'Greenest UK Government' Under Pressure

When the current UK government came to power it claimed it was going to be the greenest ever. Just over a year later it is under pressure from all quarters to get it's act together and actually do something other than cut green schemes.

The government has claimed that it's been hampered by the economic situation but ,why then make the "greenest ever" claim when they already knew the economy was in trouble? Naivety? Wishful thinking? Greenwash? Or Bulls**t? Take your pick.

A recent review said that the government had only a remote chance of becoming the greenest ever because it had made no progress on the majority of it's green policies in year one.

A few days later, 15 green pressure groups wrote to the PM, saying the government was in danger of losing it's way, and saying he needed to promote a green economy with "urgency and resolve". So they also urged him to accept the main recommendations of the advisory body the Committee on Climate Change (CCC). The CCC recommends cutting emissions by 50% by 2025 and 60% by 2030. The green groups said this would provide clarity for investors and the public.

The Treasury and the Business minister's response to the CCC's report is that following their recommendations could harm the UK economy. This seems to have sparked off a long and heated debate amongst the Cabinet.

However, it looks like the PM will be announcing tomorrow that he will be accepting the report's main points but with a get-out clause should other european countries start back-sliding on their commitments.

Well, I guess that counts as "clarity" for investors. They're going to commit to bigger emissions cuts....for now. Until they need the funds elsewhere and then they'll find an excuse to back out.

What we really need is genuine commitment (no get-out clauses) and real support for investors so we can start to build a thriving green economy with thousands of new jobs bringing in billions of pounds in export deals. Rather like the Danes are doing with their wind turbines: Selling us thousands of them for millions of pounds each because we haven't bothered to re-skill our own engineers and ship-builders to do the job for ourselves.

We can learn a lot from the Danes, or the Germans, or the Spanish, or the Chinese......