Stop Kingsnorth

I was interested to get an email today from the World Development Movement plugging their Stop Kingsnorth campaign. I expect Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the like to be campaigning against a new generation of coal-fired power stations, but for WDM to make this such a major campaign shows how serious they are about linking climate change to their core issue of tackling the underlying causes of poverty.

As they put it on the Stop Kingsnorth site:

Climate change is the greatest crisis facing humanity. Whilst rich countries are responsible for most of the emissions pumped into the atmosphere it is the poorest, most marginalised communities in the world that will be hit the hardest by climate change.

Kingsnorth power station alone will release more CO2 each year than Ghana. It will not use carbon capture and storage technology, and so will contribute to climate change that is already hitting the world’s poor first and hardest.

They also have a useful map indicating seven more planned coal-burning power stations.

Planning Disaster

Today sees the launch of a campaign against the government's plans to relax planning restrictions and allow a new generation of nuclear power plants, airports, out of town supermarkets and house-building on flood plains.

Planning may not seem the most exciting topic to campaign on, but if the government push this through, it will be a lot harder to stop some of their most damaging future plans.

The public consultation is on now and I urge you to join me in backing this campaign.

Congestion Charging - 40 years too late

Today's extension of London's Congestion Charge zone has sparked another round of media coverage of the "war on the motorist". But really it's too little, too late. I've recently been reading Harvey Sherlock's excellent Cities Are Good for Us which makes it clear that we've know since the 60s that widespread car ownership in urban areas requires the destruction and rebuilding of city centres to accommodate the car (too expensive and unpopular) or the control of private car usage (unpopular).

Since the Buchanan report in 1963, politicians of all colours have lacked the courage to take necessary action to balance the desires of individual motorists with the needs of the population as a whole.

Ken Livingstone has, to his credit, finally grasped this nettle, but unfortunately 40 years of lack of investment in public transport, combined with tax breaks (effectively public subsidy) for private motoring means that the problem is now far worse than ever anticipated.

Add to this the problem of climate change and it is clear that the congestion charge is too little too late. We can't afford to wait another 40 years for a brave politician to grasp the nettle of carbon rationing or Domestic Tradable Quotas.

Next year's Mayoral election will be a real test for the establishment parties. Will their green rhetoric match the expectations of millions of Londoners who want to live in an accessible, sustainable city?