20091129_AM
Source: BBC1: Andrew Marr Show
URL : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/andrew_marr_show/8385064.stm
Date: 29/11/2009
Event: Caroline Lucas is interviewed by Andrew Marr before the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change
Credit: Andrew Marr Show
People:
- Caroline Lucas: Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion
- Andrew Marr: Journalist and political commentator
Andrew Marr: Next week, the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change gets underway. Turning high-minded words into a real deal, however, is proving difficult; and that's despite the fact that environmental politics have, it seems, gone mainstream. So why don't more people vote Green? Well in fact more than a million people did in this year's European Elections and the Green Party has grown at all levels, except parliament itself. It's a big force in local government in places such as Brighton, Oxford and Norwich, and the party has policies on the economy and education and crime as well as the environment. I'm joined now by the Green Party Leader, Caroline Lucas. Welcome. Thank you for coming in, Caroline.
Caroline Lucas: Thank you.
Andrew Marr: Let's start with Copenhagen because that is, as Mariella was saying, the big story of the moment. How will ordinary viewers actually be able to tell that it's been a success or that it hasn't been a failure?
Caroline Lucas: It's a very good question. I mean I think there are a key number of outputs that we need to see in order to be able to judge it a success. First would be really binding targets. Not just some voluntary pledges, but binding targets connected with sanctions if you don't actually meet those targets. We need to see significant money on the table - about 150 billion at least - in terms of being able to help the developing countries, so we need that as well. Crucially, of course, all the discussion is about the figures. Unfortunately, none of the figures are coming anywhere close to what scientists are telling us that we need to avoid the worst of climate change. We need up to about 40% cuts in the industrialised countries to have even 50/50 chance of avoiding the worst of climate change. And you can imagine if someone said to you, "You know do you want to get on that plane and, by the way, it's got a 50/50 chance of falling out of the sky?", you probably wouldn't do it, yet even the most ambitious proposal on the table at Copenhagen isn't going that far.
Andrew Marr: And you started off by saying that there needed to be binding legal agreements on cutting emission targets. How likely is it that countries like America, the big industrial countries, even China, will accept that, do you think?
Caroline Lucas: Well I think there is a change in mood just over the last week. I mean until recently there's been a kind of management downwards of expectations, but just over the last few days you get the sense now that perhaps there is a bit more momentum. So I do think we might well get something that is binding and legal. The question still is whether or not the targets are going to be anywhere near high enough, ambitious enough to really avoid the worst of climate change, and that's where I'm afraid we're still not seeing what we need to see.
Andrew Marr: And ironically, it seems that everybody is going to be flying to Copenhagen for this. I mean Obama is coming, but only very briefly. Nick Griffin of the BNP is coming as well.
Caroline Lucas: Well I mean I saw that in the papers today and I have to say that once again I mean I do think the media becomes a sort of victim of this, if you like, because what they're doing is yet again puffing up Nick Griffin. He is one of a number of Members of the European Parliament who'll go on a delegation. He won't get the right to speak. The Parliament, sadly, doesn't even get the right to really influence the decisions at all. So this idea that somehow Nick Griffin is going to have any real influence over what happens in Copenhagen is a myth, and yet once again we have him all over the newspapers, which is very depressing.
Andrew Marr: What about the British Government then? What about Ed Miliband? He's had a fairly good press for sort of trying to push quite hard. Generally speaking in the past, the British Government would boast, about being one of the leaders on sort of emissions targets and cutting and so on. What's your appraisal at the moment?
Caroline Lucas: I think Ed Miliband clearly is personally motivated by this agenda. I think he's trying to do a good job, and I think internationally he is doing a good job about building momentum. I think what we see though is once again a yawning gap between what our politicians say when they're acting internationally and what they're actually delivering at home, and here at home domestically what we still see is a lack of action on renewable energy. Eventually they've come to say yes, we'll have some feed-in tariffs to make more of an incentive for householders to invest in renewables, but the figures, the percentage that people are going to get on their return is far too low. So there's still a massive gap between what they say and what they do.
