When he was environment secretary, David Miliband asserted that only Labour could tackle climate change. He argued that this was because only Labour recognised the need to intervene in markets. The Conservatives’ instincts, he said, would always pre-dispose them to solutions that stopped short of the measures necessary to set our economy on the route towards a low carbon, sustainable future. This, of course, was after the Stern report which had said that climate change was the greatest market failure the world had ever seen.
Keith Sonnet, UNISON Deputy General Secretary, reports from the UN climate talks in Cancun
When he was environment secretary, David Miliband asserted that only Labour could tackle climate change. He argued that this was because only Labour recognised the need to intervene in markets. The Conservatives’ instincts, he said, would always pre-dispose them to solutions that stopped short of the measures necessary to set our economy on the route towards a low carbon, sustainable future. This, of course, was after the Stern report which had said that climate change was the greatest market failure the world had ever seen.
This is still a powerful argument which, when applied to the bigger international left–right picture, helps us to understand what’s going wrong at COP16 in Cancun. An international trade union delegation in Cancun is lobbying negotiators from world governments for the shared vision statement that opens the draft agreement to embody just such an interventionist approach.
We have argued, with some success, that tackling climate change requires a just transition to a low carbon economy. In its broadest sense, this means managing change to a new economic system. We must address market failure and buttress hard emissions targets with active industrial policies.
Decent work, training the workforce for the low carbon economy and stakeholder dialogue are essential to success. One concrete measure that would gives force to the concept, would be an agreement on climate finance. This would enable developing countries to finance a sustainable, less polluting development path than the one taken by the developed world.
The concepts of just transition and decent work were, over the course of previous negotiations, inserted in the draft negotiating text. Progressive governments from Argentina and the USA, after Obama’s election, stuck their necks out and made the case. Ed Miliband, as Energy and Climate Change minister in Copenhagen last year backed us too.
Now, however, we find these commitments are on the cutting room floor. Negotiators are apparently paring back the shared vision to a bare minimum, focusing exclusively on the what and leaving out the how. You can see where the secretariat of the UNFCCC might be coming from.
Desperate for some progress and mindful of how the Copenhagen Accord pulled the rug out from under them last year. However, there is also a fear at the talks that the political climate is changing; that the right and the market fundamentalists are carrying the arguments. They view trade union and NGO perspectives on intervention and climate justice as getting in the way.
Richard Branson’s recent argument for business leadership is indicative. Of course business has a role, but we say people and their representatives should set the terms under which they operate.
So, where do we go from here? There are no easy solutions, but there is a very real truth in the proposition that the left do have all the right instincts on climate change. When David Cameron says, as he did on the eve of the Cancun talks, that to tackle climate change we need to mobilise the profit motive, my heart sinks. Where is the profit in bringing low carbon electricity to subsistence farmers or building flood defences in Bangladesh?
Just transition to a low carbon economy makes perfect sense. It needs to be developed and put at the centre of a radical new economic and industrial policy that should come out of Labour’s policy review. The burgeoning cross fertilisation between environmental campaign groups and trade unions, needs to be mobilised behind this cause.
We could build a strong movement that recognises the need for a common front for a new social and environmental contract, and the importance of collectivism and solidarity in achieving it. And, in turn, this needs to shape a new active global climate diplomacy. We need to lift our sights on this issue. Despite the gloom in Cancun, history is on our side. Airline bosses haven’t got the answers.
Lets not forget, climate change is the greatest market failure the world has ever seen.
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18 Responses to “Tackling climate change requires a just transition to a low carbon economy”
Gregory Norminton
Bill Fraser:
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/is_the_end_in_sight_for_the_worlds_coral_reefs_/2347/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/12/climate-change-kill-5-million-by-2020.php
Even if there were only a faint chance of the above happening, your ‘opinions’ would be reprehensible. As it is, we really are set for misery on an unthinkable scale. And none of it will have been necessary.
Your trite, hand-me-down bilge lacks all integrity.
Spir.Sotiropoulou
RT @leftfootfwd: Tackling climate change requires a just transition to a low carbon economy http://bit.ly/dYUIvr
Anon E Mouse
Gregory Norminton – All you ever seem to do is keep linking to articles that are about things that “might” happen in the future. I think one you linked to had dire predictions about 2060 for goodness sake.
I’m old enough to remember “Global Cooling” in the 1970’s and CJD and GM Food and the oil running out, aids, global starvation and on and on.
On top of that it’s become a business for the likes of individuals who seem to serve no purpose in life than perpetuating the very thing that keep them employed. The likes of that posh boy eco toff, Joss Garman and that middle class bunch of wusses for example. Has he actually done a single days work in his life I wonder?
It’s just a fad and why you aren’t demonstrating at the Indian and Chinese embassy’s is beyond me – unless of course you yourself have nothing to do except wring your hands and wail at the moon.
In my opinion you have too much time on your hands dude…
Gregory Norminton
Anon E Mouse: I link to science. But if it’s 2010 phenomena that you want, rather than predictive science (we’d have to live through the nightmare before we could be sure of it), try the following. This is, after all, an evidence-based blog.
http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/content.php?sid=3357
“2010 has seen the publication of more evidence that the world is warming and that man has contributed to that warming. Changes have now been observed in many different climate variables, in addition to temperature: the amount of moisture in the atmosphere; continuing sea-level rise; and a decreasing Arctic sea-ice extent. All are consistent with a long-term warming trend.” (U.K. Met Office)
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/media/pdf/m/6/evidence.pdf
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100809/160128496.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/photogalleries/101206-freshwater-amazon-drought-pictures/
What none of us has is time – ‘dude’.
Anon E Mouse
Gregory Norminton – Predictive “science” gave us a bill running into millions for Bird Flu jabs and not that many died from CJD either, irrespective of the doom mongers’ predictions.
I mentioned elsewhere in this blog that when “Friends” Of The Earth wrote to the Zambian government claiming that GM food caused cancer and it was all a big American conspiracy that resulted in human beings starving to death under African skies when the aid wasn’t given.
You say coral reefs; I say Himalayan glaciers. You say potato; I say tomato.
I don’t deny the climate is changing. I don’t say it may be partially man made. I don’t say the future isn’t dire if the temperature does rise as the alarmists predict.
I say what are you doing about it in regards to China and India. Oh I know bunches of middle class posh boy eco toffs run around being shrill and waving banners but what about action against China?
Instead of these self opinionated and ego inflated individuals sneering and trying to smear people who don’t support their minority view why not boycott Chinese goods because anything else is just middle class hot air air.
Dude.