Climate change and pollution
Climate change is only one part of a wider ecological disaster caused by pollution – urgent action is needed to prevent a global catastrophe.
We must take the lead. It will be costly, but we must act now if we want to give our children any chance of confronting this emergency.
| The Peoples Party must: |
|---|
| adopt a comprehensive strategy to avert the ecological crisis facing the UK |
| triple green electricity generation capacity, modernise the national grid, ensure its ongoing stability and enable on-demand connection |
| plan to replace traditional gas boilers with heat pumps or electric/eco boilers by 2035, encourage domestic energy production and initiatives to improve insulation |
| plan to get polluting vehicles off the road by 2035, encouraging the purchase of electric cars and trucks |
| cut pollution from farming |
| champion biodiversity, including initiatives to tackle the cataclysmic loss of insects, animals and plants |
| act to eliminate river pollution through proper management of catchment areas |
| plant billions of trees, encouraging tree nurseries with an initial aim of more than doubling woodland by 2050 |
| support geoengineering efforts to tackle the world’s biggest problems at source |
Policies must deliver substantial reductions in pollution while promoting economic growth, enabling further investment in environmentally friendly infrastructure and projects. We must not only commit to challenging targets but also make the tough decisions necessary to achieve them.
Our current progress is simply not good enough. Aside from global warming, pollution significantly contributes to illness, causing tens of thousands of deaths each year. Half-hearted measures, wishful thinking, and prevarication are not enough. The failures to invest adequately in clean energy, to update the electricity grid, to develop charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, and to address pollution in our rivers and coasts, as well as the destruction of habitats and wildlife loss, are clear examples.
Fiddling while Rome burns is a fitting analogy. It is clear that the future is electric. We must act now to ensure that the UK has enough clean and reliable electricity generation capacity to meet future demand. Only when this is established can we succeed in eliminating the need for fossil fuels.
We must champion an agrarian revolution that will reduce pollution from livestock and dairy production. We need to reverse our impact on the natural world, aiming to restore losses in vital elements of the food chain such as insect populations.
Government must not seek to “make money” from climate change by introducing new taxes. Instead, it should focus on limiting and banning emissions directly. Likewise, we must guard against “offshoring” pollution and require imports to be produced in environmentally friendly conditions.