As the Bali talks begin, British newspaper the Guardian asked various ‘thinkers’ to propose key breakthroughs that could be made globally/locally to combat the threat of climate change.

One of the less predictable ideas came from musician and activist Brian Eno, who proposed electoral reform (presumably in the UK) as an important step towards combatting climate change. His argument being that for many a vote for green parties seems like a vote wasted when the main competition is between two large parties.

Funny that electoral reform should be mentioned, given that it’s the hot topic in Italy at the moment, at a time when two new political parties look set to dominate the next election when it eventually happens.

The new ‘Partito Democratico’ led by Walter Veltroni (the old ‘new face of politics’) is pushing vigorously to reach an agreement with opposition parties on a new electoral system which will supposedly give Italy a stable political system.

Silvio Berlusconi in a surprise move (that has been planned for months) disbanded his Forza Italia party the other week – only to reconstitute it, while working towards the right wing version of Veltroni’s party. He too is convinced that electoral reform is necessary before the elections.

Does this herald a victory for Mother Earth? Fat chance – Veltroni and Berlusconi are working towards an electoral reform that will benefit, strangely, their two parties. The idea being to have some system that awards an automatic majority to the winning coalition, and raises the minimum quota for any given party to take up seats in parliament. The many small parties that have an disproportionately large voice in Italian politics look set to be silenced – at least until they gravitate into the two major parties.

Now this, in itself, is perhaps not a bad thing. The frankly outrageous behaviour of various small parties in the current government needs to be curbed urgently.

In the context of global warming, though, will the dominance of Veltroni and his right-wing counterpart (presumably Berlusconi – though, despite appearances, it should be remembered that Silvio is in his mid 70s) be good news in the battle to contain climate change?

A couple of years ago, while attending an energy conference in Rimini, this monkey heard Jeremy Legget, the ceo of SolarCentury describe how the yorkshire town of Woking had developed an extensive solar power network which provided a significant part of the energy needs for the town (even allowing for the sale of energy to the national grid). Berlusconi and Veltroni seem agreed that the best answer to Italy’s energy crisis and global warming is the development of Nuclear power in the country – despite the fact that, according to a report published in january of this year Italy’s levels of renewable energy generated fell well below European target levels and had in fact fallen rather than risen.

Two steps forward…