Combating global warming requires a social revolution

Twenty years ago, a UN special commission produced a report, Our Common Future, that predicted rising CO2 levels would lead to a mean temperature increase of up to 4.5oC within 50 years, which would cause catastrophic climate change. The report proposed that immediate action be taken to counter global warming through massive investment in renewable energy sources, with the onus upon wealthy industrialised nations to take the lead.

Since that report was produced, little has been done to halt, let alone reverse, global warming. Why? Hidden within the UN report was the answer. It drew the conclusion that combating the predicted climate-change catastrophe would require
Today, the business leaders and the politicians who serve them are presenting market-mechanisms such as CO2 pollution trading between corporations as the solution to the global warming problem.

Corporations are now competing to give themselves a