15th December 2006

Greens welcome David Miliband's suggestion of adopting the Green Party's policy of an individual carbon ration for each of us. This would be a positive move towards tackling climate change by using the latest credit card technology, but it has to also be supplemented with wider government action.

We need systems which make carbon reduction easy, fair and less painful. Why should the poor suffer while the rich buy their way out of the problem?

Sensitively introduced, carbon rationing can be a step towards ecological sanity, but we also need the promotion of truly sustainable local economies. Reversing the privatisation and deregulation of bus and rail, slashing fares, insulating the homes of the poorest, reducing food miles and maintaining local services - including cottage hospitals, shops and Post Offices, would be a start.

Other parties characterise climate change as a problem of market failure, when it is quite clearly one of political failure. Greens want to work with all parties to tackle this problem before it is too late.

Councillor Martin Whiteside
Hillside, Claypits Lane, Lypiatt, Stroud
Stroud District Green Party