Political parties seen failing on climate

LONDON - Britain's three main political parties are failing to address climate change as the economic downturn starts to take precedence, the country's leading environmental organisations said on Wednesday.

The recent surge in world oil prices -- and with it domestic fuel bills -- proved that now was the time for the country to reduce dependence on imported energy and produce more of its own, clean power, they added.

"None of the three main political parties are currently showing the vision and courage to prepare the UK for the challenges ahead," said Stephen Hale, director of the Green Alliance lobby group which is one of the nine signatory organisations to the report.

"In a time of rising fuel and food costs, the need for an ambitious approach to environmental policy has never been clearer," he added.

The report "Fit For The Future? The Green Standard 2007-08 Review of the Parties" calls on Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to use the upcoming party conference season to recommit to tackling global warming.

It said the government's approach was "contradictory and incoherent", putting energy security above climate change and opening the way for new coal-fired power stations without the technology to cut their carbon emissions.

This, it said, would undermine the government's own plans in legislation going through parliament to cut national emissions of climate warming carbon dioxide by 60 percent by 2050.

The Conservatives had made the right noises under leader David Cameron but failed to produce any concrete plans or policies, the report said.

With a general election due within 20 months, the party urgently needed to put flesh on its environmental rhetoric.

The Liberal Democrats, traditionally the front-runners on developing environmental policies, had also gone noticeably quiet on the issue in recent months, the report said.

It urged the three parties to promise to stick to the country's European Union target of producing 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources like wind and waves by 2020.

The government has been trying in recent months to negotiate a relaxation in this tough requirement.

The report also called on the government to come up with a major public investment programme for energy efficiency and an improvement in household energy performance, a rejection of unabated coal-fired power plants and no airport expansion.

"The party conference speeches by the three party leaders will be an important test of their ability to lead the UK to a low-carbon future," said Hale.

The report's signatories are Green Alliance, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF-UK, The Wildlife Trusts, The Woodland Trust, RSPB, The National Trust and CPRE.