Guest Post:: Climate Politics in Australia

Thanks to Dwight Towers for this very useful and comrehensive guest post on climate politics in Australia, a hot topic in more ways than one. Incidentally, a few people have told me they've not been able to leave a comment in the last few days. Apologies. Hopefully everything is back to normal now though so do give it another try.

Climate Politics in Australia seem to me, a recently returned ex-pat, both fascinating and depressing. The Labor Government, only in power with the agreement of a small band of independents and a Green, are trying to push through a carbon tax that will morph into an emissions scheme. The Opposition, led by a man whose position on the reality of climate change changes from day to day, is calling for an election on the issue. Meanwhile, the “climate movement” is punching below its weight and is – by the admission of knowledgeable participants – all at sea.

As little history as I think you'll read.

The history of White Settlement in Australia is a litany of careless extraction. Whether it was cutting down trees in, extracting the value of the soil via sheep and cattle or mining and exporting gold, the economy and mindset has always been one of pillaging natural resources and worrying about the consequences later, if at all. If you look at topsoil loss, salination and extinction of species, Australia has a record to shout about.

Australia avoided recession during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2010, partly because the thirst for Australia's mineral and energy exports in Asia seems unquenchable (though it's a myth that China burns much Australian coal – the majority is actually send to India?), and the “must export every last lump of coal or we will all starve” perception remains. Guy Pearse, a forming mining lobbyist, refers to this as Australia's “Quarry Vision.”

At the same time, water and fertile land are scarce “commodities,” and the recent floods in Queensland and parts of Victoria are only the latest indication of economic vulnerability to ecological events. A very long drought has only just broken.

Climate change politics from the 1990s to now, in two minutes

The Hawke-Keating governments of 1983-1996 (think Blair/Brown only the ambitious Treasurer, both luckier and bolder than Gordo) made some of the right noises but basically kicked climate change into the long grass. There were, as remains the case today, many votes in coal and virtually none in solar panels. Liberal Prime Minister John Howard's attitude to climate change was pretty much exactly George Bush's, and he was an eager participant in the extra-UNFCCC “spoiler” outfit known as the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (which, as of 5 April 2011, has “concluded its work”)

Howard went into the 2007 election with a proposal for a domestic cap-and-trade scheme, but at the time Australia was in the grip of a long drought, and Howard's credibility on climate change (and other issues) was not high. Labor’s Kevin Rudd came to power, signed Kyoto and went to the Bali negotiations as the great new hope. Before the election he had said “Climate change is the great moral challenge of our generation.”

He bargained intensively with the (conservative) opposition about bringing in an emissions trading scheme. Their leader, Malcolm Turnbull, was unable to convince the mix of climate skeptics and mining interests of the merits of the case and he was overthrown in December 2009 by Tony Abbott.

Months later, Rudd was faced with a choice of either dumping the attempt to bring in an emissions trading scheme or calling an election. He dumped the scheme and his poll numbers collapsed (the mining industry had also been up in arms about a proposed new tax, and spent heavily on scare-mongering). He was replaced, in an internal Labor Party coup, by Julia Gillard, the current PM. There was an election in July last year that resulted in a hung Parliament. Gillard runs a government with a very, very slender majority which is dependent on the support of the Greens (who have been eating away at the Labor Party's vote for a decade or so).

Gillard is worried about losing votes to the Greens, so has been slagging them off as “not understanding family values” (this is completely unrelated, of course, to the fact that Greens leader Bob Brown is gay).

Tony Abbott had the best comment on this “if they're so extreme, why are you in coalition with them?”

The Greens take the balance of power in the Australian Senate (which is not  at all like the House of Lords) in July.

Why do I tell you this soap opera? Well, partly because it's a soap opera. And to make the point thatthe politics of climate change in Australia have already toppled two party leaders. As I write this, the media is reporting that Turnbull has criticised Abbott's climate policies publicly. (Abbott's policies, so-called “direct action” amount to faith in technology and government subsidies for polluters, with households bearing the cost!)

Business as Usual

Meanwhile, business lobbies are split, as they are in the rest of the developed world. The most exposed sectors (the so-called “emissions-intensive trade-exposed” industries) are muttering about lost jobs and moving their businesses overseas (though they're less clear on how exactly you move a coal mine!)

