LibDems: Too yellow to be green?
20 September 2004
As the LibDem conference addresses the environment today, the Green Partypublishes a damning new exposé of the LibDems' "profoundhypocrisy and half-heartedness" on environmental issues.
Stricken by what a spokesperson called the "pretentious arrogance" of a Liberal Democrat publication titled "Yellow is the new Green", the Green Party has responded with a highly critical look at the LibDem's environmental track record in a report entitled Too Yellow to be Green (1).
Launching the newly updated version of Too Yellow to be Green today, Green Party media chief Spencer Fitz-Gibbon said:
"Since we first published a systematic exposé of the LibDems' weak and erratic environmental policies 18 months ago, they've given us more of the same. Our new report offers further evidence for anyone who still takes theLibDems seriously as a 'green' party."
Amongst other charges, Too Yellow to be Green says:
- LibDem leader Charles Kennedy has claimed the LibDems oppose GM foods, but in the Scottish Parliament they have supported GM (2).
- LibDems around the country have supported water fluoridation, which apart from being a failed health measure that infringes human rights, has been abandoned elsewhere because of the harm it does to the environment (3).
- Kennedy claimed to be taking a tough line on aviation. But his actualproposals would probably only reduce UK aviation's growth-driving annualtax-break from £9 billion to £8 billion. And his proposal to tax aircraftrather than fuel is not, as he claims, "making the polluter pay," because itmeans the longest and most highly-polluting flights will pay the same tax asshorter, less polluting flights (4).
"Bunch of charlatans"
Fitz-Gibbon continued:
"The Liberal Democrats are a bunch of charlatans on the environment just asthey were on the Iraq war (5). Simply look at their claims and compare them withthe facts."
Charles Kennedy has said (6): "It is Liberal Democrat councils up and downthe land who put the environment at the heart of planning decisions."
But LibDems locally often support roadbuilding schemes, perhaps mostinfamously the Newbury bypass and the Batheaston bypass. Manchester LibDemswere completely behind Manchester airport's second runway, which attractedsix weeks of direct action protest in 1997, and have supported thecontinuing expansion of the airport ever since.
Kennedy said before this year's GLA elections: "In London, Simon Hughes isproposing a raft of policies for a cleaner, greener city - and to tackle thepollution that blights our Capital."
But in fact Simon Hughes pledged to relax London's congestion charging rulesif elected (7).
Fitz-Gibbon commented on this:
"This was hardly in tune with LibDem transport spokesman Don Foster's callfor an extension of congestion charging to the rest of the country (8). Butthen, LibDems in cities from Edinburgh to Leeds and Manchester have opposedcongestion charging (9)."
He concluded:
"The LibDems are ideologically disadvantaged when it comes to protecting theenvironment. As a neoliberal party they have to put issues like free tradeand profit before sustainability. Even today their Bournemouth conferencewill be discussing 'Making Markets Work for the Environment', while mostGreens have pointed to the fundamental flaws in market-based solutions."
He concluded: "If the LibDems are a 'green' party, why do they supporteconomic globalisation, airport expansions, roadbuilding and nuclearweapons?
"There is still only one Green Party."
Notes
1. See Green Party MSP news release of 9.3.04, "Greens slam executive andLibDem cave-in on GM crops."
2. Eg the last Swiss canton to stop fluoridating, Basel-Stadt, gave as itsreasons that after 41 years fluoridation had been ineffective in reducingtooth decay but had caused considerable environment pollution: see the GreenParty's Truth Decay report at www.greenparty.org.uk/reports.
3. See "Kennedy champions green taxes", ePolitix 1.3.03.
4. See Green Party critiques published in the run-up to the 2004Euro-elections.
5. See Green Party critiques published in the run-up to the 2004 Euro-elections.
6. ePolitix reported on 16.2.04 that "Hughes pledged to introduce blockpurchasing and pre-payment for congestion charge passes; make the first fivejourneys into the charging zone free; extend the period for paying at thenormal rate up to midnight and for all of the following day; cancel thecharge between Christmas and the New Year; and halt any planned expansion ofthe scheme into the borough of Kensington and Chelsea."
7. "Extend C-Charge throughout country, says Foster," Gallery News, 18.8.03.
8. See Green Party MSPs news release of 17.6.04, "Greens confront LibDemtransport minister over congestion charging." Other information fromManchester Green Party and private sources.
