subject: What The Hung Parliament Will Do For Climate Change [print this page] Bland, boring and meaningless phrases are what tend to make up the political party manifestos and its true to say that most of it is filler for the one or two things they actually believe in. Every party must talk about education, environment, security, economy, transport, technology and so on, even if they dont necessarily start out with a strong stance on it, theyll soon create one for election time.
This general election saw the country ending up with a hung parliament, a mixture of Conservatism and Liberal Democracy, with Labour put firmly on the back foot for the time being. What does the hung parliament mean specifically for the future of green British politics while it lasts?
First of all lets have a look at what the Conservatives had to say about the environment in their 2010 manifesto. They talked about waste, industrial mostly as well as reforms for the water industry and fisheries and all sorts of other noble things to do with conserving natural resources and finding sustainable ways to produce energy and food. But they also talked about writing a white paper on ways to protect the environment, which just goes to show how much politicians like to procrastinate rather than take action. There must be hundreds of white papers on protecting the environment and quite frankly, each major political party should already have one in place that they can simply update as and when they need to.
The Liberal Democrats didnt do much better, it was all headlines and no article, with the promise to put climate change at the heart of politics, they merely talked down the other political parties but did little to tell us what they would actually do themselves. Cutting air pollution, finding ways to reduce energy bills and building energy efficient homes and businesses all featured and the world really would be a much better place if everything they laid out was backed up with strong and deliverable actions.
The truth about the causes of climate change is that we as a nation have taken far too long to respond to the effects our carefree lives have been having on the natural world. Its difficult to reign in free spending (as the recession showed), its difficult to get out of the habit of throwing everything into the bin without thinking about whether it could be recycled and its difficult to remember to switch the lights off and the television off standby when this is all weve ever done.
As far as the eye can see, its not about relying on the government or anyone else for that matter, its about thinking more and doing more for ourselves and if we change the attitude for the next generation, theyll put our selfishness to shame.
by: Jamie Francis
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