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Lib Dems in full environmental retreat
BEFORE THEY came to power, the Lib Dems attached
great significance to their supposedly radical programme on the
environment. The importance to their activists of the party’s stance on
this issue was highlighted by a YouGov poll for Greenpeace in October
2010 that found 77% of party members thought that the government should
safeguard or increase clean energy budgets. So have Nick Clegg, Chris
Huhne, the Lib Dem energy secretary, and Vince Cable delivered on the
environment?
The key green pledges in their 2010 election
manifesto were: a target for 40% of electricity generation from
renewables by 2020; investing £400 million to allow shipyards to make
wind turbines; investing £140 million to replace old, polluting buses;
rejecting a new generation of nuclear power stations.
Some of these got short shrift from chancellor
George Osborne within the first few months of the Con-Dem
administration. On buses, for example, the comprehensive spending review
announced a cut of £300 million in subsidies to bus services, not the
increased spending the Lib Dems were demanding for new vehicles. On
investment in wind turbines, the amount available was cut in half. More
recently, Huhne, Clegg and Cable have supported a pro-private transport
agenda, with a cut in vehicle fuel duty and an increase in spending on
road schemes to £897 million, at a time when public services for the
poor are being decimated.
The target of 40% of electricity generation from
renewables by 2020 is an extremely modest figure to aim for, because it
does not mention targets to restrict other forms of greenhouse gas
pollution, such as from road vehicles and aircraft, or gas and coal
burning not connected to electricity generation. Even so, the Lib Dem
manifesto target is missing from the department of energy’s programme.
All it says is that 30% of electricity generation ‘could’ come from
renewables by 2020.
One target that has been adopted is for 15% of all
energy consumption to come from renewable sources by 2020. However, the
consensus opinion by climate scientists now is that this figure needs to
be 40% to give any chance that global warming will be restricted to an
increase of 2C, above which catastrophic ‘tipping’ effects could be
triggered. There must also be great doubt that the 15% target will be
achieved since Osborne made clear at the recent Tory party conference
that Britain would do no more than rival countries in addressing global
warming. No doubt, such a policy would be reciprocated by most other
capitalist powers, especially in this time of economic crisis which
almost guarantees an environmental race to the bottom.
Incidentally, statements by energy department
ministers, who like to boast that they are on course to meet the Kyoto
treaty targets for cuts in greenhouse gases by 2012, are largely
spurious. This is because the Kyoto targets themselves were essentially
cosmetic, and hardly scratched the surface of what is required. In
addition, a combination of economic crisis, leading to a fall in
greenhouse gas output, and a long-term trend of de-industrialisation,
leading to pollution being exported to China as industry has relocated
there, have flattered the figures.
Despite the retreats, some Lib Dems are probably
still pinning their hopes on the Green Investment Bank announced in the
coalition agreement delivering significant environmental dividends. As
commented on in this column a year ago (Socialism Today No.144,
December/January 2010/11), the prospects for this initiative did not
look good and little has changed since then to alter this view. The
bank’s initial capitalisation will be £3 billion, slightly higher than
initially mooted. But it will not be able to begin significant
operations until financial year 2015/16, when it may, if certain
conditions are met, be able to borrow a further £15 billion to fund its
work. This delay is serious since all science is pointing to the need
for urgent action. Also, the funds available must be compared to the
vastly greater amounts that are required to meaningfully address global
warming. For example, the consultancy company Ernst and Young has
calculated that £450 billion is required up to 2025 to build a low
carbon infrastructure.
The most radical sounding proposal in the Lib Dem
manifesto was to reject a new generation of nuclear power stations.
Huhne had said that nuclear power was a failed technology, but his
opposition to nuclear was abandoned after only a few hours of initial
talks to set up the coalition. At the time, Huhne was quoted as saying
that there were a whole series of compromises made that were "obviously
unpleasant for each of the parties". This comment may have been made to
give the impression to party activists that, behind the scenes, Huhne
would fight tooth and nail to salvage as much as possible from his
programme, and at least would not give the nuclear lobby an easy ride.
However, this possible interpretation was undermined after only a few
months by the events surrounding his department’s attempted cover-up of
the consequences of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.
The nuclear lobby was in a panic after Fukushima,
and began a PR campaign to downplay its effects within hours of the
incident, even though what actually happened and the horrific
consequences did not become even partially clear until months
afterwards. Emails obtained by the Guardian showed that the PR campaign
was coordinated by Huhne’s department, in close collaboration with
Cable’s department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS).
Two days after the initial accident, the business
department contacted the nuclear lobby body, the Nuclear Industry
Association, helpfully pointing out that things were not as bad as they
seemed at Fukushima. "Radiation has been controlled, the reactor has
been protected", an official from the BIS wrote in the email. It
continued: "It is all part of the safety systems to control and manage a
situation like this". This was just before two further explosions at the
plant and before the reactors began to melt down, beginning the release
of huge quantities of radiation. Ten months later, a reactor is still
not under control and it is not certain when it will be.
The same official in Cable’s department told the
nuclear plant manufacturer, Areva, that "we need to quash any stories
trying to compare this to Chernobyl". Two months later, the disaster was
officially classified as level 7, the worst possible and the same as
Chernobyl. The text of a subsequent government statement on Fukushima
was cleared in advance with nuclear industry representatives, a level of
collusion described as "truly shocking" by a former government nuclear
regulator.
After the accident, Huhne announced a review of the
lessons, the report of which has just been published. Not surprisingly,
it recommended only minor changes to procedures, which was enough for
Huhne to give the planned new nuclear stations the go ahead. So
confident was it of the outcome of the review, the power company EDF did
not even bother to wait for the report to be published before starting
work on the proposed new Hinkley Point nuclear reactor.
Huhne seems to think that, because Britain is not in
an earthquake zone, there is no danger from nuclear. However, the
lessons of a whole series of disasters, from Windscale in the UK in the
1950s, through Three Mile Island in the US, Chernobyl and finally
Fukushima, is that disasters have occurred due to a combination of
previously unanticipated circumstances, technical failure and human
error. There is no reason to think this deadly pattern will not be
repeated.
In the aftermath of the revelations about the Lib
Dems’ role in covering up the extent of the Fukushima disaster, some
leading rank-and-file party members called for Huhne to resign. Andy
Myles. the Lib Dems’ former chief executive in Scotland, said it was a
terrible betrayal of liberal values. However, by the time of the 2011
conference, the leadership sailed through without significant
opposition. The Lib Dem betrayal of their environmental promises is
another nail in the party’s coffin.
Pete Dickenson
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