Copenhagen or Bust

Plenty is going on regarding sustainability, low carbon technologies, climate forecasts, government shilly-shallying, and a simple wising up to what is going on. Much of this of course is down to governments, and any with vested interests, jockeying for position ahead of the crucial Copenhagen talks in December. These ought to be, NEED to be, delivering a global consensus on the requirements to solve climate change and a binding treaty delivering fair, far reaching and deliverable solutions.
One of the starting problems is calculating the true emissions of each country and how much carbon is absorbed by forests and farms, it's a tricky task, especially when politicians do it.
We have a bit of time to turn things around and recession helps, U.K. greenhouse gas emissions are expected to fall by 3% this year due to reductions in production and consumption, but at the pace we going it is not nearly enough. Copenhagen and all the delegates need to be bold. No solution or inadequate solutions coming from this summit would be deeply and unforgivably immoral. It would condemn coming generations to a catastrophically diminished future.
A warning out today suggests that utility costs will rise by as much as 60% over the next 6 years. This would be the case if we, the U.K. did little to secure energy procurement and protect and invest in home energy production rather than import.
I seem to remember dim and distant school discussions that any sovereign nation should be wary of giving up control of it's basic needs. Keep all your primary industries (ooops), ensure national control of transport structure (ooops) and always keep full control of your energy production (oh dear!). A country should be self sufficient, hmmmm, well perhaps we might consider now the implications of becoming almost wholly reliant on imported gas and electricity. Invest now and invest wisely in a basket of energy sources, renewable, nuclear, clean coal et al and invest now in the means to reduce consumption. It has to be done, it must be done to reduce emissions significantly and protect us from energy charges far in excess of inflation.....not to mention the devastating effects of accelerating climate change.
The really cool thing about the solutions being put forward to make the changes we need is that they bring with them new ways of thinking, new ways of resolving issues that create new markets and new opportunities. A fresh "wealth" creation system that doesn't simply rely on GDP and unsustainable, greedy, unbridled profit growth as the measurement of success, but rather a whole host of factors including quality of life, numbers of people and eco systems benefiting etc.
President Sarkozy has put together a very powerful think-tank to look at this and will be presenting the findings at a G8 sometime soon. Bon, tres bon!