Now is the perfect time to save the planet: The Guardian

Banking crisis, recession, stocks tumbling, house prices collapsing - it's been a deluge in the past few weeks to compare with any turbulence of previous decades.

It's easy, as a result, to be gloomy about the prospects. Recession, after all, is already here and everyone is worried about the immediate future.

There's also a lot of talk that switching the world economy to a carbon-free future is now something that cannot be afforded. Not so.

There were three important events in the past few weeks that went largely unnoticed during the financial maelstrom but whose significance cannot be overstated.

Two concern renewable energy and the other a change of government structure.

In Britain, the government unexpectedly announced on October 16 that it intended introducing a "feed-in tariff" guaranteeing rates for renewably produced electricity.

And the United States said part of its $700bn banking system bail-out would include $16bn (£10bn) of new green tax breaks for renewable energy, cleaner fuels and energy efficiency.

In Britain, as regular readers will know, the rhetoric and grand target-setting on climate change has far exceeded the practical policies to take us from where we are to where we want to be.

The government has, in other words, generated a lot more hot air than it has tried to remove from the atmosphere.

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Source: The Guardian