Than they famikar posur Backing more localised, small-scale production as an alternative -Thed beat memoras to the power of the big-polluting multinationals is a pipedream as 50 per cent income tax rate on long as profit remains the driving force for growth. atmosphere. This will set off positive feedbacks, dramatically accelerating the process of global warming
The polar ice caps will melt at a far quicker rate, causing sea level rises that will drown 10 per cent of Bangladesh, and flood malor coastal towns and cities around the including London.
Glaciers, which presently feed the vast rivers of the
such India's Bhramaphutra, will disappear, causing millions of ıelugees lo tlee or die of drought and starvation.
The permafrosts of Siberia and elsewhere will melt, releasing methane, a greenhouse gas twenty times more potent then carbon dioxide.
And the huge forests of the world, such as in the Amazon basin will die back and rot or burn, releasing amounts of extra carbon into the atmosphere.
This latest news from the Tyndale Climate Centre should have provoked
all urgent response from our political leaders their annual conferences. Instead there has been little more proposed taxation as 'emedy, voting to scrap their the rich and fill the revenue gap with 'green taxes'.
However, George Monbiot pointed out (Guardian 21.09.06), the proposed switch would actually generate a paltry amount -only 2.3 per cent of current tax returns - and so would surely mean reductions in other areas of public spending.
Under the new cuddlier, bicycling David Cameron, the Tories are also expected to try to paint themselves a little greener - with an eye to growing public concern about climate change. Both they and British entrepreneur and reserve pilot Richard Branson (C) at the unveiling of the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer aircraft in the Mojave Desert, California before the attempt to complete the first solo nonstop, non-refuelled, global circumnavigation. the Lib-Dems, to their credit, have called for statutory targets, albeit inadequate, carbon emissions cuts.
As to New Labour, however, nothing of seriousness or substance penetrated their shameful, sycophantic circus in Manchester.
The Chancellor, Gordon Brown, Blairite to his dull and unımaginalive bones, had nothing at all to say about the environment on the domestic front. Since he holds the measures talked about later by Environment Secretary David Milliband looked like more hot air, particularly as emissions are rising relentlessly under New Labour.
This was reinforced by current embarrassing revelations that Milliband's staff at the pally within the framework of Depromment, Food ind Department Rural Affairs clocked up fees last year of a whopping £1.75m on airline travel!
Flying is the fastest growing contributor to increased carbon emissions and therefore dangerous global warming. Can such a band of profligates and hypocrites really be taken seriously in tackling climate change?
Meanwhile, the Green Party held a less publicised conference in Brighton.
1 ne Greens sometimes make a sharp critique of the social inequality and injustice resulting from current neoliberalism. But their leadership purse strings, the few meagre policies fall short of a radical alternative.
They rightly call for big energy efficiency and for a lifestyle changes. to achieve this remains princithe contradictions of this system. localised, small-scale production as an alternative to the power of the big-polluting multinatonals Is a pipearcam as long as profit remains the driving force for growth. The big boys on the block simply elbow out their smaller rivals. Individual companies will, of course reduce pollution to cut their own costs. But if investment decisions are governed by profit they will necessarily resist measures that make them less c competitive. The Greens traditionally have not seen the labour and trades unions (or much of the left) as allies. Conversely, investment in renewables, green issues have not been
seen by the labour movement reduction in demand through as a public good and campaigned for in the same way
But as long as their means as, for instance health and
education. This failure to link social a greener, more regulated cap- and environmental issues and italism, they come up against to fight for governments to be Labour, has been promoting
responsible for a clean enviFor instance, backing more has made it easier for corporate capitalism to push a neoliberal agenda on these Issues
Just as the welfare state as of old is now presented as unaffordable in the areas of health and education, this is also applied now to the environment. Instead the market is to provide a solution, and there is cross-party agreement on this.
The principle market mechanism proposed to cut greenhouse gas emissions is Car Don trading, as in the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Under the ETS political and business leaders agree required cuts and allot themselves quotas, which they can then trade on the open market.
However, the ETS has been much discredited. Domestic targets were set either artiti. cially low, thus failing to make sufficient cuts or artificially high, enabling big profits to be made by selling surplus quotas to others - who, of course carried on polluting.
Another proposal is for personal tradable carbon vouchers, managed through swipe cards. Milliband is apparently an advocate of such a scheme - although he clearly excludes himself, given the impermissible amount of carbon his jetting around spews out.
In fact, personal vouchers are rather in line with neoliberal thinking, since they put responsibility onto the individual, as is now being done in health and education.
The area where a solution to unsustainable emissions is most needed is in transport, especially aviation. If flying continues to expand as predicted, its emissions will double in just a decade, cancelling out all other reductions under the Kyoto Protocols. However, this is an area where a proposed market solution is set not only to fail spectacularly, but to make things much worse.
Recently, Richard Branson, capitalist entrepreneur par excellence, once darling of the Thatcherites, now of New himself as a friend of the ronment and a stable climate planet, pledging $3bn to 'combat global warming'
Branson is a ruthless ego-