While it is welcome that Chris Huhne has beaten his colleague Vince Cable and produced a policy for cutting emissions, it is debatable whether emissions will actually fall, and fall in a way that serves human beings and the environment rather than narrow corporate interests.

The recent announcement on climate change promises a reduction by 2050 of 80 per cent of CO2 compared with 1990 and promises binding legislation to achieve this.  Given the hegemony of climate change denial on the right and a huge fight by the Tresury to water down climate action this seems encouraging.  It also involves practical policies not just vague aspirations.  40 per cent of energy in the UK will come, it is proposed, from wind, waves and solar by 2030.  Heat pumps will be fitted to 2.6 million homes by 2025 and there will be an electric car revolution.

All apparently good.  However, binding legislation is never truly binding, a law to say that carbon will be cut, does not necessarily lead to effective policy.  Future governments may unbind! The target set also seems too modest to halt a rise in temperatures. However depressing, the political climate is such that realistic policies on climate are difficult to achieve.

There are also a series of get out clauses.  Ultimately the policy is within a carbon trading framework, so at worst we can go on producing as much CO2 as we do currently and buy carbon permits to permit more pollution.  Equally much of our carbon is embedded i.e. we import goods from countries like China whose manufacture leads to carbon emissions.  Such embedded CO2  is simply ignored

Equally the climate policy model contains a role for biofuels.  While biofuels sound superficially green they are highly damaging to the environment.  The main source of biofuels is palm oil from Colombia, Indonesia and Malaysia.  In all three countries rainforests are cleared to grow biofuel crops, which means that biodiversity is reduced and climate change actually increases.

There is also a nuclear clause, which means a highly polluting and dangerous technology is seen as a potential source of emissions reduction. And carbon capture is promoted.  At present this is an untested and uncertain technology, one wonders even with development whether it is realistic to store carbon for thousands of years without it leaking

The structural polices needed to meaningfully reduced climate change emissions are incomplete; yes there will be a new generation of renewables but this does not mean that carbon emissions will be reduced because so many government policies are hostile to real action on climate change.

Take transport, it’s not rocket science, we need good public transport.  While there is investment in rail, bus services are being decimated with public expenditure cuts.  People will be reliant on cars if there are no cheap convenient alternatives.  The real alternative to petrol and diesal is not the electric car but the traditional bus or train.  Rail fares are set to rise above inflation every year into the future. Far from encouraging us to let the train take the strain, rail fares are set to rise as much as 20 per cent over the next few years.  Going green is being made more difficult.

Another example is food, we need an organic local food revolution.  Fertilizers, pesticides and transportation of food are all sources of massive CO2.  So does the government give out land and encourages more growing? No, they have just launched a campaign to remove the legal duty for local authorities to provide allotments.

International action is also necessary.   Preserving rainforests must be a number one priority but countries that are devastating rainforests like Peru, where indigenous people have been massacred and the Amazon is being opened up for oil, are rewarded by the UK and EU with trade deals, while those countries with the greenest aspirations like Venezuela and Boliva in Latin America are in the cold.

We have a set of policies that are unlikely to reduce emissions enough and, no surprise from our neo-liberal government, do nothing for climate justice.

The UK needs a stronger and more militant climate justice movement, winning popular support for effective and social justice climate policies must be a priority for the Green Party, environmental campaigners and indeed all those on the left.

The coalition governments’ attempt and ultimate failure to privitise forests in Britain is an excellent, illustration of what the Hungarian radical Karl Polanyi described as the ‘double movement’.  Polanyi in his epic book ‘The Great Transformation’ published in 1944, a strident attack on liberal economics, noted,

‘To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment … would result in the demolition of society (Polanyi 1957:73).’

The double movement was a process whereby attempts to marketise society, the first movement, would result in widespread resistance, the counter movement.

Forests seem to strike at the soul of millions of people in Britain, the idea of selling them off to corporations for profit instead of using them for children to play and wildlife to inhabit sickens voters. Thatcher too tried to sell off forest commission land, and was also defeated. While arguably the major environmental NGOs have been slow to act in defence of the forests, grassroots campaigns have sprung up like mushrooms, inspiring people who are not usually politically engaged to anger and action.  Assaults on libraries and the NHS are also likely to provide iconic targets for anti-cuts campaigners and prove costly to the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

The government may have executed an apparent u turn to this public pressure, but the supposed halt to sales is more likely to be a tactical move than a real change. Again this is in line with Cameron and Clegg’s adoration of Mrs Thatcher, who despite her image as an ‘iron lady’ was prepared to take a step back from policies in the short term to buy time for their success in the long term.

