Carbon debate lacks honesty

Oxford academic says current decarbonisation efforts are a failure and calls for a global price for carbon

University of Oxford professor and economist Dieter Helm is not afraid of voicing strong views on climate change, telling us what he sees as uncomfortable truths and proposing radical solutions. His address at May's Flame gas conference in Amsterdam was no different. Helm posed a number of questions regarding the current energy transition debate, while offering solutions that may be as unpalatable as they are necessary. "How have we achieved so little decarbonisation with so much money spent and so much political will?" Helm asks. "Instead, we have been very good at ramping up targets." For Europe, the Kyoto Protocol was "not particularly demanding", given its 1990 baseline and the post-Comm