Labour has an environmental problem. A majority of the British people feel negatively about the future prospects of the environment in the UK, and an overwhelmingly majority, 70%, are worried about the prospects of climate change. But when asked whether Labour is serious about tackling climate change, more voters say that they think that we are not serious than those who think that we are serious about the monumental issue of our century. So who do the voters believe is most serious about protecting our green and pleasant land? Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s the Greens. For most of their history, we have been happy to ignore the Greens as a fringe party which can never compete with us as the primary voice of the left in British politics. But after this year’s general election, when the Greens won five seats, and defeated Thangam Debbonaire in Bristol Central, means we can no longer dismiss them. Part of their maturing as a party means that their policies need to be taken more seriously – especially their environmental policies, where they are the most trusted party in the country.
The Green Party’s policy platform is based on so many factual errors that it is not possible to cover them all in one blog post. These range from policy specific problems, such as their continued opposition to genetically modified food, despite the evidence that they are both safe and good for the environment, to larger philosophical ones, such as their commitment to degrowth, despite the necessity of economic growth to implement environmental policies. Even when there is a germ of truth to their environmental policies, such as their saying that the badger cull has been counterproductive to the reduction of bovine tuberculosis, they ignore the practical realities of implementing policy. In the case of the badger cull, they ignore that farmers themselves believe badgers are to blame for bovine tuberculosis, and without farmer buy-in, as is planned by the Labour government’s gradual phasing out of the badger cull, all you will get is a lot of covertly dead badgers. But perhaps no issue better illustrates the Green Party’s fact free environmental policies than their stance on nuclear energy.
There is no environmental issue more important than climate change. The horrifying predictions of the IPCC of what the world will look like by 2100 without serious action on climate change means you cannot be a serious environmentalist, or frankly a serious politician, without having a credible plan for reducing carbon emissions. Of all the alternative forms of energy available to replace fossil fuels, none is more energy efficient than nuclear power, which has made it the darling of almost every scientifically informed commentator on the decarbonisation of the global energy grid. And yet, the Green Party manifesto in 2024 said “We want to see the phase-out of nuclear energy, which is unsafe and much more expensive than renewables. The development of nuclear power stations is too slow given the pace of action we need on climate. They also create unmanageable quantities of radioactive waste and are inextricably linked with the production of nuclear weapons”. Nearly every word in that is a lie.
Nuclear power is safer than almost any other source of energy. There are industrial accidents associated with the production of batteries necessary for the storage of energy produced by renewable sources which have killed more people than nuclear energy has killed this century. The danger of nuclear waste has been grossly exaggerated by anti-nuclear activists, and there are now fuel re-use processes which almost entirely eliminate the problem of storing nuclear waste. As for cost, we are all aware of the much circulated video of Nick Clegg mothballing the Brown government’s ambitious nuclear programme on the grounds that they plants would not be ready until the far off date… of 2021. 2021 has come and gone, and decarbonising the grid remains an important issue. Unless the Green Party thinks that civilisation will collapse within a decade, this objection is risible. As for the costs of nuclear power plants, much of it can be tied back to the broken discretionary planning system that makes building anything in the United Kingdom more expensive than it ought to be. A discretionary planning system which the Green Party has used to block needed housing and infrastructure, including renewable energy infrastructure, across the country. Labour plans to liberalise the planning system will not only make it cheaper to build nuclear power plants, but will ensure that much needed infrastructure to decarbonise the grid can be built with minimal cost.
But perhaps you are not the type of voter who views climate as the primary environmental issue. Climate change, despite its great importance, can often feel abstract and distant compared to the pastures and wildlife in your own backyard. What do the Greens offer for that? One of the longest running policies which the Green Party has is their opposition to industrial agriculture. Since the 1970s, the precursors of the Green Party campaigned against the Green Revolution – a revolution in agricultural productivity which has permitted most of humanity alive not to starve to death. The Greens continue to oppose industrial agriculture, and campaign against the use of pesticides and GMOs. The opposition to GMOs is based on nothing factual, but the opposition to pesticides and herbicides does have a material basis. It is true that Britain’s biodiversity, denuded as it is, is particularly reliant on animals dependent on farmland which have experienced rapid declines in the last few decades. Conservation of these species will mean regulation of pesticide use over the landscape. But a ban is not the answer, for the simple reason that people still need to eat.
There is a long running debate in the conservation literature called Land Sparing or Land Sharing. The debate is about how to square the needs of nature with the needs of people. The basic trade-off is between having less land under production, but at higher intensity, or more land under production at lower intensities. Without going too much into the technical details, while there can be specific instances where the latter is preferable, in most cases, land sparing is better for the environment. Indeed, if some of the more ambitious environmental schemes which have been proposed in the last decade, such as rewilding and the introduction of large predators, are to succeed, they will require more land not under production – something which can only occur if the land under production is made more efficient through the very industrial methods which the Greens oppose. But the Green Party, its is immaturity, ignores these necessary trade offs.
Another aspect of the Green Party’s ecologically illiterate environmental policies is their embrace of NIMBYism. In every part of the country where the Green Party is an electoral force, they have won votes on the back off opposition to development and housing. With Labour rapidly taking on the mantle of the YIMBY party, and making planning reform central to its economic plans, it is likely that Green NIMBYism will only grow. One area where Green NIMBYs are particularly howling is Labour’s plans to build on portions of the Green Belt. As with so much of environmental politics, there appears to be a misunderstanding based on the supposition that if something has the word green next to it, it must be good for the environment. The truth is that the Green Belt is a designation designed before the modern conservation movement, and is based not on any assessment of the land’s value to biodiversity, but as a constricting ring meant to choke the growth of cities. In many cases, brownfield sites actually have higher rates of biodiversity than Green Belt land, which for the most part are environmentally and economically unimportant.
The natural environment is too important an issue to let policy be dictated my maudlin sentiment. Environmental policy enacted without a firm scientific basis isn’t conservation, but merely aesthetic gardening. While every party, including Labour, does indulge in environmental policies driven by heartstrings rather than scientific evidence, no party has more wholeheartedly embraced environmentally coded woo than the Greens. Labour has a long way to go before it has a properly scientifically backed environmental policy, but it is making great strides in that direction. The Greens on the other hand, remain wedded to outmoded, unevidenced, and unscientific policies which they pretend to be good for the environment.
If you enjoyed this piece, check out ‘How They Broke It: Environmental Regulation’, a rundown of the the failures and missteps of Tory governments from 2010 to 2024 on environmental regulation by the Guardian’s Environment Editor Fiona Harvey.
