Caroline Lucas | ukwatch.net

Can Ed Miliband deliver?

eddie — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:11:26 +0000

Secretary of state for energy and climate, in a government that is approving new runways as fast as they can be proposed, is poised to sign off on new coal power and seems desperate to indulge in a bit of Cold War nostalgia by resurrecting nuclear power. That’s no recipe for an easy life.

Ed Miliband‘s indication that he is supportive of moving the UK emissions reduction target from 60% by 2050 to 80% is a good start – although it merely shows the government finally admitting that what environmentalists told them several years ago was right all along. But the real question is, can he deliver?

Certainly, early indications suggest he faces exactly the same problem as former, non-cabinet, climate change ministers – he has a room full of colleagues who do not believe it is practical to care about the environment in which we live, and he is stuck with the job of green-washing their half-hearted stabs at the issue.

In the same interview in which he leaned towards the 80% target, Miliband lamented the “lack of faith” with which the green movement regards the establishment parties. He protests: “We are absolutely committed to 30% [EU-wide emissions reductions]. I want to be very clear about this. I am also very clear that if Britain is to play an important role in international negotiations, then we have to lead by example.”

Our faith in the government is so limited because the actions of Labour ministers in real international negotiations demonstrate that these affirmations for the domestic audience are, charitably put, spin. As an MEP, I get to see up close just how far from all this concerned rhetoric the government’s behaviour really is.

In March 2007, ministers agreed that the EU must unilaterally reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 30% on 1990 levels if a future global climate agreement is reached. The European Council of member states’ leaders is now calling this commitment into question, as well as trying to undermine EU emissions reductions still further by allowing for a maximum of whatever targets they do agree to be met by offsetting abroad. The UK government is one of the most active on this last point.

As for the precise policies, among many other worrying moves it seems the council is back-peddling on the “polluter pays” principle that’s supposed to underpin and incentivise emissions reductions via the emissions trading system; and to oppose the idea of ring-fencing money raised through emissions trading for climate-related purposes both at home and abroad.

To cap it all, ministers have been doing their best to lock in their inadequate ambition, by making their agreements this week so detailed that they will claim no room for manoeuvre when it comes to negotiations with the European Parliament – the democratically elected co-legislator. This is unacceptable and irresponsible, and will jeopardise the chances of having a deal in time for the Poznan talks.

The UK has also been caught trying to wriggle out of EU agreements to increase renewable energy capacity – essential not only for climate security but also our economic future. The target is for 20% of all energy consumption – electricity, heating, transport and so on – to be generated from renewable sources. Miliband has now joined the government’s effort to exclude aviation from that energy total, saying: “There is not a credible way of showing aviation can be driven by renewables.”

Miliband is an intelligent man, so I can only conclude he is being deliberately misleading. No one is suggesting we can fuel aircraft renewably – at least not yet. What we are saying is that aviation fuel must, as has always been foreseen, be included in the figures used to calculate what constitutes total energy consumption. Removing it would dilute the commitment, not to mention the political consequences of opening up the whole Pandora’s box of individual member states’ national targets. With this kind of twisting and obfuscation, is it any wonder that we lack faith in the government?

If Miliband is going to make a success of his historic appointment to cabinet as the first climate change secretary of state, then he has to be straight with us, and straight with cabinet.

He has to get through to his colleagues that business as usual is not only environmental suicide, but also economically unviable. We will not survive in the economy of the future without a world-class renewable energy sector, and Labour’s attempts to avoid attracting one do no one any favours.

Strong policies that sufficiently incentivise wind power, for example, could result in an avoided fuel cost of €20.5bn by 2020 across the EU alone and provide more than 500,000 jobs.

We won’t solve the environmental and economic crises with inertia and spin. We need a green new deal: in other words, based upon the precedent of Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s, we need the reregulation of international finance, an end to subsidies for coal and nuclear, and a major programme of public and private investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency, generating thousands of green-collar jobs in the process.

We can make the transition away from fossil fuels and avoid a huge economic downturn at the same time. But it’s going to take a lot more than faith.

Open letter to police on repression at Kingsnorth

JamieSW — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:39:20 +0000

In light of events at this week’s Climate Camp in Kingsnorth, Green MEP for the South East Caroline Lucas has joined forces with Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, and Colin Challen, Labour MP for Morley and Rothwell, to write a letter to the Gold Commander of Kent Police – please see below.

Dr Lucas MEP is also querying Kent police about emerging reports that legal observers are being restricted from observing searches on individuals.

Letter in full:

Dear Mr Allyn Thomas,

RE: Climate camp at Kingsnorth

We are writing to express our concern at the developing situation on this site. There has undoubtedly been a steady escalation of friction between the climate change protesters and police. On one morning, we are informed, riot police with dogs entered the site. During the course of this operation a vehicle was damaged and a number of arrests were made. Twenty protesters apparently required medical attention and a number were taken to the A & E Department of Medway Hospital with suspected head injuries.

In the past few days there have been a series of searches and confiscations. No doubt some of these have been justified under the terms of a general search warrant. Others, such as the confiscation of tents, ground sheets, marker pens, mobile phones and protest banners are difficult to justify on any other basis than an attempt to disrupt the protest itself.

Policing of demonstrations and protests is always necessary. However, growing and confirmed anecdotal evidence suggests that this serious and escalating situation has been caused, at least in part, by a disproportionate police response. Norman Baker MP has reinforced this during his visit to the site itself. Despite undertakings to him by DCI Ian Hall (Kent Police) that only regular, uniformed police officers would be employed on patrol duties within the site, he witnessed, immediately afterwards, a charge by full riot police (Metropolitan) and the inappropriate use of batons on two occasions.

We have severally been in contact with police officers charged with this operation and have received various undertakings including the provision of an inventory of seized material and the reason for its retention. This has not been forthcoming but may well have been overtaken by these serious events.

Climate change must be a wholly legitimate subject of protest and demonstration. If it is met (or is perceived to be met) by an arbitrary, destructive and aggressive police response the consequences will undoubtedly be a continued alienation between police and many decent, law abiding people, particularly the young.

