E3G

The implications for business of climate policy

By Tom Burke

The 3rd Australian – New Zealand Climate Change and Business Conference was held in Brisbane on 30 and 31 August 2007.

E3G founding director Tom Burke was in attendance to give his remarks at a seminar entitled Key International Developments – Implications of Policy for Business.

He delivered a speech which not only looked at policy developments in the EU and the UK, but also described the recent shift in the political context – from one of scientific knowledge to one of first hand experience.

The full text of Tom’s speech follows below and is attached in PDF format for download.

Implications for Business of Climate Policy in the EU and the UK

Tom Burke

Thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you this afternoon. It is always good to be back in this city and, given last week’s weather, this is a particularly interesting time to be talking about climate change.

I have been asked to talk about climate policy developments in the EU and the UK and their implications for business. I would like to do this however against the background of a key shift in the political context – by which I do not mean President Bush’s recent proposal to take us all back to where we were on climate change in 1994.

There are many ways in which climate change is different from any other issue on the global agenda but one of the most striking is the fact that, until now, it has been driven almost exclusively by our growing knowledge of climate science. Knowledge is a rare driver of political action.

This year, experience has joined knowledge as a driver of the politics of climate change. Climate change has generally been seen by most people as something that will affect them in the future. The extraordinary weather events that we have seen all around the world over the past few months have begun to reframe the issue.