According to the Liberal Democrats Party website the Liberal Democrats Party will try to achieve the following if they gain power at the 2010 general election:
Climate change could destroy our way of life, but going green seems harder than ever. Instead of listening, and helping, the government piles on more taxes. Liberal Democrats will cut income tax and make polluters pay instead. We’ll force energy companies to use windfall profits to cut your bills and help you use energy more efficiently.
Zero-Carbon Britain – We are the first party to aim for a carbon neutral Britain where we absorb as much carbon as we emit by 2050. We will achieve this by ensuring100% of the UK’s electricity comes from clean sources without the use of nuclear power stations, making homes greener and improving public transport. We will provide incentives for renewable technologies and make Britain a greener, healthier place to live.
Tackling climate change – taking a global lead – We will provide leadership for an international framework that will enable each country to manage a transition to a low-carbon economy, including working for agreement on a more ambitious set of targets in the negotiations for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol and beyond. We will help developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change, including working for the establishment of an International Leapfrog Fund to invest in low-carbon technologies, energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies in developing countries.
Sustainable Housing – We will aim to set national targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the UK’s housing by 80% by 2050. We will ensure that the UK complies with the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive so that we are not prosecuted by the European Court of Justice. We would raise the requirements of Building Regulations to ensure that our homes are energy efficient. This would help to curb Britain’s carbon emissions as well as tackling fuel poverty.
Tax pollution not people – We want to reverse the decline in green taxation under Labour, and use the revenue to cut income tax. We will cut income tax and increase taxes on carbon emissions and other resource usage that causes global warming. So the more you go green, the more money you save.
Renewable energy, not nuclear energy – We oppose construction of further nuclear power stations. More nuclear power is a barrier to green growth, as it will soak up subsidy, hinder development of Britain’s vast renewable resources and lead to nuclear proliferation – increasing global security risks.
I would be interested to hear both positive and negative views on Liberal Democrats Environment and Energy policies in the comments below?
Dear Mr Clegg,
I have been a supporter of the Liberal Democrats since their formation, both in national and in local elections, believing that they had the most sensible policies and that they were more trustworthy and open than the two other major parties. However, the issue of climate change is now of the utmost importance and regrettably I believe that your party’s anti-nuclear power energy policy, if implemented, would have catastrophic consequences for our country’s greenhouse gas emissions. I feel so strongly about this that unless the policy is reconsidered then at the forthcoming general election I must not only vote against you, but also actively encourage others to do so.
We all believe in the need for renewables and energy efficiency, but they can only ever have a limited part to play, and the major problem will continue to be with our baseload generation. It is an ill-advised and misinformed policy that continues to support a fossil fuel energy supply in the hope that so-called “carbon capture and storage” can be made feasible, let alone economic, for large scale electricity generation by land-based coal, oil and gas-fired power stations. Pumping exhaust gases underground has only ever been viable for specific oil-wells in the relatively small scale extraction of remaining deposits underneath locally situated impervious rocks. It is a vain hope that this technology could be transferred to capture and permanently store the huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions from conventional power stations in Britain.
Nuclear power is the only low-carbon option for the provision of our baseload electricity and we must proceed with the approval and building of new nuclear stations as soon as possible – even if the forecast energy gap means a period of reduced prosperity until the stations are commissioned. (Since this situation has been obvious for so long, it is a sorry indictment of politicians that they could only tackle the energy gap by committing the country to more and more imports of fossil fuels from insecure suppliers.)
The Liberal Democrats are virtually alone in their anti-nuclear stance. The technology is well established and proven, and it is reliable, safe, economic and widely used throughout the world. It was embarrassing to see Simon Hughes recently on television trying to claim that these facts were not so.
I would dearly like to continue supporting the Liberal Democrats, as I believe that Labour and the Conservatives have the wrong economic and social policies. I therefore strongly urge you to reconsider this anti-nuclear power policy.
Yours sincerely,
Lawrence Ward
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