Early in the week I had a comment piece printed in The Scotsman newspaper. It was defending the new Scottish Climate Change Act which had been previously described in the newspaper as vainglorious twaddle and based upon dubious scientific claims.

My article sought to clarify exactly how the scientific consensus had been reached and to highlight the enormous opportunities that exist for companies who are willing to embrace and respond to the new agenda. 

I thought it was cunningly constructed, but I was clearly wrong judging by the website responses. They were not to be moved from their position that the whole climate change thing is a conspiracy created by yoghurt knitting asexual liberals determined to ruin all our lives.

I have no idea how this idea has become so embedded into our society. It is extremely damaging. Until we get over this hurdle it is going to be incredibly difficult to have a sensible conversation around the difficult decisions we have to make. The result is that foreign investors withdraw funding from our largest wind farm manufacturer and the next generation will have to make abrupt and painful changes.

How green will the Tories be?

Another week and another by-election disaster for Labour. With the prospect of a Conservative Government seeming to move ever-closer the question we are starting to ask is how green are the Tories? The messages are confused. 

When he first became leader, David Cameron pin-pointed the environment as a Labour weakness and launched the ‘Vote Blue Go Green' local authority election campaign. It was always unclear exactly how deeply rooted this message was in the party and as Labour electorally implodes it is questionable how much Cameron now needs to stick with this original campaign.

What is certain is the Conservatives are planning to slash public spending. Exactly where they make these cuts will provide the evidence about their commitment to the environment, but it was not encouraging to hear them criticising the investment being made in electrifying some of our railway lines last week. 

What is certain is that they will be going on a quango hunt and they will certainly look very closely at why there is both an Energy Saving Trust and a Carbon Trust and why we are subsidising large companies to meet carbon targets which are being driven by legislation. These questions would be good to ask.

Decisions, decisions

On Wednesday we had a meeting of our Board of Trustees. The key item for discussion was what role Global Action Plan can best play in helping to create a mass movement on climate change. Our strengths are our practical approach, our innovation and our focus on measurement, but we know that change on a far larger and quicker scale is needed.

This view is increasingly realised, but the environmental movement is still incredibly fragmented with many organisations seeking to preciously hold onto their members and their ‘brand'. Creating a more streamlined and coherent voice is not within the remit of any one organisation, instead it will require an unprecedented level of co-operation and sharing. 

The overall conclusion was that we need to continue to concentrate on the things that we think we do well, that we need to build better relationships with the people with whom we work and crucially we need to encourage them to participate in other initiatives and campaigns run by other organisations. By doing this, we can start to join up some of the currently disconnected initiatives.