By Maryann Bird
Like the earth itself, the debate on global warming and how to address the challenges it presents is heating up in Britain. Turning up the gas, of course, are the country’s political party leaders, who – unlike many of their “special relations” in the U.S. – all want to be seen as greener than green, if not whiter than white.
David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader (who is beginning to get noticed on the western side of the Atlantic), has sought to differentiate himself from Tony Blair and his Labour government through a series of high-profile actions and addresses calling for revolution. Well, a green revolution, anyway. At home, Dave has been putting his money where his mouth is, having an eco-architect outfit his London house with energy efficient heating, lighting, insulation and fuel systems.
Now, on the heels of prime minister Tony Blair’s decision that the country’s energy future is nuclear (a turn-around from his government’s 2003 stance on investing heavily in renewables), Cameron has won planning permission to erect a wind turbine at his London home. The turbine has to be grey (like the last Conservative prime minister, John Major, one might say), rather than green or Tory royal blue; there are height restrictions, and Cameron has to apply for renewal of the permit in three years. So far, so good -- and as one observer put it, a victory over the “not-in-my-backyard” brigade.
While we wish him (and Blair’s would-be successor, Gordon Brown) well in pushing a critical issue to the top of the political agenda, however, we note that Dave has had public-relations problems with his green symbolism in the past. In April, he travelled to Norway for three days to highlight the climate-change issue, to see the effects of global warming in the Arctic for himself and, as he said in Oslo, to recapture the issue from the pessimists.
Cameron’s aides happily noted that their boss’s environmentally friendly local transport when he reached the remote island of Svalbard, above the Arctic Circle, was a team of huskies and a sled, which whisked Dave for 15 miles across a glacier. He found himself on thin ice later, though, when the dogged British media reported that, before taking to the dogsled, the Tory leader had been driven 38 miles from London to the Farnborough air base by a government car that spewed out 30 pounds of carbon dioxide. At the airfield, he boarded a 10-seat private jet, which flew him and his entourage to Longyearbyen, on Svalbard – a 1,909-mile trip that is said to have deposited five tons of carbon dioxide per passenger into the atmosphere.
Other journeys, closer to home, also have raised eyebrows. Dave has been encouraging people to walk or bicycle on short trips, and indeed is often seen pedalling his bike into work at the Houses of Parliament, helmet fixed atop his head. He’s come under fire for that gesture, too – because it turned out that a car (albeit one with a hybrid engine) followed him, ferrying his paperwork and office attire to Westminster. (Suggestions for bike accessories then followed him, too.)
WWF-UK, which coordinated his trip to Norway, backed Dave in the Svalbard dispute, noting that all carbon emissions produced by his travels would be offset by contributions toward renewable-energy projects. And Greenpeace defends him on the issue of decentralised energy. “When Tony Blair leaves offices,” says Stephen Tindale, Greenpeace’s executive director, “Britain can get on with tackling climate change and fostering energy security without reaching for the technologies of the past…With Blair in government, the chances of actually addressing climate change and ensuring energy security diminish by the day.”
Cameron has been accused by the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties of having a fondness for publicity stunts – and of being “Dave the Chameleon”, who changes from Tory blue to green and back again to fit the opinions of his audience. He insists, though, that the Conservatives can be true-blue and green at the same time. “We want to give green energy a chance,” he says. “That means no special favours or subsidies for nuclear power,” a power source he calls “a last resort”.
“Environmentalism,” says Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats’ spokesman on the environment, “is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Whenever a politician wants to burnish his credentials as a visionary, or spray on a layer of compassion to his public image, he makes an Important, Groundbreaking Speech about the environment.” Britain’s Conservatives, he adds, “are about as green as an oilslick.”
Says Huhne: “But here's a simple way of testing whether there is any commitment behind the comforting, eco-friendly rhetoric: does the speaker say upfront that taxes on fuel will have to be increased if we want to tackle global warming?”
Over to you, Dave...
