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Every parent learns the trick of reverse psychology. Its cheap, its unsophisticated, but heh….whatever works.

Those doubting the USA’s new-found passion for driving an economic reconnaissance on the back of a “green” agenda will find a strong suggestion for the new Obama administrations resolve in the unlikely grounds of an Iraqi complex for orphans in Tikrit. It comes in the form of a 2.5 metre long statue of a shoe. Sculptor Laith al-Amiri masterpiece is a lovingly crafted replica of one of the shoes hurled at Ex-President Bush by journalist Muntadhir al-Zaidi in Baghdad.

That act, and the monument it has inspired represents more than anything how low the opinion of the USA has fallen to amongst a larger proportion of the Arab (oil bearing) world. They have lost leadership not just economically, but also inspirationally, morally, and industrially. But here’s the most important thing and also why any of this is relevant to the “sustainability” story: The Obama administration are keenly aware of the existence and magnitude of that loss. And it is worth emphasising that the Obama administrations newly minted existence itself is also a reflection of the same awareness of that fact too, amongst the majority of the electorate. It is a sure thing that the Whitehouse staff have little enough time on their hands right now to be minutely following the fibreglassing and metalwork career of al-Amiri. It’s also pretty much guaranteed to be true that the thought of a monument to the execution of the most heinous insult an Arab can give being a final symbol of the US’s impact on Iraq would be an unwelcome one.

That keen awareness of America’s down and nearly out position on the world-stage is however transforming into a spirited and forceful turnaround. Like the turning manoeuvre of an ocean liner it is going to take time to set the economy off in a new direction and to stoke the boilers back from their currently sputtering and hissing state. However once turned and sailing their wake will influence the direction and pace of others.

Obama is pointing toward the US’s future - “Green Industry”. Environmentalists are rightly sceptical of our collective ability to engineer our way away from catastrophic climate change. With that reality check in mind, have no doubt that from an economic point of view that “green innovation” will be the underlying technology engine driving the next macro economic wave around the world.

The Obama Whitehouse will do everything to make sure that the US gets a big slice of that wallet. They will do everything they can to ensure that the US position is back to where they feel it should be - one of dominance on the world political and economic stages. You don’t have to like that, but you do have to recognise it.

And if they ever feel that someone else is nipping at the heels of the pace of their innovation and investment efforts, they need only to look to an orphanage in Tikrit to get the necessary boot up their behinds.

Software maker CA (which everyone keeps mistakenly still calling “Computer Associates” - so perhaps that attempted name change was a little less then successful) is amongst those which have more recently found their inner verdant. The NYC headquartered vendor, most famously known for a past period of shaky corporate governance hopes to brings its expertise in IT and Enterprise governance to the world of “sustainability”. More however on the product and go-to-market strategy later.

CA has in fact been prominent through its lack of action toward “green IT”, especially compared to those vendors which the company considers its natural competitors. IBM and BMC have now long had a noticeable greenness to their product marketing messaages, both for existing products which have newly found their environmental benefits, and also in proposed new product developments from the vendors. IBM for instance touts their credentials in regard to the greening of datacentres. Both vendors have highlighted the potential electricity savings that may arise from better server and desktop management, Meanwhile IBM has focused (and delivered on) power efficient versions of their hardware, and OS virtualisation capabilities that are positioned to improve the electricity to performance figures of Wintel servers. Even Oracle, with which CA competes with gusto in the Identity Management arena, has managed to keep Larry Ellison’s mouth shuttered long enough to slip out some green positioning.

CA, meanwhile has been…. ….quietly…. ….up to something….

CA has chosen to find its way forward in the space by first focusing on getting its own environmental house in order. The company has reported under the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP4, CDP5 and CDP6) and has made significant gains in lowering their own GHG emissions, as well as focusing on the ecological footprint of the company’s operations. They do have a long way to go, as do almost all enterprise IT vendors. CA’s sales, marketing and executive staff still travel by plane as a standard part of their business routine. The large footprint and consumptive lifestyles of the average high flying software sales person is still encouraged, again like their peers. Gone however are the dreadful throwaway plastic trays that ALL meals were served in in the company’s HQ staff canteen. From paper waste to electricity usage to water the company has reviewed its position and brought out the knives to trim away excess.

