Dear ATCA Colleagues; dear IntentBloggers

[Please note that the views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. ATCA conducts collective Socratic dialogue on global opportunities and threats.]

We are grateful to:

. Dr Ian Davis, Co-Executive Director, British American Security Information Council, based in London and Washington DC, for "Countering Nuclear Weapons and Climate Chaos";
. The Lord Howell of Guildford from The Palace of Westminster for "The Short Term Inconvenient Truths"; and
. John Elkington and Geoff Lye from SustainAbility in London for "A Shifting Climate for Technological Fixes -- True or False?";

in response to the ATCA think-piece, "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) convening in Paris has issued an Urgent Warning in regard to Global Warming."

Dr Ian Davis is Co-Executive Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC). With offices in Washington DC, and London, BASIC acts as a transatlantic bridge for policy makers and opinion formers on these issues, and seeks to promote public awareness of security and arms control in order to foster a more informed debate leading to creative and sustainable solutions. Ian has a diverse background in government, academia, and the non-governmental organisation (NGO) sector. He received both his PhD and BA in Peace Studies from the University of Bradford, in the United Kingdom. Ian has published widely on British defence and foreign policy, transatlantic security issues, the international arms trade, arms control and disarmament issues. He has made high-level presentations in Washington, DC and in Europe on WMD non-proliferation and transatlantic security issues. He writes:

Dear DK and Colleagues

Re: Countering Nuclear Weapons and Climate Chaos

The scientists have provided the diagnosis and its now time for the politicians to prescribe the cure. Last Friday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- 2,500 scientists from more than 130 countries -- issued its starkest warning yet on the consequences of global warming, describing as "unequivocal" effects that are likely to last for centuries. The IPCC scientists also say that humankind is almost certainly to blame.

And three weeks ago the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist moved its doomsday clock two minutes closer to midnight -- the figurative end of civilisation. It is now five minutes to midnight, closer than at any time since the height of the cold war. The change reflects the failures to solve the twin global threats from nuclear weapons and the climate crisis. The clock is ticking and, like Captain Hook, we can hear it loud and clear.

There has been a great deal of discussion about the important role of individuals and business, the need for a new spiritual or holistic awakening, and the importance of the new wave of emerging global powers such as India and China. The "old guard" has its responsibilities too. The United Kingdom, for a variety of reasons, has an opportunity to punch well above its weight, for good or for ill, on both of these twin dangers.

As it has been suggested on various distinguished fora, one way forward is for Britain to forego Trident replacement (and other cold war military platforms) in order to undertake a "national needs" programme of major investment in off-shore renewable energy, both for security of supply and to help tackle the growing international threat for climate chaos.

The perils of 27,000 nuclear weapons, 2,000 of them still ready to launch within minutes, are well documented (by, for example, Kofi Annan, Mohamed El-Baradei, Hans Blix and most recently by four senior US statesmen, Shultz, Kissinger, Perry and Nunn, and then Mikhail Gorbachev, in the pages of the Wall Street Journal). Augmented by a civil nuclear renaissance, the erosion of non-proliferation norms and an unsustainable system of nuclear apartheid (in which the nuclear weapon states continue to regard nuclear weapons as the "ultimate insurance"), we face a near-future world of up to 30-40 nuclear weapon states, infinitely more dangerous than the one we live in today.

The UK decision on Trident renewal may be pivotal. Does the British parliament in March endorse the government's decision of December to hedge its bets by indefinitely remaining a nuclear player and thereby play a major part in buttressing a global WMD strategic culture? Or does it seek instead to re-invigorate international attempts to bring about a world without nuclear weapons, rejecting renewal of Britain's nuclear forces? The decision to replace Trident at this time is in any case highly premature. At a minimum, parliament could delay the decision, allowing Britain to launch a new international initiative, possibly with the United States, to attempt to bring about a world without nuclear weapons, as envisioned in the recent Shultz-Perry-Kissinger-Nunn and Gorbachev articles.

Similarly, we have had the Sternest of warnings on the likely consequences of climate change. Prior to the release of the IPCC panel report, it was also one of the dominant themes at the World Economic Forum in Davos. On this issue Britain likes to claim leadership. But despite more excellent speeches by both the prime minister, Tony Blair, and the leader of the opposition, David Cameron, at Davos, their rhetoric is still unmatched by their deeds. The UK government is budgeting about GBP 1bn a year to tackle directly all the climate change issues. The Stern report demands far more to be spent far quicker. We need to harness the best that the UK science and technology base has to offer in developing cutting-edge renewable energy and carbon-reduction technologies on a scale that will make a difference both at home and abroad.

