There are some who welcome that Gloucestershire's climate could be more like Portugal (Citizen 14/11/06). We shouldn't get too excited. Climate change will bring some short-term benefits to a few of us, but the main price will be paid by the billions of people suffering from the ill-effects of a humanitarian and economic catastrophe on a global scale. Indeed the true magnitude of what could unfold is hard to contemplate.

Photo: Climate change march

Greens have sometimes been likened over the last 20 years to Chicken Licken calling "The Sky is Falling". Governments have ignored the cries and ignored the evidence, but it is with a huge sigh of relief that we see things are changing and a recognition that Greens were right all along.

The Stern report by a former World Bank heavyweight has warned us we have little time to act. Many consider this report doesn't go far enough, certainly the Government's new Climate Change Bill is insufficiently ambitious and wrongly targeted. The Green party's Lord Beaumont will be seeking radical amendments when the Bill reaches the House of Lords (i).

In one version of the Chicken Licken story the sky does infact fall in. It doesn't have to be like that, but we need many bold actions like massive investment in renewables and an end to airport expansions like Staverton and Bristol. Then perhaps we can have a happier ending.

Cllr. Philip Booth, Stroud District Green Party.



Notes:

(i) Lord Beaumont of Whitley has outlined the shortcomings of the government's policy on tackling climate change - from the minimal carbon targets to the failure to understand about carbon emissions created elsewhere for goods and services used in this country. In his speech to the House of Lords, Lord Beaumont also called for political will in the place of political rhetoric, outlining the need for 9 per cent cuts in the UK's carbon emissions.

He said: "Annual reductions in CO2 production of 9% may sound ambitious, but in reality are not impossible, requiring only political will in the place of political rhetoric. The first necessary economic steps include putting an effective value on carbon emissions, through a capped tradable quota system. They include ending airport expansion, and embarking on serious investment in energy efficiency and renewables. They include Market mechanisms such as the feed-in tariff scheme deployed by Germany, Japan and Spain, which has resulted in Germany installing 56% of the world's solar panels. By paying households to generate clean, green electricity, such feed-in tariff schemes can be used to shift our electricity production by making investment in renewables cost effective for the individual.

"We also need to take responsibility for all the carbon production in the whole of our economy... the UK's  rising levels of CO2 emissions are an under estimate of what our economic activity produces. For we are in effect now exporting the production of CO2 abroad, to China and other countries. When we consume products manufactured abroad, they use carbon in production and transit. The production is counted in the carbon figures where it is produced, and the transportation, under Kyoto, is not considered at all. If we took these factors into account, our society would be seen to produce around 20% more carbon emissions. The most obvious and significant conclusion is that, if we were to meet our needs for food, clothing and household goods from local, sustainable production we could drastically reduce the level of carbon dioxide emissions.

"The Green Party advocates a system of strengthened local economies, where we have a role as producers as well as consumers, thus not only reducing our impact on climate change but also reinforcing our identities and self-esteem within our local communities. Trade should return to its right role as being the exchange of goods we cannot produce within our own economies. This seems far from the thrust of current economic thinking on any of the front benches at present, which ought to be a source of deep concern to us all. Instead, we continue to hear from them about competitiveness in a globalised economy which provides ever cheap goods manufactured abroad for consumption in countries such as ours. Such a view is fundamentally incompatible with serious and sufficient action on climate change.

"Without addressing these fundamental measures, both the government and opposition continue to be insufficiently ambitious, and wrongly focused, for the sake of supposed 'economic stability', thereby risking catastrophic climate events. The Green Party on the other hand believes we must begin to localise our economies into more efficient and sustainable units, to guarantee the future of our planet and economy. Such a vision offers greater community and personal satisfaction: a world where conviviality replaces consumption, where local identity replaces global trade, and where community spirit replaces brand loyalty."

Lord Beaumont of Whitley is a Green Party peer. He joined the Green Party in November 1999 and has been an active member  since, acting as a spokesperson and using the parliamentary process to tirelessly campaign on Green issues. Lord Beaumont will play a crucial role in representing the Green Party's views on the Climate Change Bill, seeking to see it amended in accordance with our policy outlined above.