|
PAUL WILENIUS: A new day at Kew Gardens.
A symbol of Britain's love affair with greenery for more than two hundred
years. When Tony Blair pledged to put the environment at the heart of
government, it was hoped this would herald the dawning of a new cleaner
age. But early successes have not grown into the radical policies green
campaigners expected.
Tony Blair will try to
reclaim the green agenda this week with a keynote speech on the eve of
the Budget. Despite his promises, critics say that the environment is still
not at the heart of government's policies. Now he's anxious to reassure
voters before the election that he really will deliver greener policies,
if he wins a second term.
Even before the Royal
Botanic Gardens are opened, visitors are queuing to get in. Kew Gardens
customers are buying entry to an oasis of tranquility amidst a world increasingly
threatened by man made dangers. Voters' concerns about global warming,
pollution, freak weather and quality of life are growing. So the Prime
Minister's turned his attention to the issue again.
MICHAEL MEACHER MP: It is tremendously important
that the Prime Minister is now taking the leadership in developing these
strategies and he's making clear if we do have an election coming I think
the kind of programme which you can expect from a second Labour government
and there's no doubt that environment is going to be way up, high profile,
one of the lead issues within a second Labour government.
CHARLES KENNEDY MP: I think the Prime Minister
and the government generally have failed miserably where the environment
is concerned. He's making this great speech - well that's a good thing
- it's about the second or third speech he's made since he's been the leader
of the Labour Party, never mind the Prime Minister of the country. I don't
think that there is a gut instinct there, where Labour is concerned for
environmental concerns.
WILENIUS: Not Kyoto but Kew. But
meeting the targets set in faraway Japan on cutting greenhouse gases, is
regarded as a government success. But those waiting for more may be disappointed,
as the dash for gas power generation accounted for most of that figure
and further progress needs more radical policies. The Climate Change Levy
on big energy users had to be watered down - Ministers admit more needs
to be done.
MEACHER: Whether we like it or
not we have fundamentally to change the way in which we run our economy,
run our society. All of us: business, individuals in domestic households,
central local government. All of us have got to change the way in which
things are done, our mobility, the way in which we use energy, the kind
of fuels that we use. That's absolutely necessary otherwise we're going
to suffer on an intensified scale, the kind of severe flooding which has
actually been worse abroad and we may see worse in this country if we don't
take note. That's one key driver.
CHRIS HEWETT: I think there is a school
of thought in new Labour which has argued that there are certain priority
issues which the government must address and that some issues the public
will never vote on and environment is one of those issues. I think what
the party have learnt in government is that actually the interests of the
electorate are much broader and if you want to achieve social change across
the board then you do have to have widen, you have to widen that agenda
and environment is one of those issues, that if you don't do something
early on, then the problems will come up and bite you a few a few years
down the line.
WILENIUS: Environmentalists feel
the sort of care lavished on the trees at Kew, should also be given to
Labour's green policies. And they hope people will see a step change in
attitude, aimed at tackling the root causes of global threats, in both
Blair's speech and the Budget this week. Action on solar power, renewable
energy and greener engines are forecast.
KENNEDY: People are going to be
rightly cynical if Gordon Brown in a few days time presents his budget
as some kind of jolly Green Giant budget, because they've seen the track
record over the past four years. They know it has not been a significant
priority for the government and whatever incentives are offered to people
at this juncture I think will be treated with the cynicism that they probably
deserve.
WILENIUS: A new generation learn
about the dangers facing the world, yet the doom-mongers don't expect
all these plants to end up in Britain.
UNNAMED MAN: This is called opuntia or
prickly pear.
WILENIUS: Motorists were stung
by sharp fuel price rises when Labour first came to office, to try to teach
car owners not to pollute. But this policy of yearly escalating prices
was scrapped last autumn.
JOHN HORAM MP: They increased the escalator
so much at the beginning of their period of office. It's probably partly
environmental, though maybe that was a bit of a cover for just Gordon Brown
getting in more revenue. What no one really knows - but it's quite clear
that when they ran in to trouble, they backed off at an alarming speed
and if you recall, they never mentioned the environment when there was
all the protest last October. They never mentioned the environment, it
was all about needing the money to pay for schools and nurses and so forth
and so that was really bad. I think that gave a very bad signal to the
environmentalists.
WILENIUS: Teaching people to be
green is hard work. Cash incentives will be a feature of the Budget this
week. There'll be more cuts in taxes for environmentally friendly cars,
those using smaller engines and cleaner fuels. And there'll also be moves
to get more children on school buses, to cut car journeys. But there are
fears this will only be cosmetic as fuel costs are still falling. The Greens
say this is counter productive.
MIKE WOODIN: I think on this particular
issue the government have done immense harm because they appeared to be
supporting a green agenda on transport but in reality of course it was
Treasury driven, it was just a financial measure and we can tell that because
they weren't simultaneously investing in the alternatives to car use. So
on the one hand they were penalising motorists but on the other hand they
were not providing the alternatives to coax people out of their cars.
Now that they've done a U-turn on that and they've seen that it might ..it's
unpopular and they back tracked they have completely discredited in the
eyes of a majority of the electorate those green arguments.
JOHN HORAM MP: We have got a report coming
out next week and we've taken a lot of evidence over the last couple of
months since the big change - the dropping of the fuel duty escalator and
I think what our evidence clearly shows is that that was a major change
in policy which they did not appraise for its environmental effects at
all. Which is fundamentally wrong and going against what they say themselves
they should do, ie government policy but they tried to mitigate the problems
by putting it with for example a new green fuel challenge and also lowering
the vehicle excise duty on smaller cars in order to encourage you know
less carbon emissions and so forth. So it's a big cosmetic in truth. It
was look, as though they'd decided to make - take a step as a result of
clear protest last October and cover it up a bit by some other measures,
which look quite green but weren't really very green.
