UK still failing on climate change

No country will sacrifice its economy to meet the challenge of climate change. That’s not my prediction – it’s the Prime Minister’s. Mr Blair has been trying to explain this month why the UK is set to fall short of its targets on the reduction of carbon emissions, the cause of what he has himself described as the greatest challenge facing the world.

If we recognise the seriousness of this threat, yet so blithely fail to meet it, my prediction is that we will indeed sacrifice our economies, along with many lives, in the century ahead.

Mr Blair has worked hard on his public image when it comes to climate change. Citing it as one of the top priorities for his Presidency of the G8, and making commitments to serious-sounding targets on emissions did play well for him. But it should now be clear to all but the most self-deluded spin doctor that like so much of the New Labour CV, the claims made on environmental issues have been mostly hype.

So swift has been the Prime Minister’s conversion to his Texan friend’s agenda on climate change that not only has CO2 reduction fallen short, but the signals now are all about new technology to save the world.

I’m all in favour of using technology if it becomes available, but right now much of what’s talked about is still on the drawing board, if not in the realms of science fiction. The only option open to us today is a global effort to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. While some (now including Mr Blair himself) point toward nuclear power as the next best alternative, the suggestion that it’s a carbon-free technology has long been exposed as industry spin. Besides, the supply of high-grade uranium is so limited that it simply cannot fuel the world, even if we felt OK about handing an even bigger radioactive inheritance to our descendants.

It’s that responsibility to our descendents which should motivate us in this issue, and it should motivate the Labour Party as well. The best part of that party’s tradition has been about creating a more equal society. Whether they have held true to that intention or abandoned it is a valid subject for debate, and you will find people genuinely convinced on both sides of the argument. But anyone who shares a belief in the objectives of equality and social justice should recognise that it’s not enough to work for equality between people in one generation. Equality between different generations is every bit as important. There is little point in striving for social justice today if the achievement is ephemeral, and leads to even greater inequality tomorrow.

We know that our actions today will have a huge impact on those who inhabit this world for generations to come. Burning our way through the resources upon which their quality of life will depend, in order to make our own lives richer today, is no more morally defensible than stealing from the poor to give to the rich.
Yet that is what we are doing, and every level of government is complicit. The UK’s abandonment of emissions targets, highlighted this week by Greenpeace campaigners who blocked Downing Street with coal, is just one example. The reluctance of European politicians to place a fair tax on aviation fuel, the Scottish Executive’s refusal to support domestic energy efficiency measures, and the complacency of our councils when faced with rising traffic levels – just more from the list.

Future generations will be left with no choice but to live within their ecological means. If we don’t start laying the foundations of a society which can allow them to do so with a good quality of life, they will be well justified in cursing our generation.

Devolution a disaster?

After reading the report in last week’s edition of the Big Issue, “Devolution is a ‘disaster’ for poor”, I felt that I had to get hold of the research it was based on. The suggestion from the academic Dr Carlo Morelli that devolution has been an “unmitigated disaster” seemed to me absurd, given that powers were transferred from Westminster to Holyrood only six years ago. It should be clear that devolution is a long term project, which should not be judged a success or failure so soon.

It took little more than a glance at the full report to establish that Dr Morelli is not in fact arguing that devolution has made things worse in Scotland, or even that poverty is being tackled more effectively in other parts of the UK. Rather he makes the case that there has been a slight decline in income inequality throughout the UK, and that devolution has not improved much on this.

The reality is that neither Holyrood nor Westminster can claim to have put poverty centre-stage where it ought to be. Even if they had, it is clear that neither institution has all the right answers or even fully understands the problem. Our economies have grown, but pockets of deep poverty remain and persist through generations.

Wealth is being created, but the old idea that it would trickle its way down to benefit everyone in society is surely discredited. The links between poverty and health seem to become more complex, and more daunting, the harder we look.

