Winds of climate change are about to make their impact felt in many a boardroom

Top science adviser sounds death knell for theory that insists growth is good.

The old economics is dead. Its death knell was sounded last week, not by a practitioner of the dismal science but by Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser. Sir David King said concentrations of greenhouse gases were already at a level where the warning signs were flashing red: a comment that starkly illustrates the impending clash between economic orthodoxy and environmental sustainability.

Globalisation has meant clothes in the UK are cheap. The inflation figures show that women's outerwear is less expensive now than it was in the late 1980s. And we're not talking about the inflation-adjusted price either; the average sterling price of a skirt or a dress is lower than it was two decades ago.

There's no longer the need to wear a top several times to get your money's worth: they can be worn once and tossed in the bin. Likewise, stores now sell jeans at below £5 a pair and market them to manual workers on the basis that if they get them filthy in the course of a week they can simply throw them away and buy anew. According to the present model of economics, this is progress, just as it is to be welcomed that flights as low as £2.50 mean stag and hen weekends in Tallinn or Prague.

But are these developments really positive? Orthodox economics says they are, because they raise the real incomes of consumers. But, according to Sir David's analysis, they are potentially very bad indeed. Currently, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are around 380 parts per million, compared with around 220 ppm during the last ice age. Climatologists estimate that 400ppm - of thereabouts - is the tipping point and if we push concentrations much above that the process of climate change could become irreversible.