Green credentials
I'm on my way to the launch of the report which Tony Blair says is the most important he's received since becoming prime minister. I am travelling by tube so my green credentials are safe (today at least!)
Others will write more eloquently than I can about the environmental and economic analysis in the Stern Report on climate change. Allow me to focus on the raw politics and the suggestion from some that we are witnessing the birth of a new political consensus.
Yes, the three major political parties now all say climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our era and that is hugely significant. Yes, they now all say that we need to tax "the bads" - airline travel and gas guzzling cars. But no, they don't agree yet on how to do it.
The Lib Dems are the only party to have spelt this out - green tax hikes offset by income tax cuts.. The Tories have echoed this approach but spelt out none of the detail. Labour - until yesterday's leaked memo from the Environment Secretary - had said nothing much on new green taxes. An intriguing thought occurs to me. Could Gordon Brown use his last budget just before he looks set to become PM to hike green taxes and challenge his opponents to back them or reveal that their greenness is only skin deep?
Just because parties agree on ends doesn't mean they'll agree on means - witness the debate on nuclear power and the need for a climate change bill. Talk of a new consensus is - as ever - premature.
Got to sign off now. Tube arrived and can't type and walk at same time!
I'm 
Comments
It will be interesting to see what the findings of this report are. So often they come from a metropolitan bias.
I live in south Warwickshire and am currently without a car. I live in a small town and commute to work in Stratford... it is only an 8 mile journey, but we only get one bus an hour (and only one will get me to work and back at a reasonable time... the morning one being occupied by school and college students as well).
All the parties need to find realistic ways of selling their proposals to poor people in isolated communities.
I also think it might be wise to actually invest in the public transport system before raising taxes. That way, the public can see the fruits of what they are paying before and won't have as much reason to be cynical.
I'm not against reducing the numbers of vehicles on the road through taxation... but the right people need to be targetted - namely people driving gas guzzlers on school runs (and not car sharing) and business (non HGV) mileage.
Keep us posted Nick
Like all politics the devil is in the detail.
It is admirable that all parties are going to try and achieve "green politics". The problem is that green politics is a global issue. If you over tax then you make another country more competitive.
Tata steel has taken over Corus because UK steel has to pay for emissions and Indian steel doesn't (we have not improved the overall carbon situation.)
If we tax dairy farmers for emitting (well their cows!) then the cost of milk will become progressive, and we will pay for foreign milk instead (which has a less progressive green tax regime).
One commends the start and the fact that all the parties broadly agree that something has to be done is good. Perhaps Clare Short is right a hung parliament would cause less political point scoring and more chance for all parties to come up with a reasonable solution.
Gordon Brown, the brilliant strategist he is, will mull over what green tax incentives to offer. He will most certainly equal the Liberal Democrats in their proposals but he will have a good hard look at how tax-payers will swallow his prescriptions: bitter tax pills will drive voters off!! As long as he is the Chancellor of the Exchequer he is in the driving seat and has the clout to introduce ground-breaking tax measures. But before he does that he will have to put on his green credentials hat and woo voters in the same breath. Green ideas are fantastic but tax payers do not like to delve deep into their pockets however good the cause!
It is ludicrous to suggest that you can raise the green levies on certain items and reduce tax in other areas.
A tax base has to be secure. By definition if these green levies actually alter behaviour then you won't get the income. No income = no nurses.
Or they don't expect that behaviour will alter - in which case this is just another crafty way of putting taxes up.
At what point are politicians going to be honest about the tax base?
Well nothing will probably match Blair's hubris in dedicating his last period in office to solving the Israeli, Lebanese Paletinian issue ( Even he realised peace in Iraq was beyond him) but this runs close.
His administration has failed to deliver the required increase in public transport ( my previous on Cross Rail for example), has allowed expansion of Heathrow and probably Stanstead, tries to price people out of their cars via petrol, parking, congestion charging, speeding and any other revenue raiser they can think of and then tries to price people off of public transport too by making it the most expensive in Western Europe.
They have allowed collosal expansion in gas fired electricity generation because for a decade they wouldn't accept the obvious re nuclear and renewables which has led to both substantial rises in energy costs and still hasn't cut the greenhouse gases.
Integrated transport and energy policy? This lot don't look like they can do joined up writing. All they deliver is the bills and more and more of them to make up for their indecision and inability to deliver well planned benefits at sensible costs.
Let's face it, its just another excuse for more taxes. NuLab have a 100% track record on this - make something an issue, then raise taxes. If its about changing behaviour, where arfe the taxes they are going to reduce?
