Leading article: The world's burning issue

Readers will have noticed something different about The Independent on Sunday today. Instead of doing the conventional thing, we have travelled forward in time to give a preview of what our newspaper might be like, decades hence, if global warming is allowed to go on sweeping out of control. We have continued the theme by commissioning the award-winning science writer Fred Pearce - author of a recent book on looming climate catastrophes - to write four front-page stories for each decade from 2030 to 2060. All, of course, are imaginary; all are designed to be arresting. But all are also based on serious scientific research. The dates may be plucked from the air, but they are plausible. If we continue as we are, these are the sort of front pages we and our children will be reading. As the Prime Minister himself said at the launch of the Stern report, disasters caused by global warming will not happen a safely remote century or two ahead, but in our lifetimes.

He added that the report was the most important produced during his premiership. With that we heartily concur. It promises to mark a turning point in the Government's commitment to tackling global warming. To that we can only say: "about time". For almost the whole of this newspaper's existence we have been campaigning to get our leaders to give this issue, by far the most important facing the world, due weight and priority. Politicians have been apt to dismiss us as unwelcome doom-mongers, though we have also been constructive and argued that it is not too late to avoid disaster. Other newspapers have been bewildered by our unfashionable concern. And even some scientists have urged us to moderate our coverage, so as not to offend powerful interests. To our readers, the Stern report will contain little new. But it is good to see it so widely accepted by all political parties, industry and most of the media. We just wish that what needs to be done had been recognised a decade ago, when it would have been much easier to do it.

But praise where it is due. It is rare indeed that we have occasion to congratulate all of the country's three most important politicians in the same leading article. But Tony Blair deserves credit for pushing global warming up the global agenda. David Cameron merits even more for catapulting it to the top of the political one at home on becoming leader, and to sticking with it despite opposition from the dinosaur tendency in his party. And Gordon Brown deserves praise for commissioning the Stern report - months , incidentally, before Mr Cameron began to take up the issue. There are limits, though, to our gratitude. Mr Blair made global warming a priority within weeks of arriving at No 10 and then seemed largely to forget about it. Mr Brown said he would be the greenest chancellor ever before taking up residence next door, but has instead been a notably "brown" one. Meanwhile Mr Cameron, despite transforming the political climate, has yet to come up with a comprehensive plan of his own.

What counts, however, is the future - and for now this seems to belong to the Chancellor. It does appear that - after fighting shy of the complexities of the issue for years - he has finally got it. The Stern report has given him the heavyweight cover and political space to act. He and David Miliband, his possible successor, now need to take it. They should lead the resistance to the United States's obstructionism at the international negotiations on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change opening tomorrow in Nairobi. At home, we welcome the Government's plan to introduce a climate Bill, but it needs annual targets to make it effective. And we also need green taxes, particularly on motoring and air transport , whose contribution to global warming is increasing most rapidly.

Of course this will involve some pain. We accept that things that endanger our climate will become more costly, and are convinced that most people in the country will do so too. Opinion polls published late last week show that, despite all the newspaper scaremongering on green taxes, most people are prepared to pay them, even though they suspect that they are being used as an excuse to raise revenue for the Treasury.

The Chancellor must demonstrate that they will be used to benefit the environment or to promote the ecological tax reform described by our environment editor, Geoffrey Lean, on the opposite page. Then a virtuous circle will be set up. The public will be encouraged to make sacrifices, knowing that they are worthwhile. And its willingness will give him greater courage to act. If not the 22,000 who marched yesterday could swell to two million.

For our part we will continue to campaign, despite criticism from unexpected quarters. Professor Mike Hulme, the director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research , yesterday attacked our "megaphone journalism". Yet a decade or so ago we were being denounced by leading scientists for making predictions now enshrined in the Stern report.

We aim to grab attention while telling the truth. If today's front page made you stop and think, we are doing our job.

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