Hope after Cancún?

According to Michael Jacobs in the Guardian sees the Cancún climate summit as a sign of hope because not only action must be taken to tackle climate change but also a low-carbon world generates different opportunities and a green growth.

Now countries have put domestic emissions reduction commitments into a formal UN agreement, further action can be justified. The really convincing political and economic case for investing in low-carbon energy is not just tackling future climate change but generating "green growth" now. It's the jobs and the new clean industries that will be stimulated by a low-carbon world that countries and businesses are eyeing up eagerly. But investing in these requires confidence that others are also cutting emissions – that there will be new low-carbon markets, and that high performance will not be undercut by competition from lower-cost polluters.
After Cancún, the global race to produce clean technologies is back on. Business and investor confidence has a chance of being restored. Europe has justification for moving to its higher 30% emissions reduction target by 2020. The really significant shift is the willingness of emerging economies — China, India, Brazil, South Korea and others – to cut emissions growth, and their refusal to allow the world to be dragged backwards by the dysfunctional domestic politics of the US. The view now is that America will simply have to catch up later when the economic costs of its high-carbon economy become painfully apparent.

Michael Jacobs