Stoat

He does if you read FP Passport, whatever that is (thanks Inel). He says Nobody is really arguing about the science. Everybody acknowledges the cost of doing something is a lot less than the cost of doing nothing. Everybody acknowledges that each of us has a part to play. The question is, how do you define that? Arguably (so to speak) no-one has been arguing about the science for quite a long time; though people have been using cherry-picked bits of sci as weapons (RP Jr's favourite meme). Invisibly, of course, there is still lots of science to discuss, most obviously over how much sea level rise we might get.

But what is missing from Benns statement, as from so much govt rhetoric (see Broons conf speech) is the acknowledgement that all the stuff they are actually contemplating doing and paying for isn't nearly enough to get to the 50-60% targets they are talking about. There is lots of back-patting about jobs-from-greening but rather less talking about the costs.

Anyway, Benn continues: Benn, and everyone else I talked to, stressed the importance of the December meeting in Bali. "We can't have another gathering where people say, 'Hmmm, yeah, hmmm, I'll think about it.' We've got to get going." Anything less than binding emissions reductions targets would widely be considered a failure, since only binding targets will make a carbon market viable. My prediction is that this is exactly what will happen: it will be yet another meeting without binding targets. I've only got about £30 in sea ice bets so far (and an indeterminate amount of beer for RA, but how much beer can one man drink in a week :-?) so there is plenty left over if anyone out there is naive enough to bet that they *will* agree some targets. Perhaps HB might take me up?