Photo: Gemma Reynolds

If I had asked for a better visual analogy of the transition to a low carbon economy I wouldn’t have got one. Standing in a blustery field in Oxfordshire I was presented with a sight that highlighted the juxtaposition of old and new, pessimism and optimism, dirty and clean, the past and future of our energy economy.

Among the first strategic moves by the new UK government is to kill the Sustainable Development Commission. This is deeply misguided.

The US Treasury Department has released guidelines calling on the World Bank and other Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to significantly reduce the funding they grant to coal power stations, encouraging them to ‘ensure full consideration of no or low carbon options ...’ before approving funding to coal-fired power generation projects in developing countries.

Through a serendipitous piece of scheduling, a COP15 side event on human rights and climate change was held today, 10th December: International Human Rights Day. A panel of experts, including several from vulnerable indigenous communities in Africa, the Arctic and small islands, addressed the links between climate change and human rights. They made a compelling case for viewing climate change as a human rights issue.

Today is the first day of the international climate summit in Copenhagen. The opening formalities for one of the largest and most important gatherings in history are being completed and the representatives of 192 nations are now starting the business of bringing together the high politics and the legal details into an agreement. Whether there will be an agreement, what form it might take and whether it will be enough are open questions. But the stakes and the pressure for action could not be higher.

In one of the most dramatic weeks in Australian politics, the Australian emissions trading bill was defeated in the Senate this morning for the second time.  Australia will now have nothing to show at Copenhagen and it is more uncertain than ever which path Australia will now take to deal with climate change.  The concern is not so much that it was defeated (it really was a weak and flawed scheme that would have locked Australia into barely any reductions between now and 2020), but rather the reasons why it was defeated.

Within 48 hours we should know whether or not the Australian emissions trading bill will finally pass. It was a poor scheme to begin with and this week it has been even further watered down in the interests of the polluters. The government has struck a deal with the opposition conservative party in order to get it through, and this deal involves even further compromise of the environmental credibility of the scheme.