The influential free market think-tank the Adam Smith Institute has claimed that even before the perhaps temporary climb down, the privatisation policy did not go far enough.  They quote their supposed mentor, the 18th century economist who noted in his magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations,

‘In every great monarchy of Europe the sale of the crown lands would produce a very large sum of money, which, if applied to the payment of the public debts, would deliver from mortgage a much greater revenue than any which those lands have ever afforded to the crown…When the crown lands had become private property, they would, in the course of a few years, become well-improved and well-cultivated…the revenue which the crown derives from the duties of customs and excise, would necessarily increase with the revenue and consumption of the people.’

They also argue much of the Foresty Commission land ‘comprises endless acres of identikit conifers. Dark, dense and unwelcoming, these plantations serve none of the interests that the campaigners champion.’ The reality is that most local communities lack the resources to buy forests, so privatisation would mean them going to the highest bidder.

There were fears that the forests could be bought by biofuel companies, who would reduce trees to chippings which would be burnt for electricity. The government claims that planning law makes this impossible but at the same time as trying to sell off the forests the government is also hoping to weaken planning law. The point from the Adam Smith Institute about fast growing conifer trees is also spurious, companies will seek to maximise profit; planting broad leaf forests and opening them up to the public will not generate short term profit, planting uniform monocultures of trees will.

A forestry commission programme to turn the conifer plantations into more diverse and ecologically rich woodland has just been closed down.  Thousands of forestry commission jobs are also still to be cut.

The moves to privatise the forests in the UK are part of a wider neo-liberal consensus. Indeed the last Labour government launched a programme of forest sales. Assaults on the forests by private corporations are global; South Africa, the USA and Australia have all seen battles, at least partially successful, against forest privatisation.  If protest is sustained, militant and imaginative it is possible to win. In the Peruvian Amazon, the indigenous coalition Aidesep, have used direct action to prevent the government selling the forests to corporations who would open them up for oil and gas exploitation.

In turn indigenous people and forest campaigners fear that climate change is being used to enclose forests and exclude local people via the REDDS system. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries essentially acts as a means of privatisation, taking woodland away from local people and putting it in corporate hands.  Last year Ethical Consumer magazine noted that, ‘Owen Espley from Friends of the Earth feared that REDDS will lead to a massive land-grab from the world’s 60 million indigenous rainforest people who depend upon the rainforests for their livelihoods.’

The campaign to protect the forests must continue. If we drop our guard, there is little doubt that the government will have another go.  Dave Bangs who co-ordinates Keep Our Forests Public wrote recently in the Morning Star, ‘State ownership’s major advantage is that it subtracts a resource, at least partially, from the irrationality and greed of the market.’ The answer for our public forests is the same as the answer for our economy – we need more democratic public ownership and economy-wide planning, enough to break the dominance of the market and not some porridge of private businesses and “social enterprises” struggling for their market share.’

Links

REDD Monitor  http://www.redd-monitor.org/

38 degrees forest campaign http://blog.38degrees.org.uk/tag/save-our-forests/

Aidesep http://www.aidesep.org.pe/

Keep Our Forests Public article on Sussex Socialist Resistance blog ttp://sussexsocialistresistance.blogspot.com/2011/02/keep-our-forests-public_14.html

This is one of the best books I have read on climate change and the worsening environmental crisis. John Bellamy Foster is a professor of sociology, but don’t let that put you off – he writes with clarity and great flair. This book, like his others, is a product of very detailed scholarship. It puts the case that unless we have ecological revolution based on fundamental change, environmental problems will lead to catastrophe. He argues that environmental problems have social causes, that ever-increasing economic growth is unsustainable on our planet and that the ultimate cause of climate change is capitalism.

Critics of such a view argue that with economic growth, cleaner technologies develop and greater efficiency allows us to overcome environmental problems. Foster responds to this argument with a discussion of the ‘Jevons paradox’. Jevons, a 19th-century economist, created the marginal analysis that economists today use when describing supply and demand within the price mechanism. He was also interested in diminishing resources.

His paradox is based on the fact that when we use a resource more efficiently, rather than using less of it in total we use more. For example, if cars become more fuel-efficient any gain to the environment is cancelled out by the fact that car use tends to grow. The idea that left to the market more efficient energy solutions will emerge, and such solutions will solve the climate change crisis, are thus misplaced.

