Statement by Elaine Graham-Leigh (National Treasurer - Respect):

Gordon Brown used his speech at the launch of the Stern report on climate change on Monday 30th October to argue that Britain could lead the world in responding to climate change. However, there has been little evidence of such leadership so far.

British greenhouse gas emissions have actually increased since New Labour were elected in 1997. The government is only able to project a reduction of 20% by 2010 by using rather innovative calculation methods. Part of the projected reduction comes from the difference between what the government itself says carbon emissions would have been without any action and the actual emissions since 1997, even though this is theoretical and not a real difference. The government is also benefiting from the fact that there was a real decrease in emissions in the early 1990s, a decrease which they have not managed to repeat.

The Stern Report is welcome insofar as it stresses the reality of climate change and the need for urgent action, and also for its conclusion that it is possible for us to reduce carbon emissions without destroying living standards. But as we would expect from a report produced by a former World Bank chief economist for the Treasury, its recommendations concentrate on ensuring that the needs of the market remain paramount.

As Professor Michael Grubb of Imperial College and Cambridge University commented on the report, 'its conclusion [is] that the problem can be solved by building upon the existing foundations of emissions trading and the Kyoto Protocol, combined with strengthened attention to the other pillars of behaviour, efficiency and technological innovation.' However, emissions trading since the Kyoto Protocol has enabled developed countries to evade their obligations for real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and many of the signatories to Kyoto are well off course in meeting even these modest targets.

The emissions trading regime imagined by the Stern Report is designed to enable the reductions in greenhouse gases to take place in the most 'cost-effective' locations, with the implementation of the international emissions policies being overseen by agencies like the IMF and the World Bank. Given the disastrous effects which IMF intervention has had on the economies of developing countries, it is difficult to see this as an optimistic proposal for the developing world.

One of the Stern Report's other key recommendations is for carbon pricing, primarily through taxation, so that people 'pay the full cost of their actions'. However, the report is short on the structural changes required to enable people to reduce their carbon emissions, without which the green taxes it suggests become merely another type of regressive indirect taxation. It states the obvious fact that we have to reduce car use, but beyond further stating the obvious that mass transit systems would help with this, it doesn't offer any solutions. The problem for Stern is that, as the report itself admits, 'radical change [in the transport sector] may not be delivered by the market'. The clear requirement for a fully integrated, affordable public transport system run for need not profit does not figure. For the Stern Report, anything which does not generate a profit is anathema, and this is its major failing.