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Tom Delay: In the last year climate change has become one of the most urgent political and business issues. The debate has now moved beyond the science and the impact of human action to focus on how we can best develop timely and appropriately scaled responses to limit the damage. Business leaders will have a key role to play in the development of these responses: Action, innovation and investment from the business community will be crucial if the UK is to meet its stretching emissions reduction commitment and become a global leader on climate change. Although there will be challenges along the way, the opportunities for business, and the incentives for action, are numerous.

For example, Carbon Trust research has shown two thirds of UK consumers are more likely to buy from a business they think is taking action to tackle climate change with the same number saying they would like to know the carbon footprint of the products and services they buy. That’s why so many forward thinking businesses have already taken steps to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions and indeed display the Carbon Trust’s carbon reduction label, which outlines the carbon footprint of products. Taking action has reputational benefits. However, putting energy efficiency measures in place can also have significant financial benefits. Most businesses can reduce energy bills by up to 30 per cent by implementing low and no cost energy saving measures. As an example, in 2005/06 alone, the Carbon Trust identified £390m of savings for UK businesses and public sector organisations.

If we are to make a successful transition to the low carbon economy and succeed in decoupling carbon emissions from economic growth, we need to make reducing carbon as integral to normal business activity as profit creation. Last year’s seminal Stern report helped accelerate this move by communicating in no uncertain terms that inaction on climate change will cost more than action. Many UK companies are already setting the benchmarks for cutting carbon but we still have a long way to go. Businesses should lead the way by recognising the opportunities for taking action and in doing so, will benefit from new markets and commercial opportunities that emerge.

Mark Henderson: Scientists and polticians have always had a complicated and sometimes difficult relationship, often characterised by mutual misunderstanding. Of course both have a critical role to play in tackling global warming, but perhaps the most important thing is that each group learns what the other can do and what it cannot.For politicians, the enduring frustration is that scientists won’t give a straight answer to a straight question. They rely on specialist advice, but the uncertainties in which this is usually couched are anathema to adversarial politics. Ministers like yes or no answers, but even in a field in which the facts are as well-attested as global warming, these cannot always be forthcoming. There is always a caveat that their opponents might exploit.

Scientists, on the other hand, often feel their views are undervalued or ignored. They have long been warning about climate change — the evidence now is not much stronger than it was a decade ago — but only recently has the issue acquired political urgency. They would like governments to do what they say is necessary, not what might be practically achieved. The two are not always compatible. What is really needed for substantial progress is for each side to understand one another better. Politicians must grasp that science is necessarily uncertain, but that that is not an excuse for inaction when risks are extremely grave. Scientists, for their part, must accept that politics is the art of the possible, and that the best cannot be the enemy of the good. This would provide solid foundations for an alliance that is going to be essential to addressing climate change.

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