Given competing pressures within the economy where might such resources be found? Twenty years ago, a study called Oceans of Work outlined alternative civil work to the construction of Trident submarines at Barrow. This was an ambitious proposal, put forward by trade union representatives from the shipyard, to utilise the shipbuilding and engineering skills of the workforce, with particular emphasis on offshore renewable energy, including wave and wind power systems.

Although the report received considerable national and international attention and was supported by senior political and trade union representatives, its proposals were never seriously considered by the company's management. They continued to stress expertise in military work and consolidated its specialism in nuclear submarine production over the 1990s and early 2000s, even though employment levels fell by 75% (from 12,000 in 1987 to 3,000 in 2006).

As Britain again stands at a similar technological crossroads -- with major investment choices pending in both military and energy security -- many of the arguments raised in the original report are even more relevant today. I therefore commissioned the original author of Oceans of Work to research and write a follow-on study.

The resulting report Oceans of Work: Arms Conversion Revisited is a sobering read. It charts the decision-making behind the UK's industrial cul-de-sac of nuclear reprocessing and nuclear weapons during the 1980s and compares how Denmark became the leading nation in the development and manufacture of wind turbines. It also highlights the importance of central government leadership and broader institutional networks for successful (and unsuccessful) technological trajectories. In short, the decisions taken 20 years ago led to Britain's current energy insecurity. Will Britain make the right choices this time around, or is it going to be business as usual?

Let me sum up an alternative technological trajectory -- one that not only allows a great and proud island nation to again rule the waves, but also inspires others around the world through genuine leadership that transcends narrow national self-interest. By delaying a decision on Trident replacement, Britain could launch a new international initiative to attempt to bring about a world without nuclear weapons. If such an initiative were to be successful, then there would be no need to replace Trident, and the resources, both human and fiscal, could be permanently re-allocated to a coordinated programme of research, development and manufacture for alternative energy sources on the scale of the Apollo or Manhattan projects (as called for by Sir Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society, among others). The UK could set a realistic target of producing 50% of its energy needs from offshore wind and wave power by 2030, significantly cutting carbon emissions and providing new industrial and employment opportunities that more than compensate for the loss of defence-related employment.

There is an historic opportunity for Britain to lead the world in real solutions to the two greatest challenges of our time: the threat of a second nuclear age and the expected consequences of climate chaos.

Best regards


Ian Davis

[ENDS]

-----Original Message-----
From: Intelligence Unit
Sent: 04 February 2007 10:50
To: 'atca.members@mi2g.com'
Subject: Response: Lord Howell - The Short Term Inconvenient Truths; Elkington & Lye - A Shifting Climate for Technological Fixes - True or False?; IPCC issues Urgent Warning in regard to Global Warming

Dear ATCA Colleagues

[Please note that the views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. ATCA conducts collective Socratic dialogue on global opportunities and threats.]

We are grateful to:

. The Lord Howell of Guildford from The Palace of Westminster for "The Short Term Inconvenient Truths"; and
. John Elkington and Geoff Lye from SustainAbility in London for "A Shifting Climate for Technological Fixes -- True or False?";

for their responses to the ATCA think-piece, "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) convening in Paris has issued an Urgent Warning in regard to Global Warming."

The Right Honourable Lord (David) Howell of Guildford, President of the British Institute of Energy Economics, is a former Secretary of State for Energy and for Transport in the UK Government and an economist and journalist. Lord Howell is Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords and Conservative Spokesman on Foreign Affairs. He also Chairs the Windsor Energy Group. Until 2002 he was Chairman of the UK-Japan 21st Century Group, (the high level bilateral forum between leading UK and Japanese politicians, industrialists and academics), which was first set up by Margaret Thatcher and Yasuhiro Nakasone in 1984. In addition he writes a fortnightly column for The JAPAN TIMES in Tokyo, and has done so since 1985. He also writes regularly for the International Herald Tribune. David Howell was the Chairman of the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, 1987-97. He was Chairman of the House of Lords European Sub-Committee on Common Foreign and Security Policy from 1999-2000. In 2001 he was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure (Japan). He writes:

Dear DK and Colleagues

Re: The Short Term Inconvenient Truths

I would only add at this stage that while further man-made temperature rises are indeed 'very likely' over the next ninety years (as they have been over the last ninety, given the enormous population increase, quite aside from industrialisation and the oil age), an equally great likelihood over the next NINE years is a critical situation over global energy security and a huge and immediate task in reconciling energy needs with longer term ambitions for fighting global warming and halting the inexorable growth of carbon emissions.

