30th May 2008

Christian challenges Hillary Benn on climate change

At a meeting in the Friend's Meeting House in York on Friday 30th May 2008 Christian challenged Hillary Benn, Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, on the government's complacency with regard to tackling climate change.

''You try to reassure us that the UK is leading the world on climate change,' Christian told Hillary Benn. 'You tell us that carbon emissions in the UK have more or less stablised in the past decade, and that is partly true. You tell us that China's emissions are soaring and that we should be worried, and that too is true.'

'What you fail to tell us is that the reason our emissions are growing slowly and China's are growing quickly is that we have exported all our manufacturing to China. It is not the carbon footprint of Chinese peasants that is growing but our carbon footprint. We're just doing it in someone else's country.'

Christian also asked Hillary Benn how he could tell others the UK led on renewable energy when the proportion of UK energy derived from renewables has gone up only 1% since 1990. 'Far from leading Europe, only Malta and Luxemburg generate a smaller percentage of their energy from renewables than the UK,' Christian said.

''In a week when Friends of the Earth has attacked the government for giving Green taxes a bad name, I ask you to confirm whether you agree that green taxes should be spent on tackling our environmental problems?' Christian challenged Hillary Benn. 'The government 'green' taxes include aviation charges, vehicle licences, landfill tax, the EU emissions levy, and many others, and yet the government refuses to ringfence any of these huge pots of money for spending on tackling environmental issues. In the case of the EU trading emissions levy the government actions are ignoring the whole point of the levy agreed between all the member states which is designed specifically to raise funds to tackle climate change.

Hillary Benn protested that the Government was not complacent and, in a cheap rheotorical trick, asked the audience how many of them were teachers or worked in the NHS. Benn then suggested that environmental taxes were being spent on the health service and education.

He was lucky that the audience were too polite to heckle him and point out the 3 billion pounds spent this year alone on an illegal war in Iraq.

The audience, many of whom asked searching questions, appeared largely unconvinced by Hillary Benn's performance.

Published and promoted by Christian Vassie, 10 Blake Court, Wheldrake, York YO19 6BT