Foster argues in great detail that the present global framework for dealing with climate change is largely fraudulent. Global agreements on climate change such as the one at Kyoto have been shaped by powerful industrial interests and are having no real impact on reducing emissions. He is highly critical of carbon trading and other capital-friendly environmental policies, which are used to allow coal mining, oil extraction and airport building to continue.

This brings him back to his central theme: ‘My premise in this book is that we have reached a turning point in the human relation to the earth: all hope for the future of this relationship is now either revolutionary or false.’ The book is produced to encourage such an ecological revolution.

John Bellamy Foster, who edits the journal Monthly Review, is best known for his early book Marx’s Ecology. In it he argues that far from being enemies of nature, Marx and Engels were keen environmentalists. This assertion, surprising to many even on the left, is based on their exhaustive writings on air pollution, deforestation, soil erosion and a series of other serious environmental problems. Marx and Engels’ environmental concern is a key element of this new book too. Foster argues that insights from their work, especially Marx’s notion of a ‘metabolic rift’ between humanity and the rest of nature, are key to achieving ecological sanity.

Foster makes his case convincingly and on the way reveals much fascinating detail. For example, he relates the story of Britain’s fertiliser imperialism in the 19th century, when guano (bird shit to be precise) was transported from Peru to farms in Britain. His account of the Brando film Burn! from the director of The Battle of Algiers is also fascinating as an example of green left popular culture.

Foster finishes by identifying the advance of socialist governments in Latin America committed to ecological policies as a source of hope. Cuba’s commitment to permaculture and renewable energy, along with similar policies in Venezuela, are noted. However, Foster argues that the ecological revolution must be made at the centre of the global system in countries in North America and Europe.

Yet there is little discussion of practical efforts to build eco-socialism at the heart of the book, though there could have been. In Australia in the 1970s, the trade union leader Jack Mundy led his building workers union into green bans, where they refused to construct environmentally destructive projects. In the UK, nuclear waste dumping at sea was halted in the 1980s by trade union action, and more recently workers occupied the Vestas wind turbine plant threatened with closure on the Isle of Wight.

The foundation of an Ecosocialist International Network is a sign of the embrace of ecosocialism by both traditional socialist groups and currents within Green parties. Climate Camp, in Britain and elsewhere, has social justice and a rejection of capitalism built into its analysis, and we’ve seen the advance of indigenous struggle globally, which is both radically green and based on demands for socialism.

Greater analysis of these kinds of developments could have made The Ecological Revolution even stronger. Nonetheless this is a wonderful book which should be on the must-read list of all serious reds and greens.

The film trades on ambiguity and contradiction. Venezuela has long been the ‘magical country’, with oil wealth shaping social development in unpredictable ways. Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote novels such as ‘Love in the Time of Cholera‘, based on astonishing events on the Caribbean coast that Venezuela shares with Colombia. The biggest contradiction of all is that Venezuela, a country know for its love of Big Macs, baseball and all things Americano, has led global opposition to George Bush’s foreign policy, the Washington Consensus and the US-shaped New World Order.

For fifty years Venezuela was run by an increasingly corrupt elite, rotating power between the two main political parties – Acción Democrática (social democrats) and COPEI (Christian democrats). In 1989 during the ‘Caracazo’ hundreds of people were killed and thousands injured, as police fired on protesters, mobilizing against IMF inspired spending cuts. It was Latin America’s Tiananmen Square but unlike Tiananmen, received virtually no attention outside the country at the time.

Chavez, then a young army officer, rebelled against the killings and mounted a coup to protect citizens from the military assault. He famously surrendered but only ‘por ahora’ (for now) on national television and radio. After imprisonment and then a pardon, he won the presidency in 1998. Chavez’s victory ended the old two-party era and, though he initially proclaimed a brand of ‘third way’ politics, he later moved sharply to the left. The traditional elite, strongly aided by the US, mounted a full-scale assault on his government, culminating in a 2002 coup where he was temporarily removed from power.

‘Inside the Revolution’ argues that despite the ambiguities, the world’s media looks at Venezuela from the perspective of the ‘folks on the hill’, the wealthy and well connected elite. The changes in Venezuela threaten them, and they are in constant revolt, while the perspective of the majority of Venezuelans is ignored. Even the so-called liberal press finds it easier to go to the relatively well-heeled parts of the country rather than talk to the people of barrios, peasant farmers or indigenous people. This film talks to the people; farmers, community organisers and – most of all – the hip-hop revolución artist ‘Master’.

