There could have been no clearer warning of the devastating effects of climate change. The floods, and the Prime Minister’s welcome (if belated) recognition of the seriousness of the environmental crisis, has helped to shift the terms of the debate about fuel tax and revive the debate about renewables and alternative fuels. But we have a long way to go. And we need to remember that there’s more to a sound environmental policy than simply responding to climate change.
Tony Blair’s recent speech to the CBI/Green Alliance conference laid out the framework on which we can build. But there are some gaps to be filled – and some contradictions. I want to propose ten priorities to make New Labour greener.
First, the Climate Change Levy has been a huge achievement, but all of the revenues need to be recycled into incentives for fuel efficiency and renewables.
Second, on vehicle taxation we need stronger incentives and deterrents. A higher rate VAT on luxury cars hypothecated to financing 100 percent grants for LPG conversions of smaller cars, for example, would sharpen the debate about fuel emissions.
Third, on energy we must set five yearly targets for both renewables and fuel efficiency until 2050. Revenues from VAT on fuel should be recycled to support the development of alternative fuels and new technologies. We should plan for a carbon tax.
Fourth, research on nuclear technologies must continue, but we need a timetable for closure of almost all the existing nuclear power plants. We need to prepare for the end of nuclear reprocessing after 2004 and stop pretending that the international plutonium trade is a matter entirely for market forces.
Fifth, we need an absolute ban on new build in the green belt other than low cost housing for families working locally. We must start building high quality tower blocks, create more urban parks and gardens and establish a twenty year programme to exclude traffic from the inner core of every town and city.
Sixth, in agriculture we need to recruit a new generation of (non-whingeing) farmers, gardeners and conservationists committed to organic farming and the protection of biodiversity. Doubling the tax on red diesel, from 3p to 6p a litre, could create a new Agricultural Innovation Fund to encourage organics, co-operatives, local farmers’ markets and conservation and biodiversity projects, thus sorting out the subsidy junkies from the entrepreneurs.
Seventh, GM research must continue, in the laboratory and in the field, but must be clearly segregated from agricultural activity. If GM foods are eventually declared safe, biotechnology factories should be developed and their products clearly labelled as ‘industrial food’.
Eighth, our environment is the product of our economics and our economy is increasingly irrational and destructive. It’s time we stopped working the unworkable and settled on a four day, 35-hour week, backed by a huge expansion of local lifelong learning and work-based training to increase productivity and capability.
Ninth, we need to decentralise our political and economic structures even further and to direct public and private investment to the cities of the North and the South West, thus strengthening regional identities and reducing the pressure to build even more suburban wasteland in the South East.
Tenth, the insanity of mass commuting in Britain is paralleled by the anarchy of the globalised marketplace and the wanton destruction of the planet’s most important natural resources. We need to continue the pressure for IMF/World Bank reform, place sustainable development at the heart of their activities and establish legally binding codes of practice for multinational corporations.
Most of those ideas already reflect the Government’s general approach. But we need to move more quickly and decisively if events, and public opinion, are not to pass us by.
There will come a time, however, and it may be sooner rather than later, when we have to confront even more profound questions. Have we reached capacity in our mass transit systems in respect of both speed and safety? To what extent is our economic madness a direct cause of family and community breakdown? Are there social and environmental limits to economic growth after all?
Is it hopelessly naïve to suggest that these could form the basis of the Prime Minister’s speech to next year’s CBI/Green Alliance conference?