19 months and counting

Walking along the bank of the River Thames once, I saw some tourists gesturing at Hungerford bridge. “How far does that go?” asked one. “To the other side, I hope,” I mouthed to myself. Usually bridges do, with the exception of a few like Avignon’s, which it’s shocking to discover is little more than a masonry stump.

When there’s a gap, travellers have a problem. And, as we look to cross the bridge to a low carbon future with the UK general election upon us, the gaps in the main parties’ manifestos look enough to ditch us all into the turbulent waters of a warming world.

Sometimes the election campaign has felt like a BBC Radio 4 game show in which contestants compete to go as long as possible without mentioning the environment. In a bid to bolster their economic and social policy credentials, even the Green party seems to have prioritised an anti-austerity message over talking about climate change.

Carbon Brief, which tracks media coverage of climate science and energy policy, notes that Ed Miliband made just one passing reference to climate change when launching Labour’s manifesto, while David Cameron didn’t mention climate at all at the Conservative launch. He did however talk about North Sea energy. Eager to differentiate themselves in people’s thoughts about the coalition, the Liberal Democrats had far more green policy, but have struggled to get anyone to report it.

The single overriding story about them has been their fall from political grace, and how badly they are likely to do in the election. Little else they say about policy as a result is considered newsworthy, unless it includes revealing coalition secrets.

Another assessment by the Centre for Economic Performance(CEP) observes that the UK’s climate performance, while relatively good on paper if compared internationally, has in reality been flattered by the recession lowering energy demand. It also says the UK lags behind most other OECD countries in clean technology take-up and innovation.

In February, the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaders pledged certain actions on climate change whatever the result of the election turned out to be. They included new UK emissions targets, work towards a binding global deal and an end to unabated coal power.

The CEP dismisses much of the pledges as “largely rhetoric, with limited focus on actionable policy commitments.” Where commitments exist, like Labour’s pledge to make the UK electricity supply low carbon by 2030, CEP say they are contradicted by other policies, like those on energy which emphasise cheap energy, and continuing exploitation of fossil fuels like North Sea oil.

The Centre for Alternative Technology has done more work than anyone to visualise what it would take for life in the UK to be compatible with preventing dangerous climate change. Its Zero Carbon Britain reports are the boldest and most comprehensive attempts yet to identify the practical changes needed.

Their assessment of the parties sees Conservative policies as a void, Labour full of self-defeating contradictions, Liberal Democrats lacking detail about how their ambitions would be met, Plaid Cymru lacking ambition, the SNP too in love with North Sea oil, Ukip on another planet, and only the Green’s proposals offering a strong possibility of delivering the internationally-agreed 2C limit on rising temperatures.

If the old cliché is true about elections always being about “the economy, stupid”, the curious absence of the environment from the UK election debate is even stranger.

At the heart of the UK economy still sits the City of London, and it still sits dangerously on foundations of fossil fuels, not London clay. The inescapable logic that if we want to have a future most of them have to stay underground, has started shaking oil and coal companies. It is yet to shake politics. But where the economy goes politics surely follows.

While green issues and the climate have been lamentably absent from this election, I am going to make the prediction that they will dominate the next one.

Exactly a week before the UK election a youth group in south London, made up mostly of 10- to 12-year-olds, staged their own mock election. They eschewed the existing parties, creating their own, with names like Modern Society, the Pedal Party Party (double party, more fun), Wee Care and the Elemental Party. Policies included: banning cars to make space for bicycles, greening cities, getting rid of polluting fossil fuels and having more renewable energy, building more homes, being nice to immigrants, free or cheap public transport and free education. They got my vote. OK, they also wanted more monkeys as pets and free sweets, but they are children.

There is a potentially lethal gap in politics between what is necessary and what is deemed possible. The next generation are building bridges across that gap in their imaginations. Perhaps the most effective law the next government could pass would be to lower the voting age.