Such accounts displace Hugo from his pedestal and put the people at the centre. The Venezuelan people, especially those excluded from influence, revolted against the IMF cuts, swept away the corrupt governing parties, pushed the present government in more radical directions and put Chávez in power, even rescuing him during the coup.

While the film corrects the avalanche of elite commentary on Venezuela, it’s also unsparing in its criticisms of the corruption, crime and concentrations of power that remain in the country. In one bit of electric footage, Master and his rappers play to Chavez, slipping in an unscheduled number to rap out to the president, standing just feet away, the failings of his government. You will have to watch for yourself to see his reaction.

Capitalism is increasingly in crisis: the financial catastrophe and recession, are only part of its failings. People are looking for an alternative, and this film contains an interesting discussion of what 21st century socialism could mean. This is socialism with direct democracy, Marx, the Latin American leader Simón Bolivar, radical Christianity, free software, anarchism and much else in the mix.

Master notes somewhere at the beginning of the film that ‘culture is the train ideologies travel by’. Have a good trip – we are entering new territory.

Public screening of ‘Inside the Revolution’, Sunday 30 August, The Compass, 58 Penton Street, London N1 9PZ. Nearest Tube: Angel.

More information on this and future screenings: http://www.alborada.net/alboradafilms

The Socialist Alliance was formed as a result of the Women’s Party and other left parties merging during the 1990s. Those who rejected the merger created the Green Left Movement and the biggest gains in April’s General Election, forced by street protest, were made by the Green Left. The ecosocialist Green Left are part of Europe’s Nordic Green Alliance, a group of Communist and other Left parties, rather than European Green parties.

The left victory should be celebrated for a number of reasons. The Green Left have gained at the expenses of the rightwing free market parties because of their proud record of pointing out the risks of failing to regulate the banks and relying on finance capital. They and the Socialists are keen to diversify the Icelandic economy and to make sure that finance capital is no longer king. Both ruling parties believe in raising income tax on higher earners and are pledged to preserve workers rights and the Icelandic welfare state. The victory has also delivered the world’s first openly lesbian prime minister.

The Green Left are also hostile to NATO and are keen to maintain a demilitarised Island. There are number of big challenges for the coalition government. The Socialists are keen to fast-track Iceland into the European Union. The Green Left are, in contrast, eurosceptics who see the EU as a capitalist club. All parties are worried that Iceland’s reputation as the most sustainable fishing nation in Europe, with relatively successful policies to conserve cod, could be destroyed by entry into the EU’s common fisheries policy.

The economic crisis remains severe and essentially the far from green or socialist IMF is in control. Although the coalition insist they will not cut welfare, the IMF have insisted that interest rates, currently at an astonishing 17 per cent, remain high and that vigorous efforts are made to cut spending.

Environmental policies that the Green Left held in opposition seem to be less apparent in victory. Much to everyone’s surprising the Green Left fishing minister has upheld whaling quotas, which means despite a green coalition government, Iceland remains Europe’s only whaling nation.

According to Saving Iceland, a coalition that has been taking non-violent action to protect the island, a key signal of where the country is likely to go will be a decision whether to give the go ahead to a controversial aluminum smelter. Jaap Krater from Saving Iceland notes ‘The left greens have not done as well as they hoped for. What has been more disappointing, they have supported putting public money into construction of a new Century Aluminum smelter just south of Reykjavik, because Century had difficulty financing the project. It is also noticeable that one of the more vocal opponents of the aluminum industry, Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir, has been ousted. Perhaps she was too much of a genuine environmentalist.’

So far from being Europe’s Cuba; a plucky ecosocialist island, resisting neoliberalism, the coalition may have relatively little space to resist continued neoliberal policies. Margaret Wright, a Green Party councilor from Cambridge and a member of the Green party’s International Committee, visited Iceland during the election and is far more optimistic:

‘At a meeting with Ögmundur Jónasson, re-elected member of the Red/Green Group, I heard the classic case Greens make against EU membership – free trade, conventional economic growth, potential militarisation, centralisation and loss of regional autonomy. I also heard the priorities of the Red/Greens as they enter government. They included

*the upgrading and protection of the welfare state, which long years of rightwing rule have undermined;

* protection of natural resources and the environment, ownership of Iceland’s resources which are currently in danger of falling into other’s hands;

* a diversified economy, sustainability, democracy and gender equality;

* military non-alignment with withdrawal from NATO.’

