Ninety nine per cent of climatologists now agree that global warming is a reality, and that it is overwhelmingly caused by human activity.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that the earth's temperature will rise by anything between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees by the end of the century.
The culprit is the carbon-dioxide emissions from our profligate use of fossil fuels (mainly oil, but also gas and coal) to generate electricity, for heating and cooling and for transport.
The main effect of global warming is an increase in weather extremes. The 2003 European heat wave and the freak floods in Carlisle last year are examples.
As more and more energy from emissions is released into the sea and air, the increased turbulence will produce more storms and hurricanes; rising sea levels from the melting icecaps will flood low lying and coastal areas; other regions will experience drought and desertification; the oceans will gradually acidify, poisoning fish stocks.
The worst-case scenario is that, as the climactic balance is increasingly upset, these changes could spiral out of control. It was a temperature change of only 5 degrees which caused the last ice age!
Media attention has focussed on the issue of climate change recently because of the Kyoto Protocols, signed last month by 141 countries.
This is the first legally binding global treaty on climate change. But it is a woefully inadequate response.
Thirty-four of the most industrialised nations have committed themselves to cutting their Con emissions by 5 per cent of 1990 levels by the year 2012.
However the majority of climatologists and environmentalists say a reduction of 90 per cent is needed by 2050 if we are to halt the predicted temperature rise.
Secondly, transport, which is responsible for the biggest emissions (46 per cent), is being excluded in setting targets
Thirdly, the USA, the highest polluter of all, currently belching out 36 per cent of global greenhouse gases (of which Coz is the main), has refused to sign up to the treaty at all, saying it would harm the US economy.
-Fourthly, developing countries are presently exempted, for their economies to catch up.
The main problem with the agreement however is in the ways being promoted to meet the Kyoto cuts targets.
A principal one is the creation of a market to trade in 'rights' to pollute - the Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme (CETS)
This makes pollution into a commodity that can be bought and sold. It will reward the big multinationals, which can easily meet their tiny target of 5 per cent by investing in new cleanup technology, and then buy the pollution rights of poorer coun tries.
Under another scheme, the misnamed Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) big companies can also make money by investing in huge power plants in developing countries. These notoriously devastate indigenous peoples, their communities and their environments Wind farm: New Labour offers plenty of wind and hot air, but not enough investment in renewable energy
Such mechanisms both discourage the investment that is necessary in alternative, renewable energy sources, and continue to lock poorer countries
The Carbon
Emissions Trading
Scheme makes
pollution into a commodity that can be bought and sold. It will reward the big
multinationals,
which can easily meet their tiny target
of 5 percent by
investing in new clean-up technology,
and then buy the
pollution rights of
poorer countries. into debt and dependency.
Kyoto was supposed to be a 'step in the right direction' towards solving climate change.
In fact, it is turning out to be more of a capitalist and imperialist fix, which will not solve the problem long-term, and often makes it worse.
So it is up to us, as environmental, social and labour movements to keep up our pressure for a different solution.
Here in Britain, Tony Blair has promised to make climate change a priority issue at this years G8 Summit meeting in Scotland and during the UK presidency of the EU.
Yet his deceit and hypocrisy over this matches his lies over the war on Iraq.
If the Prime Minister was at all sincere, the first thing he would do is stop waging endless and devastating wars to seize control and increase output of oil, presently the biggest pollutant.
At the same time, he would raise the UK's cuts target under Kyoto, instead of trying to reduce it under pressure from big business, as he did recently. As it is, Co2 emissions have actually increased since New Labour came to power, and Britain will fail to meet its target.
What is needed is huge investment in renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind and wave power. Britain could easily meet 50 percent of its energy needs in this way.
Through comprehensive conservation measures, such as government grants for insulation of building we could also save 30 percent of energy presently wasted.
Instead of massive motorway expansion, an efficient and affordable public transport system would cut private car use, and an end to the present £9bn annual tax breaks for airlines would reduce the absurd amount of unnecessary air travel.
Better still why not nationalise or renationalise these profit hungry, wasteful and polluting industries, such as transport, Oil and the utilities, in order to wrest back some control from the multinationals.
In the forthcoming May election, RESPECT has a great opportunity to challenge New Labour's failures by spelling out these kind of radical alternatives.
At its G8 Summit in July, corporate capitalism will also be trying to put a whitewash on its destruction of people and planet. Campaigners aim to make the planned protest in Scotland the biggest yet.