Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

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Chatham House 15-16 October 2012 The 16 th Chatham House Climate Change conference , this year themed around questions of security, resilience and diplomacy, took place in a mixed atmosphere of urgency, hope and frustration. It is a striking fact that global greenhouse gas emissions have remained on a steep upward trajectory since 1990. Global energy demands are increasing and a growing global population looks set to intensify these pressures still further. In this context, there was consensus on the need for drastic action to control emissions if there is to be any chance of limiting global temperature increase to 2 ° C above pre-industrial rates.   There was hope of the promise offered by new technologies such as carbon capture and storage; hope too of a new determination amongst states to tackle emissions through the UNFCCC process by 2020, but also a tangible sense of frustration at the further lost years this timescale implied and a lingering fear that it might already be t

Blog post by Karen Bell, Bristol School for Policy Studies The All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group (APPCCG) is a coalition of 150 MPs from all parties, as well as almost 200 representatives of a variety of businesses, NGOs, academic institutions, and embassies.    Its registered aim is ‘To raise awareness of the threat of climate change and to promote policies to counter that threat’ (Register of All Party Groups, 2012).   This involves discussing the practical strategies, at national and international level, for enabling the UK and the rest of the world to mitigate and adapt to climate change.   The current Chair of the Committee is the Labour parliamentarian, Joan Walley MP, who also heads the Environmental Audit Committee. The Secretariat of the APPCCG is the Carbon Neutral Company, a business which has ‘…pioneered the carbon offset industry’ (Carbon Neutral Company, 2012).   On 11 th September 2011, I attended an important meeting of this group on behalf of th