The Japanese people have just voted decisively for change. For what kind of change should they now be asking?

The two most powerful trends in today's world are the green vision and the "Easternization" process — the shift in the world's center of economic and political power from West to East. Both are potentially benign if handled correctly.

The green vision embraces the aspirations of the whole human race, uniting rich and poor, north and south, in seeking a cleaner, green planet, with plentiful fresh water, good food and health, and a more pleasant and much less polluted environment, both urban (where most people live) and rural.

As for the Easternization trend, this is the opposite of the Westernization of previous centuries, and means the empowerment of a mass of new Asian investors and consumers, reflecting the shift of global influence and power to rising Asia, along with a swelling flow of international funds going from the high saving East back to the impoverished West, instead of the other way round.

Easternization has created billions of new capitalists, especially in China and India, all operating in a new pattern of enterprise and wealth-creation that lies somewhere between the past's unfettered market capitalism and old style socialism — a pattern that few economists yet comprehend or can explain.

All this is greatly to the good. Both great trends, if not interrupted, are reinforcing each other and interacting to provide an uplifting path to a better and more stable global future and a more sustainable world. More prosperity and a better environment go hand in hand, or conversely, prolonged poverty and deprivation guarantee a dirtier and uglier environment.

But there is one great shadow over these immense and beneficial trends in human affairs. Both trends are threatened by the same source — namely misguided and ill-advised interference by governments and by busybody officialdom overreaching itself and turning opportunities into crises and consensus into conflict.

Unfortunately a whole series of such interferences is now planned and will be triumphantly rolled out at global gatherings of policymakers just ahead, starting with the forthcoming G20 summit in Pittsburgh, Penn., and then continuing with the U.N.-sponsored global climate summit in Copenhagen.

On the environment front the whole issue is already being dragged into a quagmire of disputes about global carbon emission targets and global deals that have no hope of ever being agreed and would have only a minuscule effect on global warming even if they were.

At the same time the staggering costs of achieving these carbon-capping targets, estimated by one source as reducing world GDP by 12.9 percent to the end of the century, would far outweigh any gains from limiting global warming damage. The blow to economic growth and prosperity, and therefore to a greener and more sustainable world order, would be devastating. It is no wonder the U.S. Congress is choking on such costly and impractical ideas.

Another recent estimate puts China's cost alone of meeting proposed emission reduction targets at $438 billion a year, most of which, the Chinese argue, richer nations should pay. It would cost this, and more, to install carbon capture systems in China's multiplying coal-fired power plants. These are fantasy figures that could never be met in practice without huge social damage.

As for the new global economic trends, which are releasing Asian consumer power and bankrolling the struggling West, these are being undermined by wild official ideas for controlling the pay of bankers and regulating banking worldwide to the point of paralysis. So there we have the twin idiocies of the world political class, the prevailing errors and follies of our time.

The quixotic campaign to cut carbon emissions will do nothing to avoid global warming and may well increase it. The green vision will be lost and the path to a better life for millions blocked. As for the equally quixotic attack on banking rewards, this will do nothing to stabilize the global economy — in fact it will distort it further.

Government officials drawing up the agendas for these forthcoming summits have parted company with reality. As many commentators plead daily, they need to be brought back to the real world. Some say that with more transparency in government dealings, more sensible and practical policies would emerge. But casting more light on official policy thinking can just as well drive officials to huddle into even darker corners to construct their bad plans.

Instead the genuine need is for a return to the kind of global leadership that is wise, deep, and offers an honest and balanced explanation of the realities, not unworkable plans based on shaky forecasts and a hypothetical future.

The more reflective ministers who attend the summits at Pittsburgh and Copenhagen should put aside their massive briefs for negotiating complicated and unachievable global carbon targets. They should place their faith in the ingenuity and enterprise of people the world over, and in respect for the human aspiration for betterment and a decent living standard that will always be the main driver for transforming the global environment and meeting the climate challenge.

Higher living standards, healthier lifestyles, better food, water and homes, lower energy bills, nicer surroundings, the best new technology applied to industry, transport, power production and infrastructure — these things, not carbon targets and penalties — are the true ingredients of a sustainable, kinder future. That would be change worth asking for.

David Howell, a former British Cabinet minister, is a member of the House of Lords.