Climate Change Action Is Economic Common Sense

Huffington Post By Gordon Brown* (Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom)

Today, thousands of environmental campaigners will hold workshops on climate change, sponsored by thewebsite Avaaz.org. There will be more than 6,000 events in 170 countries -- a powerful human signal that, even after a year of disappointment, the climate change movement will not die -- or fade away. It is powered by the most elemental of human instincts -- our sense of responsibility to our children, and the threats we see to their future.

And the fight has never been more urgent. The future is coming to meet us now: there are new climate change refugees and evacuees every day. This week I spoke to the past Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai about the terrible loss of livelihoods occurring through deforestation -- and about our need to move forward reforestation initiatives in the Congo Basin, Amazon and Borneo. And last week I also spoke to Jens Stoltenberg, the Prime Minister of Norway, whose UN group is planning how we raise 100 billion dollars a year for post-2020 funding of adaptation and mitigation in the poorest countries.

And now, in the autumn of 2010, in a world climbing back from the global financial crisis, climate change should be at the top of the agenda of every government for another reason: investment in low carbon technologies offers us a way out of a lost decade of slow growth and high unemployment. The case for climate change action is not just a moral crusade -- it is an economic necessity. It can be a major component in the engine of growth -- and massively reduce the world's levels of unemployment.

As I will argue in a forthcoming book, low carbon technologies, renewables and balanced energy polices -- and their export potential -- represent a new way of living that can help free Europe and America from today's high unemployment and the specter of economic stagnation.

Despite the disappointments of Copenhagen, China's five year plan will this year give greater priority to low carbon development -- not least the export of wind turbines. 2010 will also see the expansion of India's solar mission; more evidence of Brazil's climate change ambitions; and the results of Norway's joint effort with Brazil, Indonesia and Guyana to finance forestation on a new pay-by-results basis.

But the biggest driver of climate change action -- and the biggest job creator of all -- could be a European Union commitment to a low carbon energy super-grid as a mega pan-European initiative. The evidence is compelling. Carbon emissions came down 7 per cent in 2008. The EU is now on course to meet its minimum target for 2020 of a 2O per cent reduction in emissions (-17 per cent already). Today -- with a huge surplus of carbon permits in the system, and a carbon price at just 15 Euros per ton -- companies have more incentive to invest in a new generation of gas, coal and oil-fired generation power stations than in low carbon technologies. However, the European Climate Foundation's "Roadmap 2050" shows that with a bold set of policy decisions now, renewables, nuclear and carbon capture and storage could supply 40% more carbon free electricity by 2050.

A low carbon European super-grid -- an enhanced transmission network, connecting power sources to demand across and beyond the continent -- is the most productive, ethical and practical way forward. The super grid is an asset that makes economic and environmental sense. And by investing an additional 1OO billion dollars a year to 2050, thousands of jobs and exports will follow. A carbon price of 20-30 Euros per ton of CO2 -- on a par with the expected 2050 oil price -- would make such a decarbonized power system no more expensive than a carbonized system -- but much cleaner and more employment friendly. Green technologies can give Europe -- and if they choose, America -- economic advantage at home and export potential abroad.

Those of us at the vanguard of climate change action have always understood that the environment is beyond price. Without a clean and sustainable world we will simply cease to be. But now we can add economic common sense to the argument for change -- because growth and new jobs for today's 2OO million unemployed global workers can come from environmental strategies based on low carbon technologies. The challenge of climate change is not just a moral issue for our time, but an opportunity to make the world's economic future stronger and more secure.

* Born in Scotland in 1951, Gordon Brown is the second of three sons. He grew up in the town of Kirkcaldy, an industrial centre famed for its linoleum and mining industries, during a time of rising unemployment and desperate poverty.

Gordon Brown’s parents, John and Elizabeth, were influential figures in his life. His father was a Minister of the Church and played a central part in town life. Mr Brown remembers his father more for his interest in helping people than for his theological zeal. He often helped those in desperate circumstances who saw the minister’s house as their only refuge for help.

Mr Brown recalls his father quoting the words of Martin Luther King: “everyone can be great because everyone can serve”. He has described his parents as “my inspiration, and the reason I am in politics”.

Like many other boys in Scotland, football was Mr Brown’s passion. A keen Raith Rovers supporter from childhood, he earned pocket money by selling programmes for the team. He also produced a newspaper with his brothers, which they sold for charity.

Mr Brown married his wife Sarah at their home in North Queensferry on 3 August 2000. They have two sons, John and Fraser.

Mrs Brown is the president of the children’s charity PiggyBankKids, which supports the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory, a project set up in memory of their daughter.
Education and early career

Mr Brown did well at school from an early age. At the age of ten, he joined Kirkcaldy High School, where he excelled at sport and joined in every aspect of school life, quickly becoming popular, and taking an early interest in local political campaigns.

He took his exams a year ahead of his contemporaries - his ‘O’ Levels at 14, his Highers at 15. When he came top of a bursary competition, he went on to university at age 15 - one of the youngest students to go to Edinburgh University since the war.

Mr Brown enjoyed student politics and the debates in the student newspaper, which he edited in a prize-winning year. He also continued with his passion for sport.

Just before he went to university, Mr Brown injured his eye playing for his school team at rugby which eventually resulted in detached retinas in both eyes. He spent much of his early years at university in hospital or recuperating.

Having gained a First Class honours degree and a number of prizes for his studies, Mr Brown became the youngest ever Rector of Edinburgh University in 1972.

In his working life, Mr Brown spent time as a university and college lecturer and also wrote a number of books. His book on James Maxton is about the early Labour MPs and their struggles. ‘Values, Visions and Voices’ is a study of the idealism and zeal of Labour’s early thinkers. And ‘The Real Divide’, written with Robin Cook, is a study of poverty and inequality. More recently, a collection of his speeches has been published as ‘Moving Britain Forward’.

After unsuccessfully fighting Michael Ancram for the Conservative seat of Edinburgh South in 1979, Mr Brown became MP for Dunfermline East in 1983 with a majority of 11,000.
Into Parliament

In 1983, as MP for Dunfermline East and Chair of the Labour Party’s Scottish Council, Mr Brown shared his first office in the House of Commons with Tony Blair and the two became friends.

Mr Brown’s maiden speech was on the growing problem of unemployment, of which he said:

“The chance of a labourer getting a job in my constituency is 150 to 1 against. There is only one vacancy in my local career office for nearly 500 teenagers who have recently left school.”

Identified early on by Neil Kinnock as a rising talent, Mr Brown became Shadow Spokesman for Trade and Industry, working with John Smith, and the two formed a close working relationship. When John Smith became leader, he appointed Gordon Brown to be Shadow Chancellor.

After John Smith’s sudden death, Mr Brown continued to be Shadow Chancellor and backed Tony Blair for the leadership of the Labour Party. Working together they won a landslide majority in 1997.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown presided over the longest ever period of growth. He also made the Bank of England independent and delivered an agreement at the Gleneagles Summit in 2005 to support the world’s poorest countries and tackle climate change.

Mr Brown sums his own beliefs up as:

“Every child should have the best start in life, that everybody should have the chance of a job, that nobody should be brought up suffering in poverty. I would call them the beliefs that you associate with civilisation and dignity.”

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