In view of the above we would ask you as a matter of urgency to take personal, immediate and direct action to resolve an increasingly threatening confrontation.

We look forward to your very early response.

Yours sincerely,

Caroline Lucas MEP

Norman Baker MP

Colin Challon MP

Caroline Lucas at Climate Camp

tim — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 11:56:43 +0000

South East MEP and Green activist Dr Caroline Lucas will be joining protesters at Climate Camp 2008 this weekend at Kingsnorth in Kent to rally against the Government’s continued commitment to unsustainable fossil fuels and its failure to adapt to tough environmental and economic conditions.

Speaking ahead of the Camp, which was held last year at Heathrow and attracted in excess of 1500 people, Dr Lucas said:

“I am delighted to be taking part in Climate Camp this year, and where better to highlight the Government’s failure to provide leadership on climate change than Kingsnorth, the proposed location for the first coal fired power station in Britain for 30 years.

“A new coal facility at Kingsnorth would emit up to 8 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year – and potentially keep doing so for 50 years. That annual emissions figure is as much C02 as the world’s 24 lowest emitting countries combined.

“Despite all its climate rhetoric, greenhouse gas emissions have risen under this Labour adminstration. Any government which commits to more coal fired power stations – and Kingsnorth is only the start – then claims to be aiming for a massive reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 is quite simply living in a fantasy land.”

On Sunday (3 August), Dr Lucas will take part in a rally on incineration and climate change. Then on Monday (4 August), she will address fellow Climate Campers on the triple crisis of food price rises, economic downturn and climate change facing governments the world over, and what lies ahead for conventional capitalist economics.

She continued: “Our political leaders seem unable to grasp a more radical social and environmental agenda. They can no longer commit to endless free market economic growth, which has played a huge part in the rapid generation of damaging climate emissions, and then wring their hands about climate change.

“The Government should be showing real leadership in this debate, with measures to tackle rising energy costs and fuel poverty, as well as initiating major investment in energy efficiency, renewables and decentralised energy. According to its own figures, we could achieve a 30% reduction in energy use in the UK through existing efficiency measures alone.

“Instead, ministers stick with their business-as-usual approach, further enabling the fossil fuel industry to profit and pollute, while paying scant regard to the average citizen or the environment.”

Blood on the Ice

Ellie Keen — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 23:32:34 +0000

It seems that Canada isn’t too keen on telling the world about its annual culling of seal pups. NGO representatives and members of the British media have reported that the department of fisheries and oceans (DFO) is refusing to issue permits for visitors on the main day of the hunt, thereby preventing observers from documenting it. Photographs of blood-stained ice and seal corpses resulting from the cull are not great for its image.

The European Community passed legislation 25 years ago banning the import of fur from whitecoat harp seal pups and hooded seal pups. The ban resulted from widespread revulsion of the clubbing to death of seal pups for a product nobody needs: fur.

However, the cruelty of commercial seal hunting persists, with substantial numbers of seals being killed in Russia and Namibia, as well as Canada, where hunters have turned their attention to slightly older pups. The DFO has just announced that 275,000 pups will be killed over the next few weeks during this year’s slaughter – nearly 100,000 more than the annual toll prior to the EC ban.

Despite the 1983 ban, Europe still plays a crucial role in supporting the killing. The sealers now wait just a few days until the harp seal pups have shed their white fur. These youngsters are still unable to swim and have not yet had a solid meal. They are clubbed or shot for their fur, which can be and is imported into the EU. It is the money from this trade that convinces sealers to continue the hunt.

Yet sealing is not a full-time job. Far from it – it is carried out for only a few days each year by off-season fishermen. On average, they make less than 5% of their income from sealing.

We are talking here about a dangerous and de-humanising occupation. Many sealers have been injured or killed and many boats lost. A rich country like Canada could buy back the licenses of the sealers, giving them fair compensation to re-invest in more dignified, sustainable work. Bludgeoning baby seals to death is not a great career choice in the 21st century.

And it would be wrong to think that sealing is carried out to protect the fish stocks – even the DFO does not argue this anymore. The ecosystem in the north-west Atlantic is complex and, for much of their lives, harp seals eat a range of species, including those that prey on Atlantic cod.

The DFO does, however, try to say that the harp seal population is huge (more than 5.5 million), but bases its estimates on questionable methodology. The population could be significantly lower than this but, because the seals do not breed until they are five to six years old, we will not see the true impact of the hunt for many years to come.

The other alarming factor in recent years has been the lack of ice forming due to climate change. Harp seals rely on sea ice to breed. For millions of years they have migrated south to give birth on ice floes, free from predators. Last year, there was hardly any ice in the southern Gulf of St Lawrence and pup mortality approached 100%.

Far from calling off the hunt, the DFO issued a quota of 270,000 and the northern Gulf saw a mopping-up exercise, where every pup that could be found was killed.

Evidence of the consequent suffering has been shown to the world by groups such as the Humane Society International that, each year and under difficult circumstances, observes and films the Canadian seal hunt.

It is this evidence that prompted the European parliament to adopt my written declaration (pdf) in 2006 that called for the European commission to ban the import, export and sale of seal products. This would ensure the protection of all seals including the 80,000 cape fur seals, which are annually clubbed to death in Namibia, and the seal pups butchered in the Archangel region of northern Russia.

The commission response has been to examine the whole issue of seal killing. A European food safety authority report concludes that “there is strong evidence that … effective killing does not always occur.” How could it?

The report also recommended that “attempts should not be made to kill seals … that do not pose a stable target or where the sealer may be unbalanced (eg in adverse weather conditions, moving substrates) as it can cause avoidable pain, distress, fear and other forms of suffering.” Yet this describes the bulk of the seal hunt and also underlines why we should be taking urgent action.

My Green party colleague Carl Schlyter tried to witness the seal hunt in 2006, but was prevented from doing so by angry mobs, which prevented helicopters from taking off and wrecked one of the observation team’s vehicles. The subsequent video taken of the seal killing showed what they were keen for the world not to see: seals, shot and badly injured, gaffed and dragged onto boats, mandatory checks to ensure seals were dead rarely being carried out, and seals brutally clubbed multiple times because the first strike was ineffective.

