The Grahic above is the Contraction and Convergence analysis from Aubrey Meyer of the Global Commons Institute, which I regard as the single most elegant and important idea currently awaiting adoption by humanity.
“C&C [GCI] the single most elegant & important idea awaiting adoption by humanity. Tom Spencer, Dir. Environmental Security Institute, Fmr. President of GLOBE International http://www.tomspencer.info/published.php http://www.gci.org.uk/briefings/GTZ_Brochure_Spencer.pdf
Johan Hari’s answers to the ‘Total Politics’ daily questionnaire... http://johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=1353 Which one law would you introduce? I would introduce a commitment to Contraction and Convergence (C&C) – a requirement for us to dramatically cut our global warming emissions while the poor world is allowed to continue developing, until our emissions meet in the middle at a safe and sustainable level. Until we reach that point, we would compensate the poor countries for the imbalance and the disastrous destabilisation of the climate we are already causing. Full Q&A on a range of issues at: http://johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=1353
Fred’s Footprint: C&C - The best solution to climate change Aug 13, 2008 http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2008/08/best-solution-to-climate-change. html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=specrt11_bar What’s the best way to fix climate change, to stamp out the emissions that are warming our planet? I don’t mean what technology. That’s actually coming along quite nicely. I mean what are the international legal and financial levers that can pulled to get the technology, on the scale needed, from the test rigs to the national grids? Later this month, in Accra, Ghana, the UN’s lumbering Kyoto negotiations will have another stab at what to do after 2012. They will come up against the familiar stand-off. On the one hand, is the rich world’s reluctance to accept emissions limits that will add to the cost of doing business unless developing countries subscribe to emissions controls. On the other, developing countries utter their familiar (and not unreasonable) cry: “You caused the problem; you fix it.” The answer has been staring us in the face for a while now. And more and more people - from business to politics to the greens - are catching on. It has an inelegant name: contraction and convergence (C&C). It works like this. The world needs to contract emissions by more than half by the middle of the century. It’s do-able and it won’t wreck the world economy. (Bankers on a spree are far better at doing that.) But there will be some pain. The only way of sharing out that pain fairly is for everyone to take on emissions targets, but targets that are fair because they are based on a basic parameter of need. That is: population size. So every country should head towards annual emissions proportionate to its population. Most would have to reduce their emissions; but some of the poorest countries could raise them. That’s the convergence part of the formula.
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