The Intelligence2 debate report

Intelligence2 debate report

3 November 2007

Capitalism can save the planet (with carbon trading we can solve the climate change crisis without damaging economic growth)

‘It’s about my cappuccino.’ No one expected the great environmental debate — Capitalism can save the Planet — to be reduced to mere refreshments, but Tim Harford, leading for the motion, used the coffee he buys outside his FT office as a symbol of the global challenge. Our survival depends on consumer decisions at every level of industrial production. Let capital decide, he said. Keep government out of it. Otherwise we’ll end up, as we do now, with excellent biofuels like Brazilian sugarcane being taxed at 25 per cent.

Nigel Lawson, against the motion, made a subtle, thoughtful, somewhat donnish and completely captivating speech examining ‘the disconnect’ between politicians’ promises and their actual effect on climate change. Carbon is a greening gas, he argued, so it’s absurd to want our economies ‘decarbonised by 70 per cent’. Terrible, futile damage will be caused. ‘And there’s a considerable element of scam about the whole thing,’ he added, referring to the EU carbon-trading system.

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