The scientists berate the policy-makers for not doing 'enough' to combat global warming, but perhaps the more practically-minded policy-makers should berate the scientists for not focussing enough on the near-term 'inconvenient truths' -- namely that global oil demand is still soaring, that growth in the developing world demands more and more cheap energy now, that the Middle East is in turmoil and will remain so, that for the next few decades the climate is going to change anyway, due to past emissions, and that a massive world-wide programme of adaptation to these conditions, including a major revision of world energy policies, is needed here and now to cope with all this.

I would feel reassured to hear more about these imminent issues and the measures to meet them from the great figures in the IPCC and the UN, and from all the environmental evangelists around us, than I hear at the moment.


David Howell
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John Elkington has worked in the environmental and sustainable development fields since 1972. A co-founder and then Managing Director of Environmental Data Services (ENDS) in 1978, he also co-founded SustainAbility in 1987. He served as the organisation's Chairman from 1995 to 2005, and is now Chief Entrepreneur. He chairs the Export Credits Guarantee Department's Advisory Council and The Environment Foundation, and sits on advisory boards of organisations like the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes in Switzerland and Instituto Ethos in Brazil. In 2004, BusinessWeek described him as "a Dean of the Corporate Responsibility movement for Three Decades." John has authored or co-authored 16 books, including 1988's million-selling Green Consumer Guide and Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business (1997), and has written or co-written some 40 published reports. One current project is a book on social entrepreneurs with Pamela Hartigan of The Schwab Foundation. He is also working closely with The Skoll Foundation on a new 3-year field-building programme in relation to social entrepreneurship.

Geoff Lye is Vice-Chairman of SustainAbility. He was previously Director (1994-2005) at SustainAbility. His expertise lies in the corporate engagement of the triple bottom line agenda linking economic, environmental and social accountability; executive board level reviews of corporate responsibility issues; development of corporate responsibility programmes with particular reference to the alignment of values and behaviours and routes to building trust in stakeholder relations; and Development of and advice on corporate climate change strategies. He has consulted with Shell post Brent Spar and Nigeria; with Ford on development and implementation of corporate citizenship programmes; with BAA and BT on environmental and sustainability reviews; and is the Co-author of "The Changing Landscape of Liability." His previous experience includes corporate issues and reputation management, advertising and marketing strategy development, and organisational development. He is a British subject and has an MA in Classics. They write on ATCA and openDemocracy:

Dear DK and Colleagues

Re: A Shifting Climate for Technological Fixes -- True or False?

If railways replaced horses and cars replaced trains, what will be the next evolutionary step after the car? Like its counterparts in North America and Asia, the EU auto industry believes the answer is the car. Some manufacturers in Detroit still hope - against the odds - that their beloved, highly profitable sport utility vehicles will long roam the freeways as the vast, lumbering buffalo herds once did the Great Plains. But the evidence suggests that they, too, are doomed.

Technical fixes - of the sort currently being promoted - will not save the day. True, bringing hybrid technology to SUVs (as Ford did with its Escape) or fuel cells (as GM and others plan to do, eventually) may improve things at the margins, for a while, but we seem to be on the verge of an intensifying series of wars over the future of mobility.

Some wars will rage - are raging - over oil and other energy supplies as the global scramble for resources intensifies. But others will rage between economies, industries, value chains and corporations. Early skirmishing looks set to develop into set-piece battles as the race to develop fixes for our energy security and climate chaos challenges moves into top gear. Europe's car industry, for example, has just pulled a fast one by forcing a climb-down by the European Commission over proposed new emission standards. With her colours snapping from her lance, German Chancellor Angela Merkel rode out between the lines and declared that Brussels should not impose standards that would dent car-makers like BMW and DaimlerChrysler. Understandable, perhaps, but a decade from now these companies could turn out to have been industrial dinosaurs.