Gillard is wooing the more “pro-action” sections of the Business Council of Australia (the Australian equivalent of the CBI) and asking them to speak up for her scheme

The Australian media is not doing a great job in reporting this, to put it mildly. The business press (I'm thinking specifically of the Australian Financial Review) is noticeably more partisan than the UK Financial Times which, while unabashedly pro-capitalist, eschews ideology-drench opinion dressed as news). The Murdoch press (The Australian, the (Melbourne) Sun-Herald, the (Sydney) Telegraph, the Adelaide Advertiser to name but the most embarrassing) is full of scare stories and denialist memes (which sits oddly with Newscorp’s proud boast of its carbon neutral status, and James Murdoch's much vaunted conviction that climate action is essential).

The main attention of political economic and media elites is at the moment focussed on the carbon tax, specifically on what price per tonne it would start at. (Analyses by the pro-renewables thinktank “Beyond Zero Emissions”  and the Climate Institute agree that a carbon price of anything less than 50 to 70 dollars a tonne would see at best a shift from coal to (“cleaner”) gas-fired power stations). A shift to 100% renewable energy in the next ten years is, according to BZE, both technologically and financially possible. But given the current parlous state of the climate movement in Australia, it does not seem politically possible.

Climate Movement soul-searching

The "treetops' climate outfits have banded together in a loose and issue-based coalition as the "POP Eleven"  (POP standing for Price on Pollution) to push for a carbon price.  There are, inevitably, tensions in that coalition, but for now they seem to be managing to keep their show on the road.

Meanwhile, the grassroots are pondering their place and their power. Two excellent pieces have recently been written by knowledgeable participants within the climate movement about the failures of climate activism. The first is by Holly Creenaune, a member of Friends of the Earth Sydney (much more radical and grassroots than the UK version).

In part she writes...

“Bad policy aside, it's the debate – or lack of it – that is the real problem. The public cannot participate in a discussion about a perfect price or the market that could work magic: the debate is inaccessible, ignores concerns about justice, and is not relevant to our daily lives. We've been stuck for decades in a media and policy vacuum of neoliberal market mechanisms and a contest over complex science. Real solutions, community voices, or the elephant in the room – our coal exports – are locked out. It suits government and industry to keep the debate on this limited terrain – but we desperately need to build a message and a movement that can reject false solutions like carbon trading, halt privatisation of energy infrastructure, and put forward new ideas.”

The second is by Anna Rose, one of the founders of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition (a more mainstream lobbying outfit – sort of like “Stop Climate Chaos,” only effective.)

“But the time has come to be honest. We are failing because as a whole the Australian environment movement does not understand power, has not built power, and has failed to effectively exercise the power we have built.

"To win campaigns we have to make it harder for those in power to continue with business as usual than it is for them to give into our demands. Yet currently, it’s easier or politicians to continue with business as usual, and to give in to the demands of industry lobbyists from the coal, gas, mining, aluminium, cement and electricity generation industries — everyone, that is, except us.”

Meanwhile, the real elephant in the room, as Holly calls it, is the carbon in Australia's exports of coal (and liquified natural gas). These exports are set to expand rapidly in the coming decades. Legally, according to the UNFCCC, the emissions are the responsibility of the country that burns them. That argument is unsatisfactory to some, such as the direct action group Rising Tide Australia, which recently installed solar panels on the office of the Federal Climate Change Minister.

They're doing their best, but the issue is just not “thinkable” yet.

My predictions? 
 

Well, with the usual caveat that their value is extremely limited, I think that, barring accidents, some sort of tax/emissions trading scheme will come into play, but with so many loopholes and get-outs as to be useless (think the European ETS in its first phase). There will not be a shift away from coal – there is too much inertia in the political and economic and cultural systems for that.

The opposition will continue to make political capital out of it, and the denialists and culture warriors will not go away until the effects of climate change are literally undeniable.

Lastly, I don't see the climate movement reflecting and innovating and creating the forms of political and social pressure and space that make any other alternatives possible. On this last point I hope I am wrong, will act as if I am wrong, and try to act so that I make myself wrong.

See also

Guy Pearse Quarry Vision

http://www.quarterlyessay.com/issue/quarry-vision-coal-climate-change-and-end-resources-boom

Club Troppo

http://clubtroppo.com.au/category/climate-change/

Larvatus Prodeo

http://larvatusprodeo.net/category/science/

Journal of Australian Political Economy issue 66 (December 2010)

http://www.jape.org/content/view/24/1/

Guest Post: Relocating London

This is a guest post from Douglas Coker, and absolutely rock solid Green in Enfield. A great start to the discussion on what climate change means for our cities.

