2010 Feasta Climate Group Meeting

The annual Climate Group meeting will now be held near the Findhorn Community in Scotland and will begin six days later than previously planned. We will start with our usual public meeting on the evening of Thursday 25th February and break up at lunchtime on Sunday, February 28th, in time for most people to travel home and be at work the following day. We will have sole use of Newbold House, which was built as a hotel and is now a retreat centre, during our stay. See www.newboldhouse.org.

Newbold House is in walking distance from the centre of Forres and consequently convenient for those arriving by train or bus. It is just over three miles from Findhorn which we will visit at least once during our stay.

Among other things, the meeting will consider the progress made by Feargal Duff in getting Cap and Share assessed by the UNEP as a possible framework either for achieving the targets set in Copenhagen or for a completely new approach to the climate crisis if Copenhagen has failed. Feargal represented Feasta in Copenhagen.

"We'll also be discussing the Carbon Cycles and Sinks Network report" Richard Douthwaite says. "Up till now the whole climate debate has been conducted in terms how reducing the use of fossil fuels is going to cut incomes and require people to give lots of things up. The trouble is, these negatives have not been balanced by anything positive but the actions required to take carbon out of the air and sequester it in the soil would yield lots of bonuses. Soil fertility would improve, there good be better crops and incomes would be better spread."

Richard also thinks that the focus on carbon dioxide and, to a lesser extent, the other greenhouse gases may have been overdone. "There are other important climate factors which we need to look at too. They include the effect of aerosols on clouds and rainfall, the influence of airborne black carbon (soot) on the Earth's albedo and the warming effect of changes in land use/land cover."

The event will begin with a public meeting at the Ramnee Hotel, Forres, at 7.30pm on Thursday 25th February. This will be hosted jointly by Holyrood 350, the leading Scottish climate NGO, and Feasta. Justin Kenrick of H350 will open the meeting by outlining the present state of the climate debate in Scotland and why an atmospheric concentration target of 350ppm or less is required. Feasta speakers will then explore some of the measures that will have to be taken for that target to be met in addition to the near-complete phase-out of fossil fuels which H350 wants by 2029. These include a complete halt to deforestation and the draining of peat bogs plus a change in farming methods so that plants take millions of tonnes of carbon out of the air and sequester it in the soil.

The conference itself will begin the next day and continue until lunchtime on Sunday the 28th. The cost for the three days, including accommodation and meals, is £100. If you stay elsewhere and attend each day, the cost is £50. As the total number attending will be limited to 25, you should book by e-mailing climate [AT] feasta.org as soon as possible.

Besides the Carbon Cycles and Sinks report mentioned above, several papers have been drafted to provide a starting point for the discussions. Two of these have been posted in the climate discussion forum so that people can comment in advance of the meeting. Richard's paper "The benefits of the failure in Copenhagen" looks at some of the ideas that the group has developed over the past year and how these might be moved into the mainstream now that the near collapse of the official UN process has created a widespread readiness to look at new proposals. It can be found here.

The second paper "Climate Change, Mitigation and Governance" by Brian Davey points out that there is no use having climate policies for governments if governments in their present form are incapable of delivering them, as they seem to be at present. It explores the possibility that the climate movement might develop a solution. It can be found here.

There is also a paper on the future direction of the Climate Group's work here and a paper from James Bruges here.