Stuart Nettle December 17, 2009 As I write this the world's leading climate scientists are meeting with appropriate government ministers, associated lobbiests and professional spin doctors in Copenhagen, Denmark. The Copenhagen Climate Conference follows Rio and Kyoto in setting targets for carbon emissions for each of the 84 countries taking part. It's stating the obvious to say that we live in a carbon economy; if consumerism is the metaphorical engine room of capitalism then carbon is the fuel it runs on. Both metaphorically and literally. Carbon is released in all our major energy sources: petrol for internal combustion engines and coal for power plants and electricity needs. The problem seems obvious - any reduction in carbon emissions will have an adverse effect on the economy. Therefore each government minister in the Danish capital is pleading their case for mimimum reductions for the sake of their domestic economy. With 84 countries pitching their argument, the conference at Copenhagen, if it manages to succeed, will be one of the most incredible examples of global co-operation. However, a huge spanner was thrown into the scientific mix when emails were recently leaked from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit that seemed to indicate that climate data had been fudged and the science poorly executed. This was proof, sceptics claimed, of a broader conspiracy by climate scientists. The conspiracy extended, at least by the more paranoid and gullible, to the creation of a false economy that climate scientists were cashing in on. The whole climate change thing, they said, is a fallacy. A house of cards constructed to tax the poor workers and line the pockets of clever climate scientists. It's true that the email leaks from East Anglia look very bad for those who believe in man-made climate change. If the sceptics are to be believed, the whole theory looks like it's built on the back of very dodgy science. But my take is this: who cares if the science is wrong? This situation has moved far beyond a scientific debate. The scientists have had their turn in the middle and we the people are none the wiser. After all, in this debate the only thing we are certain of is that there will never be any consensus on climate science. Ever. Houses could fall into the oceans, sea-levels could rise rendering ports useless and flooding lowland regions, the weather patterns could go haywire, and I guarantee there will be professors and commentators saying it's naturally occurring climate change. Man had nothing to do with it. But then again nothing may happen. All the science - poorly executed or not - is based upon past evidence projected into an unknown future and unfurled across every single ecosystem, climate and country on the planet. There has never been a scientific experiment of this magnitude, with this many variables and this many unknowns. The only thing that is clear is that if man-made climate change is correct then the whole planet is in peril. It may be a small and uncertain 'if', yet the stakes couldn't be higher. Therefore this isn't a scientific issue anymore. Let's push the eggheads off the stage and out of the limelight. This is a risk management issue now. We need to ask different questions. Ones that we can actually answer. What do we lose by replacing a carbon economy? What do we gain? And this is where the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) comes in. In all our recent political bickering over an ETS the one thing that's been overlooked is that ETS schemes (and other similar economic tools) are used to introduce alternative energy sources. It's a velvet glove approach to the issue. Rather than government intervening and forcing change via hardline policy, an ETS can open up an economic void where scientists and entrepreneurs operate to create cleaner alternatives. The first ETS scheme was established in the US in the seventies and was in response to sulphur-dioxide emissions and acid rain caused by them. It wasn't a neat system and it met with just the same resistance as our ETS i.e. businesses claimed they would go broke, economists said it would destroy the economy. It did anything but. What happened was, the system was the impetus for cleaner alternatives to be sought. New, and cleaner, technologies were able to compete with the existing technology and the free market did the rest. Because of economies of scale it's extremely hard to make any new technology economically viable, but ETS schemes level the playing field so alternatives can be researched and rolled out. That is the endgame of the ETS: creating the business environment for alternatives to become viable. They are the beginning of the transition away from a carbon economy. Anyone who takes the Tony Abbott line and sees the ETS as 'merely a tax' needs to apply a bit more forethought. Another oft-overlooked point is this: Oil is running out. It won't be in the next couple of years, but anyone who thinks we can continue as we have been is a myopic fool. What will happen when the oil dries up? How are we planning for the transition? I believe that the country that cracks the code for reusable energy, whether it be efficient photovoltaic cells, cold fusion, or effective power transfer from remote sources (wind farms etc.) will become the Middle East of this century. They will own the technology and they will reap the financial rewards. Of course it won't be a government but a company, however, the country that can host the successful companies will potentially sit on the biggest financial goldmine of the coming age. It won't just go to any country though. It will go to the country that creates the right business environment, that invests in the right technology, sets the right policy and makes the right concessions. There are already a few countries that have visionary leaders that have cottoned onto this: Denmark, Norway and, of all places, California. The Governator has done some amazing things to create a state that encourages companies working in clean technology to set up facilities there. But then, he has the working model right there in California already: Silicon Valley. Imagine a region that houses all the companies that work in renewable energy. That feeds off itself in the way that Silicon Valley does. That holds all the licenses and patents. Then imagine how much that is worth to the country it is hosted by. Arnie knows, cause he knows how much Microsoft, Sun Systems, Adobe and the thousand other computer companies in the Santa Clara valley are worth to him. Oil is running out and we will have to get energy from somewhere. When it comes to owning and controlling the new technology it will be the early adopters that win the race. So saying I don't care about climate change isn't completely true. My point is that, whether there is scientific proof or not is irrelevant, we have to change the way we are living. Whether we plan for it and use it to our advantage or have it forced upon us and suffer will be the difference.