Green is the new, errr?

[peaky]

I've posted this already under a different conext but felt it might be usefully posted here too. This is an extract from the recent Green Party conference keynote speech by Caroline Lucas MEP. The entire text is here: http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2691

"Other Parties Greenery

But just before I finish, let me say a few words about the other parties, and their new-found green rhetoric.

Journalists have been asking me in recent weeks, haven't the Tories and the Liberal Democrats stolen all your green clothes? Aren't you worried?

We aren't worried about other parties adopting genuine solutions to environmental problems - if only they were. What we're worried about is that they'll deceive the voting public into thinking that's what they're doing, when in fact their actions are going in exactly the opposite direction.

Because with the Liberal Democrats, it's the same old story - a huge and yawning gulf between their words and their action.

Take their new pledges on using taxes to curb aviation growth. It's a good first start, and yet we know that up and down the country, Libdem Councillors are promoting the expansion of airports, from Manchester to Liverpool, from Exeter to Sheffield. And when I challenged environment spokesperson Chris Huhne to commit his Party to promoting a reduction in the total number of UK flights, he - strangely - refused to give it.

Or take David Cameron, who would have us believe that "green growth' is the answer to the environmental crisis we face. The idea that there could be any conflict at all between environmental protection and economic growth is, according to him, so "last century".

It is only the Green Party that says clearly and unequivocally, that we cannot seriously address the major environmental challenges we face, chief among them climate change, using the same economic paradigm that caused the problem in the first place.

If anyone is in any doubt about that, consider the increasing evidence that the era of cheap, abundant 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 vital role to play, on their own, they will simply be unable to offset the continuing increases in global consumption.

The Green Party has been promoting policies to address these issues for many years. To demonstrate my point, let me read you the following:

"In the long run, all nations will have to learn how to manage the demands of their people in a steady-state economy. The characteristics of such an economy are clear; reduced industrial throughput, greater self-reliance and sustainability through largely decentralized economic activity, maximised use of renewable resources and conservation of non-renewable resources, a far-reaching distribution of wealth, land and the means of production, with the possibility of more fulfilling, personally satisfying work, all set within a more co-operatively based framework, and enhanced by the use of new technologies where they complement the above features."

Well that was from an old Ecology Party booklet on employment: published twenty-six years ago!

So while it's taken the best part of 30 years for the other parties to even begin to start asking the right questions - we can only hope that it's not going to be another 30 years before they start adopting the right answers. Because the reality, of course, is that we don't have the luxury of time. The Tyndall Report published just last week emphasised that if we don't get a policy framework in place in the next 4 years, our chances of avoiding the worst of climate change will be dramatically reduced. That means that climate change needs to be treated not just as an environment issue, or an economic issue, but as an issue of national and indeed international security. Even the Pentagon now admits that climate change is a far greater threat to our future than international terrorism, and government advisers on both sides of the Atlantic are recognising that climate change is, itself, a Weapon of Mass Destruction. We urgently need a far-reaching policy framework - based on both fiscal measures and regulation - to get us onto a more sustainable path as soon as possible. Of course individual action is also essential - but without a binding legislative framework, we simply won't be able to make the changes quickly enough. And that's why it's so important that we have real political leadership now. Governments do have the power to make a real difference. This government could have used its power to introduce precisely the policy framework we desperately need - and in failing to use it, they are guilty - quite literally - of criminal irresponsibility."

And we now have this to add: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5400084.stm