Our public talk with Oliver Tickell, author of “Kyoto2: How to Manage the Global Greenhouse” on 17th Feb was a huge success. The Cadbury Lecture Theatre at Aston Business School was packed with 100 people and Aston University have told us they had to tell people not to come because they were so booked up!
Prof. Julia King , Vice Chancellor of Aston University and climate change advisor to the government, was in the audience and very kindly welcomed everyone and introduced our guest. Mr Tickell himself was an excellent speaker and clearly knew a huge amount about the politics and economics of tackling climate change. He spoke about the faults of the Kyoto Protocol and how various market failings had hampered attempts to address global warming; but rather than just focus on current problems, he went on to discuss what can be done to solve them.
In a nutshell, he proposes having a global cap on greenhouse gas emissions, rather than individual targets for each country, and then allowing countries to bid for emissions rights. The revenue raised by this auction could then be used to fund projects that will allow less developed countries to better adapt to climate change and to fund more renewable energy and efficiency schemes. He also proposes enforcing the cap on greenhouse gas emissions at the source of fossil fuels, such as oil refineries and coal mines, rather than further downstream in order to make the monitoring much simpler and less bureaucratic, and therefore more likely to be successful.
Following the talk, many in the audience had questions for Mr Tickell on a range of topics, from the need for renewable heat to limiting greenhouse gas emissions along an asymptotic curve , all of which prompted interesting discussion. If you were unable to attend on the night, one of the Birmingham Friends of the Earth campaigners has kindly donated his notes, which you can download by clicking here.
Finally, a big thank you to Oliver Tickell for his thought-provoking lecture, to Aston University for kindly hosting us and to everyone who came along making it such a success.
