Climate Change

On Saturday 6 th December I joined other Lib Dems and protesters at the National Climate Change March in London .

An estimated 5,000 people marched from Grosvenor Square to Westminster as part of a global day of action. Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg and Green MEP Caroline Lucas addressed the crowds in Parliament Square .

The Lib Dems are still the only mainstream party willing to take the tough decisions that are necessary to safeguard our environment.

At Westminster we have been leading the way on strengthening the Government’s Climate Change Bill and Energy Bill. We tabled the successful amendment to increase the target for CO2 cuts by 2050 from 60% to 80%, and helped to ensure that international aviation and shipping emissions are reflected in the targets. Without Liberal Democrat pressure in the Commons and the Lords, it is unlikely that any of these changes would have been made.

Below is an extract from the speech Nick Clegg gave at the March:

“We have commentators, pundits, politicians lining up, saying that you’re wasting your time; that in a recession we can’t afford the luxury to worry about the planet…they are wrong, you are right.

“Because it is exactly now, it is exactly at a time of economic crisis, that we have to ask ourselves: how on earth did we create an economy so reliant on the short-termist boom-and-bust speculation of the City, while it let our environment and our planet go to rot? How on earth did we create an economy which is not only socially unjust but environmentally unsustainable? How on earth did we create an economy in which this government is spending £37bn bailing out the bankers who’ve got ourselves into the mess in the first place, and yet they won’t lift a finger to really help us build the green economy of the future.

“That is why I say to you: No to a third runway at Heathrow; no to Kingsnorth; and no to spending £12.5bn of our money to give us a short-term VAT cut – which we’ll all have to pay for in the future – when every penny of that money should be spent on public transport, on green energy, on sustainable housing for the future.

“One other thing could be done, and it can be done now. We have the shocking, scandalous situation that the big energy companies are charging a pensioner more than a millionaire. All of us are charged by those companies more for the first bits of energy we use than the last bits of energy we use. How mad is that? It’s bad for the environment, it is unfair, it is unjust.

“We, you, must marry the demand for social justice as we come out of this recession, a demand for a fairer economy, a fairer Britain , with your passionate commitment to a greener Britain and a greener world too.”