10 steps to tackle climate change

Our global approach to impending environmental crisis needs an urgent shakeup. Here are my suggestions for climate negotiators

Lights out ... one of Andrew Simms's messages to world leaders to help tackle climate change. Photograph: Hana Iijima/Arcaid/Alamy

A week is a long time in energy politics. A once seemingly unstoppable nuclear resurgence falters with Germany's decision to abandon its entire programme by 2022, and we learn that not even the most severe economic collapse for decades has stopped the rise of greenhouse gas emissions, in poor or rich countries. What could the UN meetings in Bonn next week do differently to shed the torpor of current negotiations and re-energise the process? Here are 10 carefully considered and completely serious suggestions. 1. Move the negotiations to a small, low-lying nation, like Tuvalu (assuming that it would have them). Time the meetings to occur when seasonal tides are highest and when water covers much of the island. Distribute the working groups, canteens and plenary sessions around the various islets of the atoll to give the delegates a flavour of what life will be like for the environmentally displaced in a world in which they have failed to halt dangerous climate change. 2. Deal with denial. Denial seems to be a common problem. We are currently waving goodbye to the climatic conditions that were kind enough to usher in human civilisation, and still heading in the wrong direction. Yet there are many well known strategies for dealing with denial. Each UN session could begin, for example, with state of the art group therapy, each delegation could replace their usually embedded corporate lobbyists with the best counselling skills available. Delegates from frugal under-emitting nations could "buddy" carbon-addicted delegates from heavy polluters. 3. Stop using fantasy carbon accounting that allows rich countries to "offshore" their emissions. The current system dumps responsibility for the pollution created by manufacturing goods on the exporting country, not on the country that demanded and ultimately consumes the product. It allows countries like the UK to look much better than we really are, creating an illusion of progress and resulting in complacency. 4. Experiment more. Progress is deadlocked because the default position of national delegations is to negotiate not for the greater good, but for short-term national advantage. It doesn't work. Why not experiment with something that breaks the link. A representative but independent council could be created within the system, mandated to set targets, timetables and distribute responsibility for cutting emissions. Its brief would be to pursue the best course for humanity as a whole. 5. To get in touch with how to create real change on the street, in local economies and communities, all climate negotiators should either set up, or join, a Transition Town initiative.

These are built around practical energy descent paths. They are about doing as much as talking, and force you to develop those currently ailing practical problem-solving skills. 6. Get rid of the circus shows. The UN climate talks too often resemble commercial technology trade shows. At an early one I attended the nuclear industry was handing out squishy foam light bulbs to calm people's concerns about it. It's a distraction, such circuses create the impression that a few new energy gizmos will solve the problem, allowing business as usual to continue, when what is needed is to rethink our economic model and have far more social innovation. They should clear out the trade fairs (they'll find somewhere else to sell) and showcase instead new economic thinking and experiments with new ways of living and working (like how a recession-driven four-day week left some people happier and cut carbon). 7. Mobilise the same amount of money that was used to bail out states and banks in the wake of the financial market failures, and use it to invest in smart grids and mixed renewable energy systems. That scale of investment could, potentially, displace fossil fuels at a stroke. At the same time, stop obsessing about the red herring of nuclear power. It won't save us. A comprehensive, favourable assessment by MIT concluded that even under an almost unimaginably positive scenario, containing several major unsolved problems, nuclear would only increase its global share of electricity generation by 2%. 8. Agree to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and redirect the money into national "green new deals" that will create jobs, reskill people who are out of work, bring enormous economic benefits, more comfortable homes, and insulate countries from energy price shocks, as well as cutting emissions. 9. Make key goals more visible. Achieving 30% emissions cuts by 2020, which is needed to keep the world on track, requires keeping the issue on everyone's minds, at least until some momentum is created and there is a sense that we really are all in this together. It needs to be visible, like the collection of metal railings for the war effect from outside people's homes in Britain during the second world war. How about a global "Lights out at 11" measure? In every city where empty office blocks and other buildings are lit throughout the night, save energy, cut light pollution and remind everyone of what we're trying to achieve by turning the lights out. 10. Finally, solving this problem is going to need everyone's input. It's our problem as much as theirs. So No 10, I'm leaving blank, a space for you to fill ...