London is under threat. Key parts of central London are built on a flood plain. A stretch of the South Bank, including part of Southwark, and Docklands are examples. The extent and timescale of the threat are difficult to predict exactly but at some point in the future low lying parts of London run an increasing risk of being flooded.

The North Sea flood of 1953 in which thousands of lives were lost in the Low Countries and Suffolk and Essex was a warning. This prompted the building of the Thames Barrier during the 1970s. It became operational in 1982 and has been used with increased frequency over subsequent years. Currently the Barrier protects billions of pounds of infrastructure including buildings, parts of the underground network and electricity distribution facilities. Some experts expect it to be fit-for-purpose until 2030, others say 2060 or later.

Now global warming and rising sea levels are increasing the threat. Add a repeat of the 1953 event with a storm surge bringing huge volumes of water up the Thames and the Barrier failing. In addition consider this. The Thames catchment area extends as far as Basingstoke, Swindon, Banbury and Luton. Imagine exceptionally heavy rainfall in this area and the subsequent large volumes of water travelling downriver to London just as the storm surge arrives from the sea. You don’t want to be strolling along the South Bank or travelling in a tube under the Thames when this happens! OK enough scary stuff. What do we do about this?

Big cities need big infrastructure and these projects should last for hundreds of years. Take Bazalgette’s sewer system. The combination of the Thames being used as an open sewer and an unusually hot summer in 1858 gave rise to the Great Stink so awful that members of the House of Commons considered relocating upstream to Hampton Court. Joseph Bazalgette was commissioned to build a substantial London sewer system to carry the offending effluent down river. We still depend on this today in part due to Bazalgette’s deployment of the precautionary principle. He doubled the size of the sewer tunnels to future proof them. What an example he set. His sewers will have a lifetime measured in hundreds of years.

Bazalgette could not have been expected to know about global warming back in the 1850s. But we are all too aware now. Why are we continuing to construct large civil engineering projects, including infrastructure and buildings in vulnerable areas? I question whether we should be building, the Thames Gateway project, the Olympic Games site, Crossrail and the Super Sewer. Huge amount of concrete and steel will go into these projects with all their attendant CO2 emissions and all or part of these projects are in areas of London increasingly vulnerable to flooding. Projects which should last, not mere tens of years, but hundreds of years should surely not be built in areas which within 50 or maybe 100 years will be inundated with water.

The London Thames Gateway development has the insurance industry worried. They are reluctant to insure homes and shops unless extra measures are taken to protect against flooding. Maybe the buildings should be built on stilts! The Olympic Games site is in the Lea Valley an area which has experienced flooding in recent decades. Measures have been put in place to prevent flooding of the site but will they prove to be adequate?

Crossrail is intended to transport commuters at high speed from Maidenhead in the west to Stratford and Canary Wharf and other places in the east. Putting aside the question of whether this is a good idea in principle this huge civil engineering project will run through and to parts of London vulnerable to flooding at some point in the future. Whether in tunnels or on the surface how is this to be protected?

Finally the Super Sewer, or more correctly the Thames Tunnel, is intended to extend for 20 miles from west to east to help prevent sewage entering the Thames when we have increasingly heavy rain (caused by climate change) overwhelming the Victorian sewage system (built by Bazalgette). All this diverted sewage is intended to end up in a sewage works at Beckton which, situated on the north bank of the Thames estuary, is right in the firing line of a surge of flood water heading up river for London! Surely a better plan is to remove all impervious surfaces in front gardens, car parks and similar places, install soak-aways and encourage the maximum use of water-butts and other storage containers before boring a huge tunnel under the Thames.

Global warming and climate change have received less attention than warranted as we experience an economic depression. But let’s not forget the economy is a sub-set of the environment and business-as-usual thinking needs to be challenged. We should not be pursuing developments which take little if any account of the prospect of London and the Thames estuary flooding. We need a new planning regime which sets strict criteria informed by a proper understanding of the risks to London from a rise in sea-level and large volumes of water. We need to plan to give places back to the river and sea as they are ultimately not protectable.

