Crash Of 2009 – Scientists Say Climate Policy Needs Radical New Direction

In a just published 43-page paper, leading scientists and professors are calling for a completely new direction in climate policy after what they call “The Crash of 2009”. http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/mackinderProgramme/pdf/HartwellPaper07052010.pdf

This was made public this morning by Dr Reiner Grundmann, one of the paper’s authors, at http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com.

In its Executive Summary, the paper states that climate policy “has failed to produce any discernable real world reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases in fifteen years”, adding:

…UNFCCC/Kyoto model was structurally flawed and doomed to fail because it systematically misunderstood the nature of climate change as a policy issue between 1985 and 2009.

In my view this paper reveals that many scientists and policymakers are now realising what many of us already knew: Radical regulation and taxation of carbon is not going to work. The paper proposes a much watered down version of what governments, interest groups and activists were previously pushing for. Its authors are still calling for a tranformation in energy supply and consumption, but in a more measured and targeted approach using low taxes and through the development of unsubsidised energy sources.

The authors say of their paper:

It explains radical and practical ways to reduce non-CO2 human forcing of climate. It argues that improved climate-risk management is a valid policy goal, and is not simply congruent with carbon policy.

Well at least governments now have an option: they can continue to allow energy policy to be formulated and driven by zealots, or they can hand the job over to the lukewarmers, who are promising a less painful approach, one that respects human dignity.