businesses that have risen to prominence in the last 100 years and wish to still be around in 100 years time need to be made fully aware of those risks as soon as possible if they are to survive.
As a report from the University of California this week on the potential cost of climate change for the state makes plain, these risks will have a huge and potentially disastrous impact on bottom lines and businesses need to be planning for them right now.
And if the threat of $2.5tr worth of assets being at risk from climate change in California alone is not enough to focus corporate minds, then perhaps it is time to start talking about something that will send a shiver down their spine, regardless of how hot it gets - litigation.
A separate report this week claimed that the risk of heat-related deaths will soar as a result of global warming. Now, not that I want to give the ambulance chasing lawyers any ideas, but if you can construct a strong case against cigarette companies for failing to act when they knew their were health risks associated with smoking, how long will it be until one of the firms that spent so long denying their contribution to climate change finds a high profile class action law suit landing on their desk?
Now, there is a risk business really should be able to understand.
