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Government regards green policies as expensive luxuries rather than inescapable necessities, and that must change
Are you thinking of taking a walk in the fresh country air this weekend? Or are you worrying about the rising cost of petrol, as well as food and electricity? Or, with one in six homes at risk of flooding, perhaps you, or someone you know, are concerned about what happens if a late April shower hits parched ground?
The environment affects us all, every day, and always will. We live in it. And that makes David Cameron's pledge to make his government the "greenest ever" a crucial one. But, one year on, how is the coalition doing? The short answer is not well – yet.
Hitting the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs with the biggest cut in Whitehall has hamstrung the guardians of our air, water and wildlife, as well as devastating plans for flood protection and prompting a zero-cost, zero-sense badger culling proposal. The Department of Energy and Climate Change did relatively well in budget terms, but has scared green investors by getting some small but crucial decisions badly wrong: a U-turn on subsidies for solar panels and converting a carbon-cutting incentive into a stealth tax.
The last government passed the Climate Change Act, compelling us to tackle the daunting threat of global warming over the next four decades. To be the greenest government ever, the coalition must turn that long-term goal into short-term action.
That means overturning long-standing orthodoxies. Our land, lakes and the life on them must be seen as a provider of precious commodities that underpin our wellbeing: clean air and water, fertile and carbon-storing soils – not an inexhaustible supply of short-term profit. The government's forthcoming ideas for new laws to cherish the natural environment as fundamental to our health and wealth, laid out in the in the natural environment white paper, are vitally important.
Another orthodoxy yet to be overturned at the heart of this government is that being green is an expensive luxury, not an inescapable necessity on a crowded planet with finite resources. The green departments get this, but the trolls of the Treasury do not, despite George Osborne's pre-election warm words: "If I become chancellor, the Treasury will become a green ally, not a foe." Did he use his budget to start getting the UK off the oil hook? No, he cut fuel duty by a penny, shaking an impotent fist at rising global prices.
In tough times, jobs are vital and skilled green jobs could be plentiful. But the Treasury ensured the promised green investment bank that could kickstart green industry can't borrow for years, and killed green Isas dead. A truly transformational idea – an energy-saving refurbishment for almost every building in Britain – may also be rejected by the accountants. Another critical policy, reforming our ultra-liberalised energy market to properly reward future clean energy, must avoid being captured by the giant utilities that dominate today.
So, is this the greenest government ever? Absolutely not, and the blinding hatred of regulation that led it to dump the Climate Change Act and more into its "cut red tape" challenge will not help it become so.
But maybe, just maybe, the coalition will deliver lasting protection of the natural world and re-engineer how the UK generates and uses its energy.
If it does, then for the first time, the heart of government will have truly changed. A government that cherishes our green and pleasant land and grasps the rare opportunity Britain has to be a green leader in the world would indeed be the greenest ever.