Relocate London? We need a plan for relocating vulnerable parts of London on a timescale which will prevent foreseeable disasters.

Japan Swept by Natural Disaster

I'm sure everyone who's watched the unfolding events in Japan has been just as horrified as I have. The earthquake and tidal wave that followed are a stark reminder of the power of the planet we inhabit.

Hundreds dead, thousands missing and an as yet unknown long term toxic an polluting impact across a highly populated area. Trains, planes, ships and cars have been swept away like so many toys.

The Fukushima nuclear power plant was caught up in the catastrophe raising the possibility of leak as cooling systems shut down and the station switched to battery power. We certainly wish the authorities the best of luck as they battle to keep the station safe. It is rare for these kinds of events to effect nuclear power stations but, particularly in an increasingly unstable climate, the impact o such a disaster d not bear thinking about. (I was talking about tis the other day on pod delusion).

The good news, if that is the right word for it, is that the wave seems to be dissipating and is unlikely to significantly effect Australia, Indonesia or vulnerable Pacific Islands. It's also true that the numbers of dead are currently far lower than they could have been due to good building standards.

A poorer nation would have been obliterated by these crushing events. Never the less Japan must be reeling, my thoughts are with them.

Activist dies in fire

I was very concerned to see that after a fire at a protest camp in Midlothian a young man has died and a woman is seriously ill in hospital. The death is not being treated as suspicious.

The Bilston Glen camp is probably one of the last surviving road protest camps existing in the country. The camp issued this short statement;

"The people of Bilston Road protest site regret the loss of one of their friends, who has been a valued member of our community, and extend our deepest sorrow to his family and friends, who we would like to get in touch with as we have no way of contacting them. We would ask everyone to respect our grief."

My condolences to the protesters and family members of those concerned.

Bjørn Lomborg speaks: but is he right?

People seemed lukewarm about the Ten O'Clock Show last night but I thought it was good. It might not have been as funny as the mythical Daily Show but it was certainly as strong as the actual Daily Show that's on daily, and their guests were far better than some of the odd choices Jon Stewart finds himself opposite of.

For example Bjørn Lomborg isn't someone you see much on the telly and it's always nice to see an enthusiast for their subject given free rein.

Mr Lomburg does have a little bit of a chequered history when it comes to green issues though and is brought to you by such controversies as opposing the Kyoto agreement but he recently recanted and we're all friends again.

So the interview he gave, with Jimmy Carr of all people, ranged from interesting to energetic to slightly bonkers, which is all to the good. However his solutions did leave a little to be desired in my view.

For example making clouds whiter and setting off (artificial) volcanos sounds brilliant in a sci-fi movie but there is a problem with thinking that the problems caused by pollution can be offset by loads more pollution.

I personally think that in the US painting roofs white is worth doing because it cools the buildings in hot countries and means the air conditioning does not have to work as hard cutting energy use - but whether there's a point in changing the planet's albedo (the colour of the surface of the globe), well, I'm yet to be convinced.

There's a real danger in Lomburg's position in that if all our efforts are devoted to finding technological devices to allow us to carry on doing what we're doing we don't question how we're contributing to the problem.

Now, in the interview Lomburg says we keep promising to cut emisions but we don't - so let's stop promising to cut emisions and get on with coping with the mess we're making. I can't help feeling he's under-estimating some of the problems climate chaos will and is causing and over-estimating the capacity of super-duper technologies to magically solve the laws of physics.

Not that I'm against useful technologies or substantial investment in renewable energies, as Lomborg also suggests. However, this cannot be a substitute for the real social change we need in order to stop causing the problem in the first place.

Just a bit of fun

I put this together the other day when I had far more important things I should have been doing. It's good to share :)

Review: The Story of Stuff

I was pleased to see that an excellent little film about capitalist production has been turned into an illustrated book The Story of Stuff.

The people behind the project have a number of really interesting instructional videos at their website, like this one on the connection between profits, environmental degradation and the shape of the electronics industry.



These videos are good resource because they're easy to watch, easy to understand and, although their message is radical, it's not conveyed in a shaking fist, red in the faced algebraic dogma of hate.

When the presenter Annie Leonard says that the corporations "get the profits but everyone else pays" with their health, with their environment and economically it's a key point of anti-capitalism but we can get so used to these kinds of messages being delivered in specific language and full of sound and fury that when you have a light and smiley presenter it would be easy to miss the message.

