Stern Warning

Panic in all the media this week after the Stern Review report here about the economic catastrophe facing us if we don't get our act together on climate change very soon. I was elated at first to hear that the message had finally got through to our dear leaders, albeit unbearably late. Then another thought took over: why does it take an economist to crack the nut after years of effort by others? Is it because the one thing that can move us is a threat to our purses? We can know that whole species - thousands of them - are under threat; that the Gulf Stream may stop working; that methane on a terrifying scale is escaping from the now-warming Siberian permafrost; that glaciers are in retreat and that ....and so on. We do nothing. Then an economist tells us that we may lose money on a vast scale - and we get it.

Having apparently got it - what now? Don't hold your breath, because there are two gigantic obstacles to change: one is the economic system that has us in its grip, the other is the political system. Both have failed, in spite of every inducement and years of warnings, to provide solutions to this crisis. There is little reason to imagine that they can deliver now. New institutions are needed, new 'paradigms' (help - I once swore I would never use that word). What can they be?

I don't know, though I wonder if the switch from traditional government in London to the mayoral system is not one possible model. And as for the economic system - the current one is palpably bonkers, needing continuing growth and consumption of resources to function. China is a grand example of the idiocy of it all - though only a repetition of what has happened elsewhere. We burn the rigging and masts on our ship to keep warm.