Meanwhile, confronted by the united legions of the car industry, EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas appears to have done something of a U-turn, scaling back plans to slash car emissions linked to climate chaos. The original idea was that the car industry should adopt new technology that would meet a CO2 emission target of 120 grams per kilometre by 2012. Instead, Dimas is now hoping to compromise on a softer target of 130 g/km. True, this would be lower than the 138 g/km target adopted by Japan for 2015, but none of this is likely to bypass accusations that the car industry has won a short-term battle at the expense of exposing Europe - and the world - to significantly greater risks from climate chaos.

All of which makes sense if you are BMW CEO Helmut Panke or DaimlerChrysler CEO Dieter Zetsche. But it is deeply worrying if you are familiar with the conclusions of the recent Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change or of the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has just been published.

One of Stern's key conclusions is that the cost of inaction is likely to be dramatically greater than those associated with timely, effective action. If the costs of greenhouse gas emissions are properly internalized, the market opportunities will likely run to hundreds of billions of dollars annually. No surprise, then, that some leading companies are beginning to break ranks - and even switch sides - as the evidence of climate stress builds. Timed to break just ahead of President Bush's 2007 State of the Union address, and of the forthcoming IPCC report, the new US Climate Action Partnership - an extraordinary coalition of leading companies and NGOs - called for US regulation to limit greenhouse gas emissions to deliver concentrations of CO2e (the CO2 equivalent of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere) which will stabilise at 450-550 ppm of CO2e. Given the current concentration of 430 ppm, their sense of urgency is understandable.

As the fight gets nastier, it was no surprise to see the US leaking the IPCC report - presumably to give climate sceptics time to get their defences in order. Indeed, with the Bush regime's days numbers, climate specialists are increasingly outspoken about the ways in which it has suppressed, doctored or distorted research on climate chaos and its implications. But, however nasty the political end-game may become, end-game it is. The IPCC's predicted conclusion is that the scientific case for urgent action is hardening, suggesting that the auto and fuel industries will face a growing barrage of criticism and, more importantly, increasingly powerful regulatory and market drivers for fundamental change. The answer to at least some of tomorrow's mobility needs may well be a car, but it may well be Chinese rather than European, a diesel-hybrid rather than petrol-powered, and owned by someone other than the driver.

There are also those who believe that one answer will be to develop new generations of electric car, like the TH!NK or the 0-60-mph-in-about-4-seconds Tesla Roadster, but for the moment the big push is towards biofuels. It was no accident that President Bush visited DuPont the day after his State of the Union Address, given that the chemical giant is partnering with BP to develop new generations of biofuels. And, on this side of the water, the EU is now vigorously pushing new legislation to force oil companies to blend expensive biofuels into petrol supplies.

Unfortunately, a shift to growing our fuels is not going to be any sort of magic wand. For one thing, biofuels production will compete for food crops. While the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has predicted that bioethanol distilleries will require 60 million tons of corn from the 2008 harvest, the Earth Policy Institute (EPI), estimates that distilleries will need 139 million tons - more than twice as much. If the EPI estimate is at all close to the mark, the Institute itself concludes, "the emerging competition between cars and people for grain will likely drive world grain prices to levels never seen before. The key questions are: How high will grain prices rise? When will the crunch come? And what will be the worldwide effect of rising food prices?" Europeans probably won't much like horizon-to-horizon crops of genetically modified fuel plants, while anyone who grows these crops will face an array of challenges linked to fertilizers, pesticides and water.

So here is our list of several fixes that are likely to be true fixes - and of some of those likely to be false fixes:

False (quick) fixes:

. Market fixes: Be very careful of assuming that we can turn all climate issues into economic opportunity without triggering behavioural and lifestyle changes.

. Biofuels: Yes, they have their place in any sensible fuels portfolio, but they will also trigger an array of economic, social and environmental concerns.

. Fertilising the oceans: Some people want to seed the oceans with iron filings, to speed plankton growth and absorb more carbon. Makes sense at the test-tube level, but having destabilised the atmosphere are we really happy to risk doing the same with the oceans?

