A new direction for climate policy after the crash of 2009

The Hartwell Paper
London School of Economics & Oxford University
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/27939/1/HartwellPaper_English_version.pdf
After the failure of the international climate policy meeting at Copenhagen last December, LSE Mackinder and the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, University of Oxford, were commissioned by an international consortium of funders to chart a new way forward.
The result of three months' intensive work by a group of 14 authors from Asia, Europe and North America, 'The Hartwell Paper' argues that a radical change of approach is required, given that the 1992 United Nations international climate policy framework has failed to produce any discernable real world reductions in greenhouse gases. So the crash of 09 is a crisis that must not be wasted.
The paper explains how the global economy can be moved away from its dependence on fossil fuels in harmony with economic recovery and with public approval. This decarbonisation is achieved as a by-product of pursuing more pragmatic and popular primary goals, including expanding energy access, energy security and, ultimately, making energy less expensive and more abundant. Unless fractured public trust is rebuilt, nothing can be done. So the key for completing the job is for policy makers to focus on the first steps, and not on outcome targets or timetables. Current policies fail because they are back to front, politically and technologically. They also misinterpret the core message that scientific research on climate issues gives to policy-makers.
Part I: From ‘How to get climate policy back on course’ to ‘The Hartwell paper’ . 6
Part II: Radical Re-framing.............................................................................................10
A: Our three over-arching goals ............................................................................ 12
1) Ensuring energy access for all..................................................................................12
2) Ensuring viable environments protected from various forcings..........................13
3) Ensuring that societies can live and cope with climate risk (‘adaptation’) .......14
B: How climate change was systematically misunderstood 1985-2009, and some
consequences arising............................................................................................15
C: Misunderstanding the nature of the science of Earth systems ..........................17
Part III: A Radical Departure from Business-As-Usual in Climate Policy ............. 19
A: Returning the relegated non-CO2 ‘forcers’ to front line service ..........................21
B: Ensuring that the best is not the enemy of the good in a complex world ..........23
1) The political prerequisite of energy efficiency strategies.......................................24
The Potential for and Limits to a Sectoral Approach Focused on Efficiency: A
Case Study of the Steel Industry’s Global Sectoral Approach...................................25
2) The primacy of accelerated decarbonisation of energy supply.............................27
C: How to pay for it: the case for a low hypothecated (dedicated) carbon tax. ....... 32
Conclusion................................................................................................................. 35