Saturday, December 04, 2004
Practising what we preach
This is an interesting item: Liberal Democrat, Donnachadh McCarthy, the author of "Saving the Planet without Costing the Earth - 500 simple steps to a greener lifestyle" (Fusion Press 2004), has produced a comparison of how four political parties measure up to their own rhetoric on climate change.
The 4 parties were measured out of a score of ten on the following criteria:
Do you use a renewable electricity supplier for your HQ?
Do you have any renewable electricity facilities installed on your HQ?
Do you have a renewable energy affinity scheme for your members? Do you
promote such a renewable affinity scheme to the public?
The parties scored as follows:
Labour : 0
Conservatives: 0.5
Green Party: 4
Liberal Democrats: 5
Commenting on the outcome of his survey, Donnachadh said:
"With George Bush back in charge of US energy policy, it is clear the rest of the world is going to have to provide the leadership on this issue. It is thus essential that all of Britain's political parties provide leadership at home on this issue which all of their leaderships have recently acknowledged is one of the most urgent facing our planet.
"This report shows that both the Tories and Labour have both hardly even started the process of tackling their own headquarters global warming emissions. The Greens and Liberal Democrats have made reasonable efforts but there remains a lot more both of them could do. All the parties need now to really sort out their own houses and then collectively they could lead the country to tackle this crisis with the far greater sense of urgency that the issue demands, if our children are not to be faced with devastating consequences of climate change."
The 4 parties were measured out of a score of ten on the following criteria:
Do you use a renewable electricity supplier for your HQ?
Do you have any renewable electricity facilities installed on your HQ?
Do you have a renewable energy affinity scheme for your members? Do you
promote such a renewable affinity scheme to the public?
The parties scored as follows:
Labour : 0
Conservatives: 0.5
Green Party: 4
Liberal Democrats: 5
Commenting on the outcome of his survey, Donnachadh said:
"With George Bush back in charge of US energy policy, it is clear the rest of the world is going to have to provide the leadership on this issue. It is thus essential that all of Britain's political parties provide leadership at home on this issue which all of their leaderships have recently acknowledged is one of the most urgent facing our planet.
"This report shows that both the Tories and Labour have both hardly even started the process of tackling their own headquarters global warming emissions. The Greens and Liberal Democrats have made reasonable efforts but there remains a lot more both of them could do. All the parties need now to really sort out their own houses and then collectively they could lead the country to tackle this crisis with the far greater sense of urgency that the issue demands, if our children are not to be faced with devastating consequences of climate change."
