Monbiot on Blair’s Greenwash

  George Monbiot wrote this article in yesterday’s Guardian.   He says that our government is “wildy optimistic” about achieving it’s emission reduction targets. 

It would appear that, and there really are no surprises here, Labour’s empassioned promises of being world leaders on climate change action are just spin and more spin in an attempt to dupe us into trusting them.  More lip-service and empty gestures.  Telling us what we want to hear in order to shut us up and win in the popularity stakes.

Unfortunately, I missed tonight’s Dispatches programme that he was involved in but Monbiot commissioned a team of scientists to conduct a peer-reviewed audit of the government’s planned reduction targets.  Dispatches reported that….

“The reasons for these failures of policy are due to the current voluntary nature of most of the policy. Where policies are mandatory there is currently no enforcement. If current policies were mandatory and new more prescriptive future policies were developed then the Audit believes the UK could still make significant cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, thus providing world leadership in combating climate change.”

This is what I’ve been banging on about many a time in here…that voluntary participation is never going to work.  We need legislation – however unpopular it may be – that is persistently monitored and enforced.  We just won’t make the neccessary changes voluntarily at any level, be it governmental, corporate, public or personal.