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Mat Hope

26.02.2014 | 4:00pm
UK policyConservatives call for a new environmentalism to resolve party divisions over climate change
UK POLICY | February 26. 2014. 16:00
Conservatives call for a new environmentalism to resolve party divisions over climate change

Conservative political ideals should naturally lead the government to implement policies which preserve the environment and tackle climate change, a new report argues.

Prime minister David Cameron pledged to make his government the ‘greenest’ ever back in 2010. But since the Conservatives came to power, the party seems to have undergone something of an identity crisis, with the government’s environmental agenda suffering a number of setbacks.

Now, a group of Conservative politicians and thinkers is seeking to reclaim an environmentalist agenda they see as dominated by those on the left. The Conservative Environmental Network’s (CEN) report calls for Conservative leaders to promote a climate action agenda based on conservationism and free market ideals.

CEN’s report isn’t the first attempt to lay out the core principles of a new Conservative environmentalism, however. Last month, a group of Conservative MPs and peers, known as the 2020 group, called for new policies to make the economy less wasteful, and more environmentally robust.

But while the 2020 group’s report focused on the economic benefits of adopting environmentally friendly policies, it studiously tiptoed around the issue of climate change. In contrast, CEN’s report isn’t afraid to tackle climate policy specifically, as part of a wider set of environmental goals.

Climate change and environmental stewardship

CEN’s report lays out why Conservatives should spearhead environmental stewardship policies, including those that tackle climate change.

“Environmentalists, if they’re honest with themselves, should be Conservatives”, argues Roger Scruton, senior fellow at Conservative thinktank the Ethics and Public Policy Centre.

He believes everyone is united by a “love of home” – implying a desire to protect their environment from threats such as climate change. For Scruton, that means tackling climate change impacts at the local level, rather than exhausting government efforts on an international climate change treaty.

Developing collective concern for how humans impact the environment should start early in life, the education secretary, Michael Gove, argues.

Schools should teach children “a love of nature, an appreciation of natural history, and an awareness of how human behaviour affects the world”, he argues. That includes teaching how changing landscapes affects the climate in biology and geography lessons, inside and outside the classroom, he says.

Gove’s words may come as a surprise to some. Earlier this year, he proposed leaving climate change off the national curriculum. He ultimately dropped the policy after complaints from educators, the public, and his cabinet colleagues.

Climate change and markets

CEN’s conceptualisation of Conservative environmentalism isn’t only driven by a love for our green and pleasant land, it’s also closely linked to another core Conservative belief: that the free market can be deployed to tackle major problems.

Like the 2020 group, CEN’s manifesto sees climate change as a market failure which can be fixed – not with regulation, but by allowing existing markets to function more effectively.

Richard Sandor, Lecturer in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago, says carbon markets – not a carbon tax – are the most effective way to reduce emissions. Existing markets, such as the much-maligned EU emissions trading scheme, have been successful, despite media stories to the contrary, he maintains.

A wholesale revision of market mechanisms is unnecessary, he argues. Instead, he says they should be tweaked to put a higher price on carbon while continuing to allow companies to trade permits freely.

Support for free market solutions should go beyond carbon markets, the CEN report argues.

For instance, Michael Liebreich, co-founder of market advisor Bloomberg New Energy Finance, argues that the only way to encourage technological innovation in the clean energy sector is by removing the protection currently given to its big players.

He says technology specific targets need to be removed and policies which encourage the development of an integrated European energy market promoted. Only in such a free market can a pioneering – and low-cost – “Easyjet of clean energy” thrive, he argues. That means Conservatives rejecting the premise that state-led solutions are the best way to reduce energy sector emissions.

Conservative leadership

If the Conservatives are to re-occupy the environmental centre ground and resolve their differences on climate change, senior party members must show some leadership, the CEN report argues.

While the current government is shying away from discussing climate change, conceding the ground to those on the left, the Conservative party has no shortage of role models to draw on, argues Telegraph columnist Geoffrey Lean.

He says Conservative politicians from across history and the globe – from Margaret Thatcher, to Richard Nixon, Angela Merkel, Michael Howard and Arnold Schwarzenegger – have all shown a passion for tackling climate change that few currently sitting on the opposition benches can match.

Lean also has kind words for David Cameron, who he says led a “detoxification” of the Conservative party by pushing a climate change agenda in the early days of his premiership. The prime minister today bolstered his climate credentials, telling MPs he believes “man-made climate change is one of the most serious threats that this country and this world faces”.

The backlash by some Conservative politicians is an “aberration”, Lean says. Without the support of the party’s leader, the views of Conservative MPs such as environment secretary Owen Paterson (who notably doesn’t mention climate change in his contribution to the CEN report) are “unlikely to last”, Lean argues.

Changing mindset

In some cases, translating ideals into action could be challenging, however. For instance, Cameron has had to resort to traditional big-state policies to respond to the flooding. It’s likely future plans to adapt to climate change will also have to be coordinated at the national level. Likewise, the EU’s carbon market has needed  top-down interventions to stop the carbon price shrinking to nothing. It’s unclear how those actions tally with CEN’s small state principles.

But perhaps the details are less important than the main message. The flooding the UK experienced this year shone a spotlight on the Conservative party’s internal divisions over climate policy. Newspapers frequently portrayed the prime minister as at loggerheads with backbench climate skeptics. CEN’s report focuses on how agreeing a set of environmentalist principles, rather than policies, could help bridge that gap.

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