Climate report calls for leaders with vision

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"A New Green Deal", a report issued by the New Economics Foundation, uses the convergence of the credit crunch, climate change and booming food and fuel prices to make the case for a new economics for the 21st century.

Key points in the report are that every home must generate its own power, an oil legacy fund must be set up using windfall taxes on oil and gas firms to help pay for green transformation, and carbon should be priced according to its climate impact.

Interest rates should be cut to help investment in green energy and transport infrastructure, and monolithic financial institutions should be broken up so the failure of one would not destabilise the economy, said the NEF, an independent group.

"A credit crisis, coupled with high and rising oil prices and long-term climatic upheaval, are conspiring to create the perfect storm," said NEF director Andrew Simms.

"Instead of desperate baling-out, we need a comprehensive plan and a new course to navigate each obstacle in this new phenomenon.

"We need a modern Green New Deal that has the scale, boldness and vision previously only seen, for example, in Roosevelt's response to the Great Depression," he added.

U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was a series of programmes between 1933 and 1938 aimed at helping the poor, reforming the U.S. financial system and stimulating an economy that had plunged into depression after the Wall Street crash.

URGENT ACTION NEEDED

Today, economists say global economic growth is slowing, and most scientists say urgent action is needed to stop the planet entering a period of unstoppable temperature rise caused largely by rising carbon emissions.

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