Heading for the third degree (COP 14)

05 Dec 2008 – Geoff Lye

I met Bill Kyte at the end of event and we went off for a coffee. Bill is a veteran of the climate debate both in terms of business and policy. He is currently Advisor on Sustainable Development at E.ON, Chairman of the UK Emissions Trading Group and Chairman of the EURELECTRIC Environment & Sustainable Development Committee.

Apart from catching up on life in general, we talked about the likelihood of holding temperature increases below the critical 2°C threshold. I am increasingly pessimistic on this, not only through lack of confidence in agreed targets being achieved, but also in the face of the multi dimensional complexity of reversing current trends. Bill is in a way more optimistic – believing that transformative changes will happen across whole industries – and especially in the energy industry which he knows intimately. But pressed on whether he would tell his children that they should adapt to a 2°C world, he said not. He believes that with a global dictatorship it was clearly possible to stay below 2°C. In the real world, however, he thinks that we will commit to a 2°C goal but overshoot to possibly three degrees. I have to agree, and, as Tom Burke – a leading UK voice on environmental issues – put it recently, ‘My somewhat more pragmatic advice in the face of climate change is ‘don’t be under 40!’