The above ‘Carbon IQ test’ is an excellent way of exploring how much you know about the carbon cycle, and what that means for viable solutions to our climate challenge. Have a go at it before checking out the information below.

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In the climate policy community there is a growing debate between advocates of ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ carbon caps (dams?). The terms draw an analogy between the flow of water in a stream and the flow of energy through an economy. ‘Upstream’ advocates want to regulate the few dozen fuel and energy companies that bring carbon into the economy, arguing that this is cheaper and simpler than addressing the behaviour of tens of millions of ‘downstream’ consumers.

At first glance this seems a convincing argument, but there is one important regard in which an upstream scheme fails – it does not engage the general populace in the changes required. Read more »

Last night was an exciting one for me, as an event that I dreamt up actually came to fruition. I have been feeling for a while that the public mood has moved on – virtually everyone is now aware of the challenge of climate change, but very few people actually feel like they know what they should do about it.

Indeed, I was in a similar position a couple of years ago, and it took me about a year’s research before I felt I had found the initiatives which could effectively deal with the nature of the challenges we face.

As a consequence, most people are just left with the nagging uncomfortable feeling of an unresolved – and seemingly irresolvable – issue, which probably only makes them less likely to want to learn more about the area. Read more »