It would also be easy to think that just because the videos (and now book) focus on specific problems and specific solutions that it's going to fall back on to ethical consumerism. But, like Annie says, "we are not going to shop our way out of the problem" and goes on to talk about political solutions to a fundamentally economic problem.

Oh, and there's one last refreshing thing about them. They may deal with big problems and look at them in a global way but they don't feel obliged to end every piece to camera force feeding us a ready packed solution. I know some people will find that a weakness, along with the lightness of tone, but to my mind sometimes less is so much more.

Winter Lights

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there is one bizarre passion that both the British and French share at Christmas time, and that's the noble breed who cover their houses with wasteful, gaudy Christmas lights. Père Noel climbing into a chimney seems to be a favourite round here.

The fine example of the tradition pictured right is taken from the local (Autun) paper but it does bring up that perennial 'eco-question' which is; what should those who are for a more environmentally sustainable society say about this kind of flagrant and wanton waste?

Well, I suppose we could say that people should do something more environmentally friendly to celebrate the season - plant some lovely trees or make decorations out of recycled tat, but somehow that all feels a bit too worthy.

I mean if people want to do those things please do, I'm sure it will give pleasure to all, but let's not se them to claim individual moral high grounds instead of trying to develop a social conscience.

What I like about this sort of tradition is that it feels like a genuine expression of fun, aimed at giving the community a sense of shared warmth. It feels like people trying to make a contribution to their area, and an alloyed positive one. There's no TV station, national newspaper or radio station telling people they have to do this, in fact this kind of behaviour is often mocked, it's more grassroots than that I think.

It's about people using their part of public space. At least I think it is.

I understand that some people are uncomfortable with the consumerist, meaningless consumption side of these displays, and I'm not claiming they're anti-capitalist or politically charged, but it seems to me that we need to keep it in perspective. In terms of household energy use at this time of year heating makes up the vast majority of the consumption. Christmas lights are a tiny fraction of the total (although those houses that go bonkers certainly notice the effect on their bills).

If we want to bring down energy use then insulation and home improvements are still the easy ways to make the big gains, and that's about improving the quality of our lives, not lecturing people to cut back. Even if we seriously tried to end these lights displays we'd be making next to no difference on December's national energy use. Social attitudes changes *can* make a big difference - but not this one.

Perhaps these displays encourage people to think of themselves as part of a community in a way that telling people to stop enjoying their holidays might not. If we're to save ourselves (and it is an 'if' I think) it will be through the understanding that we're more than just a collection of individuals buying this and watching that, and expressions of love like these light displays help us do just that.

Today's climate change demo

I'm fast turning into rent a mob as I've just got back from my third demo this week. I guess things are hotting up, despite the snow. The climate change demo today was well attended and well behaved. I've taken some pics of the crowd (I don't really do speeches and went for coffee with a friend at that bit) so no pictures of famous people I'm afraid, they're boring.

If you have a use for any of them - feel free to fill your boots - apologies if I missed your banner. It was bound to happen.

Manchester Airport Protesters in court

In May 2010, seventeen people were arrested for staging a non-violent protest/ direct action at Manchester Airport, temporarily shutting it down. They did this to stop some of the 5 million tonnes of carbon emissions that the airport is responsible for annually and in opposition to plans to destroy local homes and biodiversity spots to expand the World Freight Centre.

This is the Manchester equivalent to the Heathrow campaign and any support you can give would be very welcome. Of the seventeen defendants 17 people eleven will be tried for 'obstruction of the highway' this December. The remaining six will face a trial in early 2011.

Come to court to show your support. Climate defence is not an offence

Trial 1 – Monday 9th December
Meet at 9am at Trafford Magistrates Court (M33 7NR).

Trial 2 – Monday 21st February 2011
Meet at 9am at Trafford Magistrates Court (M33 7NR).

Or you could send a statement of support to or simply leave a comment on this Facebook page or for more information: http://www.manchesterairportontrial.org

CSR special: Environment

The Comprehensive Spending Review has a few cheap headlines in it for the environment - but sadly this amounts to a bit of window dressing amid some pretty hefty carnage. Before we start looking at the poor old Department of Energy and Climate Change let's look at transport first.

