From ‘Sustainability Essays’ – for our Masters participants: our Advocacy re: Climate-Change – Random Suggestions – How have these stood up?

Some random ideas on things to do about Climate Change:

1. Establish regarding the Government’s Head of Atmosphere (can’t remember his exact title) how much he has wanted to spend on educating our citizenry (£20-£30 m) and for how long he has had no joy from his masters – and how his masters think about this.
2. Assemble a digest of all the UNFCCC’s IPCC-based scenarios & the Government Chief Scientist, Professor Sir David King’s communications on this matter since the beginning of 2004 – and convey them to all MPs, Members of the House of Lords and elected local government Councillors, asking what if anything they are planning individually to do. In regard to the 635 or so MPs, start with a telephone survey to establish their knowledge – and current personal attitudes. Then publish it – and follow-up every quarter until something happens.
3. Locate and do a similar survey of the top 100 advisers to the government on a) CC & GW and b) departmental Environmental Management/SD. Could be fascinating!
4. Locate and do a similar survey of the HSE directors of a) the largest 100 companies and b) Local Government – and their sense of ‘Responsibility’ (sic) to lead on the basis of their superior knowledge!
5. Assemble a consortium (coalition of the willing!) of all willing leading investigative journalists and Programs to find out why the UK government has not been communicating and leading – perhaps there is a carpet to lift… Perhaps we are all in denial…
6. Very carefully investigate the dimensions and the particulars of the lobbying effort with regard to the government to not take it seriously or ‘scare the horses’ (focusing on the lobby firms, their paymasters, et al)…
7. Investigate any relevant hold the US has over our government. Is it our politicians’ desire once in the hot-seat to stay close to mother or father? Or is it that we will be subject to sanctions if we don’t, e.g loss of access to intelligence, control over ‘our’ weapons sourced from across the Atlantic (if so which etc), loss of financial support in the next financial crisis, or anything else…
8. Survey all members of the IEMA (the Institute of EM and Asessment) and ask them how much they could reduce GW emissions (in tonnes) if they had non-interest bearing returnable loans from the government to run projects that would be self funding (say) in 3 months (in the first year), 6 months in Year 2, one year in Year 3……
9. It would probably be sensible to ask the question of the IPCC and the UNFCCC.  There may be someone at home in either organisation of whom one can ask their thoughts about what is ideally needed to raise awareness and public pressure for action. These are the ‘official’ international bodies and they ought to have worked on this – and possibly been well-funded to do so.
10. There are widely different ideas ‘out there’ about what will happen on present or likely policies – and by when. The IPCC work is really not well known in the UK and is probably the best – but from what I have seen still doesn’t really communicate. It is more a musing between experts and avoids nasty things like probable death counts. If alongside the CO₂ curves, temperature curves, we had probable death curves – this might begin to do the trick.
11. We need to have properly thought out ‘soft landing’ requirements – what by when to achieve what by when.

Based on emails dated 20/08/2004 21:54 and 1/08/2004 11:11.