The Club of Rome General Assembly and Annual Meeting was held in Amsterdam, October 24-27, 2009. Robert Hoffman (President, whatIf? Technologies) attended the meetings as a one of three representatives of the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome. 

One of the outcomes of the meetings was the Amsterdam Declaration, a document intended as input into the Copenhagen meetings on climate change. It concluded that today’s global challenges – including climate change, endemic and pervasive poverty, energy security, environmental degradation, growing food and water insecurity and, indeed, the collapse of the global financial system – all largely stem from the same root causes: the obsolete social and economic models which drive our civilization. It urged that the root causes must be addressed now and they must be addressed together.

James Hansen, a keynote speaker and a leading climate scientist as Head of the NASA Goddard Institute, presented the case that the maximum concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere capable of stabilizing average global temperature at a level not more than 2 degrees Celsius higher than current temperature is 350 ppm rather than the 450 ppm established by the IPCC. Given that the concentration is now 387 ppm, not only must anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide be eliminated as soon as possible, but as well, steps must be taken to sequester carbon in biomass, soils and oceans. The time window for action is short as the positive feedbacks from temperature increases and increases in CO₂ concentrations may come to dominate the system and render decreases in anthropogenic emissions ineffective in stabilizing global temperatures.

There was a broad consensus among presenters that carbon pricing, either in the form of a carbon tax or a cap and trade system, is a necessary component of the policy response for climate change mitigation. However, it was suggested that a sufficient response would involve a regulatory component as well.

The Amsterdam Declaration, Speaker’s Presentations and background documents are available on the conference web site: http://www.clubofrome.at/2009/amsterdam/index.html