We’re running out of planet. It has been calculated that if everyone adopted typical UK lifestyles, we would need three Earths. Clean water is already scarce in some places, including parts of the UK. Biodiversity is receding at such a pace that scientists have forecast mass extinctions, and although this might prove as threatening to life as climate change, politicians have given it little attention.
Closer to home, noise and light pollution disturb the tranquillity of many areas. The rural landscape is being degraded and urban open spaces are disappearing. Valuable habitats and wildlife are being lost. There is a constant demand for more housing which puts ever greater pressure on our natural environment – yet many gardens and other valuable green areas are classified as ‘brownfield’ and developed away.
The UK discarded around 335 million tonnes of materials as waste in 2007, the majority coming from the demolition, construction, commercial and industrial sectors. Poor resource management leads to a waste of materials, energy and water – it also causes unnecessary environmental damage, including climate change. Waste management, resource efficiency and energy management need to be better integrated. Waste food, for example, can be utilised through systems such as anaerobic digestion to provide a decentralised source of energy and fuel.
What is the Liberal Democrat response? How can we safeguard the natural environment for future generation and ensure it benefits people today? The Natural Environment Working Group has been looking at these issues for the last six months and will be starting to draft a policy paper for next autumn conference shortly – there is still time to let us know what you think. Should we adopt a goal of ‘one planet living’? Should we try to quantify the value the environment or are there better ways to change people’s behaviour? Please comment below or log on to http://consult.libdems.org.uk/nature
* Paul Burall is Chair of the Liberal Democrats’ Natural Environment Working Group
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9 Comments
Nice story, however it is not true
Straightforward Liberal solution: tax value removed instead of value added. This should be a fiscal credo for our Party. It would certainly save a lot of effort in working groups wondering what to do. The market will do the rest.
this could be very useful and help us to tackle some important issues but i just hope this doesn’t turn out to provide an excuse for nimbyism whenever anyone proposes building anything anywhere.
Andrew, Just one query. How do you work out what the value removed is? I see the potential for dozens of working groups looking at that one. Just look at the mumbo jumbo used to justify the different versions of carbon offset.
I agree entirely with your analysis Paul. The hardest thing is to fit this together with our economic policies.
David, “value removed” = economic rent (effectively unearned income/wealth). This can be measured in a number of ways. With EU emissions permits for example, value removed equates to the amount a company is prepared to pay to pollute the atmosphere. Giving out permits for free places a zero value on the atmosphere and allows economic rent to be privatised. Subsequent permit trading reveals the value that has been removed from society in the form of an unearned income to the firm selling.
Auctioning 100% of permits from the outset would have measured that value in full and recycled it, allowing compensatory cuts in taxes on value added – like those on productive enterprise and commerce.
Geoff will be pleased to learn that this all fits perfectly with our economic policy strategy to shift tax off work (i.e. earned income) and onto (unearned) wealth. Unfortunately, a meaningful shift remains almost entirely aspirational. Perhaps the Natural Environment Working Group will have better luck.
Is this a response to green pressure groups like the Green Alliance’s “Green Standard Report” telling us we need to take our green policy beyond climate change and into the natural environment? Because I for one would like to urge us to reject such calls. Climate change is an emergency. Yes, we need to work towards “one planet living”, if by that we mean living in a way that would be sustainable if everyone on the planet did it.
But please can we not feel that we have to sound like tree-huggers in order to occupy the green territory in politics. Biodoversity is a laudable aim, but if it ever comes down to a trade-off between biodiversity and combating climate change, we should choose the latter every time.
Even worse, bemoaning that “noise and light pollution disturb the tranquillity of many areas. The rural landscape is being degraded.” If we start using that kind of language, we open the door to those ignorant, backwards tossers who complain that wind turbines aren’t environmental because they “ruin the landscape”, completely overlooking the fact that they are probably a vital component of not ruining the whole flipping planet.
Just because climate change is a big, real problem doesn’t mean we have to endorse everything that “the green movement” has ever said. Reducing emission of greenhouse gases is a specific, definable task with a measurable target at the end of it, and an obvious moral obligation on each and every one of us to make the changes necessary. It’s a tall order for policy, but it’s achievable. Can we please not distract ourselves chasing nebulous concepts like “tranquility”.
The problem with target-based “thinking” is that it leads to all kinds of idiocy.
“Green” consumption, when the really green thing would be to consume less.
Cutting down ancient woodland, then sticking up a few conifers to “offset” it, regardless of the fact that it is far less environmentally valuable.
& most of all, the abject stupidity of biofuels, which typifies New Labour & the whole consumerist, transactional (“prospector” if you like) mentality they have got.
I’m all for communicating with people, but policy has to reflect what is effective rather than quick fixes which make people think they can go on doing whatever they like & it will have no consequences for other people or the natural environment.
The pressing need is for international arrangements to support education, family planning & sustainable living. I still think there are enough resources for us all, but we are going to have to change course rather than coasting along & engaging in the odd bit of gesture politics as Labour do.
Andy Hinton is partly correct, the ecosystem is such that local conservation needs a national & international framework of legislation, changes to the infrastructure, & personal behaviour before it can even dream of being effective.
Over the last 50 years this country has had great success in reforestation, cleaning of the waterways & the combating of acid rain. This can be, & needs to be, reproduced worldwide. I for one think it is achievable.
I liked what Cameron said about abolishing a 3rd runway & investing in rail, which other countries have. (Though I’m obviously sceptical as to whether he’d achieve it). Countries like Germany are far more environmentally friendly than us, but that might well be changing in the future, & I certainly hope so: I would like to see Great Britain as a proud pioneer.
A reasonable public transport would reduce this dependency on cars.
We would then be less reliant on fuels overall, having changed our way of life, rather than merely fiddling around from one unsustainable, polluting source to the other, as halfwits like Bush & Brown would have us do, thinking that it’s a “solution” & they can now continue their moronic Clarksonite lifestyle as before.