5 November 2006 - Failure to act to tackle climate change is costing lives – and threatens the very future of human civilisation as we know it, Green Party Euro-MP Caroline Lucas told thousands of campaigners at a climate change rally outside the US Embassy in London yesterday (Saturday, November 4th ).

“Whatever Stern says, this isn’t an abstract argument about economics, it’s about the reality that our current consumption and production patterns are killing people – and it can only get worse. The price of inaction will be measured in lives lost, not pounds spent,” Dr Lucas told the rally .

“Many thousands around the world are paying the price for our lifestyles in the affluent West: men, women and children in Africa are dying, right now, from famines and droughts driven by climate change .

Dr Lucas, Green Party MEP for South-East England and a member of the European Parliament’s influential Environment Committee, made her comments before a crowd of between 15,000 and 40,000 gathered outside the US Embassy in london ’s Grosvenor Square .

The day’s events started with a cycle protest assembling at Lincoln ’s Inn Fields at 10am, moving on to a rally outside the US Embassy from 12 noon, with speakers including Caroline herself, MPs Colin Challen and Norman Baker and writer George Monbiot.

After the speeches, marchers made their way through central London to Trafalgar Square , meeting up with other demonstrators at 1pm.

Dr Lucas added: “In the week in which the Stern report has been published it is clearer than ever that we need urgent global action if we are to prevent the worst impacts of devastating climate change.

“But we are as far away as we’ve ever been to seeing this: Blair’s government continues to support a massive road-building programme and the biggest expansion of the aviation industry – the fastest growing contributor to greenhouse gas emissions – for a generation.

“How on earth can he claim to understand the nature of the climate threat whilst maintaining his support for an Aviation White paper that predicts a three-fold increase in air traffic over the next few decades when he knows perfectly well this will contribute to rising greenhouse gas emissions and undermine any reductions by more responsible industries?

“He has a shameful record of trying to undermine EU legislation designed to cut emissions – and yet he has the gall to call on other EU member states to co-operate further on climate change.

“But perhaps worst of all, Labour has presided over a period of rising – not falling – CO2 emissions, and a failure of international leadership on the issue which has allowed the world’s biggest climate villain, the US, to remain outside the Kyoto protocol, the only international treaty designed to prevent climate catastrophe.

“Next week, government representatives from around the world will meet in Nairobi to discuss a successor treaty to Kyoto .

“If Blair is to close the gap between his rhetoric and his inaction on the issue he must try to bring all the world’s nations on board, by persuading the US and Australia that failure to act is criminally and morally – as well as economically – negligent, and negotiating a treaty based on the principal of Contraction and Convergence, under which poorer nations will be allowed to continue sustainable economic development while those richer nations most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions do most to cut them.”

Dr Lucas added: “Nicholas Stern this week told us that climate change represents a ‘massive market failure’. Yes it does, but it also represents a massive political failure too.

“Stern tells us that tackling climate change is the only way to preserve our ability to pursue economic growth, when the reality is just the opposite: our single-minded pursuit of economic growth will render us incapable of tackling climate change. We don’t need any more reports, we need action.”

ENDS

Caroline’s speech in full