EVERYONE´S GREEN

by RAY FLEMING
HOW fortunate that a Press Association photographer just happened to be on the remote Norwegian island of Svalbard on Thursday at the precise moment that a lone David Cameron drove his dog sled across the melting glaciers! He got a stunning picture of Mr Cameron silhouetted in black against the gleaming white ice.
Conservative Party leader sees climate change as it happens! AT about the same time Gordon Brown was addressing a meeting of UN ambassadors in New York on detailed plans to fight global warming and climate change. Difficult to make much of a photograph of that.
Boring! IT is encouraging that all three of Britain's leading political parties are now “green” and committed to the reduction of carbon emissions and the consequent global warming that produces climate change. They naturally place different emphases on how the problem should be tackled but it is only the Labour government which has had to prove its credentials in specific ways. Gordon Brown's climate change levy has done more than any other instrument; Mr Cameron criticises it as too broad-brush and wants a more targetted approach to encouraging industry to become energy efficient.
BUT Mr. Brown's approach is more fully developed and, as his speech to the UN showed, argues that “climate change is a global problem requiring a global solution”. He also proposed a new fund to encourage countries with developing economies to invest in energy efficient policies from the very start.