The Green Alliance Manifesto

Or, to put it another (more accurate) way, the demands of the Green Alliance to shape the manifestos of the main parties at the next election.

The Green Alliance are a pressure group, and - of course - there is nothing wrong with pressure groups seeking to influence policy and government. Hell, it is pretty much their reason for being. Yet what is striking about the Green Alliance's press release is just how they attempt to fulfill their aims. They seem to mix strident demands with unsubstantiated threats and prophesies of doom. And as a result they are really unlikely to achieve its ends in any way.

On the eve of party conference season, eight of the UK’s leading environmental organisations today publish Common Cause: the Green Standard manifesto on climate change and the natural environment.

In case you were wondering, the eight groups are listed here by the BBC:

The groups making the call ahead of the forthcoming political party conferences are Green Alliance, Friends of the Earth, the Woodland Trust, WWF, the Wildlife Trusts, the RSPB, the Campaign to Protect Rural England and Greenpeace.

All the sort of organisations that will cause the main parties in this country to drop their pants and change their carefully designed and orchestrated party conferences to debate the calls of this strange union of movements. I can just see Gordon Brown ditching his latest desperate attempt to stay in power Keynote Speech to have a debate about these ideas. Something that becomes even more likely to me when I see the demands of these groups:

They are calling on all the political parties to endorse the Common cause declaration3, which states that climate change and restoring the natural environment should be accorded the highest priority during the next Parliament.

The highest priority? Jeez, that's a bold aspiration. Sure, you might just be able to get it to a high priority with the likes of Hug A Husky Cameron, but the highest priority? Against the ongoing crippling recession? The coming bankruptcy of the UK unless there are radical spending cuts? Against the troops dying in Afghanistan? They really want environmental concerns of a bunch of charities and members of the environmental lobby to take precedence and priority over all of those issues? That's somewhere between ludicrous and faintly insulting.

They are also calling on the parties to commit to 10 green manifesto proposals for 2010.

If the Tory Manifesto is as light as last time, then 10 pledges will pretty much eliminate all other commitments. Which, I suppose may be the point. If they can't put anything else in the manifesto then environmental concerns will have to go to the top of the list. But if this union truly wants to get their ideas into the manifestos of the main parties, it needs to make sure that there is a reason why the parties should sign up to their ideals. And this is where the Green Alliance becomes like one of those sandwich board men proclaiming "The End of the World Is Nigh":

The stakes are high: the price of failure would be paid by those in the UK and internationally who are most at risk from climate change, and in the irreversible loss of countryside and biodiversity. Action is required now, not in the decades to come.

Oh God, here we go. The tedious, predictable demand that action has to be taken now. Before something terrible happens! The problem with this rhetoric is that I have been hearing it since I was knee high to a grasshopper. Environmental doom has been coming unless the government deals with it now for years. And yet here we all are, still A-Ok. Now, for all I know there may actually be a global environmental apocalypse coming. But the environmentalists have now become the Boy Who Cried Wolf. The constant repetition of their warning has made that warning supremely ineffective.

Stephen Hale, director of Green Alliance, said on behalf of the groups: “It’s now or never. Support for the Common cause declaration will be the threshold for credibility at the next election on environmental issues. The commitment to decisive action must be endorsed by all parties. The real contest will be over specific policies, so we urge them to include our 10 manifesto asks for 2010 in their forthcoming manifestos."

Again, now or never. Or, as past history has shown us, it is now or never or some point in the future because we're not sure when - or even if - the oft-promised environmental apocalypse will actually happen.

And the next election will about a debate on policies - a variety of different policies, of which environment will be a small part. It will also be about the economy, and MPs' expenses, and the War in Afghanistan, and divisions in the Labour party, and the fact that Gordon Brown is the least popular and least effective Prime Minister since Anthony Eden nearly got us into a war with America over Suez. The Green Alliance proclaiming what the threshold for credibility on environmental issues at the next election is all very well and good, but it ignores the fact that the parties will need to consider a lot of other issues also demanding a credible response before they start worrying about environmental policies.

“Action in the next parliament is critical if we are to simultaneously reduce our CO2 emissions whilst improving the resilience of our natural environment to avoid the looming crises of food, energy and water shortages by 2030.”

Now, I'm all for avoiding food, energy and water shortages by 2030 - I think most people would be. Unfortunately, two things are missing from the Green Alliance's claim that the next Parliament will be crucial in avoiding that. They are:

1. There is no evidence that the apocalyptic shortages mentioned by the Alliance are actually going to happen and
2. There is no evidence that the 10 points from the Alliance - which consist of unsubstantiated and unexplained arbitrary targets relating to standard Green objectives - will stop those shortages.

Which is the first problem with this demand for the main parties to make their manifestos green - there's no real concrete evidence that the demands of the Alliance will truly make a difference with the environment. And that ties in nicely with the second problem these demands have - there is no evidence that embracing this rhetoric will help any of the parties politically.

Had there been an election in 2006, then these ideas might have been incorporated by the likes of Cameron into a manifesto. Unfortunately for the Greens, since then things have changed. And they have changed massively. For most people in this country, environmental politics represent the political equivalent of a luxury good. If some people can afford to be green, some people will do. However, in the midst of a financial crisis, people don't care as much about the environment, and for the vast majority of people it isn't going to be the main thing that influences their votes. This demand from the Green Alliance simply shows how desperate the environmentalists are becoming. People aren't listening anymore; people can't afford to listen. And a shrill demand for the main parties to add some environmental policies to their manifestos won't change that.