Letter: Global Warming: the Public Wants Action

By TONY JUNIPER

Sir: It is not surprising that the Government is facing so much opposition on environmental issues (report, 2 February). There is now a far stronger public demand for action on the green agenda, for example, and for policies to spare the world the worst effects of rapid climate change and to avert the impending mass extinction of species.

Closing the UK’s leading wildlife research centres will significantly damage our ability to tackle either. Tony Blair’s government has delivered one disappointment after another in recent years, on aviation, environmental taxes, housing standards, planning policies, energy efficiency, sustainable farming, company environmental reporting world trade and GM crops, and others.

The Conservatives have correctly judged the changing public mood and are homing in on Labour’s weak environmental track record. As with climate change, Labour may find there is a tipping-point in credibility beyond which remedial action becomes useless.

Several such points potentially lie ahead in 2006. One is the energy review, and the decision on whether to go nuclear. Another is the climate change programme review, and whether we will see the policies to deliver the promise set out in the past three Labour manifestos to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent by 2010 compared with 1990 levels. A third is whether the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology will close. The last one is the simplest to solve, but even here Mr Blair seems reluctant to intervene. If he and his ministers stand by and do nothing, they will have failed perhaps the easiest green test of all.

TONY JUNIPER

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FRIENDS OFTHE EARTH, LONDON N1