THE CARBON WAR

148
The Winning of The Carbon War
Can we introduce our experts to each other to compare what numbers
we can, I ask? Maybe Carbon Tracker analysts could visit Riyadh? Or Saudi
officials meet them in London?
By all means, Khalid Abuleif replies. And please, don’t think we are being
obstructive on climate change. We know the global community has a problem
that needs to be dealt with, and we want to play our part.
London, 11 th February 2015
Another panel in the Question Time format, this one at the Royal Society of
Arts. Like the one in Abu Dhabi, none of the panellists are going to be doing
much disagreeing with each other. I sit on the stage and look out across the
audience. There won’t be much disagreement here either, I suspect.
I wonder about the usefulness of this exercise. We need to be thinking of
ways of carrying the climate message to the unconvinced, and awakening as
many as we can of those who would prefer to ignore or even deny the problem
rather than deal with it.
But there is the problem. Ignoring or denying makes it easy to avoid
giving up an evening to come and listen to something like this.
No sooner have I had this thought than the chair gives me cause to reconsider.
He asks for a show of hands before the debate begins, on two questions.
How many here fear climate change, he asks.
The vast majority of hands go up. As I thought then.
How many think we will defeat it?
Maybe thirty percent.
So there is this evening’s challenge, I tell myself. See if you can help instil
some hope and belief in the 70%.
Positive momentum continues to build in both the political and business
worlds. President Obama has extended his climate campaign to India, where
plans for coal burning are just as worrying as China’s, maybe more so given the
recent Chinese efforts on air quality. At the end of the visit he and President
Modi promise to back an ambitious climate treaty in Paris. Back home, the
American President is strong on climate in his State of Union address. He mocks
the recent Republican use of a line “I am not a scientist”. The obstructionists
would do well to listen to US government employees who are, he says.
The US Senate refuses to accept man’s role in climate change. This, to a
European, is extraordinary. Twenty seven years after NASA first attributed