Put up pump prices or we will all count cost

I’m positive about climate change and energy saving and alternatives….

The problem in climate change is politics and how to manage the outcomes without making it worse, and negotiating complex agreements that are real, not just aspirational press statements. Many of the present ideas to handle the problem will hurt the poorest people in the poorest places, who say: “You in the West consume up to 10 times more energy per person than us.”
Research at Monash University in Melbourne suggests that global cuts in emissions, as proposed by Nicholas Stern, could reduce economic growth in China by 15 per cent, India by 13 per cent, in members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations by 12 per cent, and in the US by 4 per cent. Many countries that have signed up, and whose leaders made great speeches, have missed their targets, and some who haven’t signed up are closer to the proscribed targets than their critics. Yet we must find a way to co-operate, encourage nations to meet targets but allow them to find their own way to meet these targets through a very wide menu of options.

As to the moral case, how moral is it for rich countries to enjoy the inputs for their consumers and businesses from inexpensive-producing countries when this is just exporting their pollution?

In 2012 the Kyoto Agreement, which China and India have not signed, will have to be renegotiated.

I’m sorry, but history proves that only pricing forces up effective alternatives. The only time the major economies dropped energy consumption dramatically was after the oil crisis of the mid-1970s. Commentators last year wrote of a major recession if oil hit $50 a barrel. It’s now more than $70 and has exceeded $80 and the world economy has hardly blinked. Within 20 years, energy use will double. That’s why natural gas consumption will explode, giving space for the fascinating research on hydrogen to expand. But that will only happen if oil prices stay high. This is a double-edged sword, we won’t get progress without corrective, collective price pain.

The New Zealand Herald