EnviroSpin Watch

The Kyoto Protocol is dead? Long live adaptation, says new book!

This interesting piece from the Montreal Gazette captures well a new and spreading realism regarding the fast-sinking Good Ship 'Kyoto Protocol' on climate change: 'Kyoto Protocol is dead' (Montreal Gazette, November 17) - "Russia was last nail in coffin. It's time for international community to move on and adjust to warmer world."

"The Kyoto Protocol's short and unhappy life has come to an end, though some of its die-hard supporters refuse to admit it. From the outset, it was flawed in principle. It has proven unworkable in practice. No one should mourn its passing."

Interestingly, a powerful new book is to be launched during the next two weeks on precisely the theme of adaptation to inexorable climate change: Adapt or die: the science, economics and politics of climate change, edited by Kendra Okonski and formally published in December 2003 by Profile Books.

In this new book (for which I was kindly asked to write a Preface), 13 experts challenge the conventional wisdom that the effects of climate change will be devastating for the environment and humanity, and that 'climate control', through international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, is the only way to stop it. Instead the authors argue that policymakers and society should focus on adaptation to deal with climate change. Climate control, they argue, will not prevent the negative effects of climate change, nor will it benefit humanity. By contrast, we must adopt policies that promote human well-being today and in the future, by eliminating disease and poverty, developing new technologies, and improving humanity's resilience to change.

I understand that the book will be launched on:

24th November in Copenhagen, Denmark;

27th of November in Milan, Italy;

1st of December in London, UK. Here are the details of the London launch.

The book has been deliberately published to coincide with the COP-9 meeting of the UNFCCC which will take place in Milan.

I think the UK and Europe should really start to the heed this book, not to mention the surrounding rumbles, or they will soon be the last souls clinging to a doomed ship. Icebergs ahoy!

I am looking forward to monitoring precisely how the UK media deal with this new publication.

Philip. Lunch soon!