In a lecture at the end of December, Lord Stern reiterated his message that the business community and politicians need to act, and act now, on carbon emissions if we are to avoid, what he termed, a catastrophe by the next century.

He also stressed that that this challenge could be an exciting opportunity to become involved in a new technological revolution to rival the industrial revolution. It is disappointing that his lecture was given just before the start of the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change and that much of the content of his lecture referenced the critical importance of a substantive accord coming out of COP15 (which, as we now know, never happened).

2010 kicked off with the CBI adding its own concerns to the growing list of those who have seen the writing on the wall for UK industry if things don’t change. The CBI’s ‘climate change tracker‘ - a set of 24 targets against which it measures the UK’s performance showed that the country is on track with just four of these targets - improving the planning system, supporting new nuclear power, moving forward on the EU emissions trading scheme and taking steps to reduce the impact of the aviation and shipping industries… and that’s it.

Richard Lambert, CBI director-general, commented “Following the disappointing outcome to the Copenhagen negotiations, the immediate emphasis must now be on those actions that don’t require global agreement and that bring economic benefits in their own right.” He went on to say that improved energy efficiency can take us a long way towards meeting our commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, whilst bringing significant economic benefits to the country.

So the scientist (Lord Stern) and the industrialist (Richard Lambert) both agree on the same points; we are doing too little, in the knowledge that a lot more is possible and will actually benefits the economy financially through savings, and we have an opportunity to create a thriving and profitable, as well as ecologically necessary, new business stream in the green tech and build sector.

Considering the fact that somewhere in the region of £15m a day is being wasted on energy by businesses and households, every day, you might think that we would all be doing our ‘bit’; but we’re not. The politicians are doing just enough to ensure that they cannot be too harshly criticised for not getting with the programme but their actions are relatively insignificant and piecemeal. And the commercial sector is still either waiting for guidance and leadership from Westminster or else are largely ‘playing’ at being green by issuing environmental statements in their annual reports - statements that are coming under greater scrutiny now by both consumers/clients and regulatory bodies alike.

What still appears to be missing is the relatively clear and straightforward understanding that reducting carbon emissions is a cost control strategy as much as an environmental consideration. It is also true that, with the added pressure of trading out of the last recession, this is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’ but a ‘need-to-do’ strategy.

With the new year starting to pick up speed, we are already wasting time by not grasping the opportunity to make this a decade of decisive action toward creating a robust and sustainable economy and it would be interesting to hear why businesses are still not actually doing something in favour of just talking about something.

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