Godfrey Bloom

Nick Stern – the author of the climate change report that bears his name – writes in the Guardian today.

But there are still major obstacles and some doubt whether a strong global deal can be hammered out in time for the United Nations's conference on climate change in Copenhagen, now just seven weeks away.

Thank heaven for small mercies. Let us pray for more obstacles. The road to hell is paved with ‘good intentions’.

Take a close look at what Stern is saying. He hopes that a deal that will bind the world’s major (and minor) economies can be ‘hammered out’, over the next seven weeks. Hammered out?

What is this process of ‘hammering out’? It is the discussion about policies that affect your future, and your children’s future, our economy, jobs, and industry. It is happening behind closed doors, by politicians, diplomats and bureaucrats, and as far as they are concerned, it’s none of your business.

I do not want these kinds of deals ‘hammered out’. I want them to take place openly and transparently. I want them to be democratic. I want the terms of the debate to be contested in public. I don’t want it to be hurried through in just weeks. I want our options to be carefully considered. I want a debate that consists of more than secret deals, blame, and political manoeuvring for self-serving agendas. I want a careful debate about the costs and benefits.

Instead, the UK’s position on climate has been set by just one man, Nick Stern, in his 2006 report. The report was widely criticised, even by environmentalists. But the government has ignored all of this criticism. They carried on seeking climate deals, regulation, taxation, and legislation, regardless. There has been no political debate about Stern’s report and how seriously it should be taken by the policy-making process.

The targets that Stern wants – the ‘strong global deal’ – will be set by an undemocratic process that you have no control over. It will be made by people who aren’t accountable to you. Your political representatives have decided that it suits them to have a climate deal. You haven’t ever had the chance to express your views about it, and to have those views represented.

If you believe, as I do, that there is no reason for this deal, that it will cost us, and that even if there was a reason, there are better ways of dealing with the problem, that’s just our tough luck. Our views and our interests will not be represented in the ‘hammering out’ of the ‘strong global deal’. It will be a great deal for political-posers and their rent-seeking cronies. It will be a catastrophic deal for ordinary people, for their jobs, and for their futures.

Stern continues,

However, to have a reasonable chance of cost-effectively limiting a rise in global average temperature to no more than 2?C, beyond which scientists regard as "dangerous" to go, annual emissions must be reduced to below 44bn tonnes by 2020, well below 35bn tonnes in 2030 and well below 20bn tonnes by 2050.

This is nonsense. There is no magic point – Stern says two degrees centigrade – beyond which lies ‘dangerous climate change’. This figure is arbitrary. It is made up. It is a political target set for political purposes. Chair of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, who is usually the first to argue for ‘strong climate change deals’, is remarkably candid about the meaningless of the 2 degrees target. He says,

So this whole issue of 2 degrees versus 1 degree or 1.5 degree is something based on a value judgment that essentially relates to what is dangerous, what is a threshold that would define danger in terms of making it almost impossible for some people on this planet not being able to live in those locations. So it's difficult to say if it should be 2 degrees or 1.5 or 1, but this is an issue that needs a great deal of discussion or debate. There's an ethical discussion which should not be ignored at all, and it really hasn't been brought out in the [climate convention] debates.

Stern really ought to know better. The person charged with creating the basis for the UK’s climate policies makes stuff up in order to pass his political values off as ‘scientific’. It is this kind of playing fast and loose with ‘scientific facts’ and that needs ‘hammering out’. We need a straight climate debate. Not one which is twisted and bent to suit the agendas and careers of the unaccountable, self-serving, Great and the Good.