The Department of Transport is facing a 12.6% cut (an 1/8th of it's budget) and there will be a sharp rise in rail fares. That's right, in a country that already has massively overpriced rail tickets we're going to see above inflation rises.

Some infrastructure projects have been saved, like Crossrail and Thameslink, but Network Rail has promised savings by putting on hold plans for new carriages to ease overcrowding. So no new capacity, but even more expensive to travel. However High Speed Rail 2, a stonkingly expensive project that may not move anyone off the roads onto trains looks set to go ahead.

Fear not though because the road building continues with an extra lane of gridlock planned for the M25 and others. Don't worry if you're concerned about buses clogging up these precious new roads because the fuel tax subsidy to bus operators has been cut from 80% to 60% which will mean less services and higher fares - particularly for rural and less used routes.

I'm also told that even walking and cycling provision will be hit as this comes under the remit of local councils who are all facing their own massive funding crisis.

Department of Energy and Climate Change

The DECC budget will be reduced by 33% over the next four years which includes cuts in insulation subsidies, the renewable heat levy, subsidies to feed-in tarriffs and the Severn Barrage which is to go to the wall. Admittedly this was a controversial project that would have supplied a good deal of renewable energy at the cost of the local wildlife and habitats.

Between three and eight thousand jobs will be lost in the department out of a total of 30,000. Hundreds of nature reserves are likely to be sold off and grants to institutions like Kew Gardens and the Royal botanic Gardens are to be cut.

Half a billion is to be shaved off the explicit flood defences budget on top of the expectation that local councils will be cutting back on local flood prevention provision. There's also going to be cuts in animal disease prevention with the private sector being expected to take up much of the slack.

Both of these moves look quite dangerous to me, and a repeat of the foot and mouth disease outbreak a few years ago and/or new flooding like last year would cost the economy and the government dear. Yet another false economy.

However, there will be one billion for the experimental technology Carbon Capture and Storage and another billion for a 'Green Investment Bank' to help deliver new projects. However, the department has been particularly badly hit by the 'bonfire of the quangos' that were already funding projects and groups like the Carbon Trust and Energy Saving Trust will suffer so whether the GIB is a move forwards or not seems a little doubtful to me.

However, in the context of green job losses and budget cuts the occasional piece of good news is hardly earth shattering. Certainly this is a million miles away from the million green jobs policy of investment that we need, although what on Earth the 'Green Deal' turns out to be is anyone's guess.

The report also contains the chilling phrase "the DECC will develop innovative ways of working with the private sector, acting as an enabler rather than a provider." Presumably because they'll no longer be in a position to provide anything.

Bizarrely the Lib Dem minister Chris Huhne said: “DECC is playing its part in tackling the deficit. Like the rest of the public sector we have taken some tough decisions, but we remain on course to deliver on our promise to be the greenest government ever. We will help create green jobs and green growth - and secure the low carbon investment we need to keep the lights on.”

Meg Hillier: proof Ed Miliband doesn't care about climate change

The more I think about Meg Hillier the less I like her, that's nothing to do with her attitude to foxes mind. Nothing personal, I'm sure she loves kittens and can make a crying baby sleep at fifty paces but, as the main person responsible for holding the Coalition to account on climate change she is the just the wrong choice. 

Yesterday I posted a link to the new shadow Minister of Energy and Climate Change's Public Whip account which shows her woeful voting record. Stuart has summarised it here.

To summarise Stuart's summary it appears that she's voted against improvements in housing energy use efficiency, she's voted against limiting civil aviation pollution, was for Heathrow's expansion, in fact according to Public Whip she has a poor voting record on the issue for a Labour MP, let alone compared to the Tories, et al.

Don't worry though, she's 100% for nuclear power. That will sort things out. 

Today the Guardian summed up her record so far like this;

As for the real Meg Hillier, she's not known to have had a deep interest in climate change. A former journalist (like climate secretary, Chris Huhne) and privately educated (like Huhne), she was elected for the first time in 2005 as MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, having been mayor of Islington and a member of the London assembly. Probably most useful for her new job among her interests are the work she has done on housing and transport (well, bus routes). In government, she spent a year working for Ruth Kelly at the Department of Communities and Local Government, then three as a Home Office minister juggling the identity card hot potato.

Just checking to see if she has any interest in climate change...

Yup. That checks out then.

