Stern Report.

I'm doing a distance-learning course in pre-history and am just getting used to thinking about massive environmental change happening over Milena.

Now it looks like mankind could screw the whole thing up within a generation. Here's the gist of the Stern Report:

· Temperatures could rise by 5C from pre-industrial levels.
· Warming of 2C could leave 15-40% species facing extinction.
· Warming of 3 or 4C will result in millions of people being flooded-by 2050, 200 million may be permanently displaced.
· Warming of 4C or more will seriously affect global food production.
· All countries will be affected by climate change, but the poorest countries will suffer worst and soonest.

But from what I understand of the report's proposals, I can't see that education and taxation is any more than a band-aid.

It is multinational businesses who control and exploit the world's natural resources and in the developing world they are often far more powerful than national governments. Infrastructure needs to be developed for transport and energy, on the basis of planning for need not profits.

To put it simply: Socialism.

But not too many of the green ghurus seem to have the balls for that kind of joined-up thinking.