Allerdale and Copeland Green Party

Pensions March & Rally

Over 400 people joined the pensions march and rally in Whitehaven today and the Green Party was represented by a number of us, with our banner, leaflets and biscuits. Numbers were probably swelled by yesterdays dire news about the state of the economy and certainly Green anger was fuelled by the Chancellor's decision to hand subsidies to the biggest polluters when he is just rushing through cuts to the flourishing solar power industry, and his refusal to introduce a financial transactions tax such as the Robin Hood tax, or offer anything new to tackle tax avoidance and evasion.

Caroline Lucas put it well, when she said:

"This budget package does nothing to address the deepening inequality which is harming hard working people up and down the country. Osborne refuses to address the vast gulf between the haves and the have-nots, and the persisting culture of entitlement in the financial sector that has allowed the earnings of top Barclays executives, for example, to increase by a stratospheric 4899.4% since 1980, whilst wages for the average worker have only seen a threefold increase."

Three union speakers spoke graphically about the effects this Government's policies are having on their members and the services they provide to the public for the public good.

It was good to be there, as the only political party represented and to show our solidarity with public sector workers.

Response to the consultation on the draft

National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF)

Introduction

The North West Green Party is a regional body within the Green Party of England & Wales, representing approximately 1,300 members across Cumbria, Lancashire, Merseyside, Greater Manchester and Cheshire.

In this introduction we borrow heavily from CPRE’s views (which we endorse) on the draft NPPF. We then comment upon the need to encourage genuinely sustainable development, and finally outline some of the key principles which we believe should be  included in national planning policy.

The NPPF represents the biggest shake-up of planning for over 50 years. We believe it will place the countryside and green spaces in our urban areas under increasing threat.  It will lead to an intensification of traffic problems (greenhouse gases, air pollution, congestion, blight, loss of biodiversity and severance) as economic development unconstrained by sustainability adds significantly to traffic levels.

Many elements of the NPPF are deeply worrying. In particular, Ministers have failed to commit to the principle

that the countryside should be protected for its own intrinsic character, beauty, and heritage.

The new NPPF will make the countryside and local character much less safe from damaging and unnecessary development.

We fear pressure on the countryside from damaging development will grow due to:

• Loss of emphasis on brownfield regeneration - as a result of the removal of the national brownfield target and the failure to promote efficient use of land;
• Over-allocation of land for new housing - the draft NPPF requires local councils to allocate at least 20% additional sites for housing over and above the existing five year supply;
• Weakening of the ‘town centre first’ policy by removing office development from the sequential test;
• Weakening of controls over outdoor advertisements, including no mention of billboards being inappropriate in the countryside;
• Changes to Green Belt policy which would allow local communities to support building which would previously have been restricted.

• Encouraging genuinely sustainable development

The NPPF consultation document is very clear that development is needed for economic growth and job creation, development is therefore to be encouraged, and there shall be a presumption in favour of sustainable development. 

The NWGP is very concerned that the statement about a presumption in favour of sustainable development does not clearly define sustainable development, and in fact conveys a very strong message about development in general.  The wording says “the answer to development and growth should wherever possible be yes”. Inevitably this strikes a blow at the heart of the English planning system which has always tried to strike a balance between the need for development, appropriate locational considerations and the acceptability or otherwise of negative impacts.  The NPPF seeks to jettison this balancing act and create a generous public policy support system for any development anywhere. 

We totally reject this shift away from the central purposes of planning.

The planning system has to have sustainability as a core value and core set of operating principles.  If a proposed development will help to accelerate the transition to a truly sustainable society then it should be approved.  If not, it should be rejected. 

The process of evaluation is also crucially important. It has to put citizens at the centre, so that local democracy can thrive and local outcomes can be based on the considered views of the local community.  The ‘localism’ agenda delivers the rhetoric that celebrates the importance of local residents, but has no substance when set against a general presumption in favour of development, even when that development is described as ‘sustainable’.

Sustainable development has very clear meanings and relevance to public policy and planning policy, and these revolve around our ability to live within our ecological means, or so-called ‘planetary boundaries’¹.  These are limits to the extent of environmental change that can be sustained without significant risk of exceeding tipping points and precipitating an ecological catastrophe. For example, the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere has a probable safe boundary of around 350 ppm (which has already been exceeded, and continues to increase at an alarming rate).

Sustainable development requires that policy and spending steers the whole range of public and private policy decision making, so that it prevents us from exceeding the 9 planetary boundaries. 

¹ Further explanation of the 9 planetary boundaries:

http://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/researchnews/planetaryboundariesresearchgainsfurthermomentum.5.587b3d0a1325af354a580008275.html

Key principles which we want to see included in the NPPF

• Recognise the intrinsic value of the ordinary, unprotected countryside which covers around half of England, and set out stronger policies to protect the Green Belt and specially designated areas;
• Retain the ‘brownfield first’ policy so that land is used efficiently by ensuring previously developed land is used to meet development needs before greenfield sites;
• There should not be a presumption in favour of development, even when the word  ‘sustainable’ is attached to the word ‘development’.
• There should be a presumption in favour of sustainability, living within our ecological means and not exceeding planetary boundaries.
• Reinforce the plan-led system and define sustainable development, so that environmental limits are respected, rather than giving primacy to economic development;
• There should be a fundamental test of sustainability: will the development take us forward in terms of achieving sustainability, or will it make those goals even more difficult to achieve?
• It is particularly important that major development proposals (e.g. new roads, high speed rail lines and airports/runways) should be subjected to the sustainability test.  Will they add to global CO₂ emissions and make it more likely that we will exceed our planetary boundaries?  This process of testing and assessment will be carried out by independent organisation not linked to government, industry or the promoter.
• New developments should be located in urban areas and on brownfield sites and in a way that either taps into existing high quality public transport, walking and cycling routes, or brings with it excellent facilities that promote walking, cycling and public transport.
• The importance of PPG 13 (Transport) should be re-asserted and public policy should reduce the demand for transport. Local authorities should be able to refuse planning permission for development that is unsustainable on transport grounds, and to seek improvement of sustainable travel choices.
• There shall be a presumption in favour of demand management as in the case of DfT-funded sustainable towns, personalised journey planning and cycling demonstration town projects.
• All universities, NHS facilities, local authorities and employers of more than 100 staff shall implement the British Standards Institution PAS 500 on workplace travel plans with the objective of reducing car trips for the commuter by at least 20% over a 5 years time-frame.
• The ‘need’ for new housing has not yet been rigorously demonstrated and a wider policy approach to housing should come first.  This wider approach would develop regulatory and fiscal incentives/disincentives to bring empty homes back into use.  There are 663,000 empty homes in England (enough to house almost 2 million people).  A strong public policy response is needed to bring as many of these empty homes back into use as possible.  Large swathes of towns and cities are occupied by ground-level ugly car parks and should be reallocated to affordable housing in pleasant green, park-like settings near public transport and city centre work, shopping and health care facilities.  Over-generous and under-paying car parking provision is a flawed transport policy and blocks other options that should be a higher priority (such as housing, youth/community facilities, employment and green space).

Submitted by Professor John Whitelegg (j.whitelegg@btinternet.com)

on behalf of the North West Green Party, 15 October 2011.

A report by a World Bank scientist and a former WB scientist, blames the meat and dairy industry for 51% of global warming, so it is strange that most climate change activists overlook human diet. Watch this film which explains why the human diet is the main cause of climate change or read this article produced by Friends of the Earth.

National targets and environmental necessity

The UK was the first country to introduce a law requiring carbon dioxide reductions. The Climate Change Act (26^th November 2008) introduced a legally binding target of at least an 80 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and a reduction in emissions of at least 34 percent by 2020. Both these targets are against a 1990 baseline.

