Four things we can do post-Copenhagen

Copenhagen was no Christmas present to our children or to the planet.

The so-called “Copenhagen Accord” negotiated by the US, China, India, South Africa and Brazil is a fudged, inadequate, non-binding deal, which the UN Conference on Climate Change did not agree and which has weakened the structures of international decision-making. The “Accord” speaks of the need to keep global warming below 2ºC but does nothing to achieve that goal. Indeed the cuts currently on the table take us past 3ºC and into runaway climate change territory. It is a voluntary agreement that nobody need observe; a stitch-up by those who created the problem; a bad deal that is worse than no deal.

So what do we do now? Here are four suggestions:

1) The UK, the country that brought in the Climate Act, the world’s first legally binding carbon pollution targets, should continue to lead from the front by increasing the cuts it’s proposing to 40% by 2020 and making them happen without recourse to techniques like carbon offsetting.

2) We, the people, need to get on with building a greener future from the bottom up via self-help movements like Transition Towns or campaigns like 10:10.

3) The UK government should re-establish its carbon rationing committee, which David Miliband set up when he was briefly Environment Secretary and which Hilary Benn scrapped, and it should specifically look at David Fleming’s Tradable Energy Quotas concept (TEQs) as a way of decarbonising the economy and preparing for the end of cheap oil.

4) While TEQs are being tested the UK government should set high carbon taxes and send the proceeds to citizens in the form of a equal payment per person.

That way we will take responsibility for the mess we have helped to create rather than wasting time blaming China or the United Nations process as the Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband seems inclined to do.