Lateline abc tv interveiw i found quite inspirational in a planet populated by cynics and pessimissm.

MAXINE MCKEW: Well, the politics of climate change dominated the Federal Parliament this week, with the release of the Stern report in the UK giving added impetus to Labor's argument that Australia needs to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol, and while polling suggests an overwhelming number of Australians accept that more radical action needs to be taken, the Prime Minister has yet to endorse any kind of carbon pricing mechanism. But quite a different approach is being taken by Mr Howard's counterparts in the UK. There, Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, goes out of his way to parade his Green credentials. He rides a bike to Westminster and talks about putting a wind turbine on top of Downing Street. Unlike many European countries, the UK has achieved significant emissions reductions and with Gordon Brown having commissioned the report by former World Bank economist Sir Nicholas Stern, it may be that the next UK election will be a race to see who can present the most credible and the most radical proposals to reduce carbon consumption.

One Conservative suggesting a bold approach is environmentalist Zac Goldsmith. He inherited a fortune from his father, the late Sir James Goldsmith. These days he's the owner and editor of the Ecologist magazine and advocates a complete rethink of how we organise economic activity. Zac Goldsmith has been singled out as a potential star Tory candidate for the next election and is the deputy chair of the party's quality of life policy group and now he joins me from London.

MAXINE MCKEW: So, good evening to you.

ZAC GOLDSMITH: Good evening.

MAXINE MCKEW: Let's talk about the impact of the Stern report. I know you have been taking and writing about the impact of climate change for a long time. Do you see the significance of the Stern report in that it really is signalling that business as usual is no longer viable.

ZAC GOLDSMITH: The truth is it doesn't say a lot of new stuff and there's a growing scientific consensus, an obvious and quite loud demand now from the City of London, some of our biggest businesses, calling for a long-term framework on climate change, a pressure from the electorate, which is why we're seeing a response in politics, it's one of the reasons things are interesting in politics. I think what Stern has done is he has successfully removed the last major excuse for inaction on climate change. His main thesis is that dealing with climate change is not only not going to bankrupt our economy, it's actually going to open up all kinds of opportunities, it's going to be good for the economy, whereas not dealing with climate change, if even the most conservative predictions are correct, is going to be disastrous, economically, socially and, obviously, ecologically.

MAXINE MCKEW: Now, one of Sir Nicholas's key contentions is he says it represents one of the world's greatest market failures in that the full environmental cost of what we do is just not taken into account. Do you broadly accept that and if so what are the implications of that?

ZAC GOLDSMITH: I think that's exactly right. The market is without doubt the most powerful force we have for social change. There's nothing in history that's remotely comparable. But it does have a blind spot and that's the environment. It's a pretty significant blind spot. It doesn't take into account the health of the environment and the viability of the biosphere itself. That's a market failure. In my view that's where the Government needs to step in and correct that failure and the best way of doing that is finding a mechanism of pricing the environment into the market and that probably means setting very tight limits on pollution and putting high prices on emissions and if you do that and you do it sufficiently it won't make sense to pollute and you'll find businesses finding all kinds of alternatives. I think you'll trigger a process of massive innovation. We're already seeing it with the emergence of a half a trillion-dollar sector in environmental goods and services. We're really at the beginning of the process now. It is a market failure. I fundamentally agree with that and it has been now accepted fully by the Conservative Party in this country which, given the party is historically that party most associated with belief in the free market and the market itself, I think it is a significant thing that's happening.

MAXINE MCKEW: We know certainly that David Cameron gets the message but are you saying there's no longer any climate change sceptics in the Tory Party?

ZAC GOLDSMITH: Of course there's climate change sceptics. In any mass movement, whether political or otherwise, you're going to have lots of disagreement and this is an area of disagreement. The dominant message from within the party is this is something we have to deal with and you can't expect to be rewarded politically unless you come up with a cohesive, serious blueprint for dealing with climate change. The majority of the party now is absolutely behind David Cameron on that. There's very little hostility to him prioritising climate change. What's useful and almost more important than arguments about whether climate change is serious is at the heart of the Stern report, that even if climate change is a hoax, even if it's entirely a fabrication by a clique of scientists, dealing with climate change actually represents very few downsides. There's no downside really to a more efficient and leaner and cleaner economy. We have to find ways to design waste out of the system for all sorts of reasons. We need to reduce our dependence on oil and that's good politically. All these things we ought to do irrespective of climate change, and they happen not to represent a serious cost, although someone headed up their editorial in the Times a few days ago saying it may not be cost effective to change the planet, but we probably ought to give it a go in any case. Stern has found it is cost effective to change the planet. Climate change is another reason for doing that.