Across Europe, Green parties and the left have been swept into coalition governments over the last decade, with often mixed results. Typically the German Greens stoutly resisted the Iraq war, prevented Germany from sending troops and halted nuclear power but supported free market economic policies and the war in Afghanistan.

Maybe the Icelandic left government should look to Latin America for a better model for resisting neoliberalism and creating social transformation. For the rest of us in Europe, we should give two cheers and what solidarity we can but should not let up in calling for Iceland to pursue green left policies ranging from opposition to whaling to a rejection of IMF control. However according to Jaap Krater, ‘Hopefully Icelandic people that woke up due to the economic crisis will not now fall asleep, and will demand an end to these projects
that do not make environmental or economic sense.’

Britain produces 29 million tonnes of municipal waste a year, and the Local Government Association says it costs between £80 and £100 to dispose of each tonne. This loss of resources means that more forests are cut down, more mines are driven into fragile habitats, more oil is used to make plastic that is thrown away. Pollutants from landfill, including dioxins, create toxic conditions in water courses, while the pollution from transporting the rubbish is another environmental ill. Methane emitted by decaying waste is a major greenhouse gas, and although it disappears more rapidly from the atmosphere, it is around 20 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2.

Waste of money

The EU Landfill Directive means that each local authority must reduce the amount of biodegradable waste that is put in landfill by 75 per cent of the 1998 figure by 2010, then a further 50 per cent by 2013 and another 35 per cent by 2020. Authorities that miss the first target will be fined £7 million each, and a recent report by the Audit Commission has urged local councils to build incinerators to avoid the risk of such fines. But even without the prospect of fines, the practice of landfill is costly.

Landfill tax is £32 a tonne at present and due to increase to £48 by 2010. So incineration has been put forward to fill the gap, repackaged as a ‘green’ way of producing energy from burning waste and avoiding the pollution associated with landfill. However much we recycle, it is argued by the pro-burning lobby, some waste will always be left over. EU policy, to its credit, is firmly anti-dumping, but is burning the solution?

Incinerators take years to build and can cost hundreds of millions of pounds. They are generally funded by private finance initiative (PFI) schemes. Many such projects have risen sharply in cost with the ongoing financial crisis, and local authorities are finding it difficult to borrow the money from banks to complete them. A £4.4 billion PFI project in Manchester, for example, is currently in crisis because the private companies behind the scheme are short of a couple of hundred million.

Local authorities are signing long-term contracts – as long as 25 years – with the incinerator projects, with the paradoxical outcome that they have to keep on feeding them waste. If the amount of rubbish is reduced the incinerators will lack financial viability, so incinerator building locks us into a system that is based not on reducing waste but producing more. This is one reason why Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London and London’s Green Party MEP Jean Lambert campaigned so vigorously against the expansion of incinerator projects in the capital.

Health hazards

Health effects are also a very serious worry. While modern incinerators are less likely to produce dioxins if properly run, there is much evidence to suggest that they are not always run with enough care. The incinerator operators in Edmonton, north London, have been fined for breaching health and safety legislation. Without very careful monitoring, a new generation of incinerators is likely to commit similar breaches on a national scale. Dioxins have traditionally been a worry, but the major concern now is about mb-10 particles. Although these are unknown to most people – even those active in the Green Party or environmental movements – they have the potential to create a health crisis.

I first became seriously concerned about mb-10s after reading Bjorn Lomborg’s book The Sceptical Environmentalist. Lomborg is famously critical of claims made by environmentalists and views market-based economic growth as creating an ever-cleaner planet. Yet in his chapter on air pollution, he notes the ill effects of mb-10s. If even a sceptic like him is worried, the rest of us should be terrified.

Mb-10s are tiny microscopic particles produced by incinerators, difficult to monitor because they are so small, and many experts view them as deadly. Their size means they have the potential to get into the human body and do real damage, and we know that incinerators can spread these particles over a 15-mile radius. Several reports note increases in health problems, including genetic defects, among people who live close to incinerators. Incinerators have also been linked to increased infant mortality, heart disease and cancer. The ash left over from incineration is toxic and risks being blown around during disposal.

So incinerators are costly, damage the environment and health and produce far less energy than they promise. But there is a huge incinerator lobby in the UK that has the ear of government and major political parties. Waste has been big business in the UK ever since Thatcher launched her crusade to privatise local authority services in the 1980s. The name badges for delegates at the last Conservative Party conference were stamped with the logo of Sita, one of Britain’s biggest waste companies, which has an interest in incinerators.

