'World must ditch oil, go renewable' - OECD boss

T

he secretary general of the OECD group of the world's 34 richest nations has issued a dramatic plea to its members to act now to end 'unabated coal' burning, writes Alex Kirby, and invest in renewables around the world to prevent climate disaster.

The future of coal has come under scrutiny from a perhaps unlikely source - the head of the organisation representing wealthy nations that relied on coal for 32% of electricity generation last year.

Angel Gurría, secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), said the scale of new investments in "unabated" coal-fired electricity generation - where greenhouse gases are emitted directly to the atmosphere - posed the most urgent threat to the Earth's climate.

Read the Ecologist story - “OECD chief: World must ditch coal, go renewable”.

'Green tape' cleared of economic villain role

“Green tape” is not the economic villain it is claimed to be.

A story in the Sydney Morning Herald headed: “OECD says green tape is not damaging the economy” point to research that disproves the theory that green tape is prohibitively costly.

“But the economists at the OECD have made a surprising discovery: green tape might not cost nearly as much as politicians and business leaders claim. The Organisation has created an index that calculates the explicit and implicit cost of environmental policies.

“Its economists used this index to assess the strictness of environmental regulations across 24 wealthy OECD members – including Australia – between 1990 and 2012 and to measure the effect of those regulations on productivity,” the story reports.

Arguing about climate change for the wrong reasons

We argue about climate change is for reasons, it seems, we don’t truly understand.

Eric Knight's
book.

Conversations are frequently heated, ideological, divisive and being little more than words piled upon words, rarely result in anything that could be seen as a solution.

The idea that we need a “solution” is in itself divisive from some in the conversation see changes to the world’s climate as entirely natural and rather the seek answers, we should simply be adapting.

Author and former Rhodes Scholar, Eric Knight, has waded into the conversation through his June 2013 book: “Why We Argue About Climate Change”.

Knight, who has worked as a consultant for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD); the UN and the World Bank and he has written for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Drum, The Spectator and The Monthly, writes:

“Even if the alarmists of over stating their case ………. these possibilities (the complications arising from our changing climate) are so dire that we are duty-bound to consider how they might be averted. The global warming that is occurring may not be all man-made, but it is still our problem.”

Knight, who sees himself as a technological optimist, but a political realist, argues that that it is freedom rather than science that is the real sticking point in the conversation.

“If I am correct, then in my view it is from the right rather than the left that the ability to build a genuine public consensus on climate change must eventually come,” he writes.

Knight brings sense and objectivity to this polarising conversation and for anyone concerned about the welfare of humanity (that would be of interest to everyone you would assume) and the way ahead, then “Why We Argue about Climate Change” is essential reading.