MAXINE MCKEW: In terms of where we're at and in terms of where we need to be, though, we really have to move from a high carbon economy to a low carbon economy. Do you think - in terms of, say, the average Brit, are they psychologically prepared, let alone financially prepared, because there will be some cost.

ZAC GOLDSMITH: Of course there will be cost, but there's a lot of low-hanging fruit and I think while we're debating difficult issues like aviation and cheap flights, those are issues that will take a bit of time to resolve. With existing technologies, we can already dramatically improve the efficiency of homes. You can reduce the energy a home consumes by more than 50 per cent without the occupant knowing it, based on today's technology. There's no reason why new homes can't be built to higher standards. Car fuel efficiency is also something. We know the technology exists to dramatically improve the fuel efficiency of vehicles that are produced. China is already way ahead of the United States, not necessarily for environmental reasons but because of the cost of fuel. We know with existing technology we can do it. If every lightbulb in Britain was replaced with an energy saving lightbulb you would save the equivalent of two nuclear power plants and nobody would realise. The Government can step in now and start raising these targets. The other thing is the Government is the biggest spender in our country on NHS and so on. There are huge contracts negotiated on a monthly basis. There was a 1.6 billion pound ($3.95 billion) contract last week between the NHS and the DHL postal service and there was no mention of climate change. There are tools available now which could trigger rapid shifts in the way we live without requiring people to tighten their belts and live like monks, which people aren't willing to do.

MAXINE MCKEW: Can I ask what you try to do in your own life? Do you try to live carbon light?

ZAC GOLDSMITH: I have all kinds of privileges and luxuries available to me. I don't point to myself as a model. As it happens, I produce most of my own food. I was able to choose to put my office near my home, which reduces the need to travel. That's not something everybody can do. I wouldn't point to my life and hold it up as something for other people to follow. The Green movement in this country has not been successful. It is a marginal political movement because it has focused at pointing at the individual and telling people, "you have to live like a monk. If you don't you can't take part in the debate." It's not true. Things can be done at a systemic level that have dramatic implications in reducing our environmental footprint. I saw yesterday if everybody in the United States had recycled the aluminium cans they threw away last year they would have saved enough aluminium to rebuild the world's air fleet. It is one tiny example but shows we need to find a way of designing waste out of the system. If you do that it's wonderful news for the planet and not bad news for the consumer. We have developed an inherently wasteful society, one that doesn't value natural resources and that's something we have to rectify. I strongly believe, this is at the heart of the Conservative approach in this country, it does not mean telling people to live lives they don't want to live. I think we're opening opportunities from an investment point of view, financial point of view and lifestyles.

MAXINE MCKEW: Do you see the opportunities being seized in Europe? The only existing market mechanism is the Kyoto Protocol and when we look at what the Europeans are doing as opposed to the British, it is a very mixed picture. They set caps at a very high level as a result of pressure from industry.

ZAC GOLDSMITH: Yeah. Absolutely. I think there were more carbon - there was a greater carbon budget allocated than there was pollution at the time so it was a pointless exercise. It established, though, an infrastructure we can now use. The climate is changing. There is an appetite now in parliament finally - not just in this country but elsewhere in Europe, for real solutions to this problem. Politics is always the last to respond. If you walk down the high street in Paris, London or Vienna, the retailers are desperately competing to appear greenest. There was an open letter written in Britain from four of the biggest companies demanding strong action from Tony Blair. I can tell you as editor of the Ecologist magazine, four or five years ago I couldn't get our articles syndicated in the national press and I can get it every edition now. It's not because the articles are better but the debate has jumped forward in the last year alone. I think in Europe with the coming elections here and elsewhere, they will be fought on these issues. It is a mad prediction possibly, but I think the next election in the United States, we might see President Bush has had an almost homeopathic impact and the next election will inevitably have climate change as a major issue, which has never happened before. We can only hope that will be the case.

MAXINE MCKEW: You're suggesting, regardless of whether it is a Republican or Democrat who wins the next presidential election in two years time, that it will mark some kind of sea change and make possible is a truly global trading mechanism?

