The fight for local democracy and basic ecological common sense continues its frontline on an A-Road in Preston, Lancashire. It is where locals and protectors from across the country have been standing up against the fracking firm, Cuadrilla, and the Government’s dash for dirty gas. Throughout August and September, Green Party members are joining the protests en masse each Monday at Preston New Road. These “Green Mondays” have seen hundreds of Greens taking direct action while promoting the ecological alternatives to fracking. Continue reading “No fracking Mondays”
After hearing about the film ‘Cowspiracy’ which outlines the major impacts of industrialised dairy production on both the environment and the animals themselves, I thought I would rise to the challenge and join in with the Vegan Society’s ‘plate up for the planet’ week. I have to admit to being a bit wary. Continue reading “Going vegan for a week”
Yesterday, the Lords debated congestion and being the only green in the room, I said what the experts say – we need ‘pay as you go’ driving. I was pleased that I got a bit of support from some of the Labour and Lib Dem peers. The government don’t deny it will work, they just think it will be unpopular with motorists. Continue reading “Best way to reduce congestion is to reduce traffic”
Brexit will impact on every aspect of our lives, creating endless trauma but also the chance to improve things. We will need our own laws and our own enforcement agencies, and it’s an opportunity to create a body like the Environmental Protection Agency in the US, with its own staff, legal powers and a culture of independence from Government.
Continue reading “Brexit, a Clean Air Act and cycle lanes”
There are so many issues in the gracious Speech that I would like to tackle. I would like to talk about nuclear safeguards, agriculture and fisheries and the folly of HS2. However, I will try to contain my enthusiasm—or my fury—and talk about only two or possibly three issues. Continue reading “My response to Queen’s speech”
The Mayor of London issued a high pollution alert on Tuesday evening, but not the government, not the NHS, nor Public Health England, nor the Met Office and I didn’t notice anything on the BBC. Sadiq Khan has broken the silence which DEFRA managed to maintain for over a decade when Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson were Mayors. He has quite rightly decided that the public’s health comes first and efforts should be made to warn them when we have a bad pollution episode. Unfortunately, the Met Office, the NHS and the BBC outside of London, all wait for DEFRA to act before telling the public and that is why the system of alerts has failed so badly.
The government have deliberately played down the health impacts of air pollution for twenty years, because they want to do the minimum they can get away with. If they regularly issued press releases telling people to avoid exercise, or busy roads, or even not to drive in pollution hotspots, then the public would want to know when the problem was going to be fixed. The solutions are well known and have been put in place in cities around the world: cleaner vehicles, used less.
The EU have taken the lead in the drive for cleaner vehicles and while they did a good job with regulating diesel lorries and larger vehicles, they had a light touch approach to the car manufacturers. That approach failed miserably. Many car makers put profit before people and cheated on the tests. The differences between performance in the test and the reality on the roads can be measured in human lives cut short.
Meanwhile, Labour, Conservative and coalition governments have all failed to reduce traffic. In fact, they have acted to encourage traffic growth with new roads and cuts to public transport. The cost of driving has declined while the cost of fares has risen. Measures like pay as you go driving have been promoted by the experts, but rejected by politicians running scared of the motoring lobby. A few years go the Greens on the London Assembly even commissioned a report on how it would work in London and we shared that with Transport for London.
I’m glad that Sadiq Khan is now putting this forward as part of a London strategy to reduce traffic by 3m journeys. Such policies need our support if we are to end the public health scandal of air pollution
Climate change is the biggest threat facing humanity and it has been largely being ignored or sidelined by the bigger political parties. Yet last year was the hottest on record and those records are being beaten at an increasing rate. Huge cracks are emerging in the polar ice at the same time as Trump has tried to sink the Paris climate change deal. Labour has refused to oppose Heathrow expansion, which is the single most damaging policy/project for climate change and air pollution. Continue reading “Four reasons to vote Green”
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb 