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.
The Tories may come in 2008 to rue their equivocal attitude to nuclear - this policy may yet be a dreadful millstone for them, an ugly albatross hanging around their greenwashed necks. Zac Goldsmith believed, when he joined the Tories, that he had a commitment from them not to go down the nuclear route. Now it is clear that the Tories are willing to allow new nuclear power providing it is privately funded - that, in effect, they will NOT oppose New Labour policy. Zac must be feeling rather betrayed...perhaps 2008 might even see him return to the fold, and join the Green Party?
The May 1st local elections will be a significant milestone in British politics: the first real test of Brown's Labour Party. In London, Ken Livingstone will hang on to be re-elected as Mayor, and the Green group on the Greater London Assembly will grow to 3 or 4 A.M.s, thus strengthening the Greens' grip on the budgetary balance of power in London. Where I am writing from, in Norwich, we may achieve a historic milestone. If just 3 seats change hands, then the Green Party could become the largest Party on Norwich City Council, the first time that that has ever happened on a British Principal Authority Council. Fighting on issues such as more affordable housing, no to incineration, and yes to ‘home rule' (Unitary status) for Norwich, the Green Party will, I predict, certainly become at least the second-largest Party on the Council, consigning Norwich's LibDems to the dustbin of history. And that outcome, official Opposition status for the Greens, would itself too be a milestone, a historic first in British politics.
The Green Party's 1st ever Leadership election will take place in early autumn 2008. By the end of this year, the British public will be getting used to not just Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, but also a fourth name: Caroline Lucas? Sian Berry? Peter Tatchell? We will, of course, have to wait and see a while longer, to find out who will stand for the Leadership of the Green Party, in an election which, because of its first time status, will surely attract more publicity than the Greens have experienced since 1989.
The most important event of 2008, however, will not take place until December, and will not take place in Britain. In Poland, the successor Conference to Bali may well decide the fate of human civilisation. The long run-up to this event, as governments and NGOs try to get hard figures tied down to the "deep cuts" in emissions that the Bali agreement has promised us all, is the real story of 2008. Failure in Poznan will negate success in everything else in the year ahead. For, to put it simply: without a sustainably-liveable planet, within a couple of generations none of us will have any elections - nor indeed anything else - to worry about.