Anyway this whole climate change issue is just the latest do gooders charter. The only reliable scientific evidence is that we currently in a gap between ice ages, and the CO2 level is no where near its highest (18 times higher a few million years ago, in a car free age)
As for Al Gore! You couldn't make it up. The only inconvenient truth about his film was that is was c100% full of false & incorrect statements.
And one final point nuLabs council snoopers charter, which means little council wonks can demand to visit you house and count up your double glazing and increase your tax.
Surely we should get lower taxes for double glazing, if "green" taxes are to mean anything
Nick, I'm ok about saving the planet because I knew it was me all along.
Britain's total contribution to killing the planet is 2%.Yet I have the feeling as though I am about to pay the full 100% by brutal means and not reflect our true ignorance.
This tax must be neutral. For every £1 I save, I must have it returned by one means or another.
Failure to do so will see those with a brace of 4x4's driving on empty roads having little regard for me on my bicycle with my christmas shopping.
I will play my part this year and light a candle for Blackpool illuminations as a mark of my appreciation and support for this valuable cause. But not if it comes to that.
Gary
Certainly seems that in the UK, there is good agreement on the fact that there is a real problem. I haven't been too impressed with most of the solutions offered though.
For example, a "green tax" is only a green tax if it actually has a real effect on demand - otherwise, it's just an ordinary tax. A tax can also been seen as a "right to pollute". The fairest tax would be on actual usage (eg fuel burnt) but some of the proposed taxes would be on *potential* usage (eg size of your car engine), which is rather unfair.
Basically, it is easy to come out with "green taxes" which are unfair and won't improve the situation.
Oh yes - there is going to be lots of fighting over the specifics!
I'd count that as progress though.
Other than wars and scary stuff like that.
Can anyone think of any issue of domestic policy that there has been genuine party consensus on in recent times?
Yes to green taxes but some of the revenue gained from them must be used to incentivise us to use alternative means of transport. Some should be ringfenced to improve our bus and rail networks.
I don't want the treasury to have access to all this extra cash without telling us how they're going to spend it, and I would like to see it being spent where it's supposed to be spent - unlike the fiasco two years ago with schools being promised extra cash only for the LEAs to hold onto it.
Judging from the overwhelming numbers of comments on news messageboards, there is certainly a concensus among the public on David Miliband's proposals for green taxes to combat climate change. This is that without a co-ordinated programme backed by the world's industrialised nations, any measures introduced unilaterally by the UK will count for nothing, and that Mr Miliband and the Labour government is cynically seeking to impose a further tranche of taxes by stealth.
To true Nick. I fear that once the term Green was hijacked by policians it became subjective. Sustainable development is more specific but isn't as catchy. So we get a green whitewash instead. But I have to nit pick with you to jump on the tube is greener than using a car, to walk would be greener still as long as your shoes are not made from Whale tongues.
Humans are at thier greenest when they are dead and using as few resources as possible. So perhaps politicians deserve more credit than they get, afterall mass extinction seems to be thier chosen form of action.
Let's face it, they wouldn't have to change very much to make things greener. For a private individual, it's almost always cheaper to drive than to take the train. But if I use my car on business, the tax incentives for doing so are so generous that I've worked out that I actually make money on every mile I drive.
And why do I have to pay VAT on a wind turbine?
Mr Robinson, it's time for you to start asking hard questions of this government, and not watered down, well-rehearsed, easily digestible and not-followed up questions you normally ask for the camera's.
Will the government:
* Why is the government always dreaming up ways to tax the public?
* Pass a law saying that all new residential and commercial buildings MUST have solar panels, ability to recycle rain water?
* Ensure that all it's future meetings with local, regional, national and international bigwigs will be conducted via digital telecoms and not jet setting?
* Will he be giving up his jet? If not, why not?
* Will the Royals be giving up their jets? If not, why not?
* Pass a law handing out 10 free energy saving light bulbs to every household?
* If the government is totally 100% serious about defeating the specter of climate change, why doesn't it set a limit on engine size, carbon emissions for cars/HGVs, etc? Why doesn't it make a law to start moving us to a LPG fueled economy rather than diesel/petrol.
* Give the public rewards, not Tax sticks.
* Is there incentive to work hard any more in this country when Gordon Brown will just hoover it up anyway with his money-grabbing tax hiking ways?
* Why does Gordon Brown still have a position in government, considering he screwed up the pensions and the NHS?
The concept the new idea to drive Britain through to the next millennium,think about it! there would not be an element,tool,house,car nor person that wouldn't have to redefine themself's for a new less carbon free enviroment, yes a whole NEW purpose that could show the world a NEW econmic break through,GREEN TAXES FOR A BETTER AND SAFER WORLD, sound's good too me let's here some more Mr Brown.
Policitians are all trying to go for the middle ground because they are bankrupt of any good ideas and they believe that climate issues are the new election issue
This Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues are solely reponsible for wasting inordinate amounts of money; paid in good faith by over taxed citizens.
