Cities that mimic forests, bricks made from converted carbon dioxide and highways lined with wind turbines powered by traffic. These are ideas that, for now, still belong to a distant, brighter future – when the world’s focus can be turned from halting runaway climate change to actually reversing it.
Yet these were among the innovations showcased in a two-day Commonwealth brainstorming session in London, attended by leading climatologists. As the world enters an ominous new era of “climate change reality,” the organisation is now seeking to inject them into the policy debate days before a potentially pivotal COP 22 summit in Marrakech from 7-18 November.
For an organisation that has sometimes appeared to be searching for a purpose, it may now be finding one – as a pioneer for the game-changing solutions some of its 52 members are desperately crying out for. Full Story