A matter of degrees...

Reading through the IEA's recently released World Energy Outlook 2012, I had to double-check that Paris had not had too much champagne this time round!

• We are en route to a 3.6°C global temperature rise by 2035 (when my daughter celebrates her 27th birthday). At COP17 here in South Africa last year, I was still labouring under the shock of a 2°C rise - made slightly more eerie by the tropical humidity of our coastal host city, Durban, during the warmest summer month. Perhaps that's why the UN is choosing hot cities during their hot seasons - to drive the point home..?
• Today's power plants at today's capacity already account for 80% of the Co2 emissions Earth will be able to handle by 2035 - at which time humans will need 33% more energy!?
• Eight years from now, the US (not Saudi!) will be Earth's biggest oil producer - thanks to fracking - let's for now ignore the possible seismic side-effects, shall we?
• All the glitz surrounding renewable energy aside, it can only save us 12% by then :( A case of too little, too late again...
• ...whereas fuel economy, lighting and heating reform can save us 70%! Best we get those geysers, LEDs and Smart cars institutionalised for good, right?

Now do forgive me, as I'm about to embark on an anomaly of puns. 

On the other side of the coin (or trillion-dollar hedged fund), we have the investor  community (an oxymoron in itself) getting giddy over climate change, following a decade of MBA wisdom that dirty jokes aimed at Al Gore will make the problem go away...

Local catastrophes bearing female names seem to have instilled in these highly-numeric folk, at last, a new-found respect for the vulnerability of the air-conditioned cubicle.  They now want Governments to send clear policy and carbon disclosure signals to "the market" to better quantify climate risk. 

"But what does this mean?" my four-year old would ask. Well, baby, there are people who just play with money all day - not toys, or each other. This game is a bit dangerous, because if they play too rough, the can hurt other people. This game can even make your toys or food disappear! When they play, they also sometimes lose their money (and their friends' money) - and lately, a LOT of it has gone missing! Now, they're even more afraid that they won't be able to play this game anymore, because the wind and rain might blow it all away. So, they've asked the king and queen to tell them the price of wind and rain, so that they can turn it into money. Like magicians... See?

Gosh! It sure is hard to explain money markets, pension funds, SEC, FSOC, Dodd-Frank, recession and the role of climate change in instilling sanity back into humanity to a four-year old. But I try...