Paris attacks makes Paris climate talks even more important

O

ne of the questions asked after the atrocious attacks on the people of Paris by Islamic State terrorists was whether the United Nations climate change conference scheduled to begin in Paris on November 30 should or could go ahead.

The attacks in fact make the climate conference even more essential. That's because an agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with the aim of limiting the global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius would, if honoured, set in train a process that undermined the economics of Jihadi terrorism.

The claim that the western world's geopolitical filter for the Middle East is "all about oil" is a massive oversimplification.

Oil is a key element of the region's politics and an influence on the western world's response to them however, and will be until it is no longer needed.

It is the dominant source of Middle Eastern export income, and a western world's of the energy that the rest of the world expends.

Read Malcolm Maiden’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Paris is another reason for the world to kick its oil addiction.”