As former chariman of Shell Peroleum, Lord Oxburgh shows how far the fossil fuel industry has come in acknowledging climate change and the need to take drastic measures.

Naturally as a businessman he sees business opportunities as the primary solution, and does not question our consumer lifestyle as a priority problem that needs addressing.

But it needs to be pointed out that the environmental movement has never advocated hair shirts and going back to caves. This language is merely the scare-mongering language used by the development lobby to say that we have to press on with growth, growth and more growth or suffer.

Using new elegant technology it is now possible to live very comfortably on much less energy than is typically used. If I insulate my house and make it more comfortable, I am not going back to the caves. If I use a small efficent car, I am not degrading the quality of my life. If I walk my child to school, I am actually enhancing her life and my own health and fitness as well.

Somehow we have to get over this projection of savage hardship when it comes to using less energy. We have the choice of using brute energy recklessly or our brainpower.

I foresee a future society that, per capita, uses a small fraction of the energy what we currently expend with an ENHANCED quality of life.

Alternatively... we can just build 25 nuclear power stations, at a stupendous cost, and further tighten the grip that brute technology has over our lives and livelihoods, not to mention our planet.

Great stuff Gecko.
Next there will be a piece, I hope, setting out the numbers.
Electricity first for the moment set aside the GHG due to transport, 65%of total some writers say.
Take the figures that the research at Rocky Mountain Organisation has produced or figures from Germany indicating that houses can be made energy neutral or contributors to the grid, including base load concerns.
Lovins has estimates of cost of retrofitting old houses and designing new to achieve this. Calculate the money needed to retrofit existing houses and have as a separate costing that of new houses of the future say for the next 60 years the life time of a nuclear power stack..
Now put down the cost of reactors to supply similar amounts of electricity building fuelling, decommissioning and cost of storage and guarding of the small, in size, waste that must be kept separate from life for many years some for virtual eternity.
Now a new calculation since Uranium like oil is finite the cost of using the waste to produce more fuel.
The figures for likely life availability of uranium before processing becomes economic, giving in passing added weighting to alternatives particularly efficiency.
Another calculation add the CO2 embodied in the production and fuctioning of the two alternatives.
Add total CO2 production for this sector during the 60 years.
Now set out a balance sheet for public viewing.
Now do similar for other sectors starting with energy efficiency as the cheapest alternative and progressing as necessary.

The precautionary principle says if there are two alternatives one of which seems free of downside difficulties choose it.

P.S.
I left out one important calculation, at least!
There are ten years avilable to commission a new reactor and I doubt finace from the market will be availble for more than one at a time let alone 25. Thus another calcualtionis the number of houses that could be made energy neutral or better in ten as well as 60 years for this money. Then calculations for CO2 balances as before.

For the nuclear reactors some private venture capital will be available, or is it all to go to mining Uranium made profitable by a revived nuclear industry? Presumably in each case a government help will be needed.
Householders can pay some costs at least equal to the saved electricity bills. More may be needed depending on the time frame we allow.
The U.K. nuclear produced electricity has still to have added to cost recovery for closing reactors. Money calcualtions are needed and I am sure those who see profit will provide them.

Jobs created and GDP produced would need looking at before perhaps trying to calculate how much value to place on CO2 reduction starting now and increasing against business as usual, or starting later.

The Lord Oxburg's opening statement is: "The debate over whether human beings are changing Earth's climate for the worse is over - we certainly are." This dogmatism would be music to ATSE's ears. I wrote to its president: "Could (ATSE) not bring into the open the reality that climate-change science is not cut and dried in the IPCC's atmosphere-only mould?" T.M.A. Besley's reply (12/2/01)was dismissive: if "we were to set up some sort of adversarial debate between the mainstream climate science community and the 'sceptics', the Academy would probably find itself charged ... with corrupting the scientific process ..."

On matters scientific, the Great and the Good vote with a single voice, it seems - insisting that Earth has a people-driven climate; and it will just keep on getting warmer, with NO COLD PERIODS ahead. This former Shell carbonate geologist says the opposite - the Sun drives an ever-changing climate; and the next Little Ice Age cold period will be obvious by 2020, with attendant human misery. Who is right? Time will tell, of course. But in the interim, why should the precautionary principle not work both ways?

"The debate over whether human beings are changing the Earth’s climate for the worse is over - we certainly are."

When an article starts out with a sentence like this look out! What an arrogant and ignorant statement.

Having said that, I agree if the world does get hotter (whatever the reason), then us adapting to this warming is the only sensible answer.

Bozzie, that's okay if you can live with the misery and human carnage that will ensue. New Orleans was a piece of cake compared with the misery that would befall a nation such as Bangladesh.

Adaptation is a lazy, do nothing, response. Its like saying we should adapt to a car crashes rather than avoid them happening.

But I suspect many of the climate sceptics will convert as the nuclear power agenda hots up. What a nice enticement to techno freaks.

My impression of climate sceptics is that can never come to terms with the idea of cutting back energy consumption and extravagent living. Science has got very little to do with the debate, it comes down to the values we hold.