So we've been told that Ed Miliband was the best candidate on climate change, but if that's the case why has he appointed someone who has no interest in climate change to shadow the issue? What possible justification could there be for appointing someone who votes against climate change measures to spearhead your approach to climate change?

Enviro-Misc

A few links, this time with a greenish theme;

• Conservative MP Tim Yeo warns against the cuts in green funding. Guardian.
  
  
• Meg Hillier MP is Labour's new Shadow Climate Change bod. Let's look at her voting record... oh for fuck's sake! Public Whip.
  
  
• The people of Leith are fighting Big Biomass. Bright Green.
  
  
• Welcome to a new blog just one post old. Stroud Potato Day.
  
  
• There are plenty of people round the world opposing environmental degradation, including the Indigenous Environmental Network. Stuart Jeffrey.
  
  
• Are Ed Miliband and David Cameron really that different? Jane Watkinson
  

Police attack environmental protesters in Stuttgart

On Thursday police in Stuttgart attacked demonstrators protesting about construction that they claim would cause massive environmental damage in the area. There have been a number of large protests over this in recent weeks, but this is the first to have been so heavily attacked.


Protesters were gassed, beaten and sprayed by water cannons which left, according to Taz, literally hundreds wounded. Britta Haßelmann, a Parliamentary spokesperson for the Greens condemned the attacks warning that the police actions had dangerously escalated the situation.

Dagmar Enkelmann, for the Left Party, said that after the images of so many wounded had come out that we could not continue "with business as usual". The SPD (Labour) spokesperson made a rather strange comment that I'm finding difficult to interpret where he said he felt sorry for the police, although condemned their "Rambo-politics".

Germany is currently being rocked by large scale environmental protests including over proposals to extend the use of nuclear power as well as issues like that of the 'Stuttgart 21' construction.

Pictures from Indymedia

A way forward: Greens and the environment

It's been said many times, but it's worth repeating, the Green Party does not have exclusive territorial rights to environmental issues, just as the Tories don't have exclusive rights over caviar supplies, Labour over bomb manufacturing or the Lib Dems over jelly.

However, there's no getting away from the fact that the Green Party places at the center of its politics the attempt to build a more ecologically sustainable world. This is a strength and a weakness. Climate change is the most pressing issue facing the human race today, and you only have to look at the news to see that literally millions of people are currently facing very personal tragedies as a result of extreme weather conditions. Not in theory but in fact.

The Green Party takes this seriously in a way that the politicians who only regard environmental issues as an add on part of their electoral strategy do not.

However, it's been clear for some time that this deep association with environmental issues can also become a way of obscuring the fact that the Greens are a political party with policy on a whole range of issues, not a single issue campaign group. For this reason during the election we placed an emphasis on our social policy, and where we did talk about traditional green issues it was always fused with housing or jobs to keep 'on message'. While everyone knows where we stand on environmental issues, well, at least roughly, they may not always associate us with trade unions, Afghanistan, renationalisation or a whole host of other issues.

That danger of being seen as a single issue party is a real one and, in my view, highlighting our lesser known policies has been really important. The Greens are not looking for one off protest votes but long term support for a unique political project. If people believed we only talk about climate change (and green issues are not just this particular, global problem of course) we'd never have won over a hundred councillors, two London Assembly Members, two MSPs, two MEPs and an MP.

There is a problem though.

Political parties are not just a collection of policies to be put before the electorate and endorsed (or not). Parties do day to day campaigning, fighting to influence debate and decision making. It is not enough to have policies, we have to act on them too.

That means what we campaign on, the content of our leaflets, letters, door to door work and the job of our elected representatives matters. While it's been right, for the election, to steer people towards our social and economic policy if we end up neglecting our core purpose to do that we turn ourselves into an electoral machine, not a political party with principles and purpose.

If you look at the work Caroline Lucas is doing in the House of Commons the first thing you will notice is how damn hard she is working and the second thing is that she is doing plenty of work on environmental issues that is not necessarily reflected in the way the party has been marketing itself. Obviously we need to get better at publicising what she's doing, and boost the support we give her, but this also helps illustrate something important.

If someone wants to do "something useful" about the environment then they have a whole host of choices before them. They could join excellent NGOs like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, etc. They could get involved in direct action with climate camp types. They could set up a local transition towns group and get local in their activism. They could also join the Green Party.

