We are tackling this issue because it remains, notwithstanding the economic crisis, the most fundamental set of challenges we will be facing in the coming years and decades.  The bottom of the crisis will be reached, sooner or later, and as soon as it does the same dynamics will come into force that placed this topic on our agenda in the first place.  The oil price will increase and again put strain on the global economy.  CO2 emissions will continue to increase, to the alarm of climate scientists.  Our roads will clog up and continue to spew toxic smog.  In sum, we will continue to poison our world and ourselves at dramatic pace, and be confronted with increasingly nasty symptoms proving that this is an unsustainable state of affairs.

  

Fortunately, change is afoot.  The EU climate plan was pushed through, the new US administration is resolutely pursuing a new ‘green economy’, and even China is talking green.  Investment in renewable energy has exploded worldwide.   Globally, and locally here in this country, we are about to embark on a radical transformation of our energy system.  In addition, there is a growing call to fundamentally transform our current industrial model, a linear model that chews in prodigious quantities of primary resources at one end, and spews out toxins and useless waste at the other end.  

 

Make no mistake; we are only in the starting blocks of this process.  The Kyoto Protocol, the EU climate policy—these are great political and diplomatic achievements but they are only a policy framework.  Awareness of the problem—thanks to the likes of Al Gore—has also changed dramatically.  But the real work has only just begun and the impact on our day-to-day lives is as of yet barely noticeable.  The actual process of transformation, once it gets under way properly, will have a tremendous impact.  For one, it will cost this country a great deal of money.  Massive new electricity generation capacity will be built and the electricity networks will be adapted.  Industry (and indirectly consumers) will be paying for its emissions and investing in energy-efficiency measures.  Companies both large and small will need to spend their way into compliance with ever more stringent environmental legislation.  Households will need to renovate their homes.  Also, we will need to think and act differently.  Many companies will need to change their strategy and business model if they wish to survive.  Individuals too will need to adapt to higher energy prices and its impact on heating, transport and food prices.