I attended the Update 2008: Progress on Climate Change session that was chaired by Yvo De Boer — Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on climate change. He painted a very dangerous picture: Climate change is a serious problem that has fairly short term implications, and little is in place to avoid this situation. De Boer noted that the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook projects that by 2030, 60 percent of all energy demand will be fuelled by coal, while over 40 percent of the demand growth will come from India and China alone. Within the next 20 years more Chinese people will migrate to cities that don’t yet exist than currently exist in all of Europe. He says: Yes we’re on the verge of a recession — but that should cause us to be bold on climate change not conservative. When you’re broke you need to save and be efficient.

Had a good discussion with Scott Brison, former Canadian Minister of Public Works and Government Services and a big campaigner on the environment. He noted that a few years ago CEOs at Davos were climate change deniers. Today they are evangelicals because they see the business opportunity here. Businesses are ahead of governments on this — market forces are causing them to change. Business leaders clamouring to get into the environmental sessions because they have a responsibility to shareholders to get ready for a carbon constrained economy.

Ideas being discussed include every product will have a price on carbon that reflects the carbon input in production and transportation — and for certain products like cars, or food, the lifecycle costs of carbon too. Apples grown in Costa Rica will have a bigger foot print than in Ontario. California is talking about putting a carbon tariff on imports. If there is going to be a price on carbon, the companies and countries that act on carbon reduction will have competitive advantage. Those who don’t act now will be left in the dust.

I agree with position that we should be greening our tax system in Canada — taxing carbon and using that revenue to reducing personal and business income taxes. We can shift revenue sources away from personal and business taxes. Give people more disposable income. We also need to be world leaders in the cleantech industries itself — bringing the three E’s together Energy, Environment and the Economy.

Peter Schwarts — co-founder of the Global Business Network — spoke from the audience. Says — there is this view that global warming will result in a long term increase in the climate of a few degrees and that this will cause long term problems. This view is wrong — the impact of climate change will be short term in some parts of the world. Enormous impact in some places and not on others.

Rajendra K. Pachauri. Chairman of the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (and arguably the most senior person on climate change in the world) underlined the short term seriousness of the situation. We have 7 years where carbon emissions can increase. After that they must come down and dramatically. Regardless, we are looking at a relatively short term future of heat waves, floods, droughts, famine. He’s involved in a program to provide 1 billion “solar torches” especially for rural people. Urgent need to exploit local renewable energy resources.

James Rogers — Chairman and President of Duke Energy. We need business model and regulatory change. We need an arms race on what country can become most energy efficient. Governments will need to get involved to make it unattractive for to create negative externalities. Confessed to being the 3rd largest emitter of CO2. 41 in the world. 50 percent comes from the burning of coal. Duke’s approach is to build low emitting coal plants because coal will be central energy source for foreseeable future. Rogers says that unless the US and China get in the game there is no game. The
audience noted that there is no one from China on the panel.

Shai Agassi (former SAP executive) and now involved in a green startup on solar power..– need to get cars off oil. We’re on our way to a billion tailpipes. Israel announced this week that they will eliminate internal combustion engines in 10 years. We need to create a virtual oil field with no holes in the ground… Can’t be done with nuclear power because we’d need
to build 2 new reactors per day and that isn’t going to happen. Solar is key to the future.

Consensus — Biggest problem facing the world is climate change and it’s the issue we’re least equipped to deal with. We need a price on carbon — national tax or quotas. The economy can handle it because it will be economically sensible through the reduction of oil use — currently at $100 per barrel. There has never been a reduction in air pollution without
policies caps. But easier said than done — because of differences between nations. Different countries are at different stages of development.

China designing 7 new totally green cities. China can leapfrog the west. Clean energy is going to be the fastest area of the 21st century economy — Venture Capitalists like Kleiner Perkins’ John Doer all over this. The smartest companies in the world are focusing on clean tech.

But there was no agreement in the room on energy. Clean coal versus nuclear, versus solar, versus new forms, versus energy efficient consumers. This issue is all over the map.

If you could lock world leaders in a room tomorrow what is the single thing they should do?

1. Act globally, not as an individual nation. Get the framework right.
2. Agree on reduction targets.
3. Poorest communities are worse sufferers. Strong moral reason for taking action.
4. Time is now — key is new technologies that can be used to increase GDP not reduce it.

The room’s mood is cautiously optimistic. Need the equivalent of the post World War II Marshall plan in climate change for developing countries. Governments need to be bold and place policy frameworks.

One observer — Most people in this room will not be here in 2050. It made me think that Thomas Friedman was right — an act of stewardship is required. I think it is clear from the discussion that there is a crisis of leadership on this issue. We need to mobilize the world, and the Internet is the linchpin. For the first time we have one affordable, global, multi-media, many-to-many communications system, and one issue on which there is growing consensus. Climate change is quickly becoming a nonpartisan issue and citizens, businesses and governments each have a stake in the outcome. Indeed, the global consensus emerging on climate change is that solving the crisis will require leadership from every country and every
sector in society. The “killer application” for mass collaboration may be saving planet earth-literally.