Climate change - action even more urgent

As readers of my website and blog will know, tackling climate change is one of the issues in which I'm most involved at Parliament in Westminster. I know that sometimes I've heard a few whispers that I'm a little bit obsessed with the issue, but today I've taken part in four meetings which have for me underlined why it is the top issue (along, I believe, with nuclear proliferation, an issue I will try and say something about in a post shortly).

Four very different meetings, but with a common theme. First up at breakfast was a briefing at the Institute of Mechanical Engineering; they were looking at what needed to be done to adapt to climate change; and their view was that on current trends it might take 75 years or more to 'decarbonise' our society (if I understood them correctly). Sometimes looking at adaptation to climate change has been criticised as leading people to think we don't need to do as much to 'mitigate' cliamte change (i.e. try and stop it happening as far as we can), but that is a false choice, as was apparent from my next meeting that day. That was a meeting of the Environmental Audit Committee where we heard from the Tyndall Centre whose projections on climate change were some of the direst I have yet heard. They argued strongly that we still needed to aim for a maximum 2 degree rise in temperature, but should also adapt our societies to allow for a 4 degree rise as that might well be what happebns. What was scary was the fact that they felt the 4 degree rise could only be achieved with policies far more radical than anything done so far - and would probably need an economic 'contraction' on the scale of the Soviet Union's economic collpase; and even a 4 degree rise might have - almost certainly would have - catastrophic consequences.

The same themes came out at a meeting at No 10 Downing Street covering these issues which I chaired later in the day, and in a Friends of the Earth briefing for MPs later in the evening. None of these means we just give up - but it does highlight the nature of the crisis that faces us.

(But just to make clear, these weren't the only issues I was involved in today - I was also at meetings about the state of the mortgage housing market, the proposal from the Post Office union and others for a 'People's Bank' at the post office, and finally a presentation on the state of the Scottish economy. As well, of course, as the Welfare Reform Bill which is going through its final stages here in the House of Commons tonight.