ZAC GOLDSMITH: Absolutely. I don't see this as a left-right issue. I think most people don't vote for political parties as they do support football clubs. This may be a top-down issue, big-small issue. It's not about left and right. It is about a willingness to address the biggest issues. I'm a member of the Conservative Party because I don't think you can be a conservative without being an environmentalist. I think the two are inseparable. If the Conservative Party hasn't taken this seriously in the past I would suggest it's because there aren't or haven't been that many conservatives in the Conservative Party. You cannot be a conservative and not care about the future generations, conservation, stewardship and so on. In the United States you have all sorts of people emerging. Senator McCain, this has been among his top priorities. We don't know if he'll be selected but he looks to be the front-runner at the moment. I may be wrong. Things can happen very quickly, change very quickly. It looks to me like the election might be fought on these issues. In the United States you have two counter-trends. You have the lead being set by Arnold Schwarzenegger who is prioritising climate change and others can take this on because he's the tough man in politics and this is his number one issue. Mayors across the United States have signed up to Kyoto which is largely symbolic but demonstrates there's two Americas - the Bush Administration has been stubborn and hasn't recognised the opportunities involved with dealing with climate change, sees it only as a threat and its action has fallen way short of what's required.

MAXINE MCKEW: You have mentioned some of the big economies. You haven't mentioned China and India. This is an equation the Australian Government and Prime Minister John Howard consider when of course the Prime Minister here rejects the idea of any Kyoto Protocol-style framework, the argument is China and India are not represented. I'm wondering what your views are on that argument?

ZAC GOLDSMITH: Well, I think they have to be represented, they have to be part of the process. China is becoming a very, very major part of the problem. What's interesting in China, whereas presumably in Australia, certainly Britain and the US, the pace of change has been slow so the environmental effects of our lifestyle have been slow to emerge, whereas in China everything's happened very, very quickly and as a result there are dust storms now in Beijing, the water table collapsed in northern China two years ago. All these things are obvious in China and as a result you already have an environmental movement in China, whereas at the comparable stage in our development we didn't have a movement. In terms of involving China and India in a global system, I think it's absolutely essential. I think there's the argument, that they have to be somehow able to catch up by using the fossil fuel route is impossible. We should use our leverage and some of the money we give in aid and investments overseas to recreate an alternative infrastructure, an energy infrastructure which is not going to be obsolete 10 or 20 years down the line but is built to last and contribute to solutions, not problems. We build oil pipelines through central Africa and actively create dependence on oil where they're going to have to reduce their use of oil so I think we can start to exert influence without requiring people to stay in the dark ages but actually we can encourage a development process which is clean, which is not going to be rendered obsolete.

MAXINE MCKEW: There is another clean option, of course, and that is nuclear energy, which again is something that Prime Minister John Howard in this country is talking about, but I gather you're something of a nuclear sceptic. Why is that?

ZAC GOLDSMITH: I think there are lots of reasons to be sceptical. I don't see nuclear as a solution to climate change because in order for it to be a solution it has to be something that can be replicated overseas and the fact is most people would not want to see a large number of countries adopt a nuclear program. You can see what's happening in Iran at the moment and it makes a lot of people nervous. I don't think we should adopt a solution we're not happy to see replicated elsewhere. Another reason is nuclear currently provides 18 per cent of energy in this country, if we were to replace all of them we would save four per cent to eight per cent of emissions so it's not saving too much. There are enormous savings to be made and very quickly by using household appliances. Because of the concerns of nuclear we never have the full picture of what it costs, in this country we have a £90 billion, about $170 billion bill just to clean up existing waste. If you internalise that and put it into the cost of nuclear electricity it wouldn't be anything like as competitive or cheap as it currently appears. If you add to that the security concerns, particularly following 9/11 and so on, I think nuclear power is - I would be hard to imagine it's not the most expensive form of energy, probably in the history of energy, if you internalise all those costs and it doesn't represent a solution.

MAXINE MCKEW: Just a final point, in terms of discouraging the big polluters, then, is the Conservative Party prepared to go to the polls next time round and advocate and argue the case for carbon taxes?

ZAC GOLDSMITH: I think there has to be - we're fully committed now to finding a way of pricing carbon into the market. There are all kinds of ways of doing that. You can have individual carbon budgets, you can have a carbon tax instead of a climate change levy which we have at the moment. I don't know which is the most effective. We have some time to work out the best mechanism. There is an absolute guarantee we'll provide a mechanism and it will be the best. Our job is to provide solutions to the problem and if we fail to come up with something sufficiently radical, sufficiently effective, I fully expect the party to be punished brutally by the electorate at the time of the election and that would be justified.

MAXINE MCKEW: For your comments tonight, Zac Goldsmith, thank you very much indeed.

ZAC GOLDSMITH: Thank you very much.