Last March I came across a Sunday Times news report about the businessman Johan Eliasch. Johan had just bought a part of the Brazilian rainforest larger than the size of London. His goal was to protect any more of the forest from being destroyed by illegal logging.

Like lots of Sunday Times readers, I know that the world is almost at the tipping point on climate change beyond which there is no return. We must all act; last week’s World Bank report by Sir Nicholas Stern is the latest stark warning to world leaders, especially George W Bush, that the climate change issue cannot be stalled by claiming economic competitiveness would be damaged by taking action now. I believe that if we are to save our planet a totally new kind of politics is required.

Johan’s rainforest estate comprises more than 400,000 acres of trees. I thought I might stretch my resources to buy 40 acres, a sniff in comparison with Johan’s impact. But it occurred to me that there were out there tens of millions of ordinary people like me who would jump at the opportunity of “buying” forest to save the planet.

I e-mailed Johan asking if he would be interested in setting up an international trust to protect the rainforest, which acts as the world’s lungs. I have a certain track record of trying to get ideas adopted and know from bitter experience that it can take 20 years to sell an idea to the political bureaucracy. Dealing with Johan was quite different: within 20 seconds he had replied and we had fixed a planning meeting. Cool Earth, Johan’s title for our great adventure, was born from that initial meeting.

In three important respects the Cool Earth organisation we have set up is a sign of the new politics to come. On a growing number of topics individual governments are powerless when acting alone. Acting in consort takes time. Consider the effectiveness of the United Nations or the World Trade Organisation. And the one commodity the world no longer has is time — if it is to be saved from tipping into what scientists say will become an irreversible implosion.

Cool Earth is about harnessing mass people power, along with big business, to leapfrog the clanking machinery of government. Around such an idea as Cool Earth, and utilising the internet, the political voice of individuals can be heard immediately. Worldwide politics can both come into existence, and have an impact on a scale undreamt of by the most egotistical world leader.

Our aim, by the end of this year, is to have launched an international trust that will allow every individual, family, school, university, church, trade union, Women’s Institute and youth group to “own” and protect part of the world’s rainforest. Microchips will be placed in the trees so that satellites can locate our individual part of the forest and show it on our laptops when we tap in a code.

The rainforests produce 20% of the entire world’s oxygen and, less well known, 30% of our planet’s fresh water. The forest stores 40% of all the carbon in terrestrial life, plus a third or more of all the carbon stored in the world’s soils. Burning the forest emits this carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere where it has a massive warming effect. But illegal logging is all too often the only option for very poor people trying to feed and raise a family.

Recognition of this economic necessity is the second unique aspect of Cool Earth. Our aim is to allow those countries who own the rainforest to draw down its capital value in a positive way. The planet needs a cooler earth, but governments for different reasons are finding it difficult to act fast enough, and some might have a short-term interest in ensuring that it does not happen.

Cool Earth reinvents what international aid should be about. Voters in this country, and in the rest of the developed world, will not have to wait for governments to reach the UN target for overseas aid. They would be able to “vote” this change through themselves, and play a direct and quantifiable part in arresting what has until now looked like the inexorable rise in the world’s temperature.

The carbon emissions from illegal logging and burning equate to the total carbon emissions from the US and China — all seven billion tons of it. But it will take time, and political will, for the industrialised world to change its dirty habits. Cool Earth will offer trading arrangements with countries with rainforests, paying up front a capitalised rent for forest. Protecting the forest from illegal logging will immediately start to reduce these large carbon emissions.

Last week’s World Bank report emphasises that it will not cost the earth to save the planet but that it will cost the Earth if we don’t act now. Cool Earth will therefore sell on to individuals, voluntary organisations and companies and others, the stewardship of plots of rainforest above its market value.

This second payment will be used to build hospitals, schools and environmentally sound transport networks for countries where the rainforests are.