Tom Barry

Low Carbon Recovery

Gordon Brown's been in Davos. Much interesting on the UK's approach to the recession is on the Number 10 website.

Some of his views on a low carbon recovery:

We find ourselves today in difficult and sober circumstances. And in these testing economic times, some say the pledges we have made on climate change will be too hard, too costly, too demanding.

I disagree. For, as Nick Stern and Al Gore have warned us, the costs of unchecked climate change are far, far higher than the costs of combating it. If we do not reduce our emissions from their present path - by at least half, globally, by 2050, with a peak in 2020 - we will bring upon ourselves a human and economic catastrophe that will make today’s crisis look small.  And it will be the poorest and the most vulnerable who will suffer first and greatest.

So we cannot afford to relegate climate change to the international pending tray because of our current economic difficulties.  Instead, we must use the imperative of building a low carbon economy as a route to creating jobs and growth, the path that will see us through the current downturn.

And already, together, we have begun the long walk down that road.  In the European Union’s economic recovery plan, in President Obama’s green jobs package, in the stimulus packages of China, Japan, Australia, South Korea, France, Germany, Spain and Denmark, and in my own government’s forthcoming green industrial strategy, the contours of a resilient low carbon recovery are becoming clear.

Posted at 01:21 04 February 2009 by Tom Barry  |  Comments[1]