Caroline Lucas Letter to Guardian: Government policy, not the recession, is harming efforts to tackle climate change
11 October 2009
In a letter to the Guardian today, Caroline Lucas argued in response to the Committee on Climate Change report that we need a Green New Deal, to slash emissions while tackling the recession.
It's not the recession that's harming our efforts to tackle climate change. It's the fact that the government's policy on both is equally misguided. And the solution to both problems is staring Gordon Brown in the face, or at least it would be if he would read the Green Party's 2009 manifesto "It's the economy, stupid."
The Sustainable Development Commission gets it, the Climate Change Committee (partly) gets it, so let's reiterate a few interrelated facts one more time in the hope that the leaders of the big three parties might begin to grasp it.
We can't tackle a recession by stopping spending money. If the private sector stops spending money, the public sector must step in. Since we need urgent action to tackle climate change, we also clearly need something like the Green Party's £44bn Green New Deal, a plan to slash emissions while creating a million new jobs to tackle the recession. It is so obvious.
Another reason why even a few Greens in the House of Commons would make a big difference - because someone needs to challenge the warped consensus of the cuts agenda, as well as the environmental half-heartedness of the three neoliberal parties.
Yours sincerely,
Caroline Lucas MEP
Green Party leader
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