Global emission impossible?

Many campaigners' responses to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change  report took the line that the scientists had spoken and now it was up to the poliicians - a position helped by the BBC's coverage of the report, which on the whole took the line that most sceptics now admit that climate change is a reality.

This glimmer of optiism was challenged later in the evening, after I had read summaries of the IPCC report, when I picked up the London Review of Books and read the long first Letter to the Editor. It argued that mitigation, though cheaper than adaptation, was impossibkle. It concluded:

"The trillions which the developed countries have spent and plan to spend on mitigation have been and will be wasted, as there have been no global emissions reductions and there never will be. The failure of the collective brain of the environmentalism to look this in the face will erode the goodwill which is its principal resource when its role in causing the immense waste becomes indisputable. This will be another very regrettable result of interntional climte change policy."

The debate goes on.