杏吧原创

Prime Minister Theresa May today unveiled . It contains much talk about protecting wildlife, making the country cleaner and greener, and so on. It all sounds wonderful, but it is mostly waffle.

鈥淭he government鈥檚 25-year environment plan is a monumental anti-climax,鈥� the Green Party. 鈥淣othing new, nothing of substance, nothing to tackle climate change.鈥�

Take the plans to reduce plastic pollution, which dominated the headlines. A worthy goal, absolutely. But what will actually be done? A mandatory 5-pence charge for plastic bags will be extended to small shops as well as large ones. Plastic bag usage has already fallen nearly 90 per cent due to the 5p charge in large shops, so this is not going to make a huge difference.

It鈥檚 worth pointing out, too, that this charge was for reducing plastic bag consumption, rules that were opposed by May鈥檚 Conservative Party.

No substance

And that鈥檚 just about it. The plan states that 鈥渨e want to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste鈥� by 2042. But this is just a vague aspiration, not a legal requirement. And that weasel word 鈥渁voidable鈥� makes it meaningless in any case.

What about climate change, by far the greatest threat to the environment? We are currently heading for a world about 4掳C warmer, which would result in huge swathes of the UK disappearing under the waves and would utterly transform what countryside remained.

Here, the Conservative Party鈥檚 record is abysmal. After the party won an outright majority in 2015, the government scrapped a long list of policies designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, such as subsidies for renewable energy. The UK is no longer on track to meet its own emissions targets and it is likely to deviate even further off-course in the coming years as the effects of the cuts start to become manifest.

The claim at the time was that the scrapped policies were inefficient and would be replaced with better ones. Nearly three years on, we are still waiting. 鈥淲e will take all possible action to mitigate climate change,鈥� claims the 25-year plan. But again, there is no substance, despite there being a long list of steps that are absolutely crucial if the UK is to have any chance of meeting its climate targets.

No time to waste

For starters, the UK should stop blocking the construction of on-shore wind farms鈥� it is the cheapest form of renewable energy. It also needs to come up with a coherent plan for improving the woeful energy efficiency of its housing, which will have the bonus of reducing people鈥檚 energy bills. In addition, it needs a plan for replacing fossil gas as the main source of energy for heating. This is going to take decades, so there is no time to waste.

New homes should have stringent standards 鈥� retrofitting is much harder and more expensive. And England and Wales should follow Scotland鈥檚 example and ban fracking 鈥� it is simply not compatible with meeting the emissions targets.

Then there is air pollution, which is so bad in the UK and many other countries that it will probably cut months off people鈥檚 lives. Reading this plan, you wouldn鈥檛 have a clue that the UK is not only still failing to meet EU standards that came into force in 2010, it still hasn鈥檛 even come up with a credible plan for meeting those standards.

Indeed, almost all the major improvements to the UK鈥檚 environmental regulations in recent decades, from clean beaches to plastic bags, come from the EU. 鈥淏rexit will not mean a lowering of environmental standards,鈥� May claimed in her speech. But like just about everything when it comes to Brexit, this remains far from certain.