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Conservatives have opportunity to introduce a green agenda
Tony Juniper, Guardian
The Conservative party’s quality of life policy group will later this week publish their proposals for action on environmental challenges, especially climate change. This is an important watershed, as it will set out for the first time under the present leadership a detailed Conservative plan for how it is possible to go low-carbon while maintaining good living standards.
The policy proposals will of course all be scrutinised, and they will be individually assessed for what benefits they might deliver. Collectively, however, the proposals will need to do a wider political job of bridging the great chasm between what is necessary and what is acceptable. Although there is an increasing awareness and acceptance of the need to slash emissions, some of the actions needed to do this remain surprisingly controversial. Hysterical headlines about bins and recycling, the imaginary war on motorists and the propaganda against wind turbines are among a familiar mix of topics that often substitute for informed debate and stifle bold policy making.
If David Cameron and his party are to successfully move on the discussion about climate change and natural resource conservation, they will need to anticipate these and other predictable reactions and to take the initiative. Cameron can do this by being the first of the main party leaders to set out the positive vision of how life could be in a greener society.
(10 September 2007)
Related: Tory green package targets short-haul flights and landfill.
Turn off the TV and join the Tory green revolution
John Gummer, Observer
Individuals as much as governments must help in sustaining our increasingly beleaguered planet
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We live in a joined-up world and yet we organise our lives in silos. The imperative of global warming demands we change that approach utterly – not just governments, but businesses, groups and individuals. If we are to create a way of living that one planet can sustain, then water, waste, transport and energy, as well as farming, food, fishing and the built environment – have to be thought through as a whole. That’s what we have been doing over the past 18 months in the Quality of Life Policy Group. Five hundred or more people have worked on the report that we publish this week.
Cutting our emissions by 80 per cent in fewer than 50 years demands a universal response. But it is the rich countries which have caused the problem and profited most from the pollution, so we have to provide the solutions. We won’t succeed unless China and India join in, but we can’t expect the poor to pick up the baton before we have even run the first lap. Nor can Britain stand on the sidelines, reminding the world that the US produces 25 per cent of the world’s pollution with less than 5 per cent of its population.
President Bush has been a disaster, but that doesn’t let us off the hook. The UK has a huge carbon footprint. It’s our historic pollution that is causing much of today’s climate chaos.
John Gummer is a Conservative MP and a former Environment Secretary.
(9 September 2007)
American conservatives, please take note: this is the party of Margaret Thatcher. -BA
Kunstler: Letter from an employee in the British oil industry
Anonymous, Kunstler’s “Daily Grunt”
Dear Mr Kunstler,
As someone who works in the UK oil industry, I thought you might be interested in a view of how prepared the UK is for possible (!) future oil shortages.I have just finished a stint as an engineer [company name removed to protect identity of writer] on the Forties pipeline terminal. Prior to that position I had spent some 30 years working in various parts of the oil and nuclear sectors as a chemical/process engineer.
The career outlined above has enabled me to gain an acute insight of how the UK oil industry is preparing for the (dim) future. Essentially the oil industry is abandoning the UK. BP has either sold-off or closed all its UK refineries ( the last one to go was their Grangemouth refinery) and now only retains the Forties & Sullom Voe interests. Shell is planning to swap over to Middle-east crude around 2011 at its single remaining UK refinery and is busy selling off most of its European refineries. Any questions as to whether any Middle-east crude will be available to the UK in 2011 are studiously ignored in Shell. The general attitude is one of, ‘Since we will need the oil, it will be available’. All of the above points to the oil companies foreseeing a pretty bleak future for their UK and European refining operations.
Within BP, the message from senior management is that their Forties terminal will still be in operation 20 years from now. What they fail to mention, even to their own employees is just how little oil and gas will be coming out of the North sea then. This is quite weird given that North Sea production dropped another 10% last year, despite Buzzard crude coming ashore. The value of that oil will certainly sustain the future of the terminal, they just might not be able to send the petrol tankers out too far. Quite cute really.
With much of the thinking inside the UK oil industry often delusional, outside of it we pretty much in La-La land.
(4 September 2007)
New nuclear row as green groups pull out
John Vidal, The Guardian
Britain’s leading environmental groups are poised to formally withdraw from a government consultation today that will determine whether ministers will be able to push ahead with plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations.
The coalition which was asked to provide evidence to inform the debate believes the government has failed to fairly reflect the arguments for presentations that will be given to more than 1,100 members of the public that are due to start tomorrow.
The process was forced upon the government by the high court, which ruled in February that a previous consultation was “seriously flawed” and “manifestly inadequate and unfair”. At least six groups, including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and Green Alliance, claim the government is distorting the evidence and say they are considering whether to take the case to court again.
The accusations are damaging because the government is bound by its own guidelines to keep an open mind on new nuclear power stations until after the “fullest public consultation”. If the government is forced into a third consultation it could delay major energy decisions being made for at least a year.
(7 September 2007)
