The long-awaited Stern report has warned that unchecked climate change will create 200 million environmental refugees and cost £3.6 trillion – some £566 for every man, woman and child on the planet, pushing the world into economic depression. The Green Party today called for an ‘urgent’ Government response to the report’s findings – including an immediate halt to all road and runway building.
The report’s findings echo what the Green Party has been arguing for years: that the costs of not dealing with climate change are far greater than those of doing so, that switching to a low carbon scociety could bring many social and economic benefits, that action must be global and immediate.
However, Sir Nicholas does not advocate or outline the wholesale economic reform the Green Party believes necessary to really make our life on this planet sustainable, instead concentrating on the top level international agreements needed to put a price on carbon.
Green Party Principal Speaker Keith Taylor commented: "This review is a positive step forward, and confirms what the Green Party have long been saying – climate change is the greatest threat we face, and demands immediate action now to prevent devestating effects later on.
"Sir Nicholas outlines many of the Green Party’s key policies – that of the polluter pays principle, the idea of using taxation to change behaviour, and adopting a widespread and effective method of carbon trading. However, he stops far short of calling for the drastic economic reform really necessary to make living on this planet sustainable.
"We have to recognise that pursuing untrammeled economic growth as our ultimate aspiration means maintaining and growing energy consumption, and so carbon emissions, at a level that this planet cannot take. This report blows a final hole in the argument that the world can continue with business as usual economics.
Green Party Principal Speaker Sian Berry also responded: "The review has produced results in a language that George Bush can understand – that of money. Politicians often say we can’t afford to tackle climate change; this review makes it clear we can’t afford not to. The monetary impact of climate change is what you seem to need to do to get people to take notice, hopefully this will have the desired effect."
However, the Greens also warned of the dangers of a piece-meal approach:
Sian Berry continued: "It is time we valued all our eco-systems within our economic system; it is not just energy consumption that is over-burdening our planet – our cavalier attitude to water and other natural resources is also threating our very existence."
Dr Caroline Lucas, Green MEP for the South-East, called the report a ‘stark warning’ to Blair:
"This Government has repeatedly claimed to be taking climate change seriously – but these claims have all too often been little more than hot air. The UK’s CO2 emissions are rising, and the Government is backing the biggest expansion of the aviation industry (the fastest-growing contributor to greenhouse gas emissions) in a generation," she said.
"This latest stark warning increases the pressure on Blair to act to close the gap between rhetoric and reality – and he could start by scrapping all Government backed road-building and airport expansion schemes tomorrow."
"And he could truly exercise some global leadership at the forthcoming Kyoto review conference in Nairobi, forging agreement between all nations, including the US, India and China as well as those developing nations currently outside the Kyoto framework, for similarly binding targets to adopted internationally.
She added that such a new treaty must be based on the principle of ‘Contraction and Convergence’ which includes developing nations and places the greatest burden for emissions reduction on those most developed countries that have contributed most to the problem- and are best placed to implement immediate solutions.