"Climate change has been represented as a conventional environmental 'problem' that is capable of being 'solved'. It is neither of these. Yet this framing has locked the world into the rigid agenda that brought us to the dead end of Kyoto, with no evidence of any discernible acceleration of de-carbonization whatsoever."The academics advocate concentrating first on short-term fixes for greenhouse gases or other warming agents, such as black carbon - particles emitted from the incomplete burning of fossil fuels, principally in diesel engines and wood stoves. These particles warm the planet by several mechanisms, including darkening snow so it absorbs more solar energy. Black carbon may be the second most important man-made warming agent after carbon dioxide. As it remains in the atmosphere for a matter of weeks, some researchers have suggested that cleaning up its production could be the quickest way of curbing warming, as well as bringing health benefits to poor countries by reducing air pollution. "To date, climate policy has focused on carbon dioxide primarily, and even to the exclusion of other human influences on the climate system," the report says. "We believe this path to have been unwise... early action on a wider range of human influences on climate could be more swiftly productive." However, they acknowledge that carbon emissions do in the end have to be constrained. To that end, they recommend implementing a hypothecated carbon tax in developed economies to fund development of low-carbon energy technologies. The damaging effects of climate change in developing countries, meanwhile, would be tackled by having Western countries meet the internationally agreed target of contributing 0.7% of their GDP to overseas aid, rather than through specific and complex new climate adaptation funds. "Just this one action alone would swamp the miserly amounts of money being offered under the Copenhagen Accord," said Prof Hulme. Lobby group The outcome of the Copenhagen climate summit - widely seen as a failure among academics and activists - has caused considerable soul-searching about alternative approaches... "The Hartwell Paper: A new direction for climate policy" ( http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/mackinderProgramme/theHartwellPaper/)
Rapid advance in addressing climate change is now possible for the first time in 15 years because global climate policy crashed in 2009, according to 'The Hartwell Paper', a new international report co-ordinated at LSE.
Climate policy, as it has been understood and practiced by many governments of the world under the Kyoto Protocol approach, has failed to produce any discernible real world reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases in 15 years. The underlying reason for this is that the UNFCCC/Kyoto model was structurally flawed and doomed to fail because it systematically misunderstood the nature of climate change as a policy issue between 1985 and 2009.
The result of three months' intensive work by a group of 14 authors from Asia, Europe and North America, 'The Hartwell Paper' argues that a radical change of approach is required, given that the 1992 United Nations international climate policy framework has failed to produce any discernable real world reductions in greenhouse gases. The crash of 09 is a crisis that must not be wasted.
• Principal Funding was provided by the Japan Iron and Steel Federation, Tokyo, Japan and Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, Inc., Tokyo, Japan , the Nathan Cummings Foundation, New York, and the Foundation Hoffmann, Geneva.
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