Closer to home, despite overwhelming evidence that mass-burn incinerators are hugely problematic for all sorts of environmental reasons, government ministers have steadfastly argued that they represent the "least worst solution" to the fact that we're rapidly running out of dumping grounds for our waste. It really cannot be claimed that the available scientific evidence has played much part in this crucial debate.

Such examples are legion, globally and nationally. The underlying problem is not the science itself, but the fact that the science is telling politicians something they are desperate not to hear: that it's all up with our current model of gung-ho globalisation. The price we're all having to pay for today's economic progress (which, incidentally, advances the interests of a small minority of humankind) is the systematic liquidation of the natural capital on which we all depend.

But all the principal global institutions are "genetically predisposed" (as it were) to give precedence to the economic over the ecological. The IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, most UN agencies and all regional and international banks take their marching orders from white men in dark suits whose mission (for the most part, it should be said, a wholly honourable if misguided mission) is to expand the global economy on behalf of OECD governments and address poverty elsewhere through more of the same kind of Earth-bashing growth that has got us into such a mess.

Agencies such as the UN Environment Programme are impotent in the face of such hegemonic control; global treaties designed to slow the pace of ecological destruction invariably come off worst in any clash with the titans of international trade and economic liberalisation.

Experience of how such an analysis is sometimes received makes it necessary for me to put in a rider: this is not an anti-growth case, not anti-trade per se, and certainly not anti-development in the interests of the world's poorest people. It's the economic and social costs of that growth that preoccupy us, the one-sidedness of that trade, the inadequacy of that kind of development assistance. And the demeaning subservience to an economic model that may once have served some of us well, but which isn't delivering the goods today.

The irony is that the solutions are already to hand - and entail only a relatively small political risk.

Start by doing right by conventional market economics: get rid of all perverse subsidies that pay people to destroy the environment. Franz Fischler's new proposals for the (CAP) reform are a serious step in the right direction. But George Bush's US farm bill (pumping $180 billion of new subsidies into US agriculture over the next 10 years) is an even more serious step in the wrong direction - and yet another example of the kind of redneck unilateralism that is persuading more and more people of the status of the US as the number one rogue state.

Next, start internalising some of the costs that allow business to dump on to the environment, so that the price we pay for things more accurately reflects their true costs. Massively improve the efficiency with which we use energy and resources, so that every unit of production comes at a fraction of its current ecological impact.

Then get real about sustainable development on a global basis. Address the needs of poorer countries as they see them, not as we see them. Underpin their economies by securing and enhancing natural capital (in terms of water supply, sanitation, local food production, biodiversity, sustainable forestry, clean energy, and so on) rather than accelerating its destruction.

Further, slow the rate of population growth by prioritising investments in better primary healthcare and education for women, as well as far easier access to contraception.

Finally, rein in "crony capitalism", constrain the power of multi-nationals, channel foreign direct investment into socially-inclusive and ecologically sustainable wealth creation.

Pipe dreams? It's hard to see why. There are already more than enough inspiring success stories around the world to demonstrate what now needs to be done on a global basis. Bringing about such a transformation is not impossible. But it does demand a quality of political leadership that Earth scientists and green activists currently can only dream about.

First published in The Guardian newspaper Wednesday July 17, 2002
SocietyGuardian.co.uk © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002

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