If the world’s leaders really cared about climate change, there’s one easy way to reduce emissions, writes John Weeks – drop the obsession with increasing trade, and all the pollution that goes with it. A world based on local production, consumption and finance will be a better one for people and the environment.

Let us join Keynes to imagine if we can a world in which goods are ‘homespun’ and finance is ‘primarily national’. If we cannot imagine such a world, there is little hope for the planet.

The Obama administration has proposed several ad hoc multi-country economic agreements, and in doing so has abandoned de facto the World Trade Organization (WTO) as insufficiently malleable to its interests.