So the fallout continues apace from last week's elections -- and the first casualty looks like being the environment.
First, the pathetic performance of the Greens in the London mayoral result (even with the ideal opportunity for a gesture vote on the first round) showed a measly 3.15% support. Not exactly a sign of the power of the Green movement to make more traditional parties quake in their electoral boots.
Second, the fact that Ken seemed to get no political kudos from his ambitious climate change targets in a London debate that focused on crime, corruption and bendy buses. Not a single question at the debate I went to on Monday.
Third, the promised Boris review of the congestion charge. As the drivers of gas guzzlers sleep more easily that they will be able to terrorise the rest of us off the streets, the review could be good news... skip the misguided view that some cars are OK in central London; review the absurd westward extension which has given the residents of W8 and SW3 a licence to drive at a discount into the centre while penalising all the residents of poorer neighbouring boroughs... but the risk is that this is all seen about easing the burden on motorists. And Boris seems to regard cycling as something to be confined to eccentric old Etonians and tourists -- not as something to be mainstreamed through London.
And finally, already briefings coming out that the listening and learning puts questionmarks over waste charging; the fuel duty rise (decision not needed until September... so why decide now?) and a suggestion that the PM should give up his passion for Africa and climate change. Not clear that Thursday's election results suggested that Africa was any nearer stability and prosperity, nor that climate change is any less of a threat.
We are clearly back into the stage of the political cycle where everything has to be calibrated against the backdrop of minute short-term political calculation - or at least everything except anti-terrorist measures. So the environment goes into cold storage to wait for happier times to return. Or is there anyone - outside the marginalised green movement - up for arguing that the environment is important, even when we aren't all feeling rich and bouncy?
2 comments:
A few other things likely to get the chop...
1. Biofuels (okay, for good reasons) - but will there be compensating measures to save the equivalent carbon? Ministers were (once) fond of saying that the biofuel target was like taking a million cars off the road.
2. Weakening stance on the various stealth measures that add to energy prices: emissions trading, climate change levy, renewables obligation, carbon reduction obligation.
3. Safe passage for licensing new coal plants ...
4. A weak environmental package in the water pricing review 2009
5. Slowing of investment in major capital projects - the Thames super-sewer, and, god forbid, the Severn Barrage
...
You have the grim truth correctly - as a nation we are, at best, fair-weather environmentalists and the assumptions about our capacity to tackle things like climate change are way too optimistic.
How long until the Government bows to demands to reduce the environmental conditions on new housing? Penny to a pound of carbon that the Chancellor's announcement to consult on zero carbon non-domestic new build will be shoved into the long green grass.
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