While Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party have brought many improvements to party policy, much remains to be done. In particular, Corbyn has been weak on energy and climate policy. Although Labour’s election manifesto was widely interpreted to include energy nationalisation, in fact it promised no such thing. It pledged to bring the electricity […]
Posts under ‘Climate Change’
NPF Policy Responses: Environment, Energy and Transport
Apr 4th, 2017 by Chris MacMackin.The National Policy Forum has made the strange decision to group culture with the environment and energy. Meanwhile, transport is placed, not completely without justification, with local government and housing. However, as transport is a major consumer of energy and a transport policy will be essential to fighting climate change, I decided to address it […]
Share:
What’s in the NPF draft policy statements?
Mar 24th, 2017 by David Pavett.According to the Labour Party Rulebook: “Party conference shall decide from time to time what specific proposals of legislative, financial or administrative reform shall be included in the Party programme. This shall be based on the rolling programme of work of the National Policy Forum.” (Emphasis added) The results of that “rolling programme of work” […]
Share:
A 21st Century Energy Policy, Part 3: The Institutions to Make it Happen
Feb 28th, 2017 by Chris MacMackin.As discussed in Part 2, the transition to a low-carbon economy is a massive task requiring extensive government intervention. In the recent leadership campaign, Jeremy Corbyn promised to “promote the growth of over 200 ‘local energy companies’” and to “support the development of 1,000 community energy co-operatives”. Presumably by “local energy companies” he is referring […]
Share:
This Chinese nuclear deal is unsustainable and costly
Oct 26th, 2015 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Had Labour done it, the Tories would be screaming bloody murder. I am, of course, talking about the deal with the Chinese to build two nuclear power stations. If the Tories really were standing up for Britain, from a national security perspective it beggars belief that key national infrastructure be handed over to a power […]
Share:
A third Heathrow runway is a menu without the prices
Jul 2nd, 2015 by Michael Meacher.Business in this age of market fundamentalism is cock-a-hoop with the Davies report decision to recommend Heathrow. They would be, wouldn’t they, since the report has focused largely on the supposed economic benefits while claiming that all the toxic underside of the decision can be ‘managed’. However the feasibility of the latter needs to be […]
Share:
Fracking in the UK is out for the foreseeable future
Mar 8th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.Listening to Osborne waxing exuberant over Britain’s energy future because of his obsession with a fracking revolution in the UK to match that in the US, you might be excused for thinking that he had a trump electoral card. Any such idea is nonsense, for several reasons. The predicted fracking deposits in this country are […]
Share:
The right to protest is precious – we must defend it
Feb 13th, 2015 by Jeremy Corbyn.The right to protest is a precious and important one. It is fundamental to any democracy. Co-operation with the police has always been a sensitive area and indeed current legislation requires agreement with the police on march and demonstration routes. However, something very fundamental has changed this week. The organisers of the Time to Act […]
Share:
Investors beware unburnable carbon
Jun 20th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.An LSE report ‘Unburnable Carbon 2013′ has produced some startling conclusions – for investors, not just climate change policy-makers. What they show is that burning known reserves of fossil fuels is incompatible with the climate change targets which governments have committed themselves to meet, so that investors would be wise to discount both the value […]
Share:
The dreams peddled by the oil and gas industries turn out to be fantasies
May 3rd, 2014 by Michael Meacher.The one thing Osborne loves to tell us, constantly, is that the future of energy production lies in fracking and that he will do everything in his power to maximise shale drilling in Britain, even to the extent of allowing drilling to be carried out on private land without permission. However this oasis of future […]