It is clear, from countless opinion polls (and from my own constituents’ correspondence) that a total import ban is very widely supported. Belgium and the Netherlands have already banned seal imports and the US banned them way back in 1972. Until we fully ban the import of all seal products into Europe, we will have blood on our hands.

Open Skies Scandal

Tim Holmes — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:48:08 +0000

The EU-US Open Skies agreement to liberalise transatlantic air travel reveals the yawning chasm between rhetoric and reality at the heart of the EU’s efforts to tackle climate change.

It beggars belief that just 10 short days after the EU’s self-congratulation over agreeing new greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets it is now signing an agreement that will fundamentally undermine them.

It is simply incompatible to be encouraging a large increase in the number of flights between the EU and US (25m extra passengers over the next five years emitting an extra 3.5m tonnes of CO2 annually) at the same time as cutting greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to either prevent the worst impacts of climate change – or even meet the emissions reductions targets agreed at the Brussels summit earlier this month.

The reality is that aviation is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU, and we will not be able to reduce them overall if we allow the aviation sector to keep expanding. It has been calculated that in the UK aviation expansion is responsible for more CO2 emissions than are being saved by improvements in all other sectors put together.

This “Open Skies” agreement risks undermining all the EU’s effort on tackling climate change, and must be resisted – along with all other proposals for aviation expansion.

Even if, as some argue, this agreement will improve the fuel efficiency of some transatlantic flights, any reductions in emissions will be completely outweighed by the overall growth in flight numbers that will surely accompany it.

As the EU celebrates its 50th anniversary this week it is more clear than ever that the union needs a new Big Idea at its heart if it is to reconnect with the half a billion citizens it exists to serve – and that big idea must surely be sustainability and delivering climate security.

The fact is that the EU is trying – driven at least in part by the 42 Green Party MEPs in the European Parliament – to enact environmental policies and drive greenhouse gas emissions reduction. Its new standards for vehicle emissions, and the recently adopted goal of cutting CO2 emissions by 20% by 2020 are cases in point. The trouble is, neither is ambitious enough to succeed, as both have been drawn up in the context of the Lisbon agenda and pursuing economic growth at all costs.

It must resolve this tension between its economic and environmental policies as a matter of urgency. The EU needs a shift away from ever more deregulated trade, and towards the diversification of more localised economies, supporting greater self-reliance and promoting fair trade. Only in this way will we be able genuinely to address the EU’s public malaise, and build a more compelling vision of its role and purpose.

Nuclear Madness

Alex Doherty — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 13:23:04 +0000

Yesterday’s decision to replace the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons system is illegal, immoral, obscenely expensive and utterly irrelevant to the real security threats we face today.

These are just the headlines: in fact it gets even worse. Replacing Trident won’t just violate the UK’s commitments under the UN nuclear non-proliferation treaty (of which we are, supposedly, a proud signatory) – it will undermine it by persuading other countries to breach it too.

That can only lead to increased nuclear proliferation, and boost the chances that nuclear weapons will be used in time of war (and we all know resource scarcity, the principle cause of war, is getting worse in almost every case). More nuclear weapons in the world will mean an increased chance that they will be acquired by terrorists or other non-state actors entirely outside the reach of the international community. In short, today’s decision directly increases the risk that thousands will die as a result of nuclear weapons.

Voting in favour of replacing Trident is a shameful waste of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money and it sends out a deadly signal to the rest of the world: “we don’t care about nuclear proliferation, so neither should you”.

The non-proliferation treaty prohibits the development of new nuclear weapons, and calls for the progressive decommissioning of existing ones.

And if the UK is prepared to flout it, why – either morally or legally – shouldn’t the Iranians, or anyone else?

Diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to abandon plans to develop a nuclear programme are almost doomed to fail as long as we continue to develop ours, and as long as we encourage the use of nuclear energy in “responsible” states.

And this at a time when the European commission has warned that nuclear proliferation is the biggest security threat we face: yesterday’s decision is truly nuclear madness.

The government’s support for new nuclear weapons looks to be approved – but perhaps at the cost of the cohesion of the Labour party. The vote could only have been passed thanks to the support of pro-nuclear Tory MPs. The government endured Commons rebellion on an enormous scale, and the issue has already claimed more than one ministerial scalp.

Nuclear disarmament isn’t the only 1997 pre-election promise Labour has ignored and then abandoned – but it’s probably the most dangerous and wasteful.

Look at it another way: the government’s support for Trident is yet another example of its failure to grasp the urgency of climate change too. Imagine if its anticipated £76bn costs were invested in energy conservation and renewable energy generation – we might actually have a chance of cutting CO2 levels sufficiently to stave off the worst impacts of climate change.

Instead, we are left with an obscenely expensive white elephant that is likely to make the world a more dangerous place – at best it is utterly irrelevant to the real security threats we face, chief among them climate change, and a missed opportunity to invest the resources in tackling them.

Whatever the historians end up saying, the immediate cost of this decision looks likely to be measured in lives lost as well as pounds squandered.

Action, Not Reports

jeppe — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 16:28:27 +0000

An address to the Climate Change March in Grosvenor Square – the home of the US Embassy – in London on 4 November, 2006. Much of her speech was a response to the report issued recently by Nicholas Stern, head of the UK Government Economics Service, on the economic implications of climate change. Below is an edited version of what she had to say.

When it comes to climate change, we keep breaking records, with the hottest summer or the warmest day being a key headline on the news. I’m delighted that today we’ve broken a new record – and it’s good news – because this must easily be the largest demonstration we’ve ever had in this country on climate change.
We’re here, gathered outside the US embassy, because George Bush’s refusal to act on climate change makes him guilty of crimes against humanity, and if George Bush is guilty, our own Prime Minister is a very active accomplice to that crime. So we have a very clear message for Tony Blair, and our message is this:

“Climate change is a far greater threat than international terrorism and it is, itself, a Weapon of Mass Destruction

“If you had spent a fraction of the resources and commitment you expended on an illegal war on Iraq instead on tackling climate change, then the world would be a much safer place.

