Greenpeace, Zac Goldsmith and the Conservative Party: Strange, Green, Bedfellows

I was overjoyed the other day to hear that Greenpeace, with the help of some moneyed celebrities, had purchased a field earmarked to go under the third runway at Heathrow, Britain’s biggest airport, on the Western edge of London.

Needless to say, I find it unlikely that in a recession and with tight CO2 emissions goals to meet we can justify expanding Heathrow.

And even if, as is highly likely, aeronautical technology advances at its current rate and we do indeed see dramatic reductions in carbon emissions from aircraft, I still simply can’t see the numbers adding up – we will still need everyone else in the country to produce no carbon at all to make up for the air industry’s profligacies and the Government is apparently already seeking permission from the EU to break the rules. Build high-speed rail links, yes. Great idea. But airports? I really don’t think so. Not now. And whatever the alleged emissions limits placed on those new slots, surely by the time those slots exist, you’ve done all the construction anyway.

Greenpeace

What a brilliant idea on the part of Greenpeace, though, to buy the land, split it up into thousands of tiny bits and sell each of them, thus making it very difficult and time-consuming for BAA and/or compulsory purchase orders to wade through them all and bulldoze the village of Sipson, wherein lies the Greenpeace “Airplot”. (Let’s leave aside potential rulings about “vexatious lawsuits” for the time being.) So off I went to the Greenpeace UK web site to see if I could buy a plot myself.

Well indeed I can, and there has been a lot of interest. But the first thing I read when I arrived at the site was this: “We’ve bought the land with Oscar winning actress Emma Thompson, comedian Alistair McGowan and prospective Tory parliamentary candidate Zac Goldsmith.”

What, I found myself wondering, is Greenpeace doing aligning itself with a Conservative Prospective Parliamentary Candidate? Well, pragmatism, I suppose. But it started me thinking about who is the greenest on the mainstream UK political scene. And about Zac Goldsmith.

Labour and Tories

It’s evident to me that the Labour Party has blown many Green credentials with the current absurd decision. Even though some Labour MPs were very upset about the move, the Government still took it. Having been involved in the Green Party years ago, I know there is no doubt about their credentials, but without Proportional Representation they are not going to go anywhere in the UK Parliament. As a result, I align myself with the Liberal Democrats these days, and although I wish they were rather further to the Left (re-nationalisation of the railways really ought to be in their manifesto, for example, and re-nationalisation of other things too – see previous articles of mine) and perhaps more like Canada’s NDP, there is no doubt that when it comes to the environment, they are certainly trying hard.

And then there are the Tories. I have never voted Conservative in my life (I once thought about voting for Heath, but that was because it might hasten the end of Capitalism and I decided it wouldn’t, so that doesn’t count), and I remember the damage Thatcher caused – which so many people seem to find it so easy to forget – so I am even less likely to do so now, where a “Labour” Government is a good deal further to the Right than the Tory Party of Edward Heath‘s day ever could be, and the Conservatives further Right still.

I expect to be fighting hard to avoid a seemingly inevitable Tory General Election win next time around. One that will be all the more likely, now, as everyone living anywhere near Heathrow will be voting for them because they have vowed to stop the expansion if they get in. I have no doubt whatsoever that they would have OK’d the expansion had they been in power this week. Despite the little tree logo and all the apparently green rhetoric from Cameron & Co, I am afraid I don’t believe a word of it. Labour and Conservative parties alike appear to be intent on pleasing big business and multinational corporations at the expense of everyone and everything else, environment especially included. Indeed, Zac Goldsmith said as much in an Ecologist editorial in 2001 (in fact he said that of all three main parties, though I am not sure of what evidence there is for this in the case of the LibDems).

Zac Goldsmith

Ah yes, Zac Goldsmith. He definitely says many of the right things (I am in total agreement with a good many of what I believe to be his environmental policy positions) and is apparently an impressive fellow in many ways – though I have never understood why he doesn’t like Al Gore (whom I have met and talked to, and regard extremely highly).

But then Mr Goldsmith went and joined the Conservative Party. Well I can imagine that it suits him best in some senses: the family connections, for example, would point that way; he is pro-hunting, a view that would be hard to find in any other mainstream party; and he is anti-Europe (so the LibDems wouldn’t like him, then), despite the fact that much of the useful environmental regulation we have in this country has originated in Brussels – including the emissions decisions the Government is current trying to arrange a dispensation to bend.

So we now have Greenpeace aligned with a pro-hunting individual, deeply opposed to one of the leading environmental figures of the age, who is the Tory PPC for Richmond Hill, where he seeks to unseat LibDem Susan Kramer, a member of the party that is almost certainly the Greenest mainstream party in the country. What are we to make of this?

Certainly there is a strand of old-fashioned British Conservatism (and further to the right, if we think Henry Williamson) that really is about “conserving” things, including the natural environment and “traditional” practices – like foxhunting. But that strand is hardly the dominant one in the post-Thatcher Tory party. In fact it seems nearly not to exist. As I’ve said, I don’t believe Cameron’s greenwashing. I simply can’t see them, if they get to power, ever implementing anything remotely like their Quality of Life Policy Group‘s report, published in September 2007, and written by deputy Chair Goldsmith and the head of the Group, former Tory Secretary of State for the Environment, John Gummer. Goldsmith said he would be happy to see half of the recommendations accepted. Well, he’d be lucky, in my view.

Greenpeace, Zac Goldsmith and the Conservative Party. Strange bedfellows indeed. Now when I was involved in the UN Climate Talks I remember Greenpeace being criticised from some quarters (quite illegitimately in my view) for being too willing to go along with the UN process and being out of touch with its ‘direct action’  roots. On the contrary I, on the other hand, saw (and see) them as a pragmatic organisation prepared to do whatever they think will work best to bring about the change they seek – they will work with whom they need to to get the job done. Quite likely they needed Zac’s money to buy the land. And the Air Plot is such a cool idea. But I am left feeling decidedly uneasy about the whole situation. Aren’t you? Just a bit?

• Picture of Zac Goldsmith from WikiMedia Commons