Along the way, CA has learned just how potentially complex the execution of a corporate wide Sustainability Strategy is. Especially one that is being introduced into a multinational company. Such strategies require the balancing of a lot of simultaneously spinning plates.So much so that effective green governance will likely become a major area of concern and effort for the coming years. CA are now taking the knowledge they have gained and are now embedding that into their products, focusing foremost on enabling companies to more effectively understand and manage the overall portfolio of sustainability related projects and initiatives. Meanwhile, expect to see the vendor sprinkle a little green sparkle on their desktop and data centre management product lines.

CA’s inside-outward approach may arguably lost them traction in a fast moving market. At the same time the cautious approach is also a little less cynical than the arguably out and out green-marketing approach taken by an all too long list of IT HW/SW/Services vendors with which CA competes on a regular basis. CA must put no small effort toward communicating its newly minted green credentials in order to make up lost ground, in the meantime its focus on getting its own house in order should win it respect amongst buyers, while its recognition of the need for effective “green governance” should play well for it in the longer term.

A note of disclosure: the author worked for CA from 1996 to 2007. He currently holds no financial interest in the company.

Microsoft’s January 22nd announcement of relatively poor financial performance, together with the news of the first job cuts for the firm in its 34-year history has added to the gloom already felt on Wall Street. At least the Seattle giant has no retail stores trading under its own brand name. The sight of a once shiny, beige “Microsoft Windows Store” standing meekly shuttered in between a closed Whittards and a Woolworths might please the occasional passing alliterative MacFan but frankly we could do without the extra empty real estate.

Before assuming however that Microsoft is just the latest to be infected by the dreaded Downturn virus (a nasty worm that exploits unpatched Securities Exchange Commission holes, deletes wealth and then spreads rapidly through the banking system), it is worth considering a few other facts.

Microsoft’s January 22nd announcement stated “Client revenue declined 8% as a result of PC market weakness and a continued shift to lower priced netbooks”. While for Balmer and Co. the movement toward netbooks might have proven to be an unfortunate trend it is worth reminding ourselves that it is one that is neither wholly unexpected nor is it necessarily undesirable.

All throughout 2008 enterprises looked at their IT estates in light of worsening economic conditions, and also with a newly minted concern for the electricity consumption of the desktop and server environment. In common with our Industry Analyst peers, Quocirca has regularly pointed toward the need for a re-examination of the hardware choices in the office environment, especially in light of emerging computing architectures such as SaaS and Cloud.

Quocirca’s advice continues to be that corporations should look to sweat the hardware assets already deployed if you are simply looking to defer the expense of replacement. Extending the life of the existing desktop estate also allows enterprises to focus further on best-practice asset management of the IT assets they have. It is becoming mainstream for enterprises to not only focus on effective remote management of the software stack across the office environment, but also active management of the power state of the devices. The financial savings resulting from turning off and sleeping existing desktop machines can be substantial – not to mention the very real benefit of lowered GHG emissions that comes with reducing electricity consumption.

In environmental terms, there is certainly an argument to be made that newer machines are computationally more powerful and less power hungry than older models. However as the embodied CO2 and ecological footprint of neither the existing machine nor the potential replacement model is easily and accurately calculated, it is difficult to say whether there is a net environmental benefit in replacing an existing equipment or otherwise. As long as the existing desktop kit is relatively young, then active power management of the device estate will probably yield as much benefit in electricity savings as implementing newer devices, while completely avoiding the environmental burden of the embodied footprint inherent in rolling out a newer fleet.

If you do wish to replace the desktop hardware, power consumption of the hardware during its lifetime needs to be a consideration in the selection. A PC/Laptop on every desk might have been an incredibly lucrative market for Microsoft’s OS/Office combination but its suitability is questionable in terms of consumed computing power out for every watt of electricity in. Netbooks generally use less electricity in the use phase. Being less capable than PC/laptops they are inherently also simpler devices, and it is possible (though not necessarily guaranteed) that the embodied carbon footprint of the device will be less than a fully featured alternative.