The Green Party, and climate scientists, believe that, in order to avoid global warming exceeding 2°C, the UK needs to adopt an initial annual carbon dioxide emissions reduction target of around 10 per cent, with the aim of reducing emissions by 90 per cent from 1990 levels by 2030, and 65 per cent by 2020 – starting now. The Stern Report (which summarises the scientific consensus) says that at that level of greenhouse gases there is a 75–99% chance (that is, near certainty) of global warming exceeding 2°C. We think we should aim to stabilise the level of CO2 equivalent in the atmosphere at a level just slightly above the present level (i.e. around 450ppm). To achieve 450ppm, global emissions need to drop by as much as 60% as soon as 2030. And industrialised countries with high emissions, like the UK, can both afford to, and need to, reduce their emissions rather faster: a 90% reduction by 2030.

Caroline Lucas has just tabled an EDM calling for UK ban on arms sales to authoritarian regimes - please ask your MP to sign

The Green Party support the actions of Greenpeace in opposing Nuclear Power.

Below is a press statement detailing their actions

Greenpeace UK has served legal papers on the Government for unlawfully failing to take into account the implications of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in their future planning for the building of new nuclear power stations at sites in Britain.

In a 1611 page legal submission to the High Court, Greenpeace is seeking a Judicial Review of the government’s decision not to take into account specialist advice on the implications of the Fukushima disaster on future reactors, which it has an obligation to do. The case made by Greenpeace against the Government and the Secretary of State Chris Huhne includes:

That the Secretary of State unlawfully chose to press ahead with his plans for new nuclear reactors at eight sites in England and Wales (through the Nuclear National Policy Statement) without waiting to take into account relevant considerations arising from the Fukushima disaster.

That the government appears to have regarded Dr Mike Weightman’s Interim Report into the lessons from Fukushima as a ‘green light’ for proceeding with the Nuclear National Policy Statement even though that the report highlighted areas of serious concern requiring further investigation and that Dr Weightman’s review remains ongoing.

That communications between government officials and nuclear companies seems to show that there was no real intention to properly consider the implications of the disturbing events at Fukushima with an open mind as to what careful analysis of those events and their aftermath might reveal about the safety of nuclear power and the UK’s ability to respond to a major nuclear incident.

That he failed to fully consider all the risks of flooding to a nuclear site despite the evidence of how flooding affected operations at Fukishima. Five of the eight sites identified for new reactors are wholly or partly in areas classified by the Environment Agency as being areas of high flood risk.

That he failed to wait for analysis of the lessons from Fukushima on how electricity supply, both on and off site, including back up sources and supplies can be guaranteed in the event of an emergency over suitably long timescales in order to provide vital cooling for reactors. The root causes for the Fukushima station blackout and loss of power supply have not yet been properly analyzed.

That the Nuclear National Policy Statement fails to fully consider the lessons from Fukushima on the need for emergency planning for on and off site consequences of a nuclear accident involving a much wider emergency situation with radiation releases over a prolonged time and involving a need to evacuate and re-house large numbers of people. The Japanese emergency planning system demonstrably failed to provide early and sufficient protection for the civilian population in Japan.

Commenting on the legal case John Sauven, Greenpeace Executive Director said:

“The tragic events of Fukushima have been a catalyst for governments around the world to look again at the safety and viability of their nuclear plans. Instead of following the lead of countries like Germany, our government has recklessly decided to push ahead with new nuclear power without properly taking into account many of the lessons from Fukushima or wider implications for the nuclear industry.

We believe the government’s failure to properly consult experts and the public after the Fukushima tragedy amounts to a dangerous attempt to cut corners and carve out voices of concern, in order to keep pushing forward with its favoured technology. We think they should be challenged on this.

Following Fukushima, a number of countries decided nuclear power wasn’t worth the risk or increased costs and focused on safer, clean renewable technologies. Instead in Britain, despite election promises, the coalition government is planning hundreds of millions of pounds more in hidden subsidies for the nuclear industry and dragging its heels on creating the green jobs and growth we need. This judicial review should act as wake up call for the Government to think again to stop closing ranks with the nuclear industry and properly consult.”

dated 26th August 2011

Oil derived from Tar Sands is the most hostile, polluting fuel in existence

If fully exploited the extraction of tar sands alone would take us to the very point of climate change disaster.

Watch this film and take action now

www.toxicfuels.com