With the failures at the Copenhagen Conference in December, it has opened the door for global warming to be tackled on a smaller scale.
In a column for BBC News, Sir David King, director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford expressed his disappointment at the inability of world leaders to secure a binding agreement at the talks in December 2009.
He went to say rather than viewing this as a negative, it is important to seize on it as an opportunity for businesses, communities and individuals to push the carbon emissions reduction agenda forwards.
He cited Brazil as an example which residents in the UK could follow, highlighting a local co-operative organisation in the Latin American country’s south which generates its own energy via low-cost mini hydro plants.
“The key to the success of these initiatives has been the buy-in of the local community, a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach,” said King.
Earlier this week, the Observer called on global policymakers to continue to make low carbon living a priority, despite the recent scandal surrounding a report by the UN’s Intercontinental Panel on Climate Change.
