EU environmental benefits justify "Remain" vote says Green Party

 

The Green Party has called on voters who care about the environment and tackling climate change to vote for the UK to remain in the European Union.

The party's leader, Natalie Bennett, is taking this message around the country as Greens for a Better Europe begins its final campaigning push [1].

Bennett will say that collective standards across Europe can ensure that all governments - particularly our own, with its dreadful environmental record - meet the need for action on climate change and other environmental crises that we face - crises that don't stop at national borders.

She'll also highlight how the politicians running the Leave campaign have an abysmal record on the subject, including Michael Gove, who attempted to remove climate change from the school curriculum.

Bennett said:

"In environmental diplomacy, the EU as a whole is far more effective than member states could be individually in developing and promulgating cooperation, long-term approaches, and motivating others into action.

"The current UK government has taken actions, in particular on renewables policy, that have seen Britain slide disastrously in the league tables for attractiveness to clean energy investors and damaged small businesses and job prospects. But thanks to the collective peer pressure from our European partners, the UK government has indicated that it will aim to improve in areas of home heating and transport, where it so often falls behind

"When one EU country, for example the UK, moves in the wrong direction, this can be challenged by cooperative action. For example the European Parliament has called for a fracking moratorium and for chemicals legislation that can also act as a check on this government's fracking ambitions.

"On climate diplomacy, the UK benefits from enhanced representation in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, being both a party as the UK and again as an EU member.

"The Brexit campaign leadership is dominated by climate sceptics, with a terrible track record of attacking renewable energy and undermining climate action. They deny the scientific evidence on climate change, just as they deny the economic and environmental risks of leaving the EU.

"Michael Gove tried to remove climate change from the national curriculum, an indefensible attempt to prevent our young people being informed about the overwhelming scientific consensus on the subject. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage and UKIP want to abolish the Climate Change Act and have expressed total opposition to wind power [2]."

The Green Party's campaign is also focusing on celebrating the free movement of people in the EU, on our membership's central place in maintaining and enhancing workers' rights, and on the capacity and actions of the EU in reining in the abuses of tax-dodging, low-paying multinational companies.

Notes:
[1] https://www.greenparty.org.uk/europe
[2]http://www.climatechangenews.com/2015/03/11/nigel-farage-on-climate-change-in-his-own-words/
http://www.environmentalistsforeurope.org/

EU and the Environment

The Green Party is campaigning to stay in Europe, but with reforms. One of the reasons for remaining in the EU is the Environment. 

It’s only by working with our European neighbours that we can tackle the big issues like climate change, protect wildlife and reduce pollution. Thanks to EU rules, our beaches are cleaner, our air cleaner and our dirtiest power stations are being shut down. The UK government though, is always wanting to support corporations rather than people and their well being.

A current example is the use of glyphosate - a widely used weedkiller that the World Health Organisation has found is probably carcinogenic.

On 8 March Italy joined France, Sweden and the Netherlands in opposing a new 15-year licence for glyphosate at an EU meeting which had been expected to rubber stamp its reapproval. This chemical is a core ingredient in Monsanto's $5bn-a-year Roundup brand. If no new arrangement is found then the licence for glyphosate will expire at the end of June. Monsanto is furious.

True to form, however, the UK Government (not UK Green MEPS) is supporting the use of glyphosate. The European Parliament is about to vote on a resolution that would support a ban on glyphosate.

The campaign group SumOfUs is organising a petition to tell MEPS that they are accountable to us, not Monsanto.

Keep an eye out and see what happens. The EU may offer us protection. If we are outside of the EU, the UK government would definitely not.

See the Guardian article.

The EU Referendum Question

I am writing this on the day the Green Party launches its GREENS FOR A BETTER EUROPE campaign.

The Green Party believes that Europe could be a much better force for good if there are various reforms.  But how much will the voters be able to qualify their answer in the referendum? It would seem not at all.

According to the Guardian the referendum question is:

 “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” 

Voters can choose between two responses:

    Remain a member of the European Union.
    Leave the European Union.

The somewhat wordy question is designed to avoid any confusion if, for example, voters do not know whether the UK is already a member of the EU. It also avoids the positive connotations of a “yes” answer. The Electoral Commission was criticised by some experts for allowing a yes/no question in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.

Nowhere can we say that we would like to stay in, but seek various reforms.
Nowhere does it say that we dis/believe David Cameron got a good deal for the UK or that we support his views of Europe.
Nowhere does it say what the alternative will be.

There are 5 main alternatives according to the Economist:

• to join the European Economic Area, a solution adopted by all but one of the European Free-Trade Association (EFTA) states that did not join the EU. But the EEA now consists of just one small country, Norway, and two tiddlers, Iceland and Liechtenstein
• to try to emulate Switzerland, the remaining EFTA country. It is not in the EEA but instead has a string of over 20 major and 100 minor bilateral agreements with the EU
• to seek to establish a customs union with the EU, as Turkey has done, or at least to strike a deep and comprehensive free-trade agreement
• simply to rely on normal World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules for access to the EU market
• preferred by most Eurosceptics, is to negotiate a special deal for Britain alone that retains free trade with the EU but avoids the disadvantages of the other models, but it would be extremly hard or even impossible to negotiate this in an atmosphere, post-Brexit, that would hardly be a warm 

 So without declaring what the alternative will be, the Referendum question falls far short of clarity.

Stay or leave?

 At the last Cotswold Green Party meetng on 20th February it was unanimously decided that we would campaign to stay in the EU although, as with the rest of the Green Party, for vastly different reasons to David Cameron.

Over a few blogs I am going to give my views on the Europe situation for what its worth and would love others to chip in with their ideas so as to engender a good debate.

Firstly - why on earth are we having this referendum anyway? It was something David Cameron promised in the run-up to the last general election when he felt the conservatives were losing ground to UKIP and he needed to placate some tory right wingers. So a political decision and nothing to do with being in the interests of the country.
 
Secondly - David Cameron has said that he has negotiated a better deal so that Britain retains its sovereignty. Yet  -

• He willingly lets our big companies be sold to foreign enterprises eg Cadburys to Kraft
• Lets what remains of our steel industry (although admittedly already in foreign ownership) fall foul to cheap Chinese imports
• He sells off our utilities and doesn't mind if water companies are owned by foreigners even though infrastructure is at the heart of our country
• He can surrender energy independence to China and France (nuclear power) while cutting subsidies to home grown sustainable energy companies
• He encourages NHS contracts go to overseas companies
• He sits by while London is treated as an investment centre for foreign millionaires, raising the price of property so that British people cannot afford to live there.

Would anyone like to comment on these 2 points? Just click in the Comment Button.