Consortium lays out carbon strategy
July 13, 2009
Prior to this week’s G8 meeting in Italy, a worldwide consortium of research institutes has produced a report that sets out a strategy for avoiding an imminent failure in climate policy.
The document is being published by the London School of Economics' (LSE) Mackinder Programme and the University of Oxford's Institute for Science, Innovation and Society.
The authors of How to Get Climate Policy Back on Course argue that the strategy based on overall emissions reductions has failed to work and will continue to do so. They maintain that the only policies that will prove effective are those that concentrate on improving energy efficiency and “decarbonising” energy supply, rather than focusing on emissions — the output of these processes.
The report refers to its recommended strategy as the "Kaya Direct" Approach. The report’s co-ordinating author, Professor Gwyn Prins of the LSE, said that a worthwhile strategy was one based on a knowledge of what works and what is known to be feasible, rather than attempting to apply policies that have never before been implemented and require an unprecedented degree of global political alignment.
He added that, in the real world, the key indicators are moving in the wrong direction, proving that the world has been "recarbonising" as opposed to "decarbonising". He suggested that this was ample evidence that the Kyoto Protocol and the underlying approach upon which it is based have had little or no effect.
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