I was planning to right a quick blog post tonight about a new graphic novel - The Bristol Story - available at no charge in Bristol Libraries and other public buildings, which is an output of the "Bristol Reads" literacy initiative.

But, as I was popping in to the Council House to pick up my copy, I noticed a huge crowd filing into the main hall. After a bit of investigation, I discovered that Prof Sir David King, former Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, was lecturing on the subject of "What We Can Do about Global Warming".

I'd managed to not hear anything about this event, organised by the "Festival of Ideas ", but it sounded good. Although the website said all spaces were booked, I was able to nip in and get a seat at the back.

Prof King gave a concise run-through of his current thinking on climate change, albeit with a bias toward the millenarian world view. His proposed solution was more a mixture of adaption and "Cap and Trade" market-oriented responses. His support for more nuclear power did not go down well with the audience.

I've emailed the organisers to find out if the slides are publicly available, as there are some aspects of the data that I think can be quickly challenged to present a less pessimistic view of human activity. I have a more optimistic stance on our species' adaptability and ingenuity.

One particular statistic, used by Prof King that I haven't heard before was that 32,000 people died in Central Europe in 2003 in one of the hottest summers on record. I presume this is a reference to the French Heat Wave, which seems a bit of a stretch to claim as deaths due to Climate Change. It's not as though the French are unaccustomed to Heat Waves - they do have a word for the phenomena after all, having historically suffered 500,000 deaths in 1636 and 700,000 deaths in 1718.

The support act, who took questions after the talk, was a panel of the usual suspects, including: (update via Vicky Washington)

• Christ Priest, HP Labs, who seemed incapable of constructing a sentence without using the word "corporate" twice.
• David Bishop (I think), Bristol City Council's Director of Planning, Transport & Sustainable Development.
• Vala Ragnarsdottir, Professor of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Bristol.
• Peter Lipman, Sustrans' Director for Liveable Neighbourhoods

A quick mention for George Ferguson (with obligatory red trousers) who, in lieu of a question, took the opportunity to lecture Prof King on the evils of Nuclear Power for what felt like five minutes.

The chosen panel was something of a contrast to Prof King, in that they represented a much more Anti-Growth, Collectivist world view. I struggle to get beyond my implicit suspicion of this group - one gets the feeling that, having had their toys taken away when Communism collapsed in 1989, Climate Change was a handy bully pulpit for achieving the same goals of attacking personal liberty and controlling society from the centre.

Listening to the panel's responses to audience questions, I was frustrated that there wasn't someone amongst them to offer refutations. Of the half-dozen questions I wanted to ask, I asked their opinions on Economic Growth - specifically whether they thought it was just to deny to Africa the growth that had increased our own standard of living. And, given the implicit connection between population numbers and carbon emissions, whether the panel had any children.

Unsurprisingly, the general view from all except Prof King was that growth was a bad thing. And they all had two kids, which says a lot about the quantitative difference in personal action taken by activists in response to a perceived problem versus the actions they demand of others.

The Sustrans representative gave me the most interesting answer. He proposed that we should seek to offer to the developing world an equivalent Quality of Life, but not the same Standard of Living. This was illuminating, in that it provides some useful guidance on what "progressives" mean when they talk about a better Quality of Life: they mean a lower Standard of Living. I shan't forget that.