In Copenhagen the leaders of the world are discussing targets for reducing carbon emissions. The actual trend in temperatures seems decisive evidence of actual warming. The issue is how to address the issue. Politicians obviously want to be seen to be "doing something", but is this "something" the right thing?

It doesn't help that we have publications like New Scientist publishing articles about how much it energy it takes to run all our appliances. The world is awash with energy. The problem currently is how we generate that energy; by burning hydrocarbons.

It doesn't help that car companies have been so hugely reluctant to produce electric cars. However, if we are powering those electric cars with coal power they are not really much better. In New Zealand we have a history of getting power from our hydro dams. Using hydro power for transport, either in electric trains or cars will reduce our CO2 emissions significantly.

There is only so much we can extract from these resources however so we and the rest of the world needs to move at speed to building out large scale wind and solar power systems. And to be frank, if these spoil the view; Tough! There is plenty of land that is essentially scrub which is useless for cultivation. Using this for wind and solar collection is vital to moving away from a carbon dependent lifestyle.

Taxing all carbon emissions is useless. For example, taxing farming in New Zealand will suck money out of the industry and simply make it less attractive. There is no way to substantially reduce the actual emissions of cows. There is however a way to reduce the emissions of transport.

A phased introduction of electric cars enforced by legislation over say ten to fifteen years would not only reduce emissions, but would greatly reduce our dependence on imported oil. In other words the money we currently spend on oil would be invested in native energy production. Add to this a electric rail system that has been approved for Auckland and you dramatically reduce the required energy for transport.

In terms of commercial transport I think we should seriously consider a move back to sailing ships as cargo transport. It is of course slower than other forms of transport, but it is also using energy from the environment rather than imported oil. With developments in materials we could make sailing ships that are far faster and more efficient than old cargo sailing ships of 100 years ago.