In the Morning Star (26 October 2008), Solomon Hughes noted: ‘The company’s name runs all around the lanyards, so Tory delegates’ necks will be “branded” Sita. This is embarrassing for Conservative shadow Cornwall minister Mark Prisk and Conservative candidate for St Austell and Newquay Caroline Righton. Last month, they jointly presented a petition to Gordon Brown against a Cornish waste incinerator being built by Sita.’

And it’s not just the Tories. The t-shirts worn by the stewards at Labour’s Manchester conference were also marked with the Sita logo, and the company paid £30,000 for ‘advice’ to former Labour chief whip Hilary Armstrong. But Sita is not unique. Waste is big business – and there is no profit in no waste. Like virtually all other areas of British policy making, the agenda is shaped largely behind closed doors by corporate interests. Ultimately, capitalism thrives on waste: the more we throw away, and the faster we buy replacements, the better.

Zero waste

There is an alternative. Local campaigns can defeat incineration. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have been fighting the incinerator menace for more than a decade. There is a national anti-incineration network that is bringing grassroots campaigners together. The Green Party, along with Ken Livingstone, has a proud history of fighting incinerators. The Socialist Party is currently running an impressive campaign against a new north London waste plan based on burning. Social movements can win if they make noise, start fighting early, use legal means and embarrass councillors who support the toxic incinerator alternative. There are a number of very useful research, campaigning and legal resources that activists can use (see box).

The alternative to landfill and incineration is zero waste. Why recycle when goods can be made to last longer and be repaired more easily, and over-packaging can be outlawed? Zero waste is about producing less waste in the first place. In San Francisco the Green Party has managed to ban traditional plastic bags. EU directives are already making corporations deal with the consequences of waste, although the British government often opposes such progressive moves.

There are a number of clean technologies for dealing with the waste we throw away. A Greenpeace report on the subject, Zero Waste, argues that kerbside collection could be extended to the whole of Britain to make it easier to recycle where appropriate. Something like 45 per cent of the waste we produce domestically is from food, which is shocking in itself – and, given that decaying food produces methane, it is also a source of climate change. Food waste could be collected in sealed units and be put through anaerobic digesters to be used as a source of energy.

The right kind of waste policy could contribute massively to a low-carbon economy. It will require a political struggle, but without real pressure we could easily slip into a Britain where most of our waste is incinerated, with devastating financial, environmental and health consequences. n

Useful links

Socialist Party report on incinerators http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/519/3740
Greenpeace incinerator resources

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/tags/incineration?page=6

Friends of the Earth resources

http://community.foe.co.uk/campaigns/waste/incineration

UK anti-incinerator network

http://www.ukwin.org.uk

Medical report on incinerators

http://www.ecomed.org.uk/pub_waste.php

With the smoking ban, many pubs have put hugely wasteful CO2 burning patio heaters in the garden; any aspiring ethical publican would ban these too. There are a number of organic pubs, such as the Duke of Cambridge in Islington, that have been certified by the Soil Association, and a number of breweries that offer organic beers. My favourite is Whitstable ale from Shepherd Neame, although the organic hops come from New Zealand. It is suitable for vegetarians because bizarrely a lot of beer uses fish scales during production. Local pub grub with reduced carbon miles would also be an improvement.

The Boycott Bacardi campaign means that you need to find an establishment that produces mojitos with Cuban rum, organic mint and fair trade limes.

The Workers Beer Company has a pub called the Bread and Roses in Clapham, where pub staff are covered by a model union agreement negotiated with the T&G and perhaps the best wage rate in the country.

Home brewing may sound dodgy but one of the best pints I ever had was stout grown by my friend in a flat along Brick Lane.

The Campaign for Real Ale educates people about the virtues of real rather than tasteless cask beer. We must campaign to stop community pubs closing and stand up for small breweries under threat from the multinationals.

Its initial chapter on the scientific evidence for climate change moves through the technical complexities with a surprising burst of clarity. The message, buttressed with references from numerous scientific reports, is sobering.

Stern argues that ‘an overwhelming body of scientific evidence now clearly indicates that climate change is a serious and urgent issue’. This evidence suggests that if annual greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow at current levels, global temperatures will rise by between three and 10 degrees centigrade by 2100. The consequences are startling.

A four-degree rise in temperatures would mean entire regions of the world will be too hot to grow agricultural crops. Australia will be hit hardest. Glaciers that provide water for hundreds of millions of people are disappearing.

At the same time, 200 hundred million people live on coastal floodplains that are less than one metre above sea level.

