For the past few weeks the main problem that has been exercising governments has been dealing with the crisis of confidence and trust in the world wide banking system. It has been an immediate problem and one that had to be dealt with as a matter of urgency. It looks as though, now that the various governments around the world have put in place measures that will lead to a bettered ordered safer banking system.
While all this has been going on the environmentalists have been saying “don’t forget about the environment”. They have been concerned that the banking crisis will lead to less investment in the environmental measures that as a planet we need to put in place. There have been many important environmental stories which you may have missed in all the financial excitement; it looks as though we will now have a target of 80% including aviation and shipping, instead of a target of 60% excluding those industries; the Energy Savings Trust have found that 53% of people prefer to leave in a greener home, tenants prefer homes that are energy efficient, flexible transparent photovoltaics may mean that in future we can power some lighting from pv cells over our windows and algae, if properly grown in controlled environments may end up providing us with oil as well as soaking up some unwelcome carbon dioxide.
You will see that there are trends and possible future developments which will help us in our quest not to forfeit our environment for future generations. That is th point; the environmental mission is a long term one, where we must take stpes now to protect something in the future.
In many ways economies and banking systems can be fixed; indeed they seem to affect us in cycles as the world fixes one foolishness but learns others, which in turn have to be fixed.
Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have probably fixed the banking system and provided some world leadership in doing so and for that they must have credit. Banking systems when broken (and in this case Mr Brown also deserves some criticism for neglectfully permitting the banking system to break down) can be fixed. The fix costs money, costs most people a huge amount of very hard work, creates injustices but the repair does work.
Mr Brown when announcing his package of rescuing banks (including the bank that Genersys banks with) dwelt on the need for bankers to take a long term view. Bank directors and executives have been outrageously rewarded for short term profits (which mainly proved illusory) and were allowed to continue to put their short term bonuses before the interests of their company.
We have seen all this before have we not, when Barings failed because one trader sought to protect bonuses and resorted to deception. Now banks have failed because in order to protect undeserved bonuses the bankers deceived themselves. Deceptions never last and eventually truth works its way out, however carefully or with whatever complexity it may lie hidden.
So it is with the climate and the future of the planet. We are presently deceiving ourselves that we are doing something but it is clear that we are hardly doing anything. Unlike the banks, the climate cannot be fixed over a few weekends of government negotiations and adjustments.
Mr Brown and Mr Darling have sought to create, as conditions of the taxpayers investments in banks, provisions that discourage or prevent banks in future from taking a short term view.
Right now we are allowing the environment to fall into disrepair by neglect. We have weak regulation and aseries of half baked measures which will not make a difference; we have yet to learn that the complex financial derivative instruments that failed the banking system, which we have aped and now use as so called environmental measures (carbon trading, the clean development mechanism and carbon offsetting and the like) will also fail the environment.
We need real measures – microgeneration, solar panels and the like and we must take a long term view of the benefits, not simply count the short term cost.
They, and all other governments, must now act themselves for the long term view of something intrinsically even more important that the wistful savings of ordinary folk. They must act with a long term view of the future of humanity by introducing long term measures now to fight climate change, with exactly the same urgency, force and direction that they have moved to end the banking crisis.
Filed under: Alistair Darling, carbon emissions, carbon offsetting, carbon trading, climate change, global warming, gordon brown, microgeneration, power, solar panels, targets | Tagged: clean development mechanism, credit crunch, banking crisis, long view, algae, conficence and trust in banks
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