"Substantial changes will be needed in the way the economy works… Many of the technologies and solutions that will be required already exist… The pace and scale of implementation must now be accelerated." So says the CBI report Climate Change: Everyone’s Business. The report, and the video on the site the CBI has created to launch it, hammers home that it’s a challenge that needs a tripartite approach – Government, consumers and business. The three are interdependent. As an example it says that "the current rate of insulating the existing housing stock needs to triple over the next 20 years. This will only work through much closer working between government, business and consumers, with focus on delivery."
The other message is one that I’ve been hammering on this site and is being voiced across sustainability circles – moving beyond rhetoric. "It’s about what needs to happen in practice rather than rhetoric," says Taylor Wimpey chief executive Peter Redfern, a member of the task force that put together the report. "We need to find out the solutions, to find out what are the big thing we can do rather than the small things."
Could 2008 be the year of delivery?
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on Nov 27th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
I thought the report was an odd mix of optimism and tacit scepticism. It is optimistic that business has the capacity to deliver the changes required if we are to meet the emissions in the bill that is currently going through parliament. It is tacitly sceptical about the capacity of consumers to change their behaviour. The whole analysis is based on the view that consumers will simply foot the bill for investment in clean technology, rather than consuming less.
on Nov 27th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
You’ve got a point there. Furthermore, would turkeys ever vote for Christmas? Although the report says that substantial changes needed to be made to our economy I don’t see a questioning of the whole conception of growth or consumption there.