Meanwhile, it has been fairly common advice from industry watchers that enterprises should reconsider whether they will continue to need a computationally powerful, and power hungry desktop machine estate at all. Sure, a newer like-for-like device is almost certainly more powerful than the old, but do you need the extra horsepower? If a significant proportion of your application environment is today (or is planned to be) web based then traditional PC/laptop hardware is perhaps a poor choice.

Newer computing architectures shift the major processing demands back away from the desktop. The increasing desire for computing mobility, so well served during the last decade by laptops, is arguably better served today through storage of data in the cloud from where it can be accessed via a browser from whichever device suits wherever you are and whatever you’re doing.

From a security point of view, the large attack surface of a traditional desktop (or laptop) device has also continued to present an expensive and complex set of problems for enterprises. A blocked service might be a shut down service, but an absent service is one that is utterly closed off to potential attack. It may be better therefore to implement a desktop environment that doesn’t need so many software services to be patched/filtered/blocked, thus reducing the attack surface straight out of the box.

Netbooks are, as Microsoft seems to have discovered to their loss, a natural candidate for consideration to meet all these needs. The corporation’s disappointing financial results paired with their willingness to place some of the blame on the rise of such devices speaks volumes about the company’s weak position vis-à-vis having an effective strategy as computing requirements change. Difficult trading conditions during the lead up to the (now official) recession have certainly played a part. However it is arguable that the macro economic factors have merely been the accelerant that has flared an existing fire rather than being a new conflagration burning through Microsoft’s wealth.

Welcome to today…now where does Microsoft go from here?

Fog high above London. Boardroom type table Orbited by a dozen or so suited individuals to which any of the following might apply, but all would be modestly denied…clever, thoughtful, experienced, connected, influential, knowledgeable,passionate, engaged. And I got to be there too. The scene is important I think as a form of context for understanding the fascinating nature of the conversation around the table.

Suited business professionals and members of the industry analyst community (some whom scrub up OK too) engaging in a passionate and informed discussion regarding the need to consider the re-engineering of the long established and pervasive capitalist system. Specifically, to examine how we can recognise and reward the value associated with a steady state economic (and business) model, as opposed to only rewarding a constant growth model as we have for the last 500 years or so.

The serious proposal being that the current systemic economic crisis and associated recessions are an opportunity to start on a new direction, especially given the nexus of the economy, climate change and looming petroleum supply shortages.The conversations themselves are fascinating to listen to, and a privilege to have the opportunity to engage with. What is truly interesting however is the type of people having them, and what that signals as far as the debate on climate change has come.

Valuing a mature sustained state economic model will highlight the value of efficiencies in the service delivery production chain. Currently efficiiencies are only lightly rewarded, at best second to margin growth derived through territory expansion. The correct valuation of efficiency gains would be enabled to no small degree by including the currently externalised economic, social and ecological costs associated with an activity into the financial balance sheet where it all belongs.

Those still debating whether climate change exists, or pointing to sunspots as the cause have unfortunately been left behind in the debate. It is critical to remember that that group is large in size (arguably the majority) , and non optional as far as the need to include them as we further engage, educate and encourage appropriate action around climate change.

Who said what around the table shall remain unattributed for now, but it was all good and thank you everyone.

Thank you and kudos to BT for organising the event, inviting us all along, and having the maturity to encourage unbridled discussion.

More.

Please.

We are have been geared to measure progress by how much growth has been achieved. Has the economy grown or contracted this year? Has output risen and have profits increased year over year? Have we earned more this year than last year? Have we manufactured more widgets, cleared more acres of land, mined more, made more, sold more? More…More…More…More…

Sharemarkets swiftly and harshly punish companies that fail to deliver an endless cycle of growth, while we need look no further than the front pages of our newspapers to understand the corporate and personal fear that results from a succession of quarters in which our overall economy fails to expand. It should be obvious however that expansion cannot however be infinite. There must indeed come a time when the resources that are needed as inputs to the system become short in supply and hence high in cost.

