Environment

Brian Davey (Nottingham, Strategy for Losers): Green New Deals are clearly the new big idea. Governments need to spend to avert the worse kind of slump and it makes sense for their expenditure to focus on  renewables and energy efficiency. At the same time the finance system needs greater regulation.

This is instantaneously the new conventional wisdom. The beginnings of an alliance created by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) for a Green New Deal appears to be pushing at an open door. The United Nations Environment Programme are calling, apparently, for something similar.

But are these ideas radical enough for the problems that we face? The NEF alliance has created a draft programme about the banking crisis, peak oil and climate change that is effectively relating the finance and money system to the limits to growth. However it leaves out that key idea and  its implications for the banking and finance system.

Tony Curzon Price (London, openDemocracy): I entirely support Stuart Weir's view that a decision as momentous as restarting nuclear build should be arrived at by something like a Royal Commission. The question is too large, delicate and long term for ordinary representative institutions to deliver legitimacy.

Rupert Read (Norwich, The Green Party): So the Cabinet has (yesterday) spinelessly given the unanimous go-ahead for our kingdom to ‘go nuclear' once again. The formal Parliamentary announcement that New Labour is taking the nuclear option will come tomorrow, but we have known for a few years now that this was a fait accompli, and that the consultation(s) would be and were a sham. It has been coming because nuclear power is seen as an easy, ‘low-carbon' option for energy, at a time when the government is desperately trying to present itself as serious about manmade climate change.

Rupert Read (Norwich, The Green Party): My first prediction is that a news event that is already today ongoing will be big, and will run and run. New Labour are determined to push nuclear power through, this year. This will arouse huge opposition. It is a litmus-test issue for any politician wishing to don green clothing. Because it is a lie that nuclear is a low carbon source of energy: if, as one must, one factors in the energy needed for mining, transporting and processing uranium, and if (as one must, and this is crucial) one includes the vast amount of energy needed to decommission monitor and protect nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands of years, then nuclear ends up with a stupendously huge carbon footprint.

Katrina Forrester (London, Plane Stupid): In the last months we have seen a surge in environmentally driven political action. The UK's anti-aviation movement is being propelled by local residents and activist groups uniting to challenge the current Heathrow Consultation. The Green Party has agreed to elect a leader, highlighting the need for engagement at a party political level. The scene is set for widespread global change. We hope.In times of crisis leadership is necessary. Difficult times call for new political direction. What, then, is the political solution to the global crisis we now all face?

Our Kingdom: Zac Goldsmith has just emailed us a rebuttal of some of the appalling coverage dolled out on his and John Gummer's Quality of Life Policy Review. It was linked to by ConservativeHome where the comments give you a taste of the venom in the Tory party. You can also find an Executive Summary of the Report here. (Simon Jenkins in today's Sunday Times has a more interesting and constructive column than most.) Here is Zac's response:

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Newsnight got hold of an advanced copy of the Zac Goldsmith, John Gummer report on the Quality of Life last night and had a go at very rich men saying that in the UK now "increasing material gain is not a gift but a burden" - thus taking the cheap shot, ad hominem approach while appearing to be highbrow. Much the most interesting response was from that footman of Thatcherism Tim Congdon whose response to the report's headlines was a considered, “I think that environmentalism is the new socialism, it's an excuse for new regulation, new controls, new rules and in the end more bureaucrats, more government spending". He conceded that IF "we are responsible for global warming we may have to do something about it", but felt sure that the report's suggestion that action is needed now "is premature". Early this year Congdon wrote in the Telegraph, "I never imagined that the modern Conservative Party would again embrace old-fashioned Tory paternalism, with a frank advocacy of expanding the state's responsibilities" and he said he would consider voting for UKIP. It's a pity, because this will allow both right and left to dismiss him as a ridiculous fellow. However, though it does not necessarily mean more bureaucrats there is a way in which environmentalism is indeed the new form of socialism. With Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth welcoming the Tory report the possibility of significant repositioning is taking place. Especially as Zac also links his environmentalism with radical democracy, as we have been reporting here in OK. Taken separately, serious environmentalism and radical democracy can each be tagged as maverick. Together they start to make a politics.

Jon Bright (London, OK): Just been made aware of imooty.eu, a cracking news aggregator for European news outlets. Not only does it simply and clearly aggregate the top stories from different countries, it allows you to search across countries for the same news story - find out how Gordon Brown is playing in Czechslovakia, or what Merkel has been up to according to the Portugese press.

Sunny Hundal (London, Pickled Politics): Much of the talk in the press this week has been about how these "hippies" who attended Climate Camp were so smug and preachy, and probably flew to Heathrow to attend the camp. Are environmentalists full of contradictions? Do they not practice what they preach?

Paul Kingsnorth (Oxford, writer): Summer 2005, and I’m working as an assistant lock-keeper on the river Thames. A parallel world has unfurled before me. I live less than a mile from this river – I’ve walked by it many times, swum in it, kayaked on it, passed endlessly over its bridges. Yet I’ve never really seen it. It is a new channel of human life: the people who live on it, from it, and work it, are a different world.