Talking, not yelling...

Seema Singh — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 06:06:00 GMT

Will help the politicians reconstruct the global economy using means that we are now left with on the planet. The reference here is, of course, to the "god of growth" and the looming environmental crisis.

Globally, it is financial crisis that has brought environment campaigners together in this week's New Scientist, but locally I think it's politics that will determine climate change agenda as we move closer to state and national elections.

It's either populist measures or complete apathy for issues like climate change (I am not quite comfortable with the term ‘global warming' as the earth is not uniformly heating, some places, eg in Europe and Canada, will have harsher winter) as the election juggernaut rolls in India.

A differing, but scientifically argued, point of view is from Bjorn Lomborg of Copenhagen Consensus who says environmental campaigners almost always present the bad side of climate change, when science, by nature, is not so predictable.

"It is simply not correct that climate data are systematically worse than expected; in many respects, they are spot on, or even better than expected. That we hear otherwise is an indication of the media's addiction to worst-case stories, but that makes a poor foundation for smart policies," he says in this column.

While we need to voice concern, we ought to keep the pitch low. Climate change needs a long-term action plan, something that can be attained by talking, not yelling.

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Lab Rats : Copenhagen Consensus

Talking, not yelling...