There must come a time when the market is saturated. There must come a time when the growth cannot be sustained in a sensible manner.

We’re there.

The interesting question is…where do we now go from here?

The answer is that we need a different target for success, and a new way of measuring success. Rather than a constant growth state economy (CGSE) we must instead develop and recognise the value of a Steady State Economic (SSE) model. Many will decry this as impossible, improbable, irrational, or even worse “downright disproven, socialist commune speak”. It is after all easy to point to the natural world and declare that “growth is the natural state of things”, and furthermore it is the proven way of successful human social and economic behaviour.

The reality is that the natural state involves both growth phases and balanced steady states. A single tree may grow, bud and be the genesis for an entire forest. However eventually the forest will reach a balanced state, once it has reached the edges of the resource boundaries available to it. At that point the net growth of flora and fauna within the forest ceases for the most part though there can be no denying that within that same forest an incredible richness of change and activity continues. The over expansion of any one element is generally counterbalanced by the emergence of a settling force that ensures the system is kept in check. Opportunities for individual growth and success continue - a steady state model is demonstrably still an active model rather than a static one.

We too are governed by that same reality. We have managed to skirt that only by the trick of externalising the full environment impact of our activities and thus by the sleight of hand of ignoring them as factors in our economic equations we have convinced ourselves that they are at worst irrelevant and at best non existent. AGW is nothing more than the debt of the long ignored externalities having reached a point where they are bursting back out from under the rug where we have too long swept them. Nothing more….and a whole lot more too.

Meanwhile, we must now recognise that one of the fundamental changes we must push through is one of systemic performance measurement. Businesses, individuals and State economies must recognise the inherent value of the “steady state”. This will require no small degree of re-evaluation in how we set targets, reward success, measure performance and encourage desirable action. Lowering the “per unit” ecological footprint of anything produced by business isn’t enough, if the gross output of the business is expected to infinitely rise. Only recognising that a steady state model is actually not only desirable, but also one modelled on the normal course of events in the world will create the necessary formula for truly sustainable economic and human activity.

Sometime in the next one thousand, four hundred and fifty eight days its all going to get really ugly. There will be no single day of reckoning, but rather a wave of reckonings - somewhere around 303,824,640 of them. According to no less an authority than the CIA 303,824,640 was the USA population back in mid 2008, though there have been a few burials and births since then so perhaps this piece of intelligence, like so many others from the CIA should be taken with just a pinch of salt.

Arguably more than a few have already tipped into the realisation of just what is in store for them should the newly elected US President, Barack Hussein Obama II actually bring into reality the promise of a low carbon economy. Most however are still dazed by the spectacle of the inauguration to give it real thought. Carrying on his shoulders the hope of so many Americans (and no small number of the majority of the world’s population i.e. the rest of us) that he can steer the USA away from its socially, morally, and physically destructive ways, President Obama cocoons many from the reality of what those changes might mean for them. When they’re told, or when they find that they can’t do today what they could do yesterday, stand well clear ladies and gentleman of the spinning fan blades.

The Obama/Biden administration is the first to unequivocally state that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is reality, and that it represents a major risk for the survival of life. While there have arguably been many missed opportunities to say more on the subject during the 2007/2008 election cycle and during the limbo days since the election it is worth quoting again from the Vice Presidential debate of 2008:

“MODERATOR: Senator (Biden), what is true and what is false about the causes (of global warming)?
BIDEN: Well, I think it is manmade. I think it’s clearly manmade. And, look, this probably explains the biggest fundamental difference between John McCain and Barack Obama and Sarah Palin and Joe Biden — Governor Palin and Joe Biden. If you don’t understand what the cause is, it’s virtually impossible to come up with a solution. We know what the cause is. The cause is manmade. That’s the cause. That’s why the polar icecap is melting.”

Obama gave further nod to the road ahead when, in his inauguration speech he said:
“And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.”

