Stern review

Oh well, I suppose it takes an economist to provide sufficient reasons for change in the face of global warning; the moral and scientific arguments have been clearly insufficient.

But in the coverage of the Stern review that I've read I haven't seen discussion of related political issues (I know it'll be there, I haven't looked very hard) . It will be politicians who take the most critical decisions, and they need all support to stiffen the backbone.

The review's recommendations to address climate change presuppose a stable political framework. Yet the stability of western governments rests on foundations which militate against radical or rapid change. Furthermore, to remain stable, governments have learnt to export destabilising threats. The predictable result will be a much more troubled world.

Western democracies are - because they are democratic - vulnerable to inertia. The time scales of both costs and benefits are much longer than the time scales of political cycles - and longer than the expected life of many political structures below central government.

In a democarcy politicians are expected to listen to their constituencies, or lose power. And it is very hard to persuade people to pay for a reduction of their own standard of living, and easy to let them protect their own wealth at the cost of other people's. People are liable to vote for whoever will offer them comforts and, in this case, that's whoever will let them off responsibility to an abstract, distant environment.

More dangerously western democracies, especially the US and UK, have become addicted to the politics of fear. It is almost second nature to shore up one's own government (and avoid serious critique) by pointing to someone smaller and shouting "Terrorist!" - or equivalent. And this is not a comment about the reality or seriousness of terrorism; it is a comment about the way governments manage their relationships with their citizens.

The report acknowledges that the greatest impact of climate change will fall on the poorest countries. They are likely to have least access to low-carbon technologies, least capacity to cope with the destructive consequences of extreme weather, and least provision to address the negative health consequences. Many are also likely to suffer water shortage and, quite possibly, the negative impact of rapid change in agriculture.

The political consequences are likely to include greater internal unrest, mass migration of poor people, and much greater demand for the wealthier countries to transfer more of their wealth to poor countries. All these will be experienced in the west as threats - and the west has learned to tackle such threats at the point of perceived origin (inside the poorer country) rather than wait till it becomes a problem internal to them.

The fear of the outsider is liable to rise proportionately with the inequality between the world's have's and have-nots. And it will be perceived to be in western governments' interests to maintain such fear.

(The term 'economic migrant' is used as an insult only against the poor who seek work away from their home. It's not used against globe trotting business executives, nor those who go from the west to work elsewhere in the world.)

Political questions for Western democracies will include: do they raise the barriers against immigration ever higher? Will they support strong (that is, strong-arm) governments, and intervene ever more early and more frequently in unstable regimes in order to keep people in their own countries and away from the wealth of the west? Will western militaries be sent in to settle wars over water, access to agricultural land, and to redress the disasters of sudden mass-migration?

All of which is a formula for violence. The poor have their little taken from them. The rich resent making small sacrifices and do not want other people to benefit. The poor will have to move to find the basics of life: water, food, shelter, work. And the places they move to will try to exclude them.

Violence will occur in countries destabilised by a combination of climate change and a harsh international regime. And the west will shake its collective head and blame those countries - their people or their govenrments according to political convenience - for their own misfortune.

And violence will grow inside wealthy countries. Some people will inevitably come where work is seen to be; people will escape brutal regimes; western businesses looking for cheap labour will import people and discard them when they are no longer needed. And these people will be the object of fear and local violence. It will be in the interests of western governments to use migrants as both cheap labour and as the lightening rod to deflect internal instability.

So I predict these consequences of climate change: greater international inequality; more brutal regimes and more instances of failed states; more frequent military intervention for peace-making, peace-keeping, and humanitarian causes, high and leaky barriers against poor migrants; increasing vulnerability to violence amonst those who migrate; and the rise of xenophobic far-right political programmes grounded in hatred of outsiders.

Violence will thrive. Terror will just be one part of this dreadful tapestry.