The answer to climate change lies in technology and engineering
It should be scientists, not politicians, who gather to combat carbon emissions
Plan A has failed — there is no effective global deal to manage the risks of climate change. So what is Plan B?
Twenty years of conferences, reports, intergovernmental meetings, public debate and most important mounting evidence of the early effects of climate change have failed to control or seriously mitigate the risks. It is time to go back to the Paris climate change agreement and think again.
The reality is simple and undisputed — hydrocarbons continue to supply about 80 per cent of global energy needs each day, just as they did 10 or 20 years ago. The only difference is that the absolute amounts behind this percentage have grown. As a result the amount of carbon emitted continues to rise — CO2 emissions are more than 40 per cent higher than they were in 2000, according to figures produced by the International Energy Agency.
A host of reports over the past few weeks have confirmed that judgment — including the IEA's World Energy Outlook, the US government's National Climate Assessment and the most recent study produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The situation is serious and getting worse. There is no world government and nationalism is the strongest political force of our times — and so there is no viable collaborative mechanism for tackling global problems. We are on an inexorable track to the point at which atmospheric carbon concentrations exceed the levels judged likely to raise temperatures by 1.5C.
