Sorry to mock you, but environmental concerns affect us all. Earth is one giant connected system; everything eventually influences everything else. It's just a matter of the latency of the connections. Pollution is something we need to tackle globally, because many types of pollutants don't break down naturally or necessarily become less dangerous. On the contrary, many continue to accumulate and are concentrated by natural processes into places where water drains--this is why we find these things in rivers and lakes first, and in the highest concentrations. They are everywhere, tho.
Point is, its about who enforcing it not what. If even that does not fix your observations, I would like to request some proof/citations.
That's entirely expected, the EU as a whole is more liberal, more green, and more socialist than the Tories.
That's not really different in the EU.
The creation of free movement of people, goods, services and capital across 28 States and creating a common currency used by many of them is arguably not “benign”.
For avoidance of doubt I’m in no way expressing an opinion on the merits of these - simply that it is not benign in the sense of having done nothing.
I think that you're using the word in a pretty unusual way there, perhaps inspired by medical usage. 'benign' comes from the latin meaning 'good', and has the same root as 'benefactor', 'beneficial', 'benefit' or 'bonus'. In its nonmedical sense it almost always refers to something being good, not having negligible effect.