“We don’t have time to wait; so we demand – not more reports, not more surveys, not more meetings – but immediate and urgent action now

Stern Report

With the publication of the Stern report on the economics of climate change, we’ve witnessed the demolition of the last possible argument against acting now to avert the worst of the disaster – that it’s “uneconomic” to do so.

That’s very helpful. Yet this is an argument that should never be debated in economic terms alone. This is not a matter of some abstract cost-benefit analysis, but of how on earth we can continue with our current production and consumption patterns, our current profligate lifestyles, when we know that thousands of people are already paying the price of those lifestyles with their lives – the men, women, and children in many parts of Africa, for example, who are dying now, today, tonight, from famines and droughts that are driven by climate change, for which we in the North are primarily responsible.

The primary dilemma is not that we don’t know what to do. The problem is rather how to build the public and political momentum to make the changes that we need – the massive investments in energy efficiency and renewables, in public transport, in re-planning our towns and cities, our buildings and public spaces – and to do so with sufficient speed – Nicholas Stern says that climate change represents a massive market failure. However, it also represents a massive political failure, a failure of political leadership from this government, a failure of extraordinary proportions. The fact is that there would have been nothing in the broad conclusions of the Stern report that Tony Blair didn’t already know. We can say that with certainty, because he told us several years ago that climate change is the greatest threat that we face. Moreover, he gathered some of the best scientific experts in the world on climate change to brief him on the science in Exeter as long ago as January, 2005. Yet under this same Prime Minister’s government greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise. This is a prime minister who continues to back a massive expansion of aviation capacity in the UK, who insists on embarking on an £30 billion major road building programme instead of investing in public transport; a Prime Minister who is delaying the implementation of key legislation from Europe on energy efficiency and renewables; one whose chief scientific adviser admits that we should keep emission levels at below 400 ppm but who has decided that this is a “politically impossible” message.

Such political and moral cowardice amounts to nothing less than criminal irresponsibility in the face of the clear need for urgent and radical action. When the national media tells us that now, at last, we are going to see real action on climate change, when Tony Blair tells us that the Stern report is “the most important report that has ever been presented to him in government”, we are unfortunately justified in receiving such statements in a certain spirit of healthy scepticism.

I represent the Green Party, which has of course always understood that such urgent environmental issues must be prioritised. It has unfortunately taken other parties in Britain and elsewhere the best part of thirty years even to make a start on asking the right questions, and we can only hope that it’s not going to be another thirty years before they start adopting the right answers. To come up with the right answers, we need to have the right questions, and this consideration leads me to a certain amount of concern about parts of the Stern report itself.
Horrifying though the list is of climate change impacts that Stern sets out – the melting glaciers, the flooding of half of all the world’s major cities, the prolonged and severe droughts and famines, the displacement of millions, the spread of disease, and the extinction of species – his solutions are simply not going to be strong enough to prevent them.
Stern is working to an assumption that stabilising CO2 levels at 550 ppm will be sufficient to save us from the worst of climate change, by keeping the increase in temperature at less than 2 degrees Celsius above its pre-industrial levels. Yet many believe that this would be insufficient. The committee report from the Exeter conference on climate change held at the beginning of last year, which brought together the best scientific evidence in the world, warns however that “limiting warming to a 2 degree increase with a relatively high certainty requires the equivalent concentration of CO2 to stay below 400 ppm “.
Even 2 degrees Celsius is well above the level at which grave impacts will be felt by hundreds of millions of people. Achieving it would mean rich countries such as the UK cutting average emissions by around 90% by 2030 – not 60% by 2050, as Stern proposes. A 90% cut by 2030 is going to require not just new technologies, but different cultures, different economies, different expectations – in short, nothing less than a different way of life.

In Britain it is only the Green Party that is saying clearly and unequivocally that we can’t possibly get out of the crisis we’re facing using the same economic paradigm that created the crisis in the first place. While new technologies will certainly have a role to play, on their own they will simply never be enough to offset continuing increases in global consumption. In other words, more efficient planes or cars won’t help if the total number of planes in the sky and cars on the road continues to increase at the current phenomenal rate. What is needed is a completely different economic system, based not on ever-increasing economic growth, but on meeting people’s real needs.

Contraction and Convergence

An alternative paradigm exists, one that is gaining momentum. Based on the idea of Contraction and Convergence, it relies on the outstanding work of the Global Commons Institute, a body which has spent years developing and promoting a framework that sets a contraction budget for global emissions consistent with stabilising emissions at the maximum safe level. This budget would be shared internationally by means of the achievement of a convergence to equal per capita shares globally by an agreed date.
This is the only genuinely equitable approach, one which ensures that the developed countries, which are most responsible for high emissions, take the greatest responsibility for cutting them. Poorer nations will be able to continue to grow, as long as the world’s total emissions reduce year-on-year, and the gap between per capita emissions in the developed and developing worlds grows progressively smaller.

Nationally we need a system of domestic carbon allocations as well. Under such a system, each of us would have an individual carbon quota, providing both a fairer and simpler alternative to emissions trading or green taxation. In addition, we need the government to abandon its £30 billion road building plan, as well as cancelling of all airport expansion plans. The Government’s White Paper on Aviation envisages catering for a trebling of the number of passengers using UK airports by 2030, in spite of the fact that aviation is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions. We need instead to rein back expansion, recognise limits, remove tax breaks, reassess air freight, reduce noise, respect the countryside, revisit rail, revise the economics, review airport plans and rethink the whole approach.

Nuclear

While it’s true that to make adequate cuts in our greenhouse gas emissions will require nothing short of a revolution in the way we run our economy, the way we measure human welfare, and the way we produce and consume, it most certainly does not mean that we should increase our reliance on nuclear power. Nuclear power is uneconomic, unsafe, unpopular and unnecessary. If nuclear energy is the answer, then it must have been a very stupid question.

Oil Peaks

There is another compelling reason to move towards sustainable energy sources. The global peak in oil production is likely to occur sooner than many expect. Some think it could be happening now, or in just a few short years. Yet whether it’s five years away or twenty-five years away, it’s clear that we have to end our addiction to oil. With oil prices set to rise, and keep rising, the likelihood of further conflict over oil increases. A large scale switch to renewables is a move towards peace , and away from the chaos and conflict and abuses of human rights which oil expansion brings with it.

