What’s happened to climate change?
◆ Absence of green agenda in election coverage exposes most major parties’ complacency, writes Dr Richard Dixon
If you have been watching the leaders’ debates and the announcements from political parties, you may be wondering what’s happened to climate change.
A recent poll showed that two-thirds of people in Scotland think that the issue should be a high priority for the government, yet it has been almost completely absent from the election debate, both here and at the UK level.
There are, of course, commitments in the manifestoes. Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and Greenpeace have analysed the pledges made by the main parties. Not surprisingly, they found the Greens have the best policies on nature and the environment. Then came the Lib Dems, with Labour some way behind, and then – a long way behind – the Tories.
The Greens outlined strong plans to invest in renewables, green homes, public transport and nature restoration, in part, funded by taxes on wealth and on polluting companies.
The Lib Dems would also invest in warmer homes, public transport, renewable energy, with fair tax reforms targeting the super rich. However, they would not try to curb the expansion of North Sea oil and gas.
Labour’s big pledge is to create Great British Energy, not something you’ll actually be buying your electricity from, but an organisation to stimulate clean energy projects – although for Labour this includes nuclear, which could easily absorb most of its budget for no benefits at all.
They would also invest in green homes and put an end to the issuing of new oil and gas licenses. However, reneging on their earlier promise to spend £28 billion a year on green measures still haunts them.
The Tories continue to chase every last drop of oil and gas in the North Sea, as well as promising to build new gas-fired power stations.
Friends of the Earth Scotland also analysed the SNP manifesto. They liked strong words on the Just Transition and commitments to further public ownership of railways, but found it wanting when it came to ending fossil fuel extraction from the North Sea, following a retreat from Nicola Sturgeon’s strong position against new oil and gas.
Reform UK were not included in these analyses, although they actually made a feature of talking about climate change, but only to claim that they could cut billions of public expenditure by abandoning all plans for net-zero. Of course, in this analysis, they ignored all positive financial and jobs benefits of zero policies, for instance, reducing household energy bills and creating jobs in renewable energy.
If you are interested in a world free from the threat of nuclear war, you’ll be pretty disappointed. Only the Greens and the SNP would get rid of nuclear weapons, while the Tories, Labour, and the Lib Dems would maintain the “deterrent”.
Labour would enthusiastically invest in more Trident submarines so we can keep our weapons of mass destruction cruising about. If only they were led by a former human rights lawyer…
Nature, the environment and climate change are very important to voters – especially to young voters – so the reluctance of most major parties to talk about the topic could be a massive mistake in relation to future support.