Less than a week to go until the “snap” General Election 2017 that nobody wanted but what are the parties promising on the environment?
Here’s a quick summary:
Green Party
- preserve all EU environmental laws and principles after Brexit
- introduce Environment Protection Act to preserve wildlife and habitats and ensure all have right to access green space
- work towards global temperature rise of below 1.5 degrees
- ban fracking
- end fossil-fuel use
- support onshore wind and solar power
- all new homes to be zero carbon by 2020 and improve energy efficiency of old homes
- remove diesel cars through scrappage
- £2 million for cycle and walking schemes
- redirect farmer subsidies towards sustainable land management
- marine protection network around the UK, maintaining sustainable fish stocks
Labour
- will meet international climate targets and transition to low carbon economy
- protect current EU environmental standards and principles
- nationalise the energy market
- ban fracking
- interest free loans for landlords to improve energy sufficiency of their properties, as well as improving insulation in 4 million homes
- introduce a Clean Air Act
- invest in electric vehicle manufacture and use
- targets to reduce plastic bottle waste
- plant 1 million trees to help natural flood management
- protect land and sea habitats
Liberal Democrats
- maintain EU environmental standards
- create governmental office for sustainability
- create blue belt for marine life
- introduce a Zero Carbon Britain Act, Green Buildings Act, Zero Waste Act, and an Air Quality Act
- expand renewables by 60% by 2030
- diesel scrappage scheme
- plant a tree per citizen
- maintain Paris climate obligations
- £2 million for flood prevention
- redirect farmers’ subsidies towards healthy food and effective land management
Conservatives
- continue to meet the international goal of reducing emissions by 80% by 2050
- £600 million investment to make every car have zero emissions by 2050
- upgrading poor fuel homes by 2030 to EPC band C
- possible offshore wind technology, particular in the Scottish isles (if they are still within the UK….)
- subsidies for farmers guaranteed until 2022 (new schemes to come into play after that)
- improving water courses with landowners to manage natural flood defenses
- commercial fishing to preserve fish stocks
- free vote on the Hunting Act
Hope this helps you come to the right decision for the environment this Thursday!
This is helpful actually! It’s so tricky for me to decide how to vote and this post is great. Thanks for posting. X
Aw thanks! It’s difficult to make politics fun so I just went for informational. 😁
Thank you! Just what I needed:)