Conclusion

Let me just finish by saying that some people think that we will never be able to persuade the public as a whole of the need to act on such a radical agenda; that while it may be economically and technically possible to tackle climate change in time, it might not be politically possible. What this means is that we have to get better at communicating our positive vision of a low carbon future, of the positive benefits that will come with the changes we need to see. A low carbon future doesn’t mean shivering around a candle in a cave; on the contrary, it would be a future of more jobs, stronger local communities, less poverty and greater security. It might just be one where we’re happier too – instead of chasing ever more materialis wealth and energy-intensive economic growth, we could prioritise our relationships and our communities, and value people for who they are, not for their performance against targets or their earning potential.

Dr Caroline Lucas represents the South-East Region of England in the European Parliament. A member of the Green Party of England and Wales, she participates in the Greens-EFA Group. For a more detailed analysis of UK energy policy from Dr Lucas and her colleagues in the Greens-EFA Group, see So much hot air? A report on the performance of the Uk on energy and climate issues

Rhetoric Over Reality

Alex Doherty — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 10:10:40 +0000

If we believe the media hype and politicians’ statements, we have reached a new consensus in British politics on climate change. The three largest political parties all say they accept the level of threat posed by unchecked climate change – both on a humanitarian and, thanks to the findings of the long-awaited Stern report , an economic level.

They all say they accept the need for “green taxation”, and they all accept Sir Nicholas’s central argument: that urgent action on climate change now is the only way to prevent a global economic depression worse than that of the 1930s or those triggered by last century’s world wars.

The trouble is, there’s precious little in the reports of Stern’s findings that’s very new – and therefore little cause for confidence that urgent action will result. The Green party, together with a plethora of other green groups, has been making exactly the same argument for years. The main parties know this well, of course, and have seen this report coming, so we’ve seen the Lib-Dems introduce higher parking charges for gas-guzzlers, the Tories set up their quality of life working group with celebrity environmentalist Zac Goldsmith at its helm, and Labour announce its backing for an (admittedly watered down) climate change bill which would make greenhouse gas emission reductions a binding duty on businesses and government.

In short, we are in danger of witnessing the triumph of rhetoric over reality on a truly global scale. There is nothing in the broad conclusions of the Stern report which Blair would not already have known, yet we have seen precious little positive action from him to date.

Take Labour’s cavalier attitude to those EU environmental directives which have been drawn up precisely to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. A report I commissioned from the Association for the Conservation of Energy (ACE) has found a systematic failure to fully implement new EU laws designed to tackle climate change. Specifically, ACE found the UK under Labour has:

Delayed implementation of the Energy Performance of Buildings directive

Demanded an increase in the UK ‘s level of CO2 emissions permitted under the EU Emissions Trading scheme

Failed to set binding targets for energy demand reduction under the Energy services directive

Failed to promote small-scale combined heating and power plants in line with the Cogeneration directive

In other words, Tony Blair has resisted EU attempts to cut emissions, even when calling for more EU co-operation on the problem when addressing domestic audiences. And yet he has the gall to write to his EU counterparts calling for concerted action on climate change when he’s been actively sidelining or, worse, undermining it, for years.

The government must react urgently to Sir Nicholas’s findings – immediately reviewing all areas of policy to see where greenhouse gas emissions can be cut and cutting them, adopting tough new legislation to ensure year-on-year reductions are made, and exercising some real global leadership at the forthcoming Kyoto review conference in Nairobi to bring everyone on board and adopt a successor treaty that ensures the rest of the world does too.

But on its current record, there doesn’t seem much hope of it doing so. The climate change bill, for example, which is now expected to form part of the Government’s legislative programme outlined in next month’s Queen’s speech, won’t work unless it requires greenhouse gas emission reductions every year until we’ve cut them by enough to stabilise our climate – maybe by as much as 90% by 2030. But the annual targets which could make this a reality are, unsurprisingly, absent from Labour’s proposals.

At the same time, Labour is pursuing a whole raft of policies which are making the problem worse, not better. On transport, for example, the government continues to back a massive road-building programme despite the increase in climate emissions it will precipitate, and for the biggest expansion to the UK’s aviation industry (the fastest growing contributor to climate change) in a generation. A litmus test to judge whether or not the government is going to respond seriously to the Stern report will be whether a swift U-turn on these two policies is announced in the coming days and weeks.

It’s sometimes argued that the UK could cut its emissions to zero and it wouldn’t make much difference on its own. Climate change is a global problem – and international agreement will certainly be necessary if we are going to stave off its worst impacts. In the EU, we have the foundation stones of just such a global partnership – if it would only play a serious leadership role in delivering one. Indeed, if promoting action to address climate change were adopted as the new big idea at the heart of the EU, rather than promoting ever more free trade, it would re-invigorate the union’s relationship with its increasingly sceptical citizens, and it might just help prevent the devastation of unchecked climate change too.

And in next month’s Nairobi review of the Kyoto protocol, we have the arena in which the EU could start rising to this challenge. Its negotiators should use the EU’s financial and political clout to try to deliver a binding global agreement in Nairobi – based on the principle of “contraction and convergence” which includes developing nations and places the greatest burden for emissions reduction on those most developed countries that have contributed most to the problem.

There might not be much that’s truly new in the Stern report, but it does create a new political imperative to do something about it. Let’s hope Blair – and his colleagues in the EU, US and across the developing world – rise to the challenge. If they don’t, it’ll become an argument about survival rather than economics.

Green Rhetoric

Tim Holmes — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 18:51:45 +0000

Green is definitely this season’s colour. As the Conservatives prepare to draw another political conference season to a close it’s clear that all three of the main Westminster parties appear to be slowly waking up to fact that climate change, fuelled by human economic activity, will devastate human society if left unchecked. They also recognise that there are votes to be won by being seen to care about the environment and are falling over each other to be the “greenest”.

