CAT Development Director Paul Allen looks back at 2007

In 2007, scientists released a record number of climate change reports. For many the UN talks in Bali were meant to be the year’s highlight, yet despite this negotiating frenzy, and some bleak scientific warnings, the world still lacks firm greenhouse emissions reduction targets.

This year also marked the virtual extinction of the ‘contrarian’ climate change deniers – they were a notable absence in the Bali negotiations. However, instead of agreeing firm targets, the ‘Bali Roadmap’ initiated a two-year process, committing states to the principle of further emissions cuts to replace those in the Kyoto Protocol, and to concluding negotiations on those cuts by 2009. The EU pressed for a commitment of 25-40% emissions cuts by 2020 for industrialised nations, a bid that was implacably opposed by a bloc containing the US, Canada and Japan.

The ‘Bali Roadmap’ aims to build on the Kyoto process by using funds from international carbon trading to pay for mitigation measures such as sea walls, fresh water infrastructure, new crop varieties, mosquito nets and whatever else may be needed as the world warms and rainfall patterns change. But, in terms of agreeing targets, the route now leads to Poznan in Poland in a year's time, and to Copenhagen late in 2009 – there is certainly plenty to read during this, hopefully final leg of the journey.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 4th assessment report provides evidence that reducing global greenhouse gas emissions can be done at quite moderate costs, far less than the costs of failing to do so, affirming that “Delaying emission reductions significantly constrains the opportunities to achieve lower stabilisation levels and increase the risk of the more severe climate change impacts.” In short, really radical action must be taken now - if we are to avoid crossing a tipping point of 2°C in global mean temperature, beyond which we run the risk of irreversible, catastrophic feedback effects. 2°C inevitably becomes 3°C, releasing more carbon and pushing the temperature irreversibly up to 4°C and so on to climate chaos.

However, many climate scientists were concerned that the 4th IPCC report actually underestimates the seriousness of our situation because it only incorporates research published up to mid 2006. Carbon Equity’s The Big Melt report (see www.carbonequity.info) presented an overview of new trends in the behaviour of Arctic ice revealed this summer, showing the Antarctic ice shelf to be more sensitive to warming temperatures than previously thought. Its floating sea ice is headed towards rapid summer disintegration as early as 2013, a century ahead of the IPCC projections. Hence no further greenhouse gases should be released. We may even have to consider drastic action, at considerable cost to recapture existing atmospheric CO2.

We have now collated enough information to prove beyond reasonable doubt that is time for radical action – the emphasis for 2008 must shift from detailing the problem, to detailing the solution.

The Centre for Alternative Technology’s Zerocarbonbritain report was launched in July. The report aimed to integrate our detailed knowledge and experience into a national framework to address climate change and energy security while providing access to energy to a growing global population. Zerocarbonbritain demonstrated that we could reduce eliminate fossil fuels completely by 2027, reducing our greenhouse emissions from energy to zero if the correct drivers were put in place.

It is meaningless to compare our lifestyles today with those of a zero carbon future – as the most recent science has demonstrated, life as it is now will change - like it or not. More useful is the comparison between a future where we have been proactive and acted ahead of events, with a future where we have let events overtake us.

Rising to the challenge will entail a new approach to many of our current lifestyle choices. Pioneering new lifestyles in reducing emissions means ingenuity replaces apathy, and self-reliance replaces self-gratification, but perhaps most significantly, it might just deliver a rich sense of collective purpose and personal meaning, which we may find we have been craving for a very long time.

Paul Allen, December 2007