Towards a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty

Read Hugh Richards’ blog-post on this subject on our blog pages: http://gloscan.org/2019/08/16/a-lingo-treaty-to-control-legitimately-burnable-fossil-fuels-at-source/

 

Food for Thought graph – bending the curve
Emissions – bending the curve

There have been many ideas for keeping fossil fuels in the ground and possible ways of reducing the amounts consumed and burnt. Recently (July 2019) an additional idea has been proposed again. It is based on cutting actual production of fossil fuels at source.

A paper on this subject, ‘Towards a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty’ has been published by Peter Newell and Andrew Simms. As they describe it:

A new approach is needed to tackle the climate crisis, in which the long overlooked supply-side of fossil fuels takes centre stage. A crucial aspect of this is the need for international agreements and law to effectively and fairly leave large swathes of remaining fossil fuels in the ground. Towards that end, we make the case for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FF-NPT) to deal with emissions at source…’

The Chair of GlosCAN, Hugh Richards, has written some detailed notes in response: H Richards reponse to paper Towards a FF-NPT by Newell and Simms. See also his blog-post, linked to at the top of this page.

These notes continue the theme of his letter to The Guardian We need a non-proliferation treaty for fossil fuels published on 12 Dec 2018, and this theme, in turn, featured in his blog-post Carbon Bombs of March 2018,  which stemmed from ideas entitled Fantasy Climate Control (v.8 Apr 2020) that Hugh first wrote in February 2015.

We hope these provide a good overview of the subject and stimulate discussion.

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