Please, Not Another Copenhagen

Today, the high-level advisory group on climate change financing will meet for the first time in London. The group will be chaired by Gordon Brown and his Ethiopian counterpart Meles Zenawi, and will include many finance ministers as well as independent financial experts like Lord Nicholas Stern and George Soros.

This gathering of financial "wizards" has been asked identify new ways to raise the money needed to protect all of us from the risks of dangerous climate change. Conservative estimates put this requirement at around $150bn (£100bn) a year by 2020. The figure seems high, but represents just a fraction of the world's annual spending on military budgets, which today tops $1.2tn. It is no longer far-fetched to suggest that reducing climate risk is every bit as necessary as more conventional methods of protecting national interests.'

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