We Can’t Slow Climate Change Without the Energy Companies

There is a real danger that the climate debate is deteriorating into a game of name-calling, with oil and gas companies all too often portrayed as opponents of climate progress. But polarizing the debate in this fashion will not get us any closer to solving the problem. We can achieve far greater and faster emissions reductions if environmentalists and energy companies work together.

Most oil and gas companies recognize the threat of climate change and want to be part of the solution. As a sign of their seriousness, five of the largest — BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Shell and Total — have joined a broad coalition, convened by the Climate Leadership Council, which I run, in backing a concrete plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions in the United States by half by 2035. These oil and gas companies are not only lending their names to this environmentally ambitious solution; they are putting their money and lobbying muscle behind it.

This marks a turning point for American climate policy and the politics surrounding the issue, because the energy majors are an indispensable part of any successful clean-energy transition. It is important to understand why the industry’s technological, economic and political support is so essential in achieving climate progress.

Read the opinion piece from The New York Times by Ted Halstead - “We Can’t Slow Climate Change Without the Energy Companies.”

Climate Emergency Defined - Paul Gilding

The idea of declaring a Climate Emergency is as polarising as is climate change itself.

Breakthrough, Australia’s national Centre for Climate Restoration has asked the question: 

“What is a Climate Emergency and Does the Evidence Justify One?” and Paul Gilding, who 

has spent over 40 years trying to change the world, doing everything he can think of. 

Gilding has served in the Australian military, chased nuclear-armed aircraft carriers in small inflatable boats, plugged up industrial waste discharge pipes, been global CEO of Greenpeace, taught at Cambridge University, owned and run two ground-breaking sustainability-focused companies and been a close confidant and advisor to the CEOs of some the world’s largest companies.

His report, “Climate Emergency Defined” is, according to Breakthrough, a stark and confronting review of the evidence about the scale, timing and urgency of the risks posed by climate change and set out to determine whether an emergency response is both necessary and feasible.

 Download “Climate Emergency Defined” as published by Breakthrough, Australia’s National Centre for Climate Restoration, and written by Paul Gilding

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.