Andrew Marr: One of the areas where he has been very outspoken, and a lot of climate change people are as well, is on the need for a major expansion of nuclear power. Now I know that divides the Green Movement, probably divides your party and so on, but surely if climate change is that serious and if nuclear power is one way to stop emissions, we shouldn't turn our backs on it?
Caroline Lucas: Well first to say it doesn't divide our party, and actually I don't think very many people in the Green movement actually do think nuclear is the right way forward. A few do.
Andrew Marr: James Love… James Lovelock, the great guru.
Caroline Lucas: Of course there are a few high… there are a few high profile people that do, but the majority don't. And the reason is this. Not for some kind of ideological faith, but because investment in nuclear basically takes us too long. It takes too long to get nuclear up and running to be really effective in terms of getting emissions down. Can I just explain that scientists are telling us we need to get emissions down between … you know in the next 10 to 15 years essentially. We need to get them to peak and to start coming down in the next 10 to 15 years.
Andrew Marr: Yes.
Caroline Lucas: Nuclear won't do that for us. The nuclear power station that's being built in Finland now is 77% over budget, it's 3 years late. You know it takes too long. There are much quicker, safer, cheaper, more effective ways of getting our emissions down. Through energy efficiency, for example, through renewables. We don't need nuclear at this point. It's a distraction.
Andrew Marr: Alright. I mean a lot of people would say that carbon capture and some of the other … and some of the sort of bigger you know wind and wave driven projects also take a great deal of time and they're also difficult.
Caroline Lucas: Energy efficien… In the short-term though, if I can just say, what we need to be doing is putting a massive investment in energy efficiency. That would get people back to work, it would address the economic crisis, it would address the climate crisis at the same time. We've talked about a Green New Deal essentially. For example, rolling out right across the country free insulation in every single home.
Andrew Marr: Yes.
Caroline Lucas: We've started to do it in some of the councils where we have influence. That's the kind of thing that will get emissions down quickly. Of course you have to do the investment and the big renewables at the same time, but the government's own figures say that 40% of our energy needs could be addressed through energy efficiency measures alone. That's where we should put our money.
Andrew Marr: I must ask you about the big row at the moment over the figures from the climate change unit at East Anglia University - very, very important in terms of the climate change science - and this blizzard of leaked emails and documents suggesting that there was a deliberate attempt to massage figures downwards because, embarrassingly for the as it were climate change case, temperatures have not been rising over the last 10 years.
Caroline Lucas: Well I think we need to separate out the fact that it is certainly very embarrassing for those people at that climate change unit and the actual impact of what they were doing because it's not really the case that they were trying to hide what's happened over the 10 … last 10 years. They've got plenty of graphs on their website very, very publicly saying yes over the last 10 years it hasn't necessarily been getting warmer. But that … We need to separate climate from temperature. Over the last 10 years, it's true it hasn't got warmer. Over the last 100 years, it certainly has, and all of the trends …
Andrew Marr: So you think this is a blip, a 10 year blip?
Caroline Lucas: It's not just me that thinks that. Many scientists out there are not unsurprised by this. We're not looking at just little chunks of time like that. We're looking at overall trends. And really the fact that these emails have come to light is embarrassing for that unit, but it doesn't undermine the huge wealth of scientific evidence that points to the fact that we are disrupting the climate and we need to act fast.
Andrew Marr: Now right at the beginning, I said a million people voted Green and all the rest of it but you haven't broken through in parliament. Why is that and do you think … I think you're standing in Brighton Pavilion; Norwich is a relatively interesting seat for you at the next election. Are we going to see Green MPs as well as MEPs, do you think, after the election?
Caroline Lucas: I think there's every chance that we will. To answer your question why haven't we yet made that breakthrough, there are two reasons: no state funding for political parties in this country, no fair voting system. Many other countries in Europe, you have those things. You have Greens not only in parliament, but in government. We're quite confident though that in Brighton and in Norwich, all the signs are looking really positive. In the European Elections, the Greens came ahead of all the other parties in both those areas; the same in local elections. We now have more Green councillors, for example, in that Brighton Pavilion constituency where I'm standing. So we're pretty confident that we will indeed get the first MPs at this next General Election.
Andrew Marr: Caroline Lucas, thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning.
Caroline Lucas: Thank you.