Twenty-two of the world’s 50 largest cities are at risk from coastal surges. ‘The world’s major financial centres (London, New York and Tokyo) are all located in coastal areas,’ the report points out. ‘The insurance industry estimates that in London alone at least $220 billion of assets lie the floodplain.’Around 150 million people could be displaced by sea level rises.

The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen from 220 parts per million in the 19th century to 430ppm today. Stern argues that while adaptation is possible through sea defences, unless further growth is limited to keep CO2 to a maximum of 550ppm, which would require a 70 per cent cut in emissions, feedback mechanisms such as the thawing of permafrost containing methane will lead to disaster. (A recent study by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research finds even this figure too high to prevent such a crisis. )

I could continue.

At its heart, the Stern Review offers a clear understanding of ecological feedback. The consequences of rising temperatures could be a little better than predicted, but are likely to be far worse. In this context, Stern argues, just 1 per cent of global GDP spent annually could prevent a 20 per cent fall in global economic activity by the middle of the 21st century.

Stern’s solution to climate change will make the average economist swoon. Sir Nicholas and his team have reached for their micro economic textbooks in the way that a Midwest preacher would reach for the bible. Economists are not centrally concerned with the ‘end of civilisation’ as we know it, social justice or ecological sustainability. They are out to maximise ‘welfare’. Conventional economics is based on utilitarianism, the greatest good for the greatest number. Costs must be minimised and ‘benefits’ maximised. Costs and benefits are measured in cash terms. Where supply and demand curves meet, overall benefits are maximised.

Viewed in these terms, environmental problems come down to unpaid costs. For example, the motorist pays the private cost of the car, petrol and other expenses of keeping on the road but does not pay for the ecological and social costs of car use. Economists argue that by calculating the monetary costs to society of pollution, congestion and the other ills from car use, and then making the motorist pay, efficiency can be restored.

Stern takes this approach. Climate change costs money, the cost can be measured and added to the price of all the things we do that lead to climate change. If consumers choose to pay and continue wrecking the planet, so be it. This shows that they are prepared to pay because they value driving 4x4s, fly-commuting to Hong Kong and generally indulging in a wasteful lifestyle. Stern suggests that while technological solutions must be promoted, awareness enhanced and forests protected, the essential policy response to climate change involves taxation and a global market in carbon to limit CO2 emissions.

Stern is genuinely concerned with the devastating effects of climate change. However, even a robust and sophisticated set of policy prescriptions based on the logic of ‘internalising externalities’ to remove ‘market failure’ has its limits.

Environmental taxes have a surprisingly Thatcherite logic. Making the polluter pay sounds radical but the polluters who pay the most tend to be the poorest. To take a local example, £2,000 a year in congestion charges is nothing to a city lawyer but an awful lot to a single parent. The congestion charge in London is likely, as a result of Stern, to be replaced by a system of road pricing across the whole of Britain. Despite a probable middle England revolt and confusion on the part of David Cameron, the wealthy will still be able to flaunt their 4x4s while the poor will be priced off of the roads.

This is consistent with a huge shift in recent decades, both in Britain and globally, from direct taxes on income and profits to indirect taxes on consumer items. Lower income and corporation tax has been replaced by higher value added tax and excise duty. The tax burden shifts from city workers, who in the last financial year enjoyed bonuses of £7. 5 billion, to those on the lowest incomes.

The much-vaunted green taxes will further push up the bills for the poorest and cut them for the wealthy. While taxes might seem a way of moving beyond the market, the logic of green taxes is simply to make the ‘price mechanism’ reflect costs. As Tom Burke, professor at Imperial College London, has observed,’The reality is that applying cost-benefit analysis to questions such as these [climate change] is junk economics … It is a vanity of economists to believe that all choices can be boiled down to calculations of monetary value.’

Market-based instruments, essentially involving carbon taxes and global emissions trading, are blunt as a means to achieve environmental sustainability. This is because they do not address the need for deeper social changes, let alone offer a framework for social justice. For instance, consumers will only shift out of their cars if alternatives exist. Yet Stern has nothing to say about the deregulation of bus services, among other things, which means that abandoning the car is not an option for many in rural areas.

In fact, markets generally work when we consume more. Take the example of postal ‘deregulation’, which is currently being pushed as part of an EU-wide process strongly supported by Britain. The likely result is that the Post Office will be privatised and forced to compete against new firms entering the market. To make a profit, it must seek to cut costs while increasing revenue. The results will be seen in terms of local post office closures, forcing individuals to travel further to access these services. At the same time, the Post Office has removed junk mail restrictions to increase revenue – yet the environmental impact of producing and transporting increasing quantities of glossy pieces of paper remains uncalculated.

