Klimaatbeleid: politiek krabbelt terug

Was he [Lord Turnbull] speaking out because of the damage to Britain's academic reputation, or the implications for policy? Both, he told us.

"The so-called guardians have bought into a particular narrative. I'm not a skeptic, I can compare what my childhood was like, and I can see climate change going on," said Turnbull. Nor does he contest the radiative properties of CO2. But the hypothesis depends on positive feedbacks that are far from certain, and these haven't been explained to the public, with confidence wrongly assumed.

"We get fed a Janet and John version - a simplified story, and the world's politicians use this to persuade the world's electorates to take action, and action soon."

Now we're in the internet age, he thinks this is untenable.

"This is backfiring because people are intelligent enough, and well-armed enough with information.

"The deference is no longer there. We don't live in that kind of world any more. People in the blogosphere don't have to accept these and other statements from the authorities, and they will challenge them. We have seen that they can challenge them quite effectively."

"Initially I would predict there won't be very much change in attitudes. The scepticism isn't there. Ministers and civil servants still believe what the scientists tell them.

"We'll still pay lip service to all these obligations but the urgency will fade. It will be like the [Minimum Development Goals] commitment to devote 0.7 per cent of GDP to overseas aid - it will rest there. We will just fall further behind the schedule. Then, eventually, there'll be the dawning that we're doing this when nobody else is."

Adapting to climate change will be at the heart of UK government agenda. Coalition government withholds green funding and appeals to private enterprise.

Britons must radically change the way they live and work to adapt to being "stuck with unavoidable climate change" the Government will caution this week, as it unveils a dramatic vision of how society will be altered by floods, droughts and rising temperatures.

The coalition will signal a major switch towards adapting to the impact of existing climate change, away from Labour's heavy emphasis on cutting carbon emissions to reverse global temperature rises. Caroline Spelman, the Tory Secretary of State for the Environment, will use her first major speech on climate change since taking office to admit that the inevitable severe weather conditions will present a "survival-of-the- fittest scenario", with only those who have planned ahead able to thrive. Adapting to climate change will be "at the heart of our agenda", she is expected to say.

EU climate action commissioner Connie Hedegaard has said that achieving an agreement on reduced CO2 emissions at a United Nations' conference later this year is no longer a top EU priority.

Speaking at an event organised by the centre-right European Peoples Party on Tuesday (14 September), Ms Hedegaard said the US inability to act on emission targets meant the EU would focus instead on securing a number of other issues.

"I believe that targets will not be the main issue at [the UN meeting in] Cancun because the US failed to pass their environment legislation," the Danish commissioner told her audience.

Instead Ms Hedegaard's 'wish-list' for the meeting in Mexico (29 Nov - 10 Dec 2010) includes solidifying the world's commitment to a temperature rise of no more than two degrees centigrade and the conclusion of a comprehensive agreement to protect the globe's forests (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries, or Redd).