Climate change - opening silo

There are enough blogs out there stamping their foot on this issue - on one side or another of a Grand Canyon sized chasm. I've had the fortune of having divided the last decade pretty evenly between Europe and the U.S. On this topic, there still appears to be something larger than the Atlantic dividing the two continents. I'm not going to trawl through all the facts and counter facts - go watch An Inconvenient Truth and then listen to the Fox network for a couple of days.

However, on my return to Europe - and an academic role engaged with climate change research I was amazed to see the depth and intensity of the discussion around climate change. The topic is completely mainstream. There is no dissent to speak of and the climate change cause has been taken up and accepted by the highest levels of the establishment both in government and industry.

Media coverage of climate change is at such a level that a primary concern of those engaged in climate change communication in my academic institution is societal burn out or apathy with the whole subject from the public.

A little different to the view from the U.S. I did a search on climate change on CNN today - the first result was a Chevron sponsored forum where the "is it or isn't it" debate is alive and well.

Of course, the answer to that question is not yet known. The simple truth is that European institutions in particular have chosen to take the position that climate change is real and that something needs to be done about it. They may be wrong - but they've chosen to take stance and assume a position of leadership. Take a look at the European Commission's energy proposal to see quite how mainstream climate change is. Coupled with the Stern Review from the UK government late last year (widely derided in the U.S as pseudo economics - another topic for another day) - one can see that a significant bet is being placed by European governments.

A particularly interesting part of the climate change debate yields fewer differences between the opposing sides of the Atlantic - the response of business. Businesses (with few entrenched outliers) are now engaged with the climate change issue. Significant change in society brings opportunity to nimble businesses and threat to those less nimble (there's an argument that green mutual funds are good long term bets because greener companies are those with flexible, more visionary executives that are able to better withstand shocks - environmental or otherwise). Corporations see opportunity in climate change - be it GE's Ecomagination strategy or BPs Beyond Petroleum - they are increasingly making financial investments (relatively low cost hedges admittedly at this stage) to capitalise on the opportunity that climate change and it's mitigation may bring. European governments are acting for the same reason - self interest in terms of adapting to likely lower carbon future. We are seeing similar efforts in China, India, Brazil and others.

History will tell whether their bets are sound or not - but it is interesting to see the U.S. federal government under-engaged in a potentially key revolution. Many States are now acting independently to protect their own interests - but the debate at the federal level is still against action - maybe the Bush administration is courageously making the right call here - contrarian to the consensus view?

Next time: a change of tack - a short book review - Global Capital by Jeffrey Frieden.