This country is not alone in failing to solve the problem. Looking across the Atlantic, few of us were surprised at what we saw when Hurricane Katrina exposed the festering wound that is urban poverty – and especially black urban poverty – in America. Clearly US-style free market capitalism is found wanting, but more recently the world has also seen the violent consequences of poverty and racism in the towns and cities of France. If both the European social model and the rule of the market have left the patient with the same symptoms, perhaps we have misunderstood the disease.

Racism – from individual acts of race hate to the more complex institutional racism – is clearly an important factor. Divisions and inequality between people along ethnic lines have generated anger which young men in particular express in ways which cannot be ignored. But if both UK multiculturalism and French integration end up with the same social conditions, what do we try next?

There will be some whose instinct is to reach for the extremes of theory or philosophy in search of answers. Both religious and political fundamentalism can thrive in these conditions. Some will reach for the holy book and preach damnation or holy war.

Others will reach for the manifesto, and argue for a return to the hard left politics of state monopolies and the command economy, even class war. Both would represent a threat to the idea that democratic society can survive in the long run, and I don’t believe that fundamentalism of either kind can create the sort of world we’d want to live in.

We are a creature which can adapt to many things, even try to adapt the world to ourselves, but just as the experiences of childhood never cease to be a part of us the inheritance from our far past will never cease to be a part of our human nature. In this globalised life, we can feel threatened by events on the other side of the world, yet isolated from the people around us in our own street. Whatever new politics emerge from the current malaise, it much recognise the positive and social aspects of our tribal nature.

Speech on Licensing Bill

Patrick Harvie: It has been an interesting afternoon. There is a lot that I can support in the bill and a lot that I am comfortable with. We all acknowledge that alcohol causes significant problems in Scotland, but our debate had an uncomfortably puritanical tone.

Journalists who are keen to fill the Sunday supplements recently described the Greens as the new puritans, although personally I would be far more comfortable to recast ourselves as the new hedonists. Many MSPs - I will not say most — will spend part of the evening in a licensed premises. They will be in a pub or a bar or at a reception. I wonder how many of them will discuss, over a glass of wine or beer, the need to protect the public from alcohol.

We should address the issues of responsibility. People use the term “responsible drinking”, but I prefer to place responsibility firmly and squarely with the corporate sphere. When our drinking culture began its transition towards chain pubs and mega-pubs, global companies gained a huge amount of power. Jeremy Purvis was the first to mention power and the desire to empower local communities, but it is the corporate giants who have the power at the moment. The popularity of lager is a direct result of heavy marketing. Lager is quicker and easier to drink and the corporate giants decided that promoting lager would enable them to sell more alcohol.

Responsible selling should be a priority as well as responsible drinking. I regret that the bill does not go down that route and I also regret that it does not place power firmly with local communities, as Andrew Arbuckle wanted. I would have supported that. On balance, the bill contains enough good stuff for the Greens to support it tonight.

Air pollution in Glasgow

One of the less well-reported parts of the Holyrood diary is the member’s business debate. This is the last item of business in the Chamber on Wednesdays and Thursdays each week, and is one of the few opportunities for backbenchers to bring issues for debate. It’s generally a small scale affair, with just a few MSPs hanging back to take part in it as the rest file out of the building. Being a lower-profile session and having no vote at the end, it’s often seen almost as a practice session – or an opportunity to kick around a few ideas which aren’t yet ready for a full debate.

Such is the demand for these member’s business slots that after two and a half years as an MSP I will this week, on the day that the Big Issue hits the streets (perhaps at the very moment you start reading your copy on the bus home from work) move my first member’s business motion. The topic I have chosen is the stuff which may be swirling around you as you wait at the bus stop, magazine in hand. It is air pollution.

Over the last year and more, both Holyrood and Westminster have seen heated debates over the issue of smoking in public. MSPs having legislated already, at some point early next year the ban will come into force and the pubs and restaurants of Scotland will become smoke-free zones. However it will still be the case that for my fellow Glaswegians and I, the danger comes when we step out of the pub and onto the street.

