couldn't believe that LSE enviro-expert, Gwyn Prins, said, THERE'S NO GLOBAL WARMING, last night!

i just hooked up blogger.com to my blackberry so i hope this will be my last backward looking post.

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yesterday, i moderated a media lunch for intelligence squared, the cultural debating franchise, about climate change, meaning that i had to get up to speed on this profound topic in the few days preceding the event -- no small feat, considering that the speakers were gwyn prins, the lse professor who wrote "time to ditch kyoto", a nature magazine article, which has become among the most downloaded on the internet re: climate change, eric bettelheim, forestry and carbon trading expert and sunita narain, the "al gore of india". the lunch was spirited and combative, with professor prins, believe it or not, making the jaw-dropping assertion that there is no demonstrable link between dramatically increased co2 emissions and temperature increase in the earth's atmosphere. three weeks ago, the bbc announced this new research finding! he made this point to similar shocking effect at the evening debate. it's his view, well-reasoned if heretic, that, if there's no actual warming, then, the entire multilateral decisionmaking process of kyoto and copenhagen has no underlying raison d'etre or functional, let alone moral, purpose. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8299079.stm

the bbc announcement, aptly entitled, "what happened to global warming?" merely confirmed prins' view that there has never been any demonstrable climactic change since, after all, "climates change. that's what they do."

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on the CAN front, which is the reason you're reading this blog : ), we've been having a banner week, signing up the chairman of LegCo, Tsang Yuk Shing, and enlisting the support of DC members in Tin Shui Wai, Yuen Long and Wong Tai Sin.

Here are some notes from our community outreach manager:

"'sharing of the costs of cleaning up the air pollution' is the number one concern for most DC members of all political parties. In Yuen Long, the independent DC members blast the gov't public consultation paper for only asking the public to bear the costs. In Wong Tai Sin 10 DAB members have drafted a letter to the EPD demanding the gov't and the bus companies and powerplants to bear the costs as well and a timeline for implementation of those 19 measures to reduce emissions. One Liberal Party DC member (same party as Miriam Lau) said that his party understands that the Transport industry definitely has to bear some costs but the transport industry will not agree to bear too much cost. His party suggests that the gov't should provide some tax exemption or other measures to bring down the costs of the transport industry. They are still collecting public opinion on the cost sharing issue and conducting research on the best way to reduce emission from buses and trucks. However, the Liberal Party is definitely defending the interests of the transport industry. They are not willing to shorten the length of the usage of a bus because this will not be economical to the bus companies. In fact, they are suggesting to use some filter equipment to filter the emissions from buses and trucks instead of replacing bus fleet.

Another thing to be noted is that we have been receiving feedback from DC members saying that the objective of our campaign is too vague. For example, Tsang Yuk Shing asked about our stance on the cost sharing issue. When I replied to him we are open to any options and our only objective is to clean up air pollution, he questioned the effectiveness of such a vague goal. Some other DC members have raised the same point.

We need to have our own stance otherwise people don't know what we want the government to do. It is too vague just to say we want clean air. We are campaigning for a social cause and we definitely have to have a stance on policy."

We've just completed a zoomerang survey on precisely this issue. 500 people responded, so we will tabulate responses on this particular question and come up with a policy position in a few weeks. one thing is obvious already, though, IT WOULD BE SOCIALLY INEQUITABLE IF THE BUS COMPANIES WERE PERMITTED TO GET OFF SCOTT FREE WHILE BUS RIDERS AND THE PUBLIC PURSE HAD TO PAY!

thats CAN's baseline position!