Burn our planet or face financial meltdown. Not much of a choice. The Guardian 20130421

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/21/carbon-problems-financial-crisis-hutton
The world is going to fry – unless there is change soon. There is weakening political will to make national and international targets for carbon reduction stick, no strong business and financial coalition prepared to lead and a weakening groundswell of public opinion prepared to foot the bill.
Instead, the international consensus of 25 years ago – that the world must act to challenge climate change – is dissolving. Individual countries are trying to steal a march on each other in a race to the bottom, dropping whatever scant penalties there have been for burning fossil fuels.


Western people will sooner or later agitate for change, as will China's millions as pollution makes its cities unbearable. Nobody wants a return to the command and control economies that failed. What is needed is a new vision of how to do capitalism in which enlightened self-interest is hard-wired into its operation, saving us from decades of austerity and environmental disaster. There are instruments at hand – the Unburnable Carbon report sets some of them out – and they mesh with larger arguments for stakeholder capitalism. The political task is to bind them together to underpin a new consensus and a new narrative. There is no time to lose.