Victoria's Green Matters - 6th August 2015

Deal With IT's Secretary Victoria Nicholls writes a regular column in the East Kent Mercury:

It seems, of late, that our ‘greenest government ever’ is determined to remove or modify any measures that have been put in place to mitigate climate change while continuing to state that their aim is to limit climate warming to an increase of 2°C by 2020.

Despite a previous pledge to take strong action against climate change we continue to hear about the removal of subsidies from various renewable energy systems such as wind and solar and an increase in taxes on renewable energy. The plan to create zero carbon homes has been axed and a flagship energy efficiency scheme has been abandoned. Before the election there was a ban on fracking in Britain’s most important nature sites but this has been overturned and a ban on the use of pesticides damaging to bees has been lifted in some parts of the country. Swedish company Vattenfall has scrapped plans to build a wind farm in Lincolnshire because of changes to planning laws.

Changes to the laws on vehicle excise duty or road tax means that from 2017 a Porsche will be taxed the same as a Prius after the first year, thereby removing any incentive to buy a low emission car. Not only were none of these measures in the Conservative manifesto before the election but there have been no positive measures to help the health of the environment or to grow a low carbon economy and represents the worst period for environmental policy for 30 years