This political consensus is certainly a welcome development. We cannot even hope to prevent the coming catastrophe – and as we know even the Pentagon has admitted it poses a greater threat to our way of life than terrorism – unless we all agree that something needs to be done, and work together to achieve the urgently needed targets and timetables.

But the Liberal Democrats’ enthusiasm for “green” taxation at their conference in Brighton bore almost no relation to the reality of their elected councillors and MSPs backing more road-building and more airport expansion at every opportunity, making politically-expedient decisions at the local level at the expense of the very fight against climate change their party’s leaders claim to be championing.

And whatever pronouncements the new Conservative frontbenches make about prioritising the battle with greenhouse gas emissions in Bournemouth this week, the gap between rhetoric and action will yawn as wide under a Conservative government as it clearly has under Blair’s troubled New Labour one.

This isn’t lazy political scepticism – rather it’s a frank interpretation of the lack of any actual policy announcements and, worse, the record of elected Conservatives at all levels: councillors supporting new roads carving up the countryside (including a new bypass in David Cameron’s own Oxfordshire constituency), MPs backing new airports and massive growth to the aviation industry (the fastest growing contributor to climate change), and MEPs trying to water down almost every piece of environmental legislation that comes before them in Brussels.

Of course, the Cameronistas will argue that their policy working groups are drawing up the specifics based on a new top-down commitment to the environment hewn from what Mr Cameron himself dubs “the Conservatives’ proud green heritage”. This is deft politics – and it’s certainly helping the Tories in the polls – but it doesn’t solve the problem that effective policies to tackle climate change will inevitably fly in the face of the interests of the Conservatives’ traditional support base and the party’s already-elected politicians. It’s a recipe for political chaos which could undermine the Conservatives’ ability to oust even a crumbling Labour government from Downing Street.

David Cameron would have us believe that “green growth” is the answer to the environmental crisis we face. The idea that there could be any conflict between environmental protection and economic growth is, according to him, so “last century”.

Yet this position is fatally flawed. As EF Schumacher so cogently demonstrated more than 30 years ago, such illusions are based on a failure to distinguish between income and capital: “Every economist and businessman is familiar with the distinction, and applies it conscientiously and with considerable subtlety to all economic affairs – except where it really matters: namely, the irreplaceable capital which man has not made, but simply found, and without which he can do nothing.”

In other words, we cannot seriously address the major environmental challenges we face, chief among them climate change, using the same economic paradigm which caused the problem in the first place, which is based – precisely – on eating up the earth’s capital.

The limitations of this approach are thrown into sharp relief in the light of increasing evidence that the era of cheap, abundant fossil fuel energy is about to end. A growing number of petroleum geologists believe that peak oil – the moment when global oil extraction peaks, and demand starts to outstrip supply – will be upon us very soon.

And while new technologies will certainly have a role to play, technical fixes on their own are highly unlikely to be able to offset the projected increases in global production and consumption.

The argument is often made that we must have global growth in order to achieve poverty eradication. But, in truth, it’s a very inefficient strategy. In 1990, 23% of the world’s population was below the “$1-a-day” poverty line. But between 1990 and 2001, just 60 cents of every $100 of extra income generated by global growth reached the poorest. In other words, it took an extra $166 of production and consumption, with all the associated environmental damage, to generate each $1 of poverty reduction. If we are to get really serious about global poverty reduction, redistribution of income and wealth would be a far more effective method.

Instead of attempting to support ever-increasing industrialised systems based on exponential growth, and then desperately trying to find the energy and materials to sustain them, we need to reverse the present paradigm, and make sufficiency, equity and sustainability our objectives, rather than ever-increasing economic growth.

Crucially, that doesn’t mean shivering around a candle in a cave. We need to challenge the idea that increases in human wellbeing are inevitably linked to increases in economic productivity. Decoupling the need to solve the environmental and social problems we face from chasing GNP increases doesn’t mean stepping back into an agrarian lifestyle: rather it means enjoying stronger, safer communities, improved employment prospects, cleaner air, healthier food – to name but a few of the win-wins out there.

Despite sharpening up their green rhetoric, the Westminster parties fail to recognise that, even with increased efficiency gains, an economic system based on the ever-increasing use of limited natural resources cannot be a long-term solution on a finite planet.

Their strategy might deliver short-term electoral successes (clearly the voting public are clamouring ever-louder for politicians to address environmental problems) – but it certainly won’t take us down the path towards a genuinely sustainable future. It’s going to take more than a few green taxes to genuinely address climate change.

Let's Shut Down, Not Melt Down

Alex Doherty — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 17:05:09 +0000

When you’re in a hole, it’s best to stop digging. This week, the government was told there is simply no completely safe way of dealing with the 47,000 tonnes of radioactive waste produced by the UK’s existing nuclear power stations over the last 50 years.

This was reported by CoRWM , the government’s own Committee on Radioactive Waste Management. It suggested that the government adopt the least dangerous approach: that the deadly nuclear waste should be buried deep underground – following decades of “interim storage” – to allow for intensified research to address “uncertainties”.

This will mean leaving a deadly toxic legacy for future generations – and present a handy target for terrorists or combatants in any future conflict. But apparently we’ll just have to take the chance, as no one has come up with a better plan.

And yet the government refuses to see the hole and, as signalled in its long awaited energy review last month, is prepared to keep digging by authorising new nuclear power stations, adding to the nuclear waste mountain. The issue of nuclear waste was barely acknowledged in the energy review.

The energy review does talk up the issue of climate change and stresses the need for energy use to produce less CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. But this is an excuse to back nuclear power rather than a serious attempt to tackle the most pressing problem facing human civilisation today.

It’s not serious because it can’t work. Nuclear power simply can’t generate enough energy to make a sufficient impact on CO2 emissions, especially as the calculations don’t take into account the CO2 impact of either the construction of the plants or the energy-intensive fuel extraction and processing. And building new nuclear power stations, even if they could reduce our emissions sufficiently, would be a terribly expensive and inefficient way of doing cutting emissions. Four times as much energy could be saved over the next two decades through improved efficiency than we could generate by replacing all nuclear power stations over the same period.

