A good friend of mine, the economist Professor David Stout drew my attention to these two opinion pieces recently published in The Guardian newspaper (one by the IPCC chair, Rajendra Pachauri, and the other by the environmentalist thinker George Monbiot).   I’m far from agreeing with Rajendra on the hope for the world tackling climate change in time.  Considering we are pumping over 2 ppm CO2 per year, I strongly doubt that there are any signs of change to arrest this in time – having only 8 years left to slide emissions into a downward spiral.

Link to Pachuari commentary (pdf file), Guardian.co.uk

The second commentary resonates far more with me.  As I’ve commented here before on the three scenarios identified by the Stockholm Network, a variant on the upstream cap idea developed by Oliver Tickell suggests a realistic chance for us to constrain our emissions and stabilize at 400 ppm or less. If I am not wrong, the momentum is building for this type of response – the big question is how big oil and energy is going to respond?  I suggest that this is a space to watch closely!

Link to Monbiot commentary (pdf file), Guardian.co.uk