Rupert Read - response to Madelaine Bunting in commentisfree
Madeleine Bunting, on the Guardian's commentisfree website (21 June 2009), wrote about Labour's approach to the Climate Change Act. Rupert Read, the party's spokesperson on public services, responds:
Madeleine Bunting says Labour's Climate Change Act is "undermined by their preoccupation with getting out of the recession as quickly as possible." I would say the opposite is true. What is undermining the government's fine words is the very fact that it won't adopt the Green New Deal proposed by the Green Party and others - a package specifically designed to tackle the recession and the climate crisis at the same time.
Labour's own so-called "green new deal" - which was only 0.6 per cent actual new green investment - included things like nuclear power and coal-fired power stations, things which could not hope to deliver large numbers of jobs in the next decade. And even then they would create fewer jobs per megawatt than renewables.
The Green Party advocates a recovery and economic stablisation package emphasising things that could create huge numbers of jobs starting immediately while slashing emissions, like renewable energy, energy-efficiency investments and public transport improvements.
Ms Bunting also says "The value shift required is not going to be led from Westminster."
I think it might yet, if we have Green MPs elected at the next general election, which looks increasingly likely.
Rupert Read is a Green Party councillor in Norwich, and the party's by-election candidate for Norwich North
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