UK Minister Evasion on Climate Change Question

I have been conducting a long correspondence with Government, urging them to make
a pledge in climate change negotiations that the UK is prepared to implement
Contraction and Convergence if a set number of other governments are prepared to
do likewise. The correspondence is up here http://www.greenhealth.org.uk/CCSimpol.htm . 
I have been pressing Ian Pearson  to make his position clear on how the UK would react to
a pledge proposed from another party (at the moment I am putting the idea to a Dutch
green MEP).
 

Saturday, 02 June 2007

Ian Pearson MP

Minister of State (Climate Change and the Environment)

DEFRA
3/B8 Ashdown House
123 Victoria St.
London SW1E 6DE

Simultaneous Policy for Contraction and Convergence (SP/C&C)
I am sorry to have to tell you that I am not satisfied with the reply given by Peter Stupple of the Defra Customer Contact unit on 25^th May to my letter of 14 April, when he simply refers me to the letter of Ms McLeay of the Global Atmosphere Division of 22nd June 2006. In the first place, Katrina McLeay invites further discussion, while your response given through Mr. Stupple implies that no further discussion is possible. In the second place, it was made clear in conversation with the Global Atmosphere Division that the correspondence had gone as far as it could at the level of government officers, and that their freedom of thought was constrained by a political decision. Therefore, the way our elected Government handles climate change negotiations has become a matter of political debate, and is no longer a mater for the civil service.

Since it is clear that the Government is not minded to initiate a pledge to implement Contraction and Convergence which will be implemented when a sufficient number of other nations have made the same pledge, I put the question,
At what stage would HMG be prepared to join a C&C pledge process if it were to be initiated by some other negotiating party? Would it lay down its pledge with the first, second, third, or last quarter of negotiating parties?
Although hypothetical, this is a valid question, since it is quite possible that other negotiators may put such a C&C initiative forward, and the UK will then have to choose its response.

Since you have avoided this question, I will make a guess in order to try to speed up an outcome. My guess is that the Government has decided that it will only go with “global acceptability”, by which we infer perfect 100% international agreement, it follows that the present Government of the UK would be among the very last countries to sign up to a simultaneous policy initiative centered around C&C if it were to be presented.
Is this inference correct?

In a democracy elected representatives are accountable to the people for their decisions, and in simply ignoring it, you are is, in my opinion, displaying a certain disrespect for the democratic process. I will therefore ask my MP, John Penrose, by copy of this letter, to press you in Parliament to answer the two questions contained in this letter, and in view of the number of times that the questions have been avoided, I will now place this correspondence in the public domain.

Yours sincerely

Richard Lawson

c.c. John Penrose MP

Keeping Paedophiles out of Prison

I see in the news that the prisons are not big enough to accept all the paedophiles. Time to put forward once more the strategy of Treating Paedophilia with hormones and neuroleptic medication in the community. Effectively, that is. As part of a whole package, rectifying the paedophile's own childhood trauma, as well as correcting the hormonal imbalances that drive this life-destroying behaviour.

When I last wrote, Government rejected this approach, preferring to stick with counselling, while at the same time agreeming that it was ineffective and failed to reach more than a tiny minority of sex offenders.

SNAFU

Red + Blue = Green?

Red & Green

The Green Party is pleased to welcome the influx of new members who are refugees from New Labour. Together with others of the socialist persuasion they have set up the Green Left within the Green Party, a club which they are welcome to create.

However, I have noticed more than one socialist entertaining a error about the Green party which is (or was) also often trotted out by journalists: They think we are a single-issue environmentalist party. The Green Party is not, and never has been, a single issue environmentalist party. What we are and have always been is a party of political ecology.

Ecology is the science of the relationship of an organism (in this case us) with its environment. It therefore encompasses everything - our physical environment, biological environment, social environment - the whole lot, and it takes account of systems theory, where all the components of the biosphere (including us) have a complex mutual interactivity.

So there is no need for formulations like "We must get away from single issue environmentalism, and start talking about social issues". We never were single issue environmentalists, and we always have been talking about society. That’s why we work on the Manifesto for a Sustainable Society.

Another formulation that I have heard from a Green Left Member "Now that the Tories have become environmentalists we can leave that and concentrate on social policies". Apart from the frightening naiveté of his or her perception of the depth of the Tories’ environmental commitment (which like all other environmental commitments by grey parties is to be welcomed as far as it goes) this shows ignorance of the paradigm shift that has happened with the emergence of ecological philosophy, and its (imperfect) embodiment in Green politics.

The political dialectic over the past 150 years lay between the ideological clash between individualism (in the blue corner, championed by Capitalism) and socialism, in the red corner, championed by the multifarious sects of socialism – each of whom claim to be the only true adherents of the Prophet Marx.

The antithesis between these two political philosophies was absolute. No middle ground existed. Those who tried to straddle the divide end up by doing the splits.

In 1989, at the fall of the Berlin Wall, the champion of the fissiparous Left took a count of ten, and Right-wing individualism is taking a triumphal tour of the ring with arms raised. It is very likely that the celebrations will soon be ended when Corporate Capitalism passes out through as a result of a loss of oil and malignant hyperpyrexia (medical jargon for global warming).

Just as State Socialism of the Soviets was an unmitigated environmental disaster, so also the corporate domination of the world, embodied by the Neo-Conservatives in the Bush administration, are totally unable to see what their ideology is doing to the environment on which human society and economy depends.

Right and Left, Individualism and Socialism have an absolute and categorical incompatibility. This is unchangeable, since they are built on exclusively separate philosophical foundations. In Hegelian terms, they are in an antithesis with each other.

One of the many attractions of the ecological philosophy is that it allows us to resolve this antithesis. Since both individuals and societies have to live in the real world, they become simple aspects of the human organism, not fundamentally opposed ideas. We can view people as individuals or as societies, according to which is the more useful view in particular circumstances, just as we can view light as waves or particles, depending on the context[RHL1] . Socialism and individualism are aspects of the human species, and the issue is not which is the more important way of viewing us, but how the human species can learn to live in harmony with the biosphere.

Absolutisms of any kind should be treated with suspicion, and the suffix –ism usually means that some or other aspect of reality has been placed on a pedestal. We can easily see that individualism and socialism are incompatible with ecological sustainability. Environmentalism itself can be unhelpful if it takes too narrow a view, for instance when the CPRE rejects wind turbines on amenity grounds, or when the RSPB rejects a tidal barrage scheme out of hand, regardless of what is going to happen to its birds if global warming proceeds unchecked.

Political ecology is a massive and stimulating challenge to our intellects, and produces many deeply satisfying and unexpected resolutions to old philosophical challenges. Socialists – as well as liberals and capital entrepreneurs, and those with an interest in regionalism and the whole rainbow spectrum of political activists - are all most welcome to join us in the struggle for sustainability. All we ask is that newcomers place their political enthusiasms into the context of the ecological imperative that is the whole raison d’etre for the Green Party.