The next five years will be critical in the international fight to combat global warming, starting with a crunch UN summit in December, and David Cameron is very clear that action is needed. “Climate change is one of the most serious threats facing the world today. It is not just a threat to the environment, but also to our national and global security, to poverty eradication and economic prosperity,” he said in a cross-party pledge in February.

The difficulty is that for many observers, even supporters, he has been horribly inconsistent on green issues, having said “vote blue, go green” before the 2010 election then afterwards installing a climate change sceptic as environment secretary and reportedly railing against the “green crap” levies on energy bills.

Will the short-term difficulties of a tiny majority and a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union trump the medium-term benefits of supporting the thriving green economy and cutting carbon emissions?

The Conservative manifesto is brief on both energy and environment, but contains some specifics. Subsidies will be scrapped for new onshore wind farms, the cheapest form of low-carbon energy. That contradicts the Tory’s pledge on the same page to support renewables that “represent value for money”, but will please some in the shires. The Conservatives want to deliver EDF’s huge and expensive new nuclear plant in Somerset and have talked up a possible tidal barrage in Swansea Bay.

But fossil fuels will get wholehearted backing from the Conservatives, with fracking for shale gas a priority and further help for the struggling North Sea oil and gas fields, which saw record investment in the last government.



Whatever the mix of energy sources deployed, huge investment will be needed in the UK’s ageing energy infrastructure. So one potential advantage of a majority Conservative government will be less political risk for investors, who were made nervous by the feuding between the coalition partners, and that means projects will be cheaper to finance.

Energy efficiency is key to both cutting emissions and energy bills but the coalition’s Green Deal was a farce and worryingly the Conservatives have shown no sign of significant reform. Furthermore, the Tory aversion to building regulations will mean homes will be less energy efficient than many want.

A few green observers think the Tory manifesto is pretty strong on the natural environment, with plans to create huge marine protection zones around the UK’s far-flung overseas territories, to plant 11m trees at home and to charge 5p for plastic bags. It also promises to spend £3bn from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy to clean up lakes and rivers and protect hedges and stonewalls.

But the referendum on the UK’s EU membership hangs over environmental policy like the clouds of illegal pollution hanging over the UK’s towns and cities (for which the Tory manifesto has no plan at all). Many of the pollution and wildlife protections that defend the UK’s environment come from EU directives: what happens to them if the UK leaves the EU, or negotiates a new deal with the EU? What happens to the farmers who currently receive billions a year in EU subsidies?

More specifically, the EU ban on neonicotinoid pesticides, strongly linked to harm in bees, was opposed by the Conservatives. Could that be lost in bartering with the EU? That would please most farmers, as will the continuation of the highly controversial badger cull, aimed at curbing tuberculosis in cattle but dismissed by scientists – Labour had pledged to abandon the cull.



Less pleasing will be the lack of new money for flood defences, with funding already judged inadequate against the increasing risks by the government’s own climate change advisors. The environment department was heavily cut under the last government and further cuts will now come. Perhaps the one thing all the parties will agree on is the Conservatives finally making good on their promise to ban the use of wild animals in circuses.