Scoop! Government minister ducks climate debate

Last night a standing-room only audience heard a debate about climate change at a Labour Party Conference fringe meeting.

There was the scientist (Dr Kevin Anderson, of Manchester Tyndall Centre).
There was the businessman (Chris Shearlock, environment manager of the Co-op)
There was the journalist (Larry Elliot, economics bod of the Guardian).
And there was the think-tanker- Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation, a London think tank.

And who wasn't there, who said she would be? Yvette Cooper, the chief secretary of the Treasury.

And this is a government that says it's listening, that it wants to do better?

On last night's (no)-showing, not bloody likely.

MCFly will post an in-depth report soon. For now- Elliott said the current crisis has been 30 years brewing, since the New Right used the first Oil Shock (1973) to deregulate everything it could and the left largely went along with it. Anderson did a quick skim through his latest paper (reported last MCFly), saying we're unlikely to stabilise the atmospheric concentrations anything below 650 parts per million of carbon dioxide [that's a Very Bad Idea, but there you go], and Shearlock listed what the Co-op is doing.

Lots of good questions and contributions from the floor.