The thing is if we've become a little bit allergic to talking about environmental issues we both neglect that core constituency and, more importantly, we cease to fulfill one of our most important functions. Fighting for an ecologically sustainable world.

Climate change is almost entirely off the agenda of our political class, are we pushing hard enough to get it back on? I don't want to exaggerate, it's not as if the Greens never talk about their core issues, but we're not bellowing from the roof tops either. We're a broad left party, and members join for a number of different reasons. We need to make sure we're serving their needs as well as putting out a clever electoral message.

For me one of the reasons I joined the Green Party was to help myself learn about and understand environmental issues, and take part in a project for a cleaner, safer, fairer world. I'm not entirely sure the Party has fulfilled the former for me. I know why it has been necessary to highlight other manifesto areas, that are just as important, but I do worry that we're verging on taking our green policies almost entirely off the menu.

Yes, voters will always assume that the Greens are beavering away on many of these issues but we can't be too scared of saying it out loud, even when it risks unpopularity. There are a whole number of winnable battles that we need to fight and a number of crucial discussions that we need to influence - but we're not going to do that if we're too worried about the single issue label.

Nature watch

So, in the news right now we have;

• a giant ice sheet has broken away from Greenland and is drifting south. It is the largest such since 1962, and is thought to have come away due to the hottest summer on record. Apparently the technical term for when an ice sheet breaks away is 'calving'.
  
  
• fires are out of control in Moscow creating all kinds of health problems and smog. The fires, caused by an unprecedented heatwave are having all sorts of unexpected problems. For example "The fires have raised concerns about the security of Russia's main nuclear research centre in the still closed city of Sarov, one of the areas worst hit by the blazes and where the emergencies ministry has sent thousands of workers."
  
  
• record floods in Pakistan are effecting something like thirteen million people, a disaster whose scale is difficult to comprehend (You can give to the DEC Appeal)
  

Meanwhile, in an unrelated story, climate change talks in Bonn are moving backwards. You can also now get a climate denial app for your i-phone.

ps jinx! I've simultaneously written almost exactly the same post, in the same formatting, as Rupert Read. Oh well.

JR goes solar?

I've just seen this inspired ad for some US company or other. Ah.... eco-friendly nostalgia.



Glad to know we've got JR on our side...

Eco-round up

• Christine Ottery has some questions for aspiring environmental journalists.
  
  
• This week's Weekly Worker came out today and in case you've not rushed over to their site yet they're discussing the environment. Jack Conrad takes an in-depth look at the SWP's eco-credentials. Be warned, it's a bit long.
  
  
• Bright Green Scotland looks at what's been happening in the Australian government, and how it effects the environment.
  
  
• David Mitchell on the other hand has a little video on the Guardian website on how we fight climate change, or something.
  
  
• Meanwhile George Monbiot finds himself apologising over climategate. Not massively fulsome in his apology but credit where it's due - he definitely apologised.
  
  
• News from Kyoto University's leading primate research centre where there has been a mass breakout of monkeys who used trees to catapult themselves over electrified fences. Fifteen monkeys hurled themselves to freedom, but sadly the runaways were unsure what to do with their new found freedom and "they probably wanted to stay near to the other monkeys", so were lured back into captivity by peanuts. That's how they always get us. Love and peanuts.
  
  
• In Brazil the Green Party's Presidential candidate is Marina Silva, the ex-minister for the environment in Lula's Workers Party government. It looks like she may do rather well with her combination of green and left ideas. We'll see, you can check out her Portuguese language website here.

Eco-Miscellany

• The Morning Star looks at problems in the tar sands.
  
  
• The BBC advocates 'citizen science' to save birds.
  
  
• Michael Greenwall discovers you can bet on which animals go extinct first.
  
  
• The Guardian reports on a resignation from the food standards watchdog over 'GM propaganda'.
  
  
• The Australian reports on extraordinary legislation passed in Papua New Guinea that protects companies from litigation on environmental destruction.
  
  
• The Caledonian Mercury discovers that after 25 years a banned pesticide is still causing havoc with the Scottish environment.
  

Are you listening Australia?

Richard Dawkins, renown atheist and prodigious pedantician, spoke in Melbourne Town Hall last night proselytising the bad news that there is no God.

God's answer? The worst hail storm in one hundred years.


Have they repented? Have they heck - they only seemed worried that the sports have been cancelled.