We are urged to combat climate change by cutting our carbon emissions and it was heartening to see even this Tory-led Government, after much shilly-shallying, endorse the recommendation of the climate change committee - the independent body established under Labour's breathtakingly progressive Climate Change Act.
The consensus of scientific opinion and the accumulation of evidence suggests that our climate is changing and will change. We must reduce the amount of carbon being poured into the atmosphere in order to save the planet. And this agenda has widespread support. After all, it makes economic sense.
Cutting carbon emissions involves reducing energy bills and it is hard to see why any finance director - in the public or private sector - should not be investing in energy efficiency measures. The payback time for the investment can be astonishingly short and long term savings show up in the bottom line.
Entrepreneurs, anxious to make a quick buck (but also often with a passion for the environment), should see the market opportunity to offer increasingly efficient solutions to saving energy. As energy prices increase, energy supply becomes more uncertain, and regulatory regimes prod energy consumers into demanding less, this will be a growing market.
Politicians should welcome the jobs and the increased proposperity that can come from businesses and the public sector reducing their costs and entrepreneurs' innovation of new energy efficient products. They will also welcome the social aspect: government schemes to improve the energy efficiency of some of our worst housing also addresses fuel poverty.
But I sometimes wonder if addressing fuel poverty were the only benefit, whether society would be as enthusiastic for the low carbon economy? The low carbon economy is an attempt to mitigate climate change - to reduce the chance of future climate change. But we hear little about adaptation - the other response to climate change which seeks to limit the impacts that are likely to befall us. And maybe that is because adaptation does not hold the same prospect for jobs and profits.
Climate change will leave us with more extreme weather conditions such as the gales that have become an increasing feature of our weather patterns in recent years. Rising temperatures wll see the extraordinary hot summer of 2003 become the norm in the next 30 years or so. We are already experiencing increased risks of flooding.
They key feature about all these impacts is that addressing them does not really help to 'save the planet': addressing them saves people instead. We know only too well the devastation and loss of life that floods can bring. During the 2003 heatwave, thousands of vulnerable people - mainly the elderly - died as a result of the conditions. Indeed, it is the weakest in society who are most likely to suffer from the impacts of climate change. Apart from our individual safety, extreme weather threatens our collective security. Whether it is gales or heavy snowfall, the vital life support systems of our cities, towns and villages can be disrupted.
And the other key feature is that all these things cost money. While climate change mitigation through energy efficiency cuts costs and creates wealth, climate change adaptation imposes costs on society - for example, flood defences, and trees and water features to soften heatwaves. These costs help to pay for our long-term collective security. They are costs that short-term individualism cannot countenance. And they are costs necessary to remedy environmental injustices.
That is why Labour must be the party that addresses climate change, not just the party of the low carbon economy. That is why Labour should seek to remedy injustices to the powerless, not just boost the profits of powerful. That is why Labour must be out to save people, not just the planet.
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