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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (2397)	10/6/2005 10:31:20 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24225

Jeremy Warner's Outlook: Business shouldn't be moaning about the climate change agenda, but embracing it As an example of what economists call "market failure", climate change is hard to beat. Normally when something damages or disadvantages us, the market moves to solve and correct the problem. But with global warming, the very reverse is occurring. Even if the economic and environmental consequences of climate change were immediately apparent, which in the main they won't be for some years yet, the consumer would still buy on price. Paying extra to save the planet is something which collectively we seem unwilling to contemplate unless forced. So we buy our cheap Chinese goods, even though China has become one of the fastest-growing sources of CO2 emissions in the world. To buy the more expensive, greener variety seems just plain stupid when nobody else is doing it. All these issues are the subject of a two-day Government/Business conference in London this week on the challenge of climate change. So far the business community has been reasonably supportive of the Government's various initiatives, but there were some warning shots across the bows yesterday. John Sunderland, the president of the CBI, said that the UK emissions target for 2010 was unrealistic, given that the burden of achieving it is falling largely on heavy industry, while the target of a 60 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050 is too long-term and ill-defined to be of any use in business planning. He broadly welcomed the principle of the European emissions trading scheme but questioned its usefulness when so many of the biggest sources of CO2 emissions - from households to transport and small businesses - are left out. Sir Digby Jones, his director-general, went further, to argue in a radio interview that all we do to address climate change in the UK and Europe is just whistling in the wind as long as America refuses to sign up to Kyoto. With good reason, the emerging economies of China and India will always refuse to play ball as long as the world's wealthiest nation and biggest polluter per head of population does nothing. In the meantime, we only put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage by claiming the moral high ground. Yet I'm not sure he's right about this. Even George Bush is beginning to ease his position on climate change and we can reasonably assume that once he's gone, America will become more receptive to the idea of doing its bit. Unless the science dramatically changes over the next few years, much tougher carbon controls will be a global reality 10 to 20 years from now, so there may be some merit in being ahead of the curve. To impose demanding standards unilaterally now means we'll be better prepared as a nation when they are imposed universally. It might also put us at the forefront of greener, more efficient technologies, for which there will plainly be a huge demand. The fault with the present set-up is that heavy industry, which is already struggling to compete, is shouldering a disproportionate share of the load. That's plainly got to change. news.independent.co.uk