Part of the Climate Clinic blog
Last night I was privileged to experience the combined force of the two politicians who've done most to get climate change in the UK media, Cameron and Gore. First was An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's block-busting documentary about climate change. If you haven't already seen it then do try to catch it. He refined it over a period of decades, and it's a great primer on climate science and far more entertaining than you'd expect.
After the film his Daveness of Cameron turned up in person to answer questions from a mixed audience of tories, greens and journos, possibly with the lowest average age of any event in the conference. Cameron really can talk the talk - he still sounds like a politician (one particular politician springs to mind) but if talk-time is any indicator of priorities then he is serious about the climate. But is it? A lot of advertising focuses not on extolling the product's virtues, but neutralising its defects. Is Cameron trying to change his party, or just paper over the cracks? Well, he's given a lot of hostages to fortune - if the tory manifesto at the next election isn't particularly green, he'll get a roasting from the press - but this is only really relevant in comparison to Labour. If Brown's programme is a climate disaster, will Cameron still be crusading on the issue, or just making sure he's slightly greener than Gordon?
What we need from Dave is something concrete to confound the cynics. He's got a good line in prevarication; putting forward detailed, costed policies three years before an election is folly. Labour could implement the popular ideas before any campaigning even begins, and the world might be a very different place by then anyway.
To my mind this makes political sense only in terms of winning elections - Cameron also makes much of his willingness to cooperate with Labour when they agree, which doesn't sit well with keeping his plans secret to avoid them being implemented. The media accepts this strategy as simple common sense, but if Cameron's plans are so good, shouldn't he put country before party and try to get them implemented as soon as possible? This applies particularly to climate change - a three year delay in combating global warming might amount to a death sentence for millions. Of course I'm assuming Dave's ideas would have some practical effect, but then he's not going to argue otherwise.
His answer to this might be that, given the situation, he's doing his best. This amounts to one firm policy commitment, supporting FoE's Big Ask campaign. This is an attempt to get a climate bill which commits the government (any government) to an annual target for carbon reduction of three percent. Dave supports every element of this plan, except one. Can you guess what it is?
That's right, it's the three percent. He's fully behind all other aspects of FoE's scheme, but he's not sure about the actual target figure. If we end up with FoE's campaign being hijacked and altered to fit the level of tolerance of the Tory party and their backers, will Dave still be the climate's greatest defender, or will he just have sabotaged one of the climate's best hopes?
Admittedly any figure should stop emissions increasing, but FoE's three percent isn't by any means unnecessarily radical, and a figure much below three percent would be of more symbolic than practical value. Either way, his failure to back FoE's target or to name his own means that his one firm commitment is about as firm as (insert crude sexual simile, possibly refering to Clarkson, here).
Or perhaps I'm just a knee-jerk anti-tory ingrate.
