I was humbled to receive a personal welcome by name from the chairman at the start of the day, and later, when I asked him why, he said it was because they were so pleased to have delegates from different spheres of society at a conference mainly populated by business representatives.
The conference itself featured some top quality speakers representing:
the Committee on Climate Change set up under Climate Change Act to advise government on carbon budgets; Mars , and Food and Drink Federation; the Trades Union Congress; EON; Unilever; BT; Kelloggs; Friends of the Earth; Department of Energy and Climate Change etc.
In keeping with the two previous blogs, there seemed increasing acceptance within the world of business that Climate Change is happening - in fact as I write this the Meteorological Office has just published information about the impact of 2 deg centigrade tempearature rise in the UK by 2050, which includes warnings of heat waves of up to 40 deg C in London.The problem is, many of the local residents of north west England probably don't necessarily think that this would be a bad thing - it would save them having to travel to the Costas, not that the Costas would be comfortable if they were between 2 - 5 degrees celsius warmer, and what about those living in the harsher sub-Saharan climates,
or those whose islands and coastal homes will be obliterated by rising sea levels? A recent BBC documentary series on the South Pacific highlighted this and many other ecological challenges associated with climate change - it's not all about carbon.
The conference was told that unless agreement at Copenhagen 2009 is reached with global significance - in other words with the developed world agreeing to cut emissions by hugely significant
amounts and offer substantial financial support to the developing world to help them plan and prepare for growth using clean technologies, the temperature rise is more likely to be in the region of 5 degrees centigrade across the world. Global population is forecast to rise to 9 billion, of which 80% would be in the developing world, whilst the planet can only sustain 1billion at the level of wellbeing currently taken for granted in the devloped world.It was very interesting to see that commercial businesses, often motivated by economics, but in some cases also by ethical reasons such as trust and integrity in the eyes of customers, and the recognition of valuable initiatives by employees, generally at shop floor and board level (interestingly, middle management are perceived as least ready to be proactive) are bringing about changes in practice in the work place that will reduce carbon emissons, and result in more effecient use of increasingly scarce and costly energy resources.
Much of the input was focussed on reducing carbon emissions as a matter of urgency - 80% by 2050 in UK - but one excellent break-out group received significant information about the challenge of water stress - reduced sources of clean water, brought about as a consequence of global Climate Change - for an increasing population, and ever-more demanding global production systems. Careful use of water was being researched and sponsored in the developing and industrial world by, amongst others, Unilever.The final speaker from the London School of Economics was asked if the UK was ready to act decisevely to do its part in mitigating against the effect of Climate Change, gave the reply, that the cost of acting now is not insurmountable (interesting that the government is prepared to put a telephone tax on every landline to cover the cost of greater digital coverage), but the barriers are institutional, social and political. The will to do anything is still not there. Climate change events and consequences will catch up on us, and steps to bring about change will be forced up the global community, by which time it will cost significantly more. The more business act now, the better their own economic prospects will be.
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