THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report states clearly that we need a code red response to a code red emergency. 

Days into the most important Cop of our lifetime we have seen warm fluffy pledges to shift away from coal, to end public financing for “unabated” fossil fuel projects abroad and we have countries proudly outlining their own targets to decarbonise industrial sectors. 

Any action is of course positive but what we have seen so far is sparse. Sadly more toothless targets are not the code red response the world truly needs.

Indeed we have a bad track record on targets already — we missed the last ones completely. 

Last year all countries, including Britain, missed the symbolic February 9 deadline to strengthen plans to fight climate change under the Paris Agreement, and the British committee on climate change warned that the British government was not going far or fast enough to reach net zero. 

In the recent Budget the government had the chance to address these shortcomings, and as the host of Cop26, to be a global trailblazer in our response to climate change. 

Staggeringly however, there was nothing in the Chancellor’s recent Budget speech on climate change, bar a passing reference to the government’s already announced Net Zero Strategy, which has been widely criticised. 

Many critics have said the carbon savings set out in the paper will not get Britain close to its net-zero goal by 2050, and that without the funds might fail to meet even this limited ambition.

The fact is, warm words and fluffy targets are not enough to tackle this crisis. Without detailed industrial plans and a radical shift in global economic thinking, they are not enough to spur on the dramatic levels of investment required, to provide reassurance to those areas which may lose industries that they will be guaranteed replacement ones and to ensure that everyone will be given the ability to decarbonise their own homes and lives irrespective of income.

We need to see an economic and climate game-changer. That game-changer has to be a real Green New Deal.

The Green New Deal is not just a vehicle to tackle climate change and ensure the health of future generations, it is also the biggest economic lever we have ever had to implement the radical economic change needed to tackle social injustice and inequality.

Naomi Klein stated in 2011 in her paper Capitalism vs the Climate that real climate solutions are ones that steer interventions to systematically disperse and devolve power and control to the community level, and importantly, arriving at these new systems is going to require shedding the free-market ideology that has dominated the global economy for more than three decades.

So the ultimate goal should not just be about increasing investment in climate-friendly technologies — it should be about greening every aspect of society and instigating long-term systemic economic change that empowers our communities.

The last Labour manifesto set out a bold ambitious green programme called the Green Industrial Revolution, focusing on a range of industrial measures such as the decarbonisation of energy and transport, home retrofitting, publicly owned energy and water, decarbonising energy intensive industries, a just transition for affected workers as well as unionised, well-paid workforces and much more.

All must be championed, especially public ownership, as this is not only the means to drive the change we need at the pace required, it is also a fundamental building block of devolving power and sharing the prosperity we create. 

But it is also important to note that while these key industrial measures are urgently necessary, they form only a small part of a true Green New Deal agenda. 

The next step of the vision must therefore use the power of the Green New Deal to improve lives beyond the well-discussed industrial sectors and one right at the top of the agenda must be social care.

We must of course retain our firm commitment to a public national care service just like the NHS, funded not by pushing those who have seen their income drop further into poverty or selling people’s homes, but by ending the unfairness that sees income from wealth taxed at lower rates than income from work. 

But in developing this care service we must also develop a green national care service. This requires recognising that care jobs are green jobs and should be paid as such, and that investing in care, in its physical infrastructure and care technologies is investing in a sustainable future.  

Further, by entrenching fair and inclusive unionised work, with good pay, terms and conditions, as well as apprenticeships and ongoing training, right at the heart of this Green New Deal, we could reset the standards for workers right across our economy. 

Respecting our planet means respecting those who live and work on it, after all. 

The risk is however that most of Cop26 will be an attempt to tinker around the edges. One more week of fluffy pledges in absence of a real detailed global industrial plan that puts the needs of people at its heart.

So we need to lead by example in the last week of Cop26 and make the case for a detailed Green New Deal. 

That means pushing for a significant increase in foreign aid and for wealthy nations to stump up the $100 billion a year to help poorer countries reduce their emissions and protect themselves against the impacts of climate change. 

It also means pushing on climate damages — the role and responsibility of the big polluters to pay reparations — because this has never been properly addressed by Cop.

But perhaps most importantly it means each country developing detailed national policy plans and ensuring they have completed most of this work to reach net zero by 2030. 

And if they are serious about embracing the vast benefits of a Green New Deal, they will truly grab the opportunity to reverse decades of deindustrialisation, with bold, green investment strategies. 

They will not just fast-track new industries but they will embrace public and alternative ownership models to distribute wealth fairly.

They will export not only technology across the world but socially just models of public ownership to build community wealth and stability in poorer countries.

Many countries will be fearful of this because it shows that an active state, supporting industry and workers within a new democratic economy is really the only way to truly solve the climate crisis. 

It’s our job to make sure the world knows that this is the only viable way forward — and that in this most monumental battle for human existence, a Green New Deal is our only chance.

Rebecca Long Bailey is Labour MP for Salford and Eccles and was shadow secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy from 2017 to 2020.