Brown’s green dilemma

The publication of the Stern report on the economics of climate change was a deeply significant political punctuation mark. On Monday Tony Blair declared that the document was ‘the most important report on the future which I have received since becoming Prime Minister’. Yet it will not be Mr Blair who faces the formidable task of selling the report to the British public, legislating accordingly and urging other countries to follow suit. That task will fall to the man who is all but certain to succeed him: Gordon Brown.

Sir Nicholas Stern’s findings are the work of a seasoned economist rather than of a green campaigner. Not everybody accepts his conclusions. On Tuesday Mohammed Barkindo, secretary-general of Opec, claimed that the review’s scenarios ‘have no foundations in either science or economics’. Nigel Lawson, a formidable opponent of woolly thinking on climate change, has urged scepticism. Nonetheless, the extent of the political consensus on Stern is striking: remarkably, no mainstream party now disputes the case for higher green taxes. A cynic would say this has as much to do with the ferocious battle for Lib Dem voters in marginal seats — an electoral constituency deeply preoccupied by green issues — as with scientific evidence or economic argument.

Since Stern’s publication, attention has focused, naturally enough, on the potential impact of environmental policy upon motorists, householders and airline passengers. A battle will now ensue to define the tax implications for each category of consumer, and rightly so. Integral to this will be Sir Rod Eddington’s transport study, announced in the 2005 Budget and expected to be published around the time of this year’s pre-Budget report. In our special green supplement today, Martin Vander Weyer makes a compelling case for developing high-speed rail: better to think strategically about green train travel than to introduce swingeing taxes on aviation.