and George Monbiot's column in the same paper is essential reading. He lays out a 10-point plan to turn the economic analysis of Stern into practical and swift action:On Friday, Stephen Ladyman, the minister for transport, announced that £371m was to be spent to turn the reminder of the A3 into a dual carriageway. This is in addition to £1.9bn that is planned to go into road and motorway development in the 2007-08 financial year. And despite the fact that the fastest-growing source of CO2 is air travel, the government - anticipating that the number of annual passenger flights will triple from 180m to 501m by 2030 - has given the go-ahead to a second runway at Stanstead, a third at Heathrow and big regional air expansion.
Dr Derek Wall, Green Party, Windsor
1. Set a target for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions based on the latest science.
2. Use that target to set an annual carbon cap, which falls on the ski-jump trajectory. Then use the cap to set a personal carbon ration.
3. Introduce a new set of building regulations, with strict energy-efficiency requirements on all major refurbishments (costing £3,000 or more). Landlords would bring their houses up to high energy-efficiency standards before they can rent them out. All new homes in the UK are built to the German Passivhaus standard (which requires no heating system).
4. Ban the sale of incandescent lightbulbs, patio heaters, garden floodlights and other wasteful and unnecessary technologies.
5. Redeploy money now earmarked for new nuclear missiles towards a massive investment in energy generation and distribution.
6. Promote the development of a new national coach network.
7. Oblige all chains of filling stations to supply leasable electric car batteries.
8. Abandon the road-building and road-widening programme, and spend the money on tackling climate change.
9. Freeze and then reduce UK airport capacity.
10. Legislate for the closure of all out-of-town superstores, and their replacement with a warehouse and delivery system.
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