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Vote blue get blue – Tories and climate change
Posted by Claire Spencer (@thedancingflea)
Friday, 4th December 2009
With Copenhagen looming, I took a trip to London on Tuesday to celebrate the launch of a new pamphlet (party!) from SERA – a Labour-affiliated group that seeks to find solutions that bridge the social and environmental movements. ‘The Road to Copenhagen – The Progressive Case for Climate Action’ is a set of essays that emphasise how the progressive left is leading the debate on the response to climate change. The launch, which was a joint effort between SERA and Progress, had David Miliband (eventually – he’s a busy man) as the main speaker, and he raised several interesting points. He emphasised what experience has shown – that market mechanisms, left to their own devices, contain built-in incentives for environmental degradation. Much to my delight, he emphasised the importance of the EU, its political weight and its ambitious targets for Copenhagen, and drew up some valuable distinctions between environmentalism and climate change.
But what interested me the most was the remarks he made about the Conservative Party. He said that we had to be grown-up about their stance – if they say that they accept the scientific evidence available as proof of the reality of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), then we should welcome that stance. As progressives, our stance is not that we think those on the right do not believe in AGW – but rather that the left just has better policies.
I agree with all these things (natch) – but it’s hard to welcome a stance that doesn’t seem to exist on any meaningful scale. Take David Davis – on one hand he says that climate change is “probably” caused by human activity. And to give him his dues, this is all anyone can say with any confidence. Of course, then he ruins all his good work by saying that “the ferocious determination to impose hair-shirt policies on the public – taxes on holiday flights, or covering our beautiful countryside with wind turbines that look like props from War of the Worlds – is bound to cause a reaction in any democratic country.”
Such messages are very damaging. He is saying “I am a man who understands that there are human causes of climate change, and we should be able to carry on behaving exactly as we have been.” That message has no basis in reality. You cannot believe in AGW and also believe that we, as humans, don’t have to change anything. I would have a lot more respect for a person who showed their cards and said “I do not believe in AGW, for these reasons”, or who had proposed viable alternatives to onshore wind, flight taxes, etc. But he hasn’t. He doesn’t. He expresses distaste for the measures proposed, makes one example about how micro-generation is often overlooked, and goes on his merry way.
I have no problem with working with and listening to Conservatives who do not echo my exact views on how we should solve the issues surrounding climate change – I have no authority to say my views on such things are superior, and I truly welcome more information – but if those same Conservatives are misrepresenting their expertise and their stance, with the effect that people are being fed false ideas and information, I can’t just nod along and go “oh well, at least you accept AGW”. Because words are cheap without actions that support them, and it takes a lot of action to undo harmful words from people of influence.