WILENIUS: Labour brought in measures
to open up the countryside to walkers and to tax those who despoil it.
But Ministers are under pressure on genetically modified food and new
plans to build more roads and homes across green areas of the countryside.
HEWETT: The government did not
anticipate an interest from consumers in those issues and so they didn't
have an environmental argument prepared and were therefore forced by vested
interests to back in a sense what the industry wanted. I think that will
change now, already is changing. A great more consultation is going on
in terms of GM foods and I think the government is going to have to take
on board, much more seriously, the concerns of consumers.
WILENIUS; The row over GM foods
caught the public's attention. They worried that the government was not
protecting the environment. The government says issues like this distracted
the electorate from the new Right to Roam, new National Parks and new green
taxes on landfill and quarrying. But Ministers now face a backlash over
plans for one-hundred new road schemes and a million new homes.
KENNEDY: I think that there is
a reaction - a genuine reaction taking place in a lot of rural Britain
about the degree of concreting over, that is perceived to be taking place
and that is something at the end of the day that Mr John Prescott, in particular,
has got to stand in the dock on and I think that the jury is not going
to find him innocent.
WILENIUS: The Palm House at Kew
takes a lot of energy to maintain its warm and moist atmosphere. Now the
government feels the great British public is more interested in sustainable
and renewable ways of producing that energy. So Tony Blair will this week
give more support for renewables like wind and wave power and the solar
power industry will get a big push. The government believes it could become
a multi-million pound business given the right incentives.
MEACHER; I mean renewables is absolutely
key at the present time. It's absolutely at the centre of the switch away
from fossil fuels, oil and coal in particular, to the renewable sources
of energy, which are wind, tidal power, bio-mass energy crops and above
all of course, solar and the hydrogen fuel cell for cars. That's the way
we're going. Now we do need, we are putting more resources in to this.
We have imposed on the electricity suppliers that they should get at least
ten per cent of their sources for fuel burning from renewable sources,
by 2010, we're well on the way to achieving that. We intend to meet that
target.
WOODIN: Well the government's record
on renewable energy can be summed up simply by quoting Department of Trade
and Industry figures which show that in the year 2000, just one-quarter
of one per cent of Britain's energy requirement, came from renewable sources.
So I mean I'll be absolutely delighted if they meet their ten per cent
target but on their record so far, I doubt they're going to make it.
WILENIUS: The government says it's
not just hot air. It's set to unveil a big programme to boost the sales
of energy producing solar panels.
MEACHER: With regard to solar photo
votayics, we certainly will shortly be publishing a programme, which indicates
that we are in line with the world leaders. Germany has a hundred thousand
roof programme by 2007, Japan I think, seventy-thousand by 2005. When
we announce it is going to be in that sort of range, this is a major commitment
that we're making of enormous importance.
WILENIUS: There are dangers for
Tony Blair, especially in the long term if he is not seen as a green Prime
Minister. His government could lose votes if it fails to respond fully
to the environmental problems facing Britain. And his advisors are telling
him privately that green issues are close to the hearts of the affluent
middle class voters he needs at the next election.
The main priorities for
those voters are still the economy, health and education. But they are
looking much more closely at green issues and if the government's record
is not convincing, they could start drifting away towards other smaller
parties, or they could lose interest altogether. And Labour also needs
to lift its image on the environment, to attract and keep younger voters.
Otherwise it could suffer at the ballot box, eventually.
HORAM: I think the government hasn't
taken the environment as seriously as it should have done, or said it was
going to do, partly at least, because it didn't believe there were votes
in it. Now, that may be true in a short-term sense that obviously things
like crime and law and order are more important immediately at the next
General Election. But in a more fundamental sense I think that a lot of
middle class people, middle England people if you like, in the South of
England and the middle and in other parts of the country, who are very
concerned about their environment and see more road building and more house
building and more dispilation of the environment as a threat to their quality
of life and I think they ignore that feeling at their peril.
KENNEDY: I think the concern in
Labour high command about the environmental agenda and about green issues
generally, is that there are a lot of disillusioned Labour voters, or previous
Labour voters out there. We know that. The opinion polls are telling
us it. The commentators are saying it. For heaven's sake, the Labour
Party is saying it, quite loud and quite open, and one of those groups
of people that must feel quite disappointed by Labour in office, are those
who thought, at last we've got a government that's actually going to take
the environment and green issues seriously and they haven't and they know
it, and that's what they're trying to address and that's why we will be
putting the focus very heavily on these issues during the campaign itself.
WILENIUS; In Kew Gardens it's a
constant battle to preserve the environment. Labour too wants to tidy
up its green policies. But electoral imperatives aside, there are some
in the government who genuinely worry about the future of the earth.
MEACHER: Rising water levels, the
risks to our shore-line particularly in East England. These are... the
fact that if the temperature does rise we could see many areas of the country...of
the world, including this country, suffering an increase in malaria infestation.
It's already happened in New York, it could happen here, as well as other
diseases. It is very, very, very serious. This is absolutely deadly serious.
It is the number one issue. Not just environmentally, but for our whole
world and for the survival of the human race.
WILENIUS: This dire warning of
some future apocalypse shows a significant change in the government's attitude
towards the environment. But if Ministers cannot produce effective policies
soon to lift the dark threats to the future of our world, then its own
long-term survival, as well as the planet's, could well be in doubt.
|