Jonathon Porrit says “there is something surreal about the current climate change debate. On the one hand, there is an unprecedented consensus about the science, based essentially on the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Even Professor John Marburger, George Bush’s Principal Scientific Advisor, recently acknowledged the robustness of the IPCC’s principal conclusion: that it’s now 90% certain that the climate is changing because of man-made emissions of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases; that in order to avoid ‘dangerous’ climate change, average temperatures must rise by no more than 2^oC by the end of the century; that in turn means stabilising concentrations of CO₂ at a lot less than the 550 ppm level the world is currently aiming at - and that we have got no more than 10-15 years to put in place the policy platforms that will enable all that to happen.

“People shouldn’t underestimate the importance of reaching such a consensus. Of course some will continue to chip away at it, and others to reject it entirely. But theirs are increasingly forlorn and isolated voices. In fact, a far larger number of scientists now believe that the IPCC is significantly underestimating both the scale and the speed of climate change, although they can understand why governments would prefer to go with the consensus view.

“So, the science is now in place. On the other hand, global climate negotiations seem to be almost completely bogged down. Most people reckon that the likelihood of any substantive breakthrough at the big conference in Bali in December is very low indeed. Although it is true that the intransigence of the Bush Administration remains the principal reason for this impasse, many countries are perfectly relaxed at the endless delays in the process.

“This is seriously crazy. We know everything we need to know to start addressing climate change in a big way right now. Only two things can make a massive difference between now and 2020: huge new investments in energy efficiency (in industry, buildings and transportation), and equally huge investments in renewable energy - substituting directly for fossil fuels.

“This was the principal recommendation of Sir Nicholas Stern’s blockbuster report (commissioned by the UK Treasury) on the economics of climate change. He was adamant in arguing that this would require massive new government investment as well as private sector investments - to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10-15 years.

“Ironically, it’s the US that is demonstrating the clearest leadership in that regard, with federal expenditure on many different kinds of renewables at historic high levels. And China is not that far behind! And it is Germany that has taken the lead in terms of using public money to bring its existing housing stock up to a radically higher level of energy efficiency. But the rest of the world still seems to be in snooze mode - including the UK, where the Government has all but buried the Stern Report.

“As a result, fantastic opportunities for scaled investment in some of the technologies the world now totally depends on continue to go begging. For example, although we are at last beginning to see a few concentrated solar power projects coming on stream in southern Europe, the US and the Middle East, current investments in this technology (based on huge collectors directing solar radiation onto a central column of water or gas to drive conventional turbines to produce electricity) are still a tiny fraction of what is now needed.

“Such investments could have a huge impact in a relatively short period of time. Other solutions are equally important, but will take longer to make an impact. And none is more important than carbon capture and storage (CCS), which has the potential over the course of the next 20 years or so to store away hundreds of millions of tonnes of CO₂ that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere. Most environmentalists remain very nervous about CCS, but I just don’t see how we can achieve the necessary reduction in concentrations of CO₂ in the atmosphere without a massive international commitment to CCS.

“In a nutshell, that’s it. Three planet-saving interventions: efficiency, renewables and CCS. Two of them are available to us right now, and all of them will be needed as crucial elements in any decarbonisation strategy, whatever global arrangements or treaties eventually emerge as the successor to the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. Of course these negotiations are fundamental, and there can be no let up in trying to arrive at the kind of diplomatic breakthroughs that are so badly needed. But we simply don’t need to be waiting for some successful outcome from these negotiations before getting on with doing what we know we need to be doing right now.

“And that’s the leadership failure for which politicians should now be held most directly to account. No one country can crack the international log jam on its own, but every country should be massively ramping up investments in today’s climate change ‘no brainers’.”

Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future www.forumforthefuture.org.uk, Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission www.sd-commission.org.uk; and author of Capitalism as if the World Matters (Earthscan 2007)