Our annual magazine Respond will be available in Durban at COP17
By Ed King
Welcome to Responding to Climate Change’s new website.
Our team has been working on our new look for a few months, and we hope you enjoy both the fresh design and the content we have to offer.
Responding to Climate Change has followed the fortunes of international climate negotiations through our magazine and website for the past decade.
In that time we have seen highs like the enforcement of the Kyoto Protocol in 2005, and lows in the shape of the 2009 Copenhagen Summit.
Barely a day goes by when climate change is not in the news, and increasingly its affects and our attempts to deal with its causes will come to trouble us all.
The sheer weight of information on this topic can be overwhelming – since I started writing this article over 100 people have tweeted under #climatechange, while googlealerts has sent me 35 stories to check – and it’s only 10am on a Friday morning!
At RTCC we have no deep-seated political ideology, but we do note that the majority of climate scientists are warning that we must take action now.
While complex multilateral negotiations can be frustrating and slow, an agreement across the globe is important if real progress is to be made on this front.
A key challenge is that confronting changing climate is more an economic question than it is an environmental question – yet the progression towards a low-carbon economy need not be painful, even in these financially austere times.
Investment in innovations and technology, long-term policy commitments and a clear strategy from politicians can all provide an effective and affordable path forward.
As US Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu pointed out in a speech on November 3, states wishing to remain competitive need to move into the low-carbon hi-tech arena.
RTCC is committed to highlighting developments that enable this transition, and speaking to the people who can make a difference in the political and business arenas.
We will be in Durban for COP17 and Rio+20 for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, and aim to bring you all the latest news, analysis, interviews and snippets of key information from those events.
Our partnership with the UNFCCC ensures that through the Climate Change TV studio you will be able to watch key negotiators and diplomats explain their positions and ambitions for the talks.
And in the next few weeks we will also roll out our 2050vision campaign, which aims to build a virtual city of 2050 to inspire politicians and entrepreneurs in their efforts to develop a low-carbon clean economy.
Shell, WWF and the European Climate Foundation have all laid out compelling reasons why a truly sustainable economy by 2050 is not just a dream, but an achievable reality, while the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change have recently published their plans to achieve 80% emissions cuts by mid-century.
Climate change is one of the most pressing problems facing the planet. It presents huge challenges, but also massive opportunities. At RTCC we’ll be with you every step of the way.
Ed King – Editor, November 11 2011
If you have any comments about the site please get in touch via [email protected] or @rtcc_edk