Worldchanging is all about the mass implementation of ideas once seen as fringe. Here in the UK, thats certainly starting to happen. There may still be things that politicians see as unpalatable to their electorate (or the business lobby) but boy, things are changing. This week we got a frontline politico positing an idea that, even a year ago, would have been unthinkable. After announcing in the annual Energy Review on July 11th that he would look at a scheme to introduce a domestic carbon tax via energy suppliers (who would then pass this on to consumers), the Environment Secretary David Miliband gave a speech on the 19th that posited far more drastic action: making individuals personally responsible for their carbon emissions through a carbon credit card scheme.
Imagine a country where carbon becomes a new currency. We carry bank cards that store both pounds and carbon points. When we buy electricity, gas and fuel, we use our carbon points, as well as pounds. To help reduce carbon emissions, the Government would set limits on the amount of carbon that could be used.
Imagine your neighbourhood. Each neighbour receives the same free entitlement to a certain number of carbon points. The family next door has an SUV and realise they are going to have to buy more carbon points.
So instead they decide to trade in the SUV for a hybrid car. They save 2.2 tons of carbon each year. They then sell their carbon points back to the bank and share the dividends of environmental growth.
Imagine indeed but this might be coming our way. And this comes after other ministers announced that every home (old or new) sold after May will have to have an Energy Performance Certificate, plus new boosts for micro-generation through scrapping the need for planning permission for domestic energy installations, new building codes the list goes on.
But our government hasnt suddenly discovered idealism far from it. What has really happened and this is the big jump is that the environment has become a battleground for the mainstream political parties here for the first time. The Labour party in power for nearly a decade has found its Conservative opponents under their new youthful leader David Cameron trying to claim the green spot for their own. Cashing in on the middle-class electorates environmental guilt, he cycles to work (albeit with a car behind him carrying his suit and shiny shoes, has installed a wind turbine on his roof, taken on the editor of The Ecologist as an adviser and adopted a soft green-speak that has those of us who remember Margaret Thatcher rubbing our eyes in disbelief. His slogan for the recent local elections was Vote Blue, Go Green which Labour matched by printing posters showing Cameron as a Dave the Chameleon on a bicycle changing from blue to green.
The politicians have mostly yet to back up their rhetoric with action. But the speed with which green issues have become a genuine political battleground is encouraging, because a lack of real action is the first thing that politicians exploit in their rivals, taunting the greenwash.
It also shows that the speechwriters think the electorate actually care. We normally hear about virtuous circles in terms of zero-carbon, Cradle to Cradle, reuse and recycling. Now we have a virtuous circle of another kind; the spin doctors sense a shift in the public mood, put green items into the speeches of our leaders, which then result in a flurry of press articles about the shifting agenda, increasing awareness among the electorate which then gets picked up again in the focus groups. Were still not there yet with the policies nuclear power is also back on the agenda but the debate has picked up an exciting speed.
