What Sir David King gets wrong about carbon pricing | Judy Hindley and Brian Utton

Pricing carbon is key to spurring the quick deployment of existing low-carbon technologies that we need

Sir David King, UK Special Representative for Climate Change, recently took to The Guardian to throw cold water on the prospects of carbon pricing as an effective tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He instead advocated for increased government research funding to develop 'competitive' clean alternatives to fossil fuels.

There can be little argument that swift, effective action on the climate is essential. In the UK alone, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' most recent Climate Change Risk Assessment projects a potential doubling of people at significant flood risk between 2012 and the 2020s, and industry experts warned that the economic costs of this last winter's storms was over 5 billion.