There can be no value in seeking to give any credibility to these latest comments as they are as insincere as all the previous grand statements made before.
This government has brought the art of duplicity, spin and insincerity to new heights.
The sooner they realise they are solely accountable for the waste of tax payers money to date that could otherwise be have been going into areas like helping reduce these climate related problems the better.
In the mean time they should lock themselves in a very dark room and not come out until are prepared to be honest with how wasteful they have been with the doubled tax take they raked in since coming to power in 1997.
If we get our real spending priorities right there is more than enough in the system to address the climate issue.
Let us not be bullied any more by an economically illiterate government seeking to tax us still further.
In the real world we can't spend as we want and have to make choices. So must we with the tax take.
Perhaps then we would start to see real economic prudence at work not the demented end results of deluded spinmeisters that will leave us a legacy of debt so horrendous, it makes the climate issues pale into insignificance.
In the end its all about tax, so lets get a life and be honest on where and how we want to spend what is brought in.
Finally and above all else lets keep the politicians out of the debate, at least then sanity will prevail.
I know that this will be highly controversial but I believe that road tax should be abolished and all of the taxes for road usage should be on petrol. Therefore, you pay as you pollute.
In addition, we keep hearing that we in the UK produce 2% of the world's carbon emissions. This may not sound much but when we are only 1% of the world's population, we are producing twice as much carbon as we should be. Therefore, I think it is really important to do what we can as a country for the environment. Cross-party consensus is always a good place to start and should be followed by international consensus. This is an issue that will affect us all.
"I am on my way to the launch of the report which Tony Blair says is the most important he`s received since becoming prime minister"
Well Nick over 655,000 dead Iraqis (and counting) would have disagree with that statement.They would have said the most important report he had received since becoming prime minister was the one saying there was no WMD in Iraq.
If we can set up the right incentives, Britain and its entrepreneurs can be ahead of the game in developing low-carbon technologies. Which should put us back on top for innovation. So let's not worry too much about a short term loss of competitiveness and let's get on with the green revolution!
I predict we will be having a new Tax.
It will be known henceforth as C.A.T.
Carbon Added Tax.
Ostensibly this tax will be spent on the "greening"of this fair and pleasant land.
In fact like all the other taxes this Chancellor has imposed it will be spun and disappear into the Exchequer.
It was interesting to note in his appearence this AM on 91Èȱ¬ TV David Milliband managed to list several means of raising "green power",Solar ,Wind Water but somehow not Nuclear,which is the only system that will run 24/7
Unless New Labour drop some real taxes as an incentive (not for cars that don't exist) then this is just another tax grab.
In the mean time I have a stap line for Gordon.
Tax Guzzlers 4 Gas Guzzlers.
Most people now seem to accept that action has to be taken, and the sooner the better.
The questions will be, as always: why do I have to pay or why am I paying more than someone else?
That is what the fear, irritation and political infighting is all about.
outright prohibition in the US failed to change a nations drinking habit. Banning smoking virtually everywhere, and the annual increases in duty on alcohol and tobacco fail to change the UK's drinking and smoking habits. Why then should any sensible person think that taxation is a valid method for changing our impact on the environment?
Banning smoking virtually everywhere has failed to change to UK's smoking habits? Sorry, has the ban come into force? When was that and why has no-one told the patrons of just about every pub I've been in?
I know it's come into force in Scotland and apparently they're seeing record numbers of people requesting help to give up.
But then that's an example of legislation affecting people's behaviour and attitudes. Governments have increasingly taxed tobacco for years and had little to no effect. Legislation's a little harder to ignore.
Global warming due to human action has not been proved, and in fact a number of climatologists are now saying the current hysterics are a major over-reaction.
If these measures are introduced only the drivers of the 4x4s will be able to afford to stay on the road.
The whole issue needs some better 'joined up thinking' - most politicians spend their lives in a metropolis served by excellent public transport, try living in rural Cornwall where some places get one bus a day and many get none.
Many have said that climate change is the biggest threat facing mankind others say nuclear weapons they I would say are wrong.At this moment the biggest threat facing mankind is man made viruses. I remember on question time with David Dimbleby back in the year 2000 a female labour MP said this...
"They now have viruses that can kill by race they do this by targeting that piece of DNA that is different from other races".
So here we have it mankind finds something that can give monumental benefits to mankind and the first thing he does with this knowledge is to find ways to kill his fellow man after all try and think of a weapon that mankind has ever made and NOT used to kill his fellow man?.Did I say viruses were the biggest threat facing mankind when you think about it is mankind that is the biggest threat facing mankind.
The earth has enough for man’s need but not for man’s greed.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)