The energy review concedes that nuclear power alone can’t solve the problem, by calling for a “judicious mix” of new nuclear power and the increased harnessing of genuinely renewable energy. But this can’t work either, as building new nuclear power stations will lock us into a centralised electricity system for the next 50 years, at exactly the time when opportunities for microgeneration and renewables are stronger then ever before. Nuclear power will also act as a magnet for public investment – of both cash and political will – that will stifle support for alternatives.

Rather than tie us into a future of new nuclear, oil and gas-fuelled power stations, the government should be adopting the solution that is staring it in the face: decentralising energy supply. Moving away from the National Grid may sound like a drastic solution, but a radical new approach based on energy efficiency, conservation and renewable generation is surely needed if we are to both secure future energy supplies and cut the emissions that fuel climate change.

Our centralised electricity system is not merely a symbol for what needs to change. Lost heat during generation and transmission means we waste over two-thirds of primary energy generated before it even reaches our homes under the current grid system. Real energy security can only be safeguarded by decentralising the electricity grid and replacing a small number of large power stations with a large number of small, diverse and highly efficient energy sources.

This is because part of the problem is structural, such as, peaking oil and uranium supplies, aging infrastructure and high maintenance and set-up costs. Also, existing grid-based electricity supplies are vulnerable to huge power cuts such as the recent blackouts in Italy, Sweden and the US.

A decentralised system, based on a mixture of renewable generation technologies near the point of energy use would, on the other hand, improve long-term security of supplies, cut losses in power production and transmission, reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions and create local jobs.

Decentralised energy is already a reality in some EU countries. Denmark, for example, gets more than half its electricity from decentralised sources, and Latvia, Finland and the Netherlands between 35% and 40%. The UK languishes near the foot of the EU table, with just 8% coming from decentralised sources.

By concentrating on looking for a quick-fix macro solution, the government is missing the most obvious solution to the pressing problems of climate change and energy insecurity. It should be looking to those citizens who have already installed microgeneration turbines and those councils that are already requiring developers to build combined heat and power plants in new blocks. The government must facilitate this on a much larger scale before any contracts for new power stations are signed or it will be too late for another 50 years.

An Industrial Disease

Tim Holmes — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 20:16:35 +0000

So the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has arrived in Britain after winging its way around the world – not just under the self-propelled movement of wild birds, but also, it seems, the systematic and deliberate air miles notched up by a globalised poultry industry and trade in live birds. It was only a matter of time.

But whilst the government has doubtless been sharing in the collective sigh of relief over the fact that the Cellardyke swan doesn’t seem to have been the harbinger of a major outbreak, this is no time for complacency. Britain hasn’t been given the all clear, just a little more time to work out what to do about an outbreak which government scientists have declared “inevitable”.

Make no mistake: bird flu is potentially disastrous. Although it has only infected about 200 people worldwide, half of whom have died, scientist are warning it could mutate further into a form transmissible from human to human. This could, potentially, create the conditions for a repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic responsible for at least 50 million – and maybe as many as 100 million – deaths worldwide. A government contingency plan leaked last week warns that 100,000 children could die in the UK alone.

If the government is to prevent this sort of doomsday scenario, it is crucial that it uses this time to develop an understanding of the factors that cause the disease’s development and spread.

Predictably there is little sign that it is doing so. In spite of the fact that an increasing number of analysts are now making the case that the virus is spread not just under the self-propelled movement of wild birds, but also the systematic and deliberate air miles notched up by live poultry and poultry products, official policies are being based on an incomplete assumption: that H5N1 has evolved through the interaction of outdoor free-range and backyard flocks with wild birds, which then act as a vector for the strain by spreading it as they migrate.

Bird flu is endemic in wild birds in much of the world – and always has been – without leaping the species barrier and causing people any harm. Highly pathogenic strains are very rare in wild birds; one (H5N3) was first detected in South Africa more than 40 years ago, but it wasn’t until 1997 that the current highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 emerged, capable of infecting people, and already responsible for some hundred human deaths, mostly in the developing world.

Highly pathogenic viruses evolve in domestic poultry, and industrialised indoor poultry farms provide the perfect conditions: they are warm, crowded, nutrient-rich environments, heavy with “viral load”. It also seems that the spread of H5N1 has followed human trade routes, not migratory bird routes, according to a growing number of experts. The respected medical journal the Lancet, for example, reports: “ ... the geographic spread of the disease does not correlate with migratory routes and seasons. The pattern of outbreaks follows major road and rail routes, not flyways.”

Could we be unwittingly facilitating the spread of H5N1 around the world by creating a perfect vector: the international trade in live poultry products?

We certainly trade a lot of poultry products, both live birds and their “waste” – the fecal matter and feathers processed and sold on as fish farm fertiliser or animal feed, both within and beyond the EU.

Much of this trade takes the form of a bizarre great food swap, with millions of live birds passing each other as countries trade back and forth between themselves.

Britain exports almost 10m kg of poultry and eggs to Ireland every year for example – and in the same year we import some 6.5m. We “swap” 1.1m kg of live birds for 1.9m kg from France, which last month confirmed its first case of H5N1 in a domestic poultry flock. Almost 3m kg of birds are traded back – and forth – between the UK and the Netherlands, according to HM Customs figures for 2005.

And we don’t confine the bizarre trade to EU countries: until a recent ban was imposed in response to the latest human deaths from bird flu, EU imports of poultry products from Brazil and Thailand were significant and rising.

And, though the relatively small number of cases and lack of information mean no links have been established in the EU (yet), the evidence from Cambodia, Nigeria and China is that new outbreaks of bird flu have coincided with the import of live poultry products, rather than the arrival of wild birds.

Of course wild birds play a role in spreading the virus: as they come into contact with poultry some species pass on the milder, endemic form of the virus – and after it has mutated into its highly pathogenic form they catch it back and spread it to other nearby flocks. But, as BirdLife International put it, wild birds are primarily victims rather then vectors of H5N1. They say many questions remain concerning the effects of the virus on wild birds and how efficiently they can spread it to other wild birds or to domestic poultry. They point out that, with the exception of the Rügen Island outbreak in Germany, which killed over 100 wild birds, the incidents reported in Europe this spring involve single birds or very small numbers.