On those scores the Obama/Biden ticket would have got my vote (had I been entitled to one), though in fairness to my Inner Sceptic I should hasten to add that action is what will make the difference not words. And it is that action which brings me back to my original thesis: its going to get real ugly some time during the next four years.

Of those three hundred and three odd million American people there are very few who really get what those words might mean to them and their daily lives. It is one thing to hear the words, it is another to listen to them, it is yet another thing to internalise them and absorb the implications. The challenge ahead no longer lies with convincing a nation’s leader of the reality of AGW, the challenge ahead lies in bringing the citizenry of that country along the same road. I suspect that for most, it is today somewhat akin to the cynical exercise of going to Church on Sundays. Being inspired by the rhetoric of the preacher, washing out the stains of a few sinful acts in the confessional, praying with heartfelt earnestness for the redemption of those who have lost the way on the true path…and then going right back to the same shit way of living by Sunday evening.

So sometime during the next four years, those 303,824,640 or so people are going to find that navigating the road ahead involves their participation. The problem hasn’t been solved by a newly elected President dropping one sentence into his inauguration speech. The problem won’t be solved the by Washington twiddling a knob or two on the economic and social control panels that mysteriously manages (or not) the ebbs of flows of the macro economic maelstrom. Nor will it be solved by changing a light bulb or two, turning down the thermostat a degree, and manufacturing the same old stuff in the same old way but with a nod toward any resulting device having a better energy efficiency than last year’s model.

Obama’s implementation of his campaign words will instead involve changes in the running of every day American life. And seeing as so many other countries are followers and imitators of that social and economic model a lot of other lives too. Yours. Mine. Your neighbours. Your parents and your friends. What we drive, whether we drive. Where we holiday and how we get there. What we eat, how that food is grown and where it is grown - and therefore when it is available. Where and how we design our communities and buildings. How we define success and freedom and how we reward it. What our expectations for economic and social growth are. Which businesses make sense. Which businesses need to be deliberately shut down. These are just a few of the smaller questions that we must address as we enact change.

Some of them have undoubtedly already twigged. A largish number who perhaps already have one of these plastered on the back of their Chevy Suburban. Any slick talkin’ Dem-o-crat who tries to wrestle the keys for their Chevy from their clenched fist and swap it for the electronic keyfob for a shiny new Prius (or even a Chevy Volt) is probably going to find themselves staring down the barrel of a constitutionally legal firearm. These people are going to resist with every braincell, every dollar, every decision, and perhaps even with their physical might any effort to have them change their day to day way of life.

There are to be counted also the relatively small number of people who already truly understand the personal implications of dealing with AGW. They have proactively made personal decisions, and have set themselves on a course somewhat different to the day to day path followed by mainstream. They are the Eco-Amish. They already walk. They already eat a little differently. They already holiday locally. They already teach their children that unbridled economic expansion derived from profligate consumption of fossil fuels might well be mainstream, but it is also a truly dangerous thing.

Then there are the rest of them. To quote the newly elected President - change is coming. What worries me isn’t whether the newly installed US administration says and believes those words, it is whether the everyman understands the truth of those same words. And most importantly, whether the everyman accepts the change to them that delivering on those words means.

Hang on for the ride, this is where it gets really interesting.

What a failure of vision the announcement of the UK government’s go ahead for Heathrow expansion is. Brown’s government has added another item to the list of lamentable directives, all notable by their inspirational paucity and shallowness of intelligent insight. Not that Cameron’s side is much better - starting with Boris’s vision of a Venice like Thames Estuary airport with waves lapping gently outside as passengers board the next generation of eco-jets. The best thing that can be said of Boris’s plan is that if Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger ever needs to ditch a plane again at least there will be a nearby river to do it in. Don’t hit the Thames Barrier on the way in Ches’.

The decision to expand has been positioned as one that is necessary if the UK is to remain competitive within Europe, and globally. So sayeth the Chairman of the IoD, so sayeth the airline CEOs, not to mention the ever impartial BAA. Baroness Valentine of Putney, who took the unprecedented step of pausing as she reloaded her shotgun in between shooting foxes to comment “In the current economic turmoil, one mustn’t forget that if the UK is to face darn increasingly fierce global competition – if London’s access to world markets is to remain one of its unique selling points – the capital will need the best international connections. We simply mustn’t allow upstart economies such France and Germany to fly more aeroplanes than we do. The British Bulldog must be given its wings!”

