Climate change crisis 'can be solved by oil companies'- By Michael McCarthy

[kpete]

Climate change crisis 'can be solved by oil companies'

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor in Lyon

Monday, 27 September 2010


Climate change can be solved in a snap by making oil, gas and coal companies take responsibility for burying all the carbon dioxide emitted by the fossil fuel products they sell, one of Britain's leading young climate scientists said yesterday.

Government attempts to try to get millions of people to change their behaviour through taxes and incentives were doomed to fail, said Dr Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics Group at the University Oxford, and an increasingly influential voice in the climate debate.

It would be much more efficient, he said, simply to make all producers of carbon-based fuels accountable for the disposal of the carbon dioxide their fuels ultimately give off, as a condition of remaining in business. Successful climate change policy would involve less government, not more.

Dr Allen put his proposal forward in a debate on the politics of climate change at the Sustainable Planet forum in Lyon, the environmental conference co-sponsored by The Independent and the French newspaper Libération, where he was sparring with the former French Environment Minister and leader of the French Green Party, Dominique Voynet.

more:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-change-crisis-can-be-solved-by-oil-companies-2090423.html

[Uncle Joe]

1. I believe going that route would eventually lead to carbon gushers while also

working as a deterrent to much needed societal change in regards to breaking our addiction to finite, carbon burning, fossil fuels.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.

[Moostache]

2. Linear analogy math is always problematic...

Quote:
"World temperatures have already risen to nearly one degree above the pre-industrial, and this rise has been produced, Dr Allen says, by all the fossil fuels which have been burned since then, which has been estimated at about 500 billion tonnes.

Therefore, he says, we can afford to burn another half-trillion tonnes of carbon before the extra degree of warming is reached – we need to stop using fossil fuels completely by the time we reach the trillionth tonne."

First major flaw - that thinking in this case (1 + 1 = 2 always and without exception) is WRONG! It eliminates consideration of positive feedback loops such as the release of permafrost methane and dangerously make the issue seem more remote and less urgent.

While I agree that the companies who produce and generate the carbon in the atmosphere should be directly accountable for its removal and the costs to the environment (I HATE the term "externalities" and believe that any corporatist who traffics in its use should be drawn and quartered), I have to take umbrage with the assertion that we "can afford to burn another half-trillion tonnes of carbon". That is the level of thinking that leads to total inaction, hand wringing, dis-information disguised as advocacy and in general the global morass we are currently in when it comes to this issue.

We cannot "afford" any delays, and the ones that we are going through now are going to be revisited on our collective heads 10-fold in the future. Every day that passes without a concerted, global response to this issue is a day in the future that is made more bleak and hopeless than it needed to be. May the future generations that suffer our sins have mercy on our souls and to them I say again, I am truly sorry that I was unable to awaken enough people to the dangers to counter them sooner.