Like many others who are avid sports fans, I have devoted too much of my spare time over the past two weeks to the TV. For once, as a Brit I feel good - we have delivered. As the games closed I was intrigued by arguments over which country was the overall winner - number of gold medals or total medals. Here I'll leave it to China and the US to fight it out, it’s all part of the changing world order. But as someone who has grown up in the "true and fair" world perhaps the real winner will only be known if we weighed the medal tally against population size - so well done Jamaica.
The Olympics is also a time when one is reminded of what it is like to be a winner and a loser. I'm always surprised by commentators’ insensitivity...."so how does it feel to have only won silver?" It took Steve Backley a legendary javelin thrower to put the record straight: "no one should be disappointed if they delivered their best - a season’s best, a lifetime best - if someone raises their game more than you, well that's life". So how does this way of thinking play out in the arena of climate change and reporting of carbon emissions? Who will be on track for gold at the 2012 London Olympics? Will the UK and the rest of the world have positioned themselves in a way that they can deliver a life time best performance? Sadly, I think not.
Take the UK Climate Change Bill; this was amended to remove a provision inserted in the House of Lords, requiring the mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions for all companies producing a business review. In its place a new requirement has been created whereby ministers must develop and issue guidance on how companies should report their greenhouse gas emissions, to help create a common standard. Phil Woolas also pledged that the Government will consider the issue of emissions reporting in 2010, in parallel with the anticipated review of how companies have responded to the business review.
Against this backcloth, the opposition parties continue to call for the introduction of mandatory reporting through the Bill. Interestingly, throughout the debate at committee stage there were various references to the Aldersgate Group, a broad coalition of environmental agencies including the Environmental Agency, NGOs, think tanks and industry representatives such as BT, Tesco, United Utilities and ACCA, who believe that high environmental standards will be a major part of future economic growth and international competitiveness and are campaigning for mandatory reporting.
It appears that as with many things, there remains fear of the unknown, but for many the biggest fear is that we make no decisions and continue to try to operate in a world of uncertainty. Furthermore as one starts to understand all the disparate work that is going on around the world in this area, the more one believes we have to move quickly to an end game - one measurement standard for carbon and one reporting model. On the face of it, it would appear that the Green House Gas protocol provides the measurement standard. Let's embrace it globally, let's learn from its use over the last few years, but let’s not try to reinvent the wheel and introduce the complexity that accounts did with the creation of multiple financial reporting models.
Put simply, let’s jointly go for gold before 2012, in this race we can all be winners - as sadly there will be no medal for coming second.
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