And what an unnecessarily black and white view that is, simply because it ignores the possibility that we may, if we just try hard enough, manage to uncouple economic stability from the need to fly. What might such a vision look like?

There are basically two types of airline traveller - business and holidayer. OK, there are also people travelling for funerals, to participate in sporting events, or emigrating. There might even be the occasional asylum seeker who is either flying to the UK to spend some time getting to know the BNP (sorry Immigration Department) process for asylum seekers, or having already enjoyed the BNP’s hospitality perhaps flying back to the welcoming African regime from which they fled. It might even be the case that some of those failed asylum seekers might be flying back for repatriation to whatever tiny, remaining square of dry land we still call Bangladesh.

Of course the projected increase in passenger numbers that is used to justify the need for expansion includes the increased holidaying crowds, however Baroness Val appears a little dismissive of the economic benefits of 10 million more Aussie backpackers and Chinese holiday makers, which is odd really. It is worth remembering that outbound English holidayers are a net economic drain on the UK, taking as they do all their hard saved pounds and pissing them up the wall of some Ibiza nightclub. Every pound spent in Eurozone or in the US is a pound not flowing back into the UK economy. Indeed, if we are primarily worried about benefiting the UK economy then we’d be better off charging all those wannabe UK holiday flyers the fully loaded ticket cost, including a carbon and environmental tax reflective of the true environment footprint of their flight, with a view to encouraging them to holiday instead within the UK’s borders. Gap year students who have nothing better to do than backpack through India (no really….they truly have nothing better to do as there are no graduate jobs for them) might instead be encouraged to walk through Slough and Chalvey buying English samosas instead of Indian ones. Immediately, that will free up seats on both outbound and inbound flights for more foreign holiday makers to come here. More camera wielding Japanese gleefully pumping Yen back into the Putney High Street as they pose in front of a boarded up Woolworths snapping retro photos that celebrate England’s passed glory. A result for the IoD and Baroness Val - a net economic benefit to England and the beginnings of the traveller carrying the economic burden of the environmental footprint of jet travel.

Meanwhile let us remind ourselves that is the business traveller whom the airlines all find the most profitable to cater for. Not for them £10 seats and a bag of peanuts an optional extra. For the business traveller has the fantastically profitable habit of planning travel relatively late, and thus paying full price for the dubious joy of flying to New York, Hong Kong or Moscow to take part in a High Powered Executive Thinkfest. However as they too are charged the full environmental cost of flying, they’ll suddenly decide that those business meetings in New York sit a little more uncomfortable on the balance sheet. The already significant economic argument for avoiding optional staff travel will gain a whole new lustre.

Already, companies that have deployed high end video conferencing technology (”telepresence” as it is known) as a way of conducting effective executive meetings, with a range of international participants are reporting significant savings as a result of avoided staff airline travel. One company this author has spoken to has reported a saving in the region of $40 million, in return for a $4 million dollar investment in telepresence suite solutions. The use of such solutions is not without challenges of course. Telepresence suites are not cheap, and of course you need one for every location to which you wish to communicate. A reasonable alternative to each business having their own suites however is for a network to be established that can be shared by many businesses. And therein lies the failure of vision from the Brown government, and their wannabe Cameron alternatives.

Heathrow T6 could be so much more simply because it could represent the future of international and intranational business communications. By all means, build all the high speed rail you want. By all means, build all the bus and rail links in between London and Heathrow so as to encourage the use of public transport to and from rather than use of personal cars. T6 however, ought to a Telepresence Hub, not an additional runway. Business travellers, already used to the idea of heading out to Heathrow anyway, could find awaiting them not a baggage hall of lost luggage and the demeaning exercise that is full body scanning in your socks. Instead upon arriving and checking in a highly trained Telesteward could shepherd business people to waiting lounges where they may avail themselves of the facilities and prepare for their discussions, and then ensures that they can find their assigned suite and can start and conduct their meeting with success.

