• Mike Steketee

16 November 2009Improved energy efficiency can contribute close to 60 per cent of the reduction in global emissions, the International Energy Agency's Nigel Jollands tells Mike Steketee in The Australian

STABILISING greenhouse gases to limit global warming to 2C or slightly more requires global carbon dioxide emissions to peak within six years, according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. What would they know?

After all, the IPCC is informed only by 4000 or so internationally recognised scientific experts and they are part of a monstrous conspiracy to impose world government. But for those of us who have trouble believing that or even just think it is not worth taking the risk, the future suddenly seems very close.

That is all the more so because the more the scientific evidence piles up, the less urgent the response seems to be. A meaningful agreement at Copenhagen in little more than three weeks seems unattainable and a modest Australian contribution through legislation for an emissions trading scheme looks increasingly unlikely to make it through the Senate. Perhaps we face the boiling frog syndrome, with change too gradual to make us jump, even though the risks and the costs rise the further we delay...

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Photo: Andrew Jeffrey