the biggest protests on environmental issues ever to take place in Britain as thronged to Trafalgar Square in the run up to the talks in Nairobi. The London protests were part of an international day of action that saw tens of Cooper thousands mobilised across the world. SHEILA MALONE explores the context of the movement in Britain A few days before the talks and the protests, a tightly controlled press conference was staged in London, involving a spent Prime Minister, his chancellor (and Prime Minister. in waiting) and a former chief economist of the World Bank. This was the launching of the Gordon Brown-commissioned Stern report on 'the economics of
Nicholas Stern is neither a scientist nor an environmentalist. So there is nothing new here about the reality and extent of global warming due to increased greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.
In fact, since the report relies mostly on figures and projections from the 2001 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), it is, if anything, already out of date.
The general forecasts of increasing drought, disease, crop failure, storm surges and rising sea levels have also been documented in other reports together with their measurable future effects on population and migration.
More recent studies from the Hadley and Tyndale climate centres emphasise the greatest danger of abrupt, catastrophic changes, due to positive feedbacks like methane release from melting permafrosts and ice caps collapse.
They therefore stress the need to keep carbon levels in the atmosphere lower than Stern's 450-550ppm. Most environmentalists now consider 90% emissions cuts by 2030 as necessary, rather than this report's (and the governcount We can stop climate chaos www.icount.org.uk ments) inadequate framework of 60% by 2050.
The $1trillion price tag (or 1% of global GDP) for tackling climate change also seems unrealistic. Previous estimates vary from the European Commission's $2.5trillion (to keep within450ppm) or $1-8 trillion (to keep within 550ppm) to Bjorn Lomborg's $38 trillion to keep temperatures stabilised at 1.5 degrees above the 1990 level.
Nevertheless, Stern's report is to be welcomed. It has certainly generated a lot of publicity about the issue and hopefully will push governments to act, since it clearly warns that the price of doing nothing now will be an enormous bill in the future. It also recognises that the scale of both preventative and adaptive measures needed is massive
The real problem is the mechanismos it sees as central to achieving this. Stern calls for huge investment in renewable energy and efficiency together with green taxation and regulation. He sees the need for an internationally agreed framework to reduce BLAIR TAKES STERN LINE OVER CLIMATE CHANGE DEBATE
Brown has not only been a particularly visionless chancellor but, from his record so far on the environment, I have not detected a green bone in his body. emissions. But the main means of delivering this will be the market, as with Kyoto, and in particular schemes for carbon trading.
Carbon markets have been in operation for some time in Europe and the USA For instance, the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) was set up in 2005. involves business and political leaders allotting themselves quotas to pollute within a certain agreed limit. These can then be traded on the open market. However, ETS members simply awarded themselves too generous quotas, failing to bring down emissions. Later the price of carbon collapsed and prospectors have bought up surplus for the future.
Airlines are presently lobbying for inclusion in the ETS, claiming this can reduce their rapidly increasing carbon emissions. This is nonsense, given the predicted trebling of flights, but they are still set to be admitted, rather than curbed, for instance by rationing or taxation.
Another area the report does not tackle is the current We can stop climate chaos www.icount.org.uk huge subsidies given to fossil fuel companies. With nuclear power, these amount globally to a staggering $71 billion dollars annually. As long as this continues, there will not be the necessary investment in renewabies
Under a profit-led system energy efficiency can also produce contradictions. Carbon cuts achieved through introduction of lower energy goods can be cancelled out by the drive to sell ever more of the new product
This is particularly true of road transport. where manu facture and sales of the private motorcar continue to soar.
Yet through his commior barbarism?
Socialist
forum
SATURDAY
December 2 10.30-6.00pm
ULU, Malet St London WC1. Tickets £10/£4 Gordon Brown clearly hopes to position himself as the man with the economic competence and now green credentials to sort out the issue ot climate change, both at home and abroad.
It's a move both cynical and hypocritical, since he has not only been particularly visionless chancellor but, from his record so far on environment, I have not detected a green bone in his body.
He has been the architect of anti-people and planet neoliberalism at and abroad. He is also the man who pledged unlimited finance to wage a savage war fro oil against Iraq. The estimated global cost for this carnage is $1 trillion - the same amount this report deems as necessary to combat climate change.
So far business has welcomed stern. The City of London is ideally placed to become the centre of a potentially huge, expanding carbon market, worth an estimated $500 billion annually in the future.
The report's authority will also be used by Brown to try to broker post Kvoto international agreements. However, if these are both as low and as long term in their targets, they will be as ineffective as Kyoto. Far from an agreed 8%, reduction, it has achieved only a meagre 0.6%. What are needed are mandatory annual cuts, independently molltored.
In all the media hype surrounding the Stern report, there was little discussion of any alternatives to the prevailing neo-liberal capitalist order.
Yet climate change is such a huge issue that it can onlv be addressed by asking in whose interests the present profitled system works, wnal 1s meant by 'growth' and why should this be measured only through the financial index of
These are the sorts of issues we are looking to explore in our forum on December 2. •CAPITALISM SOLVe THe eCOLOGICAL A CRISIS?!