This is a post for all the young British activists. We’ve got a new, ‘coalition government’ running climate policy now and that means a new figure-head to target and new policies to critique. Chris Huhne is the new Energy and Climate Change Secretary, take a good look at the picture above and imagine Ed Miliband morphing into him. He is the new guy to watch out for at negotiations and we need to make sure he engages with youth and activists in the same way as Ed did so the pressure stays on. We have two other ministers to watch out for (see voting records by clicking their names):
Charles Hendry, Minister of State for Energy
Gregory Barker, Minister of State for Climate Change
A good place to start from is the words written in the coalition agreement in which among other things the party’s state:
- We will push for the EU to demonstrate leadership in tackling international climate change, including by supporting an increase in the EU emission reduction target to 30% by 2020.
- We will establish a full system of feed-in tariffs in electricity – as well as the maintenance of banded Renewables Obligation Certificates.
- We will establish an emissions performance standard that will prevent coal-fired power stations being built unless they are equipped with sufficient carbon capture and storage to meet the emissions performance standard.
- We will introduce a floor price for carbon, and make efforts to persuade the EU to move towards full auctioning of ETS permits.
- We will work towards an ambitious global climate deal that will limit emissions and explore the creation of new international sources of funding for the purpose of climate change adaptation and mitigation.
These all sound very nice but it’s our job to force them to flesh out exactly how? And when by? And to encourage them to be more ambitious. Why not 40% by 2020? Cameron stated he wanted this to be “the greenest administration ever”. Well let’s make it clear that young people will be judging them on the action they take today and every day up until then next election and beyond.
