Collaboration on climate change

A brief article in the New Civil Engineer (14/07) referred to collaboration between the RIBA, ICE and CIBSE presidents (see also BSj 09/05, page 8), resulting in a call to government for ‘more decisive action’ on climate change. It also mentioned the need for a target-based policy framework within which this action would be taken.

You may know that such a framework – Contraction and Convergence – has already been prepared by the Global Commons Institute. It has attracted an amazing degree of support worldwide including, in this country, from the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, the Synod of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury and all but one of the main political parties.

In last year’s Penguin title, How We Can Save the Planet, my co-author and I set out grounds for extreme concern about the Government’s failure to respond to predictions of an ecological catastrophe if urgent action is not taken. Since then, even more evidence supporting these predictions has come to light. We also put forward the case for personal carbon rationing, based on the Contraction and Convergence proposal, as the only means of averting that disaster.

I would hope that CIBSE will intensify its efforts to call government to account on this most pressing of issues.