"Age of Stupid" documentary takes on the British electorate
Morning all,
Ed's page here),
but, jolly times aside, it really hammered home how utterly crucial
this election is. So much so we've decided (thanks to Thomas Grist for
the suggestion) to make
The Age of Stupid free for 48 hours - from now till the polls close
tomorrow night - in case there's any voters out there who think this
election is about taxes or the economy or which leader has the most
photogenic wife.
Many a politician is claiming that this is the most important election for a
generation. I'd go further: it's the most important UK election ever.
Because the Government we elect tomorrow is the last which could still
prevent catastrophic climate change causing the greatest humanitarian
disaster of all time. To give ourselves even a 50/50 chance of not
hitting two degrees - the point at which it's thought unstoppable
runaway climate change will be triggered - we must stabilise global
emissions by 2015 and then reduce them rapidly over the next few
decades. So we have to turn around 150 years of
ever-increasing-emissions within the timeframe of the next Parliament.
And just to make it even more crucial, the UK has been one of the very
few countries pushing internationally for a really strong new climate
treaty, which is the only practical way of reducing global emissions -
see this
video from the final night of Copenhagen for details of Ed
Miliband's 11th-hour interjection which prevented the whole talks from
collapsing. And so it would greatly reduce the world's chances of
securing the right deal if, at the Copenhagen follow-up meeting in
Mexico this December, the UK is represented by a party whose candidates rank climate change
as 19th out of 19 most important issues, which wants
to decrease onshore wind and increase
North Sea oil drilling and which is riddled with
climate sceptics (with one even rumoured to be lurking in the shadow
cabinet).
So come Friday morning, the Green government I'd like to see sweeping in to Downing Street is: Caroline Lucas as
Prime Minister, Nick Stern as Chancellor, Tony Juniper as Home
Secretary, George Monbiot as Chief of Staff, newly-defected Ed Miliband
continuing as Minister for Climate Change and Gandhi as Foreign
Secretary.
That's not looking highly likely, so what to do?
If we were to vote simply on emission reduction targets - which would be logical, as reducing emissions is the
key thing we need to do - it would be a no-brainer. The Greens are
going for 90% by 2030, compared to 40% by 2030 for the Lib Dems, 34% by
2020 for Labour and we don't know about the Tories as they didn't think
it worth including in their manifesto. But last Friday, when I was
arguing with Ed Miliband around the country in our "Climate Roadshow"
(see video below), we met the former Labour MP for Milton Keynes, Brian
White. Brian was an MP from 1992 to 2005, when he did loads of green
things like kickstarting the Sustainable Energy Act 2003, setting
various sustainable energy targets and finding £60m for
renewable energy. Partly as a result of his work, green issues became
more widely understood locally, and then in the 2005 election, 1,100
people voted Green, split the vote and the Tories nabbed his seat. Which
meant that the net effect of voting Green was to get rid of one of the
greenest MPs.
at least three (including Carshalton and Wallington, Dorset West and
Torridge and West Devon) where it would either give a Lib Dem seat to
the Tories or prevent the Lib Dems from taking one from them.
So I urge everyone who understands the precipice on which we all stand to be highly tactical with their vote:
-> If you live in a hope-in-hell constituency, vote Green. The impact of
the first one or two Green MPs in to the House of Commons would be
massive, though there's only four seats with a half-decent chance:
Caroline Lucas in Brighton Pavilion (now the bookies' favourite), Tony
Juniper in Cambridge, Adrian Ramsay in Norwich South and Darren Johnson
in Lewisham Deptford.
-> If you're in a Labour-Tory marginal, steel your environmentalist's heart and vote Labour rather than Green
-> If you're in a Lib Dem-Tory marginal, vote Lib Dem rather than Green
-> If you're in a Labour-Lib Dem marginal, vote for Labour, with an eye on
helping stop Clegg siding with the Tories if there's a hung parliament.
(Clegg said last week - whilst visiting a poppy factory, charmingly -
that he'd be happy to work with the Tories as long as they concurred on
four policies - fairer taxes, a shake-up of the education system and
economic and political reform. Nothing else important, Nick?)
-> If you're in a safe seat for any of the three main parties - as I am in
Holborn & St Pancras - vote Green to add one more to the Greens'
total and strengthen the case for proportional representation next
time.
In the wake of the Copenhagen flop, the climategate emails and the IPCC's glacier mistake, a huge amount of
energy has gone out of the climate change movement. If only the same
were true of the global climate system, we could all relax. But the
inconvenient truth is that if we don't sort out climate change, it won't
matter what happens with the economy or pensions or Trident or
inheritance tax or all the other issues the leaders discussed in hours
of television debate whilst almost completely ignoring the one thing for
which history will remember them.
to Arthur
Girling's 50 minute podcast, or read the final
declaration (="The Peoples Agreement") and Bolivia's
submission to the UN process.
this photo may just be the greatest ever taken.
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