Bold thinking is required if we are navigate our way through the challenges we face from climate change. Heathrow expansion as announced has the boldness and vision of a wet tissue, locking us in to the status quo as it does. Ecoplanes are merely ecoplans on Boeing’s and Airbus’s drawing boards, and should only be a meaningful factor in our planning when they are a proven sight in our skies. Meanwhile, it is time for us to look differently at both the needs of the business traveller, and the meaning of “a transport hub suitable for the 21st century businessperson”. In the 21st century, effective ideas do not need an additional runway to have wings.

Yesterday, in response to an article in the The Independent I wrote that “Taking the path of biospheric engineering should also go hand in hand with direct social and industrial intervention to ensure that what we have collectively failed to achieve through voluntary and half hearted adherence to emissions reductions targets is instead enforced.” Some of the examples I gave as being good first targets for such intervention were suspension of air travel and the enforced change in vehicle design to produce cheap and capable zero emissions vehicles. Such suggestions would also raise the hair on the necks of the shrill minority who decry any such suggestions to be an attack on their right to continue the SUV status quo.

The Government (insert country name of your choice here _______________) has proven itself completely unwilling to engage in any meaningful way in such socio engineering with regard to climate change. They may point to progressive taxes for large engined vehicles as being an example of a positive step they are taking toward encouraging ownership of more fuel efficient vehicles, but you can’t tell me that someone who can afford a BMW 7 series is at all put off by having to pay a few hundred pounds a year more in registration and taxes for the privilege. The evidence would suggest that the government is frightened of the voter backlash that might ensue from any attempts to enforce stoppage of heavily polluting personal activities.

Odd really, because the same government(s) have had no qualms at all about denying us an increasing number of other civil liberties. Since September 2001, civil privacy rights have been all but repealed, police rights to seizure and search have massively increased, proactive surveillance of the population - both electronic data sniffing and photographic - has continued to balloon, and habeas corpus has been beaten near to death. All in the name of “fighting terrorism”. The government has done their part to maintain a continual sense of danger amongst the population regarding “terrorism”, and then used that angst as an anaesthetic under the influence of which we foggily accept the continued degradation of the human rights we previously enjoyed.

Two very interesting questions emerge:
1. Why is it that on balance, the government has sexed up the danger of terrorism, while downplaying the dangers presented to humanity’s survival from climate change?
2. Why is it that as a society we seem to be more worried about the right to have a cheap overseas holiday once a year and the right to drive a SUV than the right to privacy, habeas corpus and legal and responsible use of the nation’s military might?

It is hard not conclude that we are species with a fantastic ability to self delude.

According to a report in The Independent, a poll of Scientists performed by the paper found almost unanimous support for active engineering of the Earth’s biosphere in a drastic attempt to strip CO2 from the atmosphere. Even though we are living in an everyday life-is-the-experiment form of biospheric engineering (which is how we got into this mess to begin with) it should be easy to recognise that such suggestions are the climate change response equivalent of a plumber sucking air sharply through clenched teeth as he shakes he head in despair of the extent of the work required. I’m afraid Madam, that this is going to be far more inconvenient, painful and expensive than we first thought…. [suck/shake]

To pursue any of the bioengineering efforts that have been suggested, which range from blocking sunlight using spaceborn reflectors to manipulating the ocean’s chemistry and currents in an attempt to increase its CO2 absorption capability, should be rightly recognised as a REALLY BIG ISSUE. Assume for a moment that those scientists are correct in their support for such steps, and that they have also correctly ascertained that the current efforts to curb the flow rates of GHG emissions are wildly insufficient, then we are at the beginning of where it all gets really scary. The moment that must recognised as one of those gravely addressed times when you realise things aren’t quite going as well as you thought, and on the table there are no good options left, only a set of bad ones from which to select the least worse.

