If the total collapse of the world’s economy has accomplished anything, I’d like to pretend it’s undermined the all-too-common misinterpretation of Adam Smith, which dictates that the market always knows best. Yet government strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions still presume we can spend our way towards carbon neutrality. Increase the cost of polluting behaviour enough and we’ll change our behaviour, emissions will tumble and climate change will recede until it’s just a bogey man climatologists once used to frighten their children.

Last week saw the launch of the 10:10 campaign by Age of Stupid film director Franny Armstrong, hailed as a real opportunity to re-engage individuals with the task of reducing domestic CO2 emissions.

To coincide with the launch, the Guardian commissioned a poll, presumably hoping to show people’s willingness to accept carbon reduction measures.

But looking closely at the figures reveals instead the public’s resistance to some forms of carbon pricing.

Although 85 per cent of respondents accepted the threat of climate change, just 33 per cent were willing to accept something like a pay per mile road charging scheme.

So if the necessary carbon reductions cannot be made through voluntary measures will it soon be time to reconsider compulsory carbon allowances?

Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green party, delivers her conference speech in Hove today. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

Labour‘s failure to properly address the problem of climate change is “nothing less than a political crime”, Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green party, said today.

Addressing her party’s annual conference, Lucas said 300,000 people were dying every year as a result of global warming and the main political parties had failed to show “real political leadership” on the issue.

She also insisted the Green party was growing as a political force and that Britain’s “wholly dysfunctional” political system needed fundamental reform.

The plant in Fujian, China, whose foul smells led to anti-pollution protests in the province. Photograph: AFP/AFP/Getty Images

Polluters in China are operating in a “black box” of secrecy, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has warned amid a rash of violent protests related to industrial poisoning.

Offenders are protected by the vast majority of local authorities defying Beijing and violating state law by refusing to disclose information about pollution, with a study showing just 4 out of 113 local governments complied.

The ministry said this lack of transparency was partly to blame for recent riots over lead and manganese poisoning in Shaanxi, Hunan and Fujian, which has affected thousands of children.

One of the main water sources outside Moyale in Kenya runs dry. Photograph: Sarah Elliott/EPA

We met Isaac and Abdi, Alima and Muslima last week in the bone-dry, stony land close to the Ethiopia-Kenya border. They were with five nomad families who have watched all their animals die of star vation this year in a deep drought, and who have now decided their days of herding cattle are over.