Environment

Boris was always the straggler in the election race when it came to green politics. He was widely ridiculed for seemingly missing the point about Heathrow, and rightly so. He opposed expansion of it under the heading of “Make Transport More Sustainable” in his manifesto, but then came out in favour of a whole new airport. It may well be preferable to put a new airport in the east rather than expand Heathrow further, but neither option has anything to do with sustainability.

Likewise, his policy on vehicle emissions seemed confused. Although he opposed Ken’s £25 Congestion Charge for gas-guzzling, emission-heavy vehicles, describing it as “a stick with which to beat motorists” that would hit families and small businesses, he also supported the Low Emission Zone, which targets…gas-guzzling, emission-heavy vehicles. The discrepancy was, as you might expect, screamed about by the pro-Ken camp. Again, rightly so. Of the two policies Boris supported the one with the catchier name that didn’t involve penalizing the Kensington & Chelsea 4×4 brigade who, traditionally, are core Conservative voters.

Time, then, to look at the rest of his environmental policy. He says he will:

Use the Mayor’s powers to protect the green belt and protect against development on gardens.

For those not in the know, the green belt’s history and purpose is summed up nicely here.

Invest £6 million in making our open spaces cleaner and safer.

This would be nice, except that once again Boris is letting his security obsession get in the way. I’m prepared to bet that more of the £6m goes towards ’safer’ than ‘cleaner’, so this isn’t necessarily much of an environmental pledge.

Invest in 10,000 street trees to improve the local neighbourhoods that need them most.

He’s already started on this one, which I mentioned a couple of posts ago. The problem I had was in finding out why it is that local neighbourhoods actually need these trees. Well, since then I’ve found this site, on which Boris claims that “Not only do trees improve the street environment, they absorb CO2 and traffic noise, provide habitats for wildlife and help cool streets when temperatures rise.”

They do improve the street environment, yes – they have aesthetic appeal. But a tree absorbs only a tiny amount of carbon dioxide (about 30 grams a day ), not enough to make an impact (bear in mind that even the most efficient hybrid cars produce about 4 times that much per mile). Especially since the carbon they absorb will be offset by the CO2 produced by the respiration of all that wildlife sheltered by them (what exactly does Boris have in mind here? Pigeons?). And, unless I’m missing something, this cooling mechanism Boris talks about is…shade. Also provided by…buildings. So we still haven’t found much to make planting trees a world-changing strategy. Moving on.

Promote innovative new schemes that pay Londoners to recycle.

This annoys me. Recycling is expensive but important. So we shouldn’t make it more expensive for councils by making them pay people to do it, we should make it harder to avoid by penalising people for not doing it.

Work closely with boroughs to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill, and support a ban on plastic bags.

I have my own crazy theories on land-fill which don’t deserve airing here. For the time being let’s assume this is a good thing, and watch carefully for actual progress on this. Does he actually mean to ban all plastic bags (which would be great!) or just to ban the practice of giving them out for free? Time will tell.

Oppose the third runway at Heathrow and mixed mode operation.

We’ve already discussed this above. Opposing Heathrow expansion counts for nothing in environmental grounds if instead you open up a new airport elsewhere.

Promote hybrid buses and get traffic moving more smoothly to reduce congestion and so reduce emissions.

I was initially sceptical of this – I didn’t believe that reducing congestion could have a significant effect on emissions, but according to this research from the US I’m wrong. So far Boris’ methods of getting traffic moving are plans to re-phase traffic lights and to get Thames Water to reduce time spent doing roadworks. He might actually be doing some good here.

Make London a genuinely cycle-friendly city to promote modal shift.

I had to look it up, but in the context of transport, modal shift is generally used to mean a change in the zeitgeist towards embracing healthy transport. Let’s see it happen, Boris.

Work to help cut London’s carbon emissions by 60% from their 1990 levels by 2025, through promoting greater energy efficiency and cutting
congestion.

Yes. I was actually very surprised to see this one; it didn’t have the feel of a Boris environmental policy. But I support it all the way. Even if it’s not attainable, setting it as a target has to be A Good Thing.

Work with the boroughs to encourage Londoners to install insulation in return for Council Tax rebates.

In this case, I think the carrot rather than the stick approach is the right way to go about it. Since insulation provides long-term financial benefits to home-owners anyway, a rebate to give people enough of a short-term incentive seems like the right thing to do.

Champion innovation through an annual Mayor’s prize of £20,000 for the best new ideas for low carbon technology from London’s students.

A little bit gimmicky, this one, but still, seems like a good idea.

All in all, then, Boris’ environmental policy, at the outset, doesn’t seem as much of a train-wreck as I expected. There are some genuinely positive initiatives among the airport-, tree-, and emission zone-related fiascos. However, I still don’t trust Boris to be green. Anyone who can write as facetious and childish an article as this still needs to be watched.

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