Fine Shades of Gree: Britain's Environmental Politics a Bit Dull

[Nelson Muntz]

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15996814

There are many thrilling aspects to the British election due to be held on May 6th. A hard-fought battle over environmental priorities is not one of them. Climate is the top environmental issue across the board, and the three major parties, Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats, broadly agree on the need for measures to cut carbon dioxide emissions steeply. So, for that matter, do the regional parties and most of the minor parties.

The most notable exception, out towards the fringe, is the UK Independence Party. UKIP speaks for those opposed to membership of the European Union, a group that has a lot of overlap with climate sceptics, and is the political home of Christopher Monckton, the highest-profile climate sceptic of the "it's all an outright fraud" persuasion that Britain can boast. UKIP is proud of its own climate scepticism, and says it would repeal the 2008 Climate Change Act, remove Al Gore DVDs from schools, allow wind turbines only offshore, and so on. (Met Office funding in UKIP-land will be calculated on the basis of the accuracy of the organisation's weather forecasts.)

Even so, the party is firmly, indeed fervently, pro-nuclear, wants more high-speed trains and enthuses over electric vehicles. It would build more coastal and flood defences and invest in clean coal. Leaving aside rhetoric and renewables — both things which British climate discussions might be said to overemphasise — even UKIP isn't that far out of the consensus.

So when the energy, environment and climate spokesmen of the major parties meet to debate in public, as they did on April 21st at the Guardian newspaper, and again on April 26th under the aegis of Ask the Climate Question, an assortment of green charities and pressure groups making common cause, there was more dull worthiness than high drama. The major parties all agree on reductions to Britain's emissions, increases in the deployment of renewables, investments in carbon capture and storage systems for coal-fired power stations, a big nationwide push to increase the energy efficiency of people's homes, new high-speed-train lines and the creation of a Green Investment Bank.

The shared level of commitment and wonkiness is, in its way, inspiring (though it must be a bit dispiriting for the Green party, which to stay distinctively unelectable has had to move towards a thoroughgoing social-justice agenda funded with tax increases no-one else would touch). As George Monbiot, an activist who writes a column for the Guardian, wrote after that paper's event, "They all had the kind of detailed knowledge of green issues that just a few years ago would have been perceived as superfluous to a political career... any one of them could have been fronting a Friends of the Earth campaign from a few years ago. The issues that were once marginal or excluded have gone mainstream." Which may be nice, but hardly produces fireworks, unless you consider the correct way of applying business rates to onshore wind farms an incendiary issue.

Where there are differences, they are sometimes smaller than they seem. Labour is in favour of a third runway at Heathrow, which the other main parties point to as evidence of its poor green credentials. But Labour rules out all other new runways, which the other major parties have not. Which party's position would actually result in the lowest emissions from aircraft is not clear. Nor is it that obvious that runways are the key factor. Arguing for a tighter cap on emissions for the industry is probably more important, not least because it has effects Europe-wide.

The issue where there is the largest substantive issue is on nuclear power. The Liberal Democrats oppose it, and would try to meet the already ambitious carbon reduction targets that the country has subscribed to (a 34% reduction in carbon emissions, measured from a 1990 baseline, by 2020) without it. The Conservatives and Labour are in favour; one of the reasons that the Conservatives are planning to institute a "floor" on carbon prices is presumably that it will make nuclear power look plausible to investors without being seen directly to subsidise it. But both Conservatives and Labour are pro-nuclear with some reluctance, aware both of the technology's costs and its unpopularity. This awareness may be why they do not attack the Liberals on the subject as strongly as they might. Though the Liberals have a point that nuclear is in no way a quick fix, nor is climate change a short-term crisis. To ignore an established, widely used low-carbon technology a priori when committed to massive long-term decarbonisation makes no sense.