The market-driven approach produces similar problems at a global level, where carbon trading schemes also mean that environmental considerations are secondary to profit.

Carbon trading, which has been reaffirmed at the recent UN Climate Change conference in Nairobi, commodifies the atmosphere. In place of regulation to prevent climate change, it offers a market in which countries buy and sell the right to pollute. This is the basis of the Kyoto protocol, which, ironically, is a product of US corporate lobbying – despite George Bush’s rejection of it. Many environmentalists are reluctant to point out the problems with this, thankful for crumbs of ecological comfort.

Carbon emissions are hard to measure and policing such a market is difficult. While it produces opportunities for investors, rich countries can buy the right to pollute. At worst, this can even mean that those with the most ecological lifestyles are kicked off their land, displaced by fast-growing eucalyptus plantations that are used as ‘offset’ credits.

The market for carbon is an institutional version of the consumerist carbon offset process (see Kevin Smith, this issue). One can clean up one’s act and sell the right to pollute to others, or buy credits through often-dubious offset schemes.

But this emissions trading process is a form of global ‘green’ imperialism, according to campaigners like the Durban Group for Climate Justice. ‘The problems with carbon trading are compounded when carbon credits are used to fund destructive projects like large dams and industrial tree plantations, which is a frequent occurrence in the global South,’ argues Cristian Guerrero, a climate justice organiser based in Mexico. ‘This never benefits the local populations who become displaced,’ he says, ‘and it harms biodiversity too.’

In a letter to Kofi Annan, Soumitra Ghosh of the National Forum of Forest Peoples and Forest Workers in India notes: ‘We’re creating a sort of “climate apartheid”, wherein the poorest and darkest-skinned pay the highest price – with their health, their land, and, in some cases, with their lives – for continued carbon profligacy by the rich.’

Stern argues that climate change will impact most on the poor but does not describe how carbon reduction through trading or tax can meet the goal of global social justice. This is not to say that the Stern Review is without its merits. It is a weapon in the fight against global warming because it shows even the most hardened neoliberal that it is vital to deal with the problem. For example, the Economist recently argued that ‘the world should invest a small proportion of its resources in trying to avert the risk of boiling the planet’. Stern is clearly aimed at the climate sceptic in the White House, and will be part of the process of getting Democrats to sign up to Kyoto.

The point is not merely to criticise Stern but to look at the politics of the path beyond Stern. The logic of market based instruments such as green taxes and a global carbon market should make way for more radical policies.

The Green Party has long backed more redistributive and greener taxes by simply replacing VAT with green taxes. George Monbiot’s call for an end to road building and new airports is also essential. The international Rising Tide network has identified a number of key policies and social changes to tackle the root causes of climate change, including a moratorium on all new fossil fuels extraction; the rapid phase-out of coal for energy; cancellation of airport expansion plans, a tax on aviation fuel and plane tickets, and an end to short haul flights; abandonment of fossil fuel-intensive industrial agriculture in favour of decentralised, locally-grown, sustainable food sources; drastic increases in energy conservation; and the immediate transition to clean energy sources such as wind, solar and tidal power.

‘Contraction and convergence’, whereby every individual on the planet is given the right to use an equal and declining quantity of C02, provides a framework for such radical but essential measures. The poorest and the richest would share the same allowance and an absolute limit on greenhouse gas growth could be created.

Hair-shirtism is no option. We must make the move to an ecologically sustainable society as enjoyable as possible. Local production for local need, a huge expansion of public transport and renewables, zero waste and all the rest are possible. Ecologically sensitive and diverse forms of economics that meet the needs of those most in need must be preserved and extended.

The most important part of change will be the demand that policy is governed not by the needs of more economic growth but on the basis of what is good for humanity and the rest of nature. The real lesson of Stern is that to create a liveable future we will need to develop more sophisticated and detailed eco-socialist solutions. Climate change is a product of capitalism, and its solution will come about by creating practical alternatives to the market. This is a political task, not simply a form of accountancy. Derek Wall is a visiting lecturer in economics at Goldsmiths College and a prominent member of the Green Party. He blogs at another-greenworld.blogspot.com. The Stern Review is available, both in summary and in full, with all submissions and other documents, at www.hm-treasury.gov.uk