. Give the planet an umbrella: If bioethanol is a boondoggle for corn growers, this one goes to the aerospace industry. The US government is calling for the IPCC to recognise the potential role of advanced technologies, including the positioning of giant solar shields in place to cut down the amount of incoming solar radiation.

True (longer term) fixes:

. Conservation: This must be the absolute number one priority. Simply changing the energy mix and attempting to find technical fixes to reducing carbon emissions must always be a second best option.

. Regulation: Voluntarism may help spur early experimentation by business, but the key will be regulation - and enforcement. This message is core to the US Climate Action Partnership agenda.

. Incentives: Auto manufacturers need to be incentivised to re-direct technological advance into improving fuel economy rather than performance. If congestion and other forms of road charging were widely adopted, our consumption of energy - and with it our CO2 emissions - would fall more dramatically and more quickly than chasing new technologies.

. Politics: The biggest challenge is a political challenge, requiring political will, leadership and action. We need to see more US Climate Action Partnerships, working for smarter, more effective incentives for change. If Stavros Dimas and the rest of our Cecil B DeMille cast of Commissioners can't persuade us and move us along, maybe we need a new Commission.

Best wishes

John Elkington and Geoff Lye

[ENDS]

-----Original Message-----
From: Intelligence Unit
Sent: 02 February 2007 12:39
To: 'atca.members@mi2g.com'
Subject: ATCA: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) convening in Paris has issued an Urgent Warning in regard to Global Warming

Dear ATCA Colleagues

[Please note that the views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. ATCA conducts collective Socratic dialogue on global opportunities and threats.]

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- which draws together 2,500 scientists from more than 130 countries -- issued its strongest warning on the consequences of warming in Paris today as it published the most authoritative research on the issue. The influential global panel of scientists declared today that global warming is "unequivocal", that its effects are likely to last for centuries, and that humankind is almost certainly to blame.

While the IPCC's previous assessment in 2001 rated the link between the warming planet and human behaviour as "likely", which is said to mean a probability rate of between 66% and 90%, this has now been revised to "very likely" -- a greater than 90% chance that humankind is to blame. Sea levels will continue to rise for centuries along with temperatures, the IPCC has found, because the process has already begun.

According to the 20-page summary of the IPCC report, "Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations. The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice-mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that is not due to known natural causes alone. Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level."

Temperature rises of 1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius were predicted by the year 2100, which is wider than the previous IPCC report's forecast. For sea levels, it predicted rises of 7 inches to 23 inches by the end of the century. A further 3.9 inches to 7.8 inches are possible should the recent, unexpected melting of polar ice continue.

Dr Susan Solomon, Vice-Chairman, IPCC, said that there is no doubt now about a link between human behaviour and global warming. "Global concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased markedly since 1750. They are now far above the values seen in the ice cores in many thousands of years. "We have very high confidence that the net effect of human activity since 1750 has been one of warming. The dramatic rise (in temperatures) is so different from behaviour in thousands of years. Most of the increase since the mid-20th century is due to the observed increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. This discernible human influence extends to ocean warming, temperature extremes and wind patterns." The overall impact was "affecting the Earth's energy balance", she said. Temperatures rose 0.7 degrees in the 20th century and the 10 hottest years since records began in the 1850s have been since 1994.

UN officials say they hope the report will prompt governments and companies to do more to cut greenhouse gases.

[ENDS]

We look forward to your further thoughts, observations and views. Thank you.

Best wishes



For and on behalf of DK Matai
Chairman, Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance (ATCA)
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ATCA: The Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance is a philanthropic expert initiative founded in 2001 to resolve complex global challenges through collective Socratic dialogue and joint executive action to build a wisdom based global economy. Adhering to the doctrine of non-violence, ATCA addresses opportunities and threats arising from climate chaos; radical poverty; geo-politics, organised crime & extremism; advanced technologies -- bio, info, nano, robo & AI; demographic skews; pandemics; and financial systems. Present membership of ATCA is by invitation only and has over 5,000 distinguished members from over 100 countries: including several from the House of Lords, House of Commons, EU Parliament, US Congress & Senate, G10's Senior Government officials and over 1,500 CEOs from financial institutions, scientific corporates and voluntary organisations as well as over 750 Professors from academic centres of excellence worldwide.

The views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. Please do not forward or use the material circulated without permission and full attribution.
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Intelligence Unit | mi2g ATCA The Philanthropia Φ

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