SIR DAVID King, the government's chief scientific advisor is predicting an average increase in the world's temperature of 3 degrees centigrade - unless urgent action is taken to combat global warming.
This would take us beyond the two degree 'tipping point, after which positive feedbacks kick in, such as accelerated melting of the ice-caps, acidification of the oceans and the melting of permafrosts, releasing trapped methane-a greenhouse gas twenty times
potent than carbon LUIC dioxide.
Given such disastrous news, together with the continuing rise in global emissions (including 3 per cent annually in the UK), party leaders were forced to pay at least lip service to the environment during local election campaigning.
Tory leader David Cameron jetted off to Norway to be photographed next to a melting glacier (albeit hastening its demise by his CO2 emitting flight).
On his return, he talked about the need for new technologies such as carbon capture, for investment renewables and for more environmental taxes. He also called for agreements on emissions cuts to be binding, but was careful not to give any largels.
His attempt to lead by example in life-style change only provokea rialcule wnen it was discovered that he did indeed bicycle to work, but followed by a chauffeurdriven car carrying his lap-top and a change of shoes!
New Labour was slower on the uptake, perhaps due to lack of credibility the last budget - best remembered for its risible answer to escalating pollution from transport - a derisory £45 tax on 4x4 gasguzzlers!
The Chancellor did make a dull speech on the environment to the UN during the campaign. But it was entirely within his customary narrow thinking.
He merely proposed a continuance of his notably inettective climate change levy on business, further government research into new energy and efficiency and promotion and extension of emissions trading schemes.
When challenged in interviews about binding targets for emissions, Brown repeated the current mantra of New Labour, popularised by the then Environment Secretary Margaret (Airmiles) Beckett that 'since the UK is responsible for only 2 per cent of global emissions, what it does to reduce them here will make peanuts of difference.
In fact, 2 per cent is more emissions than the entire continent of Africa - showing what a huge polluter Britain is compared to its size and popwanon.
Given Cameron's hot air and Brown's timidity, it was not difficult for the Liberal Democrals to appear more radical and concrete.
Their leader Menzies Campbell backed decentralised energy, renewables and greater efficiency as an alternative to nuciear power; and promised to tackle transport pollution. To tackle global emissions lne LibDems favour some kind of 'contraction and convergence (C&C) agreement.
The environment is the traditional ground of the Green Party, and they were far more radical than the main parties.
They call for emissions cuts of 85-90 per cent, fuel taxation, a halt to road and airport expansion. various measures on energy decentralisation, efficiency, together with changes in litestyle. This won them increased support and they picked up twenty more seats.
The Greens, along with many in the environmental movement also support C&C - a policy first put forward in the 1980s by a Green Party member Aubrey Meyer.
C&C sounds like a good idea. 'Contraction' refers to the need to reduce greenhouse gases to an agreed level. The overal amount or emissions allowed are then shared out These are the amongst countries according to their population - thus SOrt of issues convergence. This is supposed to even that Respect out the huge amounts now emitted by the USA (25 per needs to be cent of emissions with 4 per cent of the world's popula- taking up in a tion) and the much smaller amounts of others. capitalism such a scheme will way over the The problem is that under onlv oe arcca lo ull lunc tions through market mechanisms. The Green Party tends months ahead to ignore this small problem.
1 hus under the new European Emissions Trading Scheme. companies trade in permits to pollute. They can snap up permits from poorer nations prepared to sell them. They themselves, of course, can carry on polluting and expanding.
For this reason the (previously excluded) airline companies are now lobbying to be part of the EETS. They much prefer it to any tax on aviation fuel, which would end their current f9bn tax holiday.
The rhetoric of the main parties in the election was of 'green growth' (Cameron) and 'green revolution' (Campbell). Gordon Brown even declared that 'global economic goals and global environmental goals are converging and can even reinforce each other'.
But can capitalism really be high profile greened or made sustainable? Advocates like Al Gore of the Business Sustainability movement in the US or Jonathon Porritt, former director of Friends of the Earth and now author of 'Capitalism as if the world matters' tell us it can -and that this is happening.
But under capitalism relations between businesses are based on competition. Production COSLS must be driven down, at the expense of both employees and the environment. The system overall works to maximise profit, not for social or ecological conCOINS
At last conference Respect adopted comprehensive policies on the environment, many of which were the same as the Greens.
But where we were much more radical was in addressing the fact that market driven capitalism cannot provide solutions. As alternatives we proposed public ownership and socialist planning, especially for the utilities and transport.
But since then we have missed opportunities to highlight and campaign around our views. For instance, gas prices have recently shot up by 25 per cent.
One reason for this goes back to Margaret Thatcher's sell-off of utilities in the 1980s. The newly privatised companies squandered natural gas, even exporting it for a quick profit. Now it is running out.
There has been almost no investment in renewables as an alternative (a tiny 3-4% in the UK), since this was not seen as profitable enough. So now we are faced with either a switch to hugely polluting coal, soaring prices for imported gas or the dangerous, and very expensive option of going nuclear.
Another issue has been the closure of the Peugeot car plant at Coventry. Workers mere have been sacked because the companv can tind cheaper labour elsewhere. These jobs have to be fought for, through effective means such as occupation.
But 26 per cent of CO2 emissions come from transport, much of it due to unsustainable car use. So why not think about using the plant to produce something more socially useful?
In fact workers themselves have come up with imaginative solutions in the past. When Lucas Aerospace was threatened with closure in the 1980s, trade unionists drew up a plan to convert the plant to making much-needed solar panels.
Such radical measures contradict the idea of leaving everything to market competition. Instead they pose the need for public ownership and planning, which can save both jobs and the environment.
These are the sort of issues that Respect needs to be taking up in a high profile way over the months ahead -and which all activists will have an opportunity to discuss at the Campaign against Climate change conference on June 3.
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