Jeanie Falconer, LibDem candidate for North Herefordshire: a video on Environmental Issues
18 months ago it seemed that there was a concensus on taking climate change seriously. Climate Change and pollution are not just an environmental issue but an economic and security issue too. But Brexit and Donald Trump's isolationism and populism in the US might well halt that progress.
In Coalition the Liberal Democrats oversaw the trebling of renewable energy production, we established the world's first Green Investment Bank, we invested in green technologies and home improvements.
But the Conservatives seem determined to take us back to the 1980's when we were the dirty man of Europe: they've cut support for renewable energy and home insulation, sold off the Green Investment Bank, and kicked control of air pollution into the long grass of a "consultation". They have not just put our environment at risk but our health and economy, undermining our new green industries, which employed half a million workers.
In Government we were able to move the UK's green agenda forward significantly, (in spite of the Conservatives.)
But now we want to go further
We want Five Green Laws.
- A Green Transport Act to get rid of deadly diesel emissions in our cities and to encourage electric and low emision vehicles
- A Nature Act to set legally binding natural capital targets - including on biodiversity, clean air and water
- A Zero Carbon Act with the ultimate aim of reducing greenhouse gas emmission to zero by 2050
- A Zero Waste Act to establish binding targets to reduce net consumption of natural resources and to give business incentives to improve repairability, reuse and resycling
- A Green Buildings Act to set energy effeciency targets including an ambition for every home to reach at least a Band C energy rating by 2035, and to restore the zero-carbon standard for new homes we introduced ingovernment but which the Conservatives have abandoned.
We also have plans to plant many more trees, to manage our water ways and marine environment properly, to encourage communtiy energy saving schemes, and local energy generation
Here in Herefordshire we do have a success story. Worcestershire and Herefordshire have combined resources. We now recycle more than half our waste at the Norton plant, and from incinerating the rest at the plant at Hartlebury we are generating enough energy to power a town the size of Hereford. And they're working on turning the residue into road surfacing. So, good news.
But this would not have happened without the European imperative on reducing landfill. It is inconceivable that any British government would have come up with this, let alone enforce it on its own. This is another demonstartion of the benefits of European Union membership.
These things are possible. We CAN afford to do them. It is a question of the choices we make.
Jeanie is LibDem Candidate for North Herefordshire MP, to replace an old Tory banker, Bill Wiggin
Jeanie's facebook page is at: https://www.facebook.com/jeanie4northherefordshire/