It is worth pausing for a moment to just reflect on the enormity of what is being suggested, the risk inherent in the exercise, and potential scope of the end result if we botched it up. In an everyday and everyman’s sense, it is impractical to understand however what all that does really mean on a planetary scale - so instead I will express it everyday terms. Imagine that your domestic central heating system’s thermostat has gone haywire and the house’s temperature is wildly fluctuating. Its 38 degrees Celsius in the lounge room and its 5 degrees in the bedrooms. Biospheric engineering is the equivalent of saying “Look, we tried to fix the central heating system but we can’t make it work properly anymore. So what we’re going to instead is leave the heating system as it is; and remodel the house around to cater for the problem. Of course….a few walls will have to come out in the process….”.

You can imagine that you’d take a long, careful look at that before proceeding VERY carefully.

Similarly, we need to have a number of careful debates regarding biospheric engineering, and a vigorously applied risk management methodology to any path forward. Sure we need to analyse and rank the relative merits of each of the suggested approaches - including for each a matching “back out” plan. We must ensure that part of the risk analysis for each suggested bio-engineering technique is a thorough what-if effort that considers the likely range of undesirable outcomes that may ensue, and what we’d then do to deal with those that arise (and be ready to do it). But if we’re going to have an Intervention, then lets do it properly.

Because if we’re saying that we’re at the point of considering biospheric engineering then we are also saying that Monopoly money carbon trading schemes, non enforceable international protocols, voluntary corporate emissions disclosure schemes and a generally unregulated approach to emissions measurement and management didn’t work. Rather than abandoning all of those efforts however, we should continue with (some of) them albeit in a different way. Taking the path of biospheric engineering should also go hand in hand with direct social and industrial intervention to ensure that what we have collectively failed to achieve through voluntary and half hearted adherence to emissions reductions targets is instead enforced. That reality is the obnoxious truth sitting unacknowledged around the Climate Change Christmas Dinner table. Because if we are going to take the incredibly complex, expensive, desperate and risky path of technical intervention in the planets biosphere we also need to try a different, and more honest approach to reducing the emissions.

Some of the required steps would be enormous ones to take. Forcing an immediate change in vehicle design. Forcing a suspension of a near totality of commercial air traffic. A rigorous change in building design codes, and a strict timetable for retrofitting of existing building and housing stock. A soup to nuts reorganisation of our food supply lines. Redeploy military personnel to a multinational, U.N. type force the mission of which it is to protect from any further degradation those natural carbon sinks that we have left - for example preventing any further logging or burning of the Amazon. It would be untenable to intervene with the workings of one sink - say the ocean - to try and boost it’s capacity while actively degrading another through profit seeking enterprise. When we’ve done those then perhaps we can find the courage to have a sensible debate regarding overall human population targets, in context of the capacity of the biosphere to be able to support us. Its easy to understand why no politician has yet thought it a winning strategy to include such suggestions as elements of an election policy platform.

Lets remember though that we are living in truly interesting times. GM and Chrysler are continuing to negotiate the details of US Federal support, lest they disappear in a fog of their own tailpipe emissions. Is it really too difficult for the conditions to be very simple: “If you want this money, then stop building every other vehicle except for a zero emissions (0em) 2 passenger vehicle, a 0em 4 passenger vehicle, one for 6 passengers, a delivery van, a large van, a small bus and a large bus. You have one year. When you’re done with those, come back and we’ll tell you the next thing we want you to do. Oh…and you’ll co-operate with each other to achieve this. Go. Now…”.

Those unable to continue to jet around the globe will of course go absolutely mental. There’s no great answer to that other than to again ponder the enormity of the implications and risks involved in engineering the biosphere in an attempt to resurrect and boost in the short term the planet’s capacity to absorb the emissions that result from such activities. And that is why this now has the potential to get all very ugly, and why we must take a very deliberate, risk managed, and deliberated approach toward the next steps. Half arsed hasn’t worked, we need to apply some strategic sustainability governance from here on in. Welcome to the topics that will define 2009: Biospheric Engineering, Governance, Risk Management.

I cannot help but point out that the acronym that immediately jumps out from that is B.E. G.Ri.M. Happy New Year.