Next contestant please. In contemplating what informs my role as a political advisor in the policy and solutions unit at Greenpeace I got to thinking about a new grandmother and a newborn baby (no hankies or violins required, honest).
My dear Ma, just turned 71 and as Irish as Mrs Doyle from Father Ted, but without the personality disorder and compulsive tea habit, was never one for political protest, but she certainly had her political alignments sorted. A Daily Express reader for years, sucking up the rhetoric long and hard, she more recently jumped ship to the Daily Mail (think of it as opting for a slightly more formal jackboot).
So no wishy-washy liberal she. But more recently she has shifted out of her voting comfort zone, driven by new priorities. She even voted for Ken Livingstone in the last London Mayoral elections. Admittedly this was partly a 'stop Boris' vote rather than a ringing endorsement of Red Ken, but a key motivation for her was a desire to see Ken’s progressive agenda on climate change carried through.
You can make your own mind up as to whether Boris is proving to be a climate champion, but the fundamental point is that her growing environmental concerns trumped established loyalties. In the context of a climate crisis where we have less than one hundred months left to get on the right track patterns shift, loyalties melt; ‘things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’, as her compatriot Yeats put it.
My mum also lives under the Heathrow flightpath in West London, and suffers skies full of planes every day. Although her house no longer rattles beneath Concorde’s thunder she is firmly opposed to more flights at Heathrow and has signed up to Airplot, joining thousands of others opposing plans for Heathrow expansion.
She is joined in Airplot by my son, her first grandchild. He arrived only 13 weeks ago, radically changing my life and perspective. Stealing sleep, bathtime splashing and gummy smiling are his priorities at the moment but he will have bigger concerns before long.
The world he inherits from us is a very different one from the world I inherited. He faces unprecedented environmental challenges that are impacting the world harder and faster than previously forecast. My mum now prioritises her grandson’s future in her worldview as she plays her small part in ensuring that we take responsibility now for the mess we’ve made, rather than leaving him to deal with the dangerous impacts of runaway climate change.
So where do I come in? Part of what I do here is connecting our UK, EU and international campaigns with decision-makers, helping to shape the political agenda and deliver solutions on a range of issues as diverse as overfishing and marine reserves, financing forest protection, illegal logging, aviation, lobbying transparency and predominantly climate change.
We interact with councillors, MPs, Lords, MEPs, advisors, civil servants, experts, NGO allies, Greenpeace offices around the world – whoever has the power and influence to effect positive change - working alone as Greenpeace and also in alliance with other UK and international NGOs and organisations. We monitor activity in Westminster, devolved assemblies and the EU, take part in inquiries, consultations, conferences, formal and informal meetings talking to all major political players. Our political work was even recognised with an award recently. All of this feeding into an honourable record of Greenpeace successes shared across the Greenpeace world, which now includes a long overdue presence in Africa.
So I carry with me these voices of a granny and grandchild, as well as countless other voices beyond the UK, into the corridors of power ensuring they are heard and that nobody is left in any doubt about the solutions that exist and the necessity to apply them now.
There is a dangerous democracy and credibility deficit at present in political culture. Vested interests and powerful lobbies are sucking political energy away from the relentless focus on existing sustainable solutions that the science demands, which is partly why lobbying reform is so necessary.
De Gaulle had it right when he said “I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians”. Too many of our leading politicians have mastered the Machiavellian craft of politics and in the process have been eaten by the machine, losing sight of the big picture. Man Ray’s vision says it all in showing what we lack: “the streets are full of admirable craftsmen, but so few practical dreamers”. Vision, will and courage are the old-fashioned political concepts that stand between us and change.
My son's first birthday this December will see the start of crucial climate negotiations in Copenhagen thrashing out a new post-Kyoto global deal to cut carbon emissions rapidly. There can be no doubt that Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown know what's needed, but will they deliver?
Buried amongst the fawning sycophancy in Brown's speech yesterday to Congress were these easy words: “why does anybody plant the seeds of a tree whose shade they will never see? The answer is because they look to the future... it is only by investing in environmental technology that we can end the dictatorship of oil, and it is only by tackling climate change that we can create millions of green new jobs”.
Talk is cheap.
