May 7 2007
On May 7, 2007, Derek Wall, one of the Green Party's two national Principal Speakers, was invited to lead a climate change discussion at Leicester Social Forum's May Day Festival of Alternatives, which took place at Regent College.
He said there were two essential things to know about cimate change.
1) In the words of Hugo Chavez, "If we all consume like Americans we will need five earths."
2) Like all the big ecological issues, climate change is political.
Useful though it was in raising the profile of climate change, he said, the Stern Report's accountancy approach had its dangers. For example, a frequent flier could pay a large amount in carbon offsets and claim to be carbon neutral. This was like a twenty-a-day cigarette smoker paying for tobacco education in China and claiming that made him healthy. A good deal of so-called carbon offsetting was simply fraudulent, while carbon trading offered literally a licence to pollute. There was, he said, no substitute for legislation.
Society was addicted to excessive economic activity, and it was time to take the needle out of its arm. Governments must make it easier for individuals to leave a smaller carbon footprint - to live close to work, to use public transport, to buy local produce.