Climate Change and the Hay Hamster Paradox

The real title was Letter to Copenhagen, and it was a talk given as part of the Hay Winter Festival by Jane Davidson, Andrew Simms and Andy Fryer. Rosie Boycott was due to appear, but sent her apologies as she was far too busy preparing for the Copenhagen summit - which, in case anyone is unaware of it, is the successor to Kyoto and the world's last, best chance to do something positive about climate change.
Jane Davidson is one of the Welsh Assembly's delegation, the Assembly Minister for the Environment - and she's certainly got her work cut out for her. Wales has only a limited ability to create legislation, and a huge public sector which has to be paid for before other schemes can even be thought of. She said that Wales has benefitted enormously from membership of the EU, because of the environmental legislation which has come from Europe. At present, Wales has cleaner rivers and cleaner air than it has had since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and that probably wouldn't have happened without Europe.
Andrew Simms is the Policy Director of the New Economics Foundation. He'll also be at Copenhagen, and he's the man responsible for the Hamster Paradox.
Apparently, the 'must-have' toy this Christmas is a robot hamster. So he got thinking about real hamsters. In the first six weeks of their lives, they double their body weight every week. Then they level off at their adult weight. What would happen if they just kept on growing, doubling their body weight every week? How heavy would they be on their first birthday? Someone in the audience guessed 7 tons, but the real number is around 9 billion! And the hamster would be eating the entire world's output of cereals.
Conventional economics is like that hamster - every country in the world (except Bhutan, which prefers a national index of happiness, and failed states like Somalia who don't have a policy on anything much), they all buy into the idea of unlimited economic growth, and it won't work for much longer.
He also talked about the 350 campaign, the idea that CO2 emissions should be stabilised at 350 parts per million - and we're already at 387, so there's a lot of hard work involved in bringing the world's emissions down, especially as countries like India and China and Brazil aren't going to get on board unless they see real movement from the rich countries, especially the US and Europe. "Stop me if I'm using too many numbers," he said at one point, and Jane Davidson said that the problem with numbers is that they are being used to obfuscate the arguement far too often, rather than clarifying matters.
One of the questions at the end of the session was about the Hay Festival starting a Festival in the Maldives - what was all that about? Andy Fryer, who works for the Festival, explained that they had actually been invited by the President of the Maldives, because his country is one of those in most danger from climate change, being on average only 2 metres above sea level. Tourists come for the sun, sea and sand, but he wanted the world to know that there is an entire culture under threat there, and inviting a cultural festival was one way of doing that.
The Festival have recently signed up to the 10:10 campaign, which involves everyone, from individuals to businesses and even government departments who sign up, in reducing their carbon emissions by 10% in one year - to show that they take the problem seriously. Hay Festival have signed up, and so has the Welsh Assembly, this being one of the last things Rhodri Morgan did in office before he retired.
It was a fascinating morning, and I hope that people like Jane Davidson and Andrew Simms are listened to at Copenhagen, and serious action taken. As they said, it's not like a health budget where you can argue about a bit more here or a bit less there - the biosphere doesn't care about the arguments, and when it's had enough that's it - it's the future of the human race that's at stake here.