Climate change policy, energy and cities

Urgent public policy debate on energy is currently highly fragmented with one party not wishing to hear what the other is saying. There is continuing pressure to find and exploit more oil and gas. This, however, contradicts the recent Copenhagen Climate Change Agreement to limit global warming - caused mainly by burning fossil fuel - to no more than another 2 degrees C. Then we have the 'peak oil' debate that indicates that in any case oil, and shortly after gas, production will imminently be diminishing on the way down to total exhaustion later this century. This should, actually, be good news as NGOs attending the Copenhagen Conference indicated that it will take a rapid exit from the use of fossil fuel to achieve the Copenhagen limit. However, if we are to maintain even our present energy demand, let alone further growth, then we would need a crash programme to obtain more energy from renewables and nuclear. The International Energy Agency, that recently confirmed that oil production is very likely soon to go into rapid decline, has expressed scepticism that even if such a programme were politically and financially feasible, the available technologies are not up to the job. Whether the Copenhagen Agreement is implemented through political decision to reduce energy use, or whether we are forced to reduce energy use by lack of supply, the consequences for our present lifestyle are dire. The second half of this article discusses some of the issues and debates that are currently emerging that try to face up to these consequences and what this might do to our cities