Islington’s Lib Dem council has broken new ground by setting up a £3M climate change fund to take local action on climate change, through promoting renewable energy, energy conservation and sustainable transport (walking & cycling). This is despite Islington’s council tax rise being around 1.5% (continuing to deliver a longstanding pledge to keep Islington’s tax below the London average) and giving residents like me who pay by direct debit a £20 discount. In a neat twist, there’s an invitation to give the £20 to the climate change fund – a free ‘I feel good’ moment with every tax bill…. what’s not to like?
Low taxes; easy green hit; you’d think the local Tories would be ecstatic: but no.
Party chair Margaret Reese says “It is not for councils to tackle global warming by spending council tax. It’s something governments do internationally.”
Tim Newark, former Conservative council candidate, argued that the council is spending money on a “fashionable theory”. He added: “We have no real scientific proof that links rising carbon emissions and pollution with climate change. Indeed, recently scientists have been arguing that the theory is a lot of hot air. In fact, from 1945 to the early 1970s, when carbon was actually rising because of the post-war boom, global temperatures went down.”
http://www.thecnj.co.uk/islington/031607/news031607_14.html
Bridget Fox is PPC for Islington South & Finsbury
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14 Comments
Sounds very similar to the views of Tories in Haringey – who deny that human action is causing global warming.
Have you seen the Great Global Warming Swindle, ‘Dr’. Pack?
The Great Global Warming Swindle was processology and pseudo-science. Go watch An Inconvenient Truth, IATHR.
Shock horror: another Tory comes out as a climate change-denier, eh, Two Horse?
Did the movers of the Trident motion act properly by sending a mailshot to constituency chairs outlining their policy ahead of conference?
Yes: 42% (40)No: 58% (56)
Looks to meet that you can’t seem to manage a conference, let alone climate change!
What’s wrong two horse? Can’t deny that the Tories contain a number of climate change deniers?
I think the expression ‘climate change denier’ is not only misleading but offensive. For one it’s usually applied to people who don’t deny climate change _ simply the extent to which Mankind is causing it. Secondly, the phrase is clearly meant to echo ‘holocaust-denier’. And to equate scepticism about the evidence for manmade global warming with denial of the exhaustively documented holocaust is just too grotesque. It trivialises the Holocaust and suggests a moral equivalence between sceptical positions on these two issues.
Er, whatever.
I think you’re reading far too much into the phrase.
Indeed, unintentionally or otherwise, you’re just trying to close down debate by suggesting I am trivialising the holocaust. Interestingly, this is usually what “(man made) climate change-skeptics” acuse others of doing.
Too bad. I find the few scientists ( nearly all of whom are NOT climatologists) who deny any human impact on climate change offensive.
I find the politicians & journalists who champion these quacks’ views even more offensive.
I bet you deny any human impact on climate change too, that’s why you’re picking up on a non-issue. Tory.
Even if you don’t believe the science behind climate change – why is the idea of reducing energy and heating costs such a bad one?
Oil & Gas are a finite resource and there are sound geo-political reasons for making ourselves less dependent on them regardless of any climate change effects.
Trying to ban the use of the word ‘deny’ is political correctness gone mad.
Hywel (Morgan?) says: “Oil & Gas are a finite resource and there are sound geo-political reasons for making ourselves less dependent on them regardless of any climate change effects.”
Well said. Even if no causal link between human activity and global warming is ever proved to the satisfaction of all but a handful of polemicists, a move towards renewable sources of energy must be an unqualified good.
The term “denial” in this context denotes the refusal to acknowledge the overwhelming weight of evidence. People who say the Holocaust didn’t happen are “deniers”, as are people who say Napoleon won the Battle of Waterloo or that Beethoven was black. Whether or not someone is seeking to draw “moral equivalence” is frankly irrelevant to the issue of whether or not claims about climate change amount to “denial”.
If the most apocalyptic scenarios prove to be correct, then global warming will kill many, many more than Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Mussolini put together.
There are many on the right who will resist any move to limit economic growth or restrain big business. And they are more true to Tory tradition than the Cameron/Gove leadership and its embrace of green tokenism.
The real giveaway about how little many Tories care about the environment is the way they eagerly lapped up one TV show, ignoring all the well made arguments trearing the TV show’s argument apart.
And that one TV show produced by someone with “form” for distorting people’s views with selective editing. Something which one scientist has already complained about with this program.
And has already been found to use several sets out-dated or retracted data
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2355956.ece