healthier, happier and richer

The Danish government has said that it will pay for poor nations, including the Maldives, to send people to the Copenhagen climate conference in December. This won’t be very expensive – €2.5 million. However, it has great symbolic significance.

It’s a melancholy irony that the right wing faction within the Australian Labor Party, which ended Kevin Rudd’s Prime Ministerial career, is the same faction that pressured him to drop his Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

I am writing a book, with Prashant Vaze and Peter Meyer on the role that local, regional and state governments should play in increasing energy efficiency and promoting low carbon energy. This will be published by Earthscan in 2011.

Yesterday (9 November 2008), the UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, published National Policy Statements (NPS) outlining the government policy on energy. They consist of guidance to the new Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC), which, from next March, is due to grant or refuse planning permission on major energy and transport infrastructure projects. The statements are area a mixed bag – good on renewables, nuclear and electricity networks, but less good on coal.