On a hot day in Glasgow, you can actually see the stuff hanging in the air - great clouds of exhaust fumes filling the narrow gaps between the buildings in places like Hope Street. But what you can’t see is just as deadly, and not only in those narrow streets either. The whole of Glasgow city centre is what is known as an Air Quality Management Area, in recognition of the toxic levels of pollution. With respect to some poisonous gasses, it has been reckoned that at busy times breathing the air in Glasgow city centre is equivalent to chain-smoking.

So dangerous is the pollution which comes from high traffic levels that Scottish Environment LINK, the umbrella group of environmental organisations, ran a campaign recently which carried the message that the rear end of a car kills five times more people than the front end – two thousand every year in Scotland.

Given the public resources and legal controls which go into trying to improve road safety, we are left to wonder why no such priority is given to tackling the greater killer – the exhaust pipe.

Glasgow isn’t the only part of Scotland to suffer from this problem – but it’s the worst. The whole of our city centre is designated as part of the danger zone, and the City Council is therefore required to produce an action plan to bring the pollution levels back down to safer levels.

This they have done, but the plan itself sadly acknowledges that they have little hope of tackling the single most significant cause of the problem – ever rising traffic levels. Indeed when the Scottish Executive attempted to estimate future traffic levels they predicted a 40% increase in Glasgow by the year 2021.

Put simply, there is no chance that Glasgow’s air will be fit to breath if we continue to allow ever increasing traffic levels. I won’t be dropping this after one afternoon’s debate – we need to see meaningful action to protect the lives of people who live, work and spend time in Glasgow.

Religion and politics

Religion and politics are two subjects which many people instinctively avoid discussing. Each can open up fierce divisions between people, but if we think it’s bad now we should remember that ours is a country which was once gripped by fervour – to the point of bloodshed – on both.

It’s too easy to look at other cultures in which religious fundamentalism holds political power and feel a sort of arrogance which comes from three centuries of enlightenment values. But we shouldn’t get too cocky about the strength of those values, for if we’re not on our guard they may come under attack here just as they have elsewhere.

The view recently expressed by a senior US politician and used as an argument in favour of the ‘war on terror’ is that George Bush was not elected by US voters… he was appointed by God. Although the White House has distanced itself from the remark, saying that Mr Bush does not Himself share this view, the President has spoken openly of running a “faith-based presidency”. When those around him have been challenged to provide an evidence base for government policy, they have been known to decry their critics as members of the “reality based community”.

The tone of the Republican government is not the only evidence of the rise of fundamentalism in the US – whether we look at creationism in state schools, outright attacks on scientific materialism, or the popularity of the whole “god, guns and gays” agenda in large parts of the country, the picture is disturbing.

Elsewhere in the world similar trends are emerging, with fundamentalist movements cropping up within many religions and in many countries. Europe is the only part of the world which seems to be holding the line for Reason, and even here we need to be vigilant.

For the most part, seriously religious people in Scotland (as opposed to those many who simply tick the ‘C of S’ box on the census every ten years) are motivated by their faith on issues like poverty, equality, peace, human rights, homelessness, fair trade and so on. They don’t all share one political perspective on what to do about those issues, which is why you will find them in all political parties as well as in the mass of people who are turned off party politics. But they see those as the issues where their religion is most relevant.

But for some, it seems that those issues are overshadowed by an agenda consisting entirely of personal morality – other people’s sex lives for example. This is infuriating for people like me who believe that these issues are not even the business of the state, much less the church. But even ignoring my individual grumbling about this so-called “family values” agenda, it is a serious mistake for atheist and Churchgoer alike. To focus on it is to play into the hands of those who would like to see a fundamentalist revival in Scotland.

The recently launched Scottish Christian Party for example (previously Operation Christian Vote) has announced its intention to stand candidates in the 2007 Scottish Parliament election. It’s mission is to place democratic government in a subservient position to religion, and it brings with it a half million pound donation from an as-yet unnamed source. Having polled well in some constituencies this year, the possibility of a regional seat is not inconceivable.

We in Scotland should be proud that we rid ourselves of Knoxian fundamentalism in favour of reason. But we shouldn’t imagine that we are immune from the resurgence of religiosity which is in evidence around the world.