Climate bill is not the radical action needed

Dr Derek Wall, the Green party's principal speaker, argues the climate change bill must include mandatory, annual targets to cut emissions. But, to be truly effective, the government must undertake a whole scale review of policy and recognise the role of aviation and road traffic in climate change.

Everyone acknowledges the crisis, but the action proposed from the traditional parties and the New Labour government is simply too little too late. Unless swift, certain and ecologically literate action is taken, future governments are going to simply be caretakers of catastrophe. We have a few short years to introduce radical solutions to climate change; otherwise governmental action will be about administering apocalypse in the face of forest fires, the flooding of major cities, crop failure and millions of environmental refugees.

The Green party believes that the current government target of stabilising carbon dioxide and equivalent gases at 550 parts per million is too high - it will result in a real danger of runaway climate change.

We want to see binding emissions-reduction targets in the region of six to nine per cent a year to allow us to achieve cuts in UK GHG emissions of around 90 per cent by 2030. This is the level of cuts required for us - in a framework of contraction and convergence - to play a fair role in delivering the global cuts needed to stabilise atmospheric carbon dioxide at 450 parts per million.

This sounds ambitious, but the Swedish government is aiming for an even more ambitious target of zero carbon by 2020

Unless the climate change bill imposes strict mandatory annual emissions-reduction targets, and is backed by a wholesale review of government policy - including Labour's commitment to road-building and aviation growth - it simply won't work at a national level. It is absurd that we are expanding Heathrow and other airports while air travel is the fastest growing source of CO2 emissions.

Motorway expansion and major road building must be halted. Car use is growing by two per cent a year, rail and bus fares are rising and motoring costs have fallen by eight per cent since 1997.

To reach 90 per cent cuts the Green party would place a moratorium on building anymore airports, double the climate change levy, bring back the fuel duty escalator and greatly increase year on year investment in clean technologies e.g. local recycling, solar, wind etc. We would massively expand the renewables obligation, including financial incentives to encourage suppliers to use renewable sources along the lines of the German model (Feed-In tariffs). Renewable energy investment is vital to reducing climate change.

Much of the present approach from the government is based on arcane accountancy. While carbon trading has a role, without major structural change, carbon reduction will be difficult to achieve and fraud will be impossible to avoid.

We need to create a framework where carbon reduction is realistic for individuals. Renationalising rail and massively investing in other forms of public transport will reduce car dependency. An emphasis on preserving and extending local services would cut the need for commuting. Imaginative fiscal change is needed to encourage carbon consumption.

Ultimately we need to move to an economy based not on continual economic growth but one that focuses on meeting needs with the minimum of resource use.

One important consideration is the need to preserve rainforests and other habitats which act as carbon sinks. At present the clean development mechanism in the Kyoto agreement allows forests to be degraded and replanted with fast growing energy crops. Palm oil use for biofuel looks likely to destroy virtually all of the rainforests of south east Asia. The Green party believes that local management by local people of vital ecosystems is vital, corporate exploitation for short term profit is immensely damaging.

Preservation of rainforests is absolutely essential on ecological grounds. One step would be to end arms exports to nation such as Indonesia and Cambodia which repress local populations in forests and support illegal clear cutting. Eco development must be based on local control and the advice of skilled local experts including figures like Benny Wenda of the Free West Papua movement.