Clearly we need more research to better understand what role the trade in industrially produced poultry has in the spread of the virus. But in the meantime we must adopt a precautionary approach based on relocalising the poultry sector, stopping the great poultry swap and devising and introducing transitional measures to make sure farmers and those in the developing world don’t suffer unduly as a result.

In the short term, the government’s priority must be to prevent the disease spreading to poultry farms by culling any domestic flocks that do become infected and vaccinating those nearby to ringfence any infection.

Any large-scale move to ordering free-range farmers to coop their birds up indoors will increase overcrowding and stress amongst poultry at the same time as reducing their natural immunity to viral infection.

In the longer term, we must seek to close the international trade in wild birds and relocalise our poultry industry, but that would require a revision of the WTO and EU rules, and that’s just too radical a prospect for many. It’s much easier to blame wild birds and the backyard and small-scale farmers than place the global agri-business sector under the spotlight. We must also be prepared to give real support to less developed countries to help them deal with the virus, especially those in Africa and Asia more dependent on poultry as a source of protein, and where immunity is compromised due to HIV/AIDS and the effects of poverty.

Failing to tackle the root causes of pathogenic bird flu could be devastating. As Professor Mike Davis writes in The Monster at our Door, backyard poultry and wild birds are acting as the fuse, but it’s the indoor intensively farmed flocks which are the explosive charge.

Putting out the current fuse might hold back the explosion for now, but it still leaves the potential for the charge to detonate – with devastating consequences – later.

Climate Demo Speech

Alex Doherty — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 14:07:27 +0000

Speaking to 10000 demonstrators outside the US embassy in London, on International Climate Change Day, 3rd December 2005

This is easily the largest ever demonstration against climate change in this country.

We are standing here outside the US embassy, because George Bushs refusal to act on climate change makes him guilty of crimes against humanity. (wild applause) But if George Bush is guilty, let us not forget our own prime minister, Tony Blair, is a very active accomplice in that crime as well (wild applause).

We have a message for Tony Blair, and our message is very clear, ( a shout from the crowd: fuck off, general laughter) Climate change is a far greater threat than international terrorism: climate change is itself a weapon of mass destruction. And if Tony Blair had spent a fraction of the resources and commitment that he spends on an illegal war in Iraq, instead of tackling climate change; then we might genuinely have a chance of a safer world.

And so we demand immediate and urgent action, now! (wild applause) this is the Prime Minister who says that climate change is the biggest threat that we face, who says he is going to show global leadership on it: well, he had better get his domestic house in order first. Because under this Prime Minister and this government, greenhouse gas emissions have risen, not fallen. This is a Prime Minister who personally intervened in a row between the Environment Ministry and the Trade Ministry, and he intervened in the row on the side of big business to allow them to emit more greenhouse gas emissions. This is a Prime Minister under whom aviation capacity is going to see a huge expansion, and who has embarked on a massive road building program. Well, this doesnt look like global leadership to me. (wild applause)

The reality of climate change is a devastating one, and it is one that will hit the poorest people hardest. It is the reality that we are sleep walking towards, because most people, and almost all politicians are in a state of denial. The targets set by governments, or by the Kyoto protocol are hopelessly inadequate. Even worse our own government seems to have given up even on the idea of targets. Tony Blair was quoted a few weeks ago saying that legally binding targets make people nervous and worried. Well we have news for you Tony Blair; the absence of legally binding targets makes a lot more people a lot more nervous and a lot more worried. (wild applause)

Even more astonishingly, Margaret Becket has called targets imperialist. But the real imperialism is for rich countries to carry on with business as usual, knowing that the poorest countries will pay the price for our livelihoods with their lives, and the lives of their children. (wild applause) And under contraction and convergence, and lets give a huge round of applause for that (applause). Contraction and Convergence is about a fair and equitable way of making cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in a way that means the poorest countries dont suffer from it. That is the way we need to follow, and nationally we need a system of carbon allocation as well, so all of us have a domestic carbon allocation and quota. To make the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions not of 60% but of the 80% or 90% that we need. It will take nothing short of a revolution of our economy, a revolution of our planning system and our transport system, and the way in which we produce and consume. But watch my lips Tony Blair: that does not mean nuclear power. (wild applause)

Those of us who campaigned against the war in Iraq will find something strangely familiar here, about the tactics being used to persuade us that nuclear is necessary. First we have the contrived panic, about an energy crisis and gas supply, that is followed by a series of Downing Street anonymous briefings. And now the energy review: a dodgy dossier, full of misleading statements and lies, designed to give Blair the pretext he needs to implement a policy on nuclear that he has already decided upon. And just like the invasion of Iraq, the energy review will be used like the dodgy dossier to take us down the nuclear road. But our message to Tony Blair is simple: nuclear power is uneconomic, it is unsafe, it is unpopular. If nuclear power is the answer, it must have been a very stupid question. (applause).

The European Union could save some 40% of its energy demand by efficiency measures alone. Half of our remaining energy needs could be met by renewables by 2050, and yet it is true that the technical measures alone will not be enough. We need a completely different economic system, based not on ever increasing economic growth, but on meeting peoples real needs. (wild applause) There are compelling reasons to go in that direction, because the global peak in oil production is likely to occur sooner than many expect. Some think it could be happening now, or in just a few short years. But whether it is 5 years away or 25 years away, it is clear we have to end our addiction to oil. Because with oil prices set to rise, the likelihood of wars and conflicts over oil increases. A large scale switch to renewables is a move towards peace, and away from the chaos and conflict that oil exploration brings with it. And our message is: no to the human rights abuses that go along with oil exploration, and no to oil wars. (wild applause)

Let me finish by saying that there are some people who say that demonstrations like this make no difference, there was even an article in yesterdays Guardian saying that people could do better by staying at home. (Cries of rubbish and boos from the crowd.). Yes personal action is important, but we need a political framework of legally binding targets that mean that everybody moves in that direction. So we will go on fighting until we succeed, good on you all for being here, and we will make a difference!

Caroline Lucas is an MEP and principal speaker for the Green Party