Originally published @ 8:34 am, Thu 17th Dec 2009
Radio show presenter Simon Mayo challenged MPs from the 3 parties to say something nice about their opponents or their policies yesterday. Labour MP Jon Cruddas quickly said that he supported the Tories' latest proposals to require Members of Commons and the Lords to pay tax in the UK.
Why is saying something nice about the opposition difficult for politicians? Often, it isn't. Commons debates are mostly very polite and members often acknowledge others' expertise and efforts.
But a serious political party will have drawn their policies through their core values and should either be clear that their policies are right or start getting them changed.
Still, people find bickering between parties a turn-off. So ...
... how to react to David Cameron's initiative to work with Tescos, Marks & Spencers and local councils to drive on with insulation - http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/dec/15/david-cameron-energy-efficiency-copenhagen - announced in the Guardian? As a spoiler to Gordon Brown's arrival in Copenhagen - whoa! - I'm not supposed to be saying that kind of thing in this article.
OK, so if I'm being nice, it would be trite to say £20 billion is not enough - whoa! The Guardian says the scheme "would tackle more than 30% of UK carbon emissions by offering 6 million households the chance to get £6,500 worth of energy-efficiency measures". (Has the Guardian got that right? Only 8% of our emissions come from buildings.)
The Guardian's report says "Cameron sees the idea for a "localist green revolution" as an answer to his fear that what he describes as the current top-down climate change agenda is "in danger of starting to lose people"."
"Speaking as Gordon Brown arrived in Copenhagen for the climate change summit, the Conservative leader said: "If the environmental agenda becomes limited to well-suited politicians stepping out of aeroplanes on to tarmacs, telling people how to live their lives and sounding like everyone else will just have to sit in a darkened room, wearing woollies with the lights turned off and the heating down, we are not going to get anywhere."
""People do not like being lectured. You have to take people with you, and the way to do that is to connect individual behaviour and rewards, and help people see the advantages of going green. We have to have carrots as well as sticks.""
Whoa - a lot of barbs in there. Maybe I can be forgiven my two.
So how do we make change? I've always been uncomfortable with the notion of carrots and sticks. Why, in any campaign to take people forward, would you equate people with donkeys?
And the problem for those of us seeking change, is that we as individuals, families or at work in business or public services, rarely have environment our main concern. It's not that people don't care, we're just mainly focussed on other things.
And one of the few things that we generally accept as a legitimate control of what we do is money. And the cost of the greenhouse gases we emit rarely reflects the price we have paid.
Hence, Gordon Brown has arrived in Copenhagen, landing on a tarmac runway (whoa!), dressed in a suit (whoa!), sounding off (whoa!), to seek a deal on carbon trading. (See how barbed Cameron can be?) This top-down initiative, can't be locallist, (And we can't solve climate change by cycling to work, followed by a car carrying your change of clothes - whoa again!)
Signs from Copenhagen do not appear to be good and it's apparently 18 hours behind schedule. And the organisers didn't properly plan for tens of thousands of people wanting to directly witness events. It's going to take some skill and knowledge in the world arena to negotiate the deal.
As for Cameron's plan on insulation. Well yes, I have at conferences adapted Tony Blair's catch-phrase and called for "Insulation, Insulation, Insulation." But there are better examples of partnerships using "warmfront" money for systematic programmes of insulation that we should build on and we need to do more to tackle the insulation of solid-walled houses.
We need to change our taxation from road vehicle tax and fuel tax to a national road user pricing scheme that funds better public transport, so that we can make commuting greener.
Lower fuel prices and a public transport are benefits that people could relate to.
TO BE UPDATED, not least for the spelling.
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