Global warming: Your chance to change the climate

[cal04]

Four senior ministers will, this morning, make one of the most embarrassing admissions of the Labour Government's nine years in office - that the official policy for fighting climate change has failed. Yet, as they do so, a group of MPs will offer a different way forward in the struggle to combat global warming, one which they think is the only alternative. It will mean turning established principles of British economic life upside down. It will mean sacrifices from everyone. Therefore, they say, it will have to be taken out of politics.

In The Independent today, their leader, Colin Challen, the chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group, sets out the case for abandoning the "business as usual" pursuit of economic growth, which has been the basis of Western economic policy for two hundred years. Instead, he says, we must concentrate our efforts on putting a limit on the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from power stations and motor vehicles that are causing the atmosphere to warm.

To do this, Mr Challen and his colleagues believe, carbon will have to be rationed, for companies, individuals and, eventually, for countries. And only a full cross-party consensus would allow such a departure to be implemented without being destroyed by the political process. Today, the group announces a climate change inquiry, inviting evidence from any interested parties, and readers of The Independent are invited to join in the debate. We will forward your responses to the committee.

The idea represents a radical rethink. Today the case for it will be dramatically illustrated as the Government admits that its Climate Change Programme Review, on which it has spent more than a year, will not deliver its key global warming target to cut CO2 emissions to 20 per cent less than 1990 levels by 2010.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article354055.ece

[MissWaverly]

1. I don't think that will work

I have been thinking about this, we need big brains to help us, if we switch to alternative
fuels, will they produce the same amount of CO2 as fossil fuels. We may just have to
get alternative fuels and converters. I know it seems pie in the sky but if the alternative
is 40 hurricanes all striking the US, massive coastal flooding, etc. I will buy a converter. I know it sounds impractical but during WW II, most of the homes in this country
were heated by coal and everybody switched to natural gas, oil or electricity. There
is a show on CBS tomorrow on Brazil, they are now producing their oil from sugar cane.
I am not saying that this would be the ideal situation but it would buy us some time.

[back2basics909]

2. And/or....

... set this as your screen saver..

http://bbc.cpdn.org/

It's really important, they just need your computer time while you are not using it. Distributed computing, more people in America should take part. Please spread the word.

[MissWaverly]

3. Thanks

I really am in favor of some big ideas on this, like maybe getting some scientists together
to tackle ways of reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere, it's better than sitting around like George Will saying it will cost trillions. We might just have to figure out how to
do it in stages to make it workable. Just like me, I could use an electric car to commute,
the speed limit here is 35, most people go 50, but an electric car would be good for
communter city driving. Maybe for people like me a commute to work car would be the
answer.

[drm604]

4. Great suggestion.

I've been running it for a while.

[rfkrfk]

5. rationing is the best way for the UK to go

the people are demanding it