I think he means it will get worse when we leave EU
The EU hasn't been a panacea thus far, particularly with the environment. The strongest influence they've had is with personal rights & freedoms but there have consistently been lapses when it comes to the environment. They refuse to pound down on coal in Eastern Europe/Northern Greece & overlooking Diesel-gate are just more recent ones.
The only thing that can help the environment is if green politicians get a sufficient vote in the country involved
Diesel-gate is a different issue and highlights the weakness of recognising other countries’ testing standards without setting sufficiently stringent regulations to ensure that testing was valid. The problem was that member states weren’t required to do their own testing but to trust that whoever did it had done it correctly while incentivising the testing state to be lenient lest they lose the payments to perform tests.
The country has no green tradition, it was dragged into modern practices kicking and screaming by German and Scandinavian-inspired EU regulations. Their rivers and beaches only started looking clean in the early ‘00s.
The Cameron government promised to be “the greenest ever” and failed to deliver on all accounts, dropping the whole issue after less than a year in power; the current one doesn’t really have a green policy at all, unless you count “build on greenfields” as such.
Because of the hardcore first-past-post electoral system, green parties in England are happy when they manage to elect 1 MP and maybe throw enough races against Labour that “reds” have to listen a bit; but in the meantime they get a Tory government that is naturally pro-business and anti-environment. The only real influence they can have is by winning seats in the proportionally-assigned EU Parliament, where they gang up with the more numerous Eurogreens and deeply influence actual regulations.
Leaving the EU is a tragedy for UK greens, and it will kill any semblance of environmental policy in the country.
Almost nobody in the world is 'anti-environment'. That's a ludicrous claim. Many people think other things matter more than the environment, or don't care about the environment at all, sure, but if you think any people, let alone major political parties, are working against the environment deliberately for its own sake I think you're barmy.
Resulting in stupid stunts like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal which really is pollution for its own sake.
Typical examples of this culture war are nuclear power and GMO agriculture. The scientific consensus is settled: using GMOs in agriculture would be better for environment, but nevertheless it is the "environmentalists" who particularly oppose them.
Is it? I'm not aware of the GMO counterpart of the IPCC here and, unlike the question of global warming, there is a problem with Monsanto-funded studies muddying the waters.
I mean, in the same sense that socialists are often seen as anti-business. It's not so much that they dislike businesses per se (most of us in the social democratic tradition see markets and those who operate in them as an important source of wealth and innovation) but that, given a choice, they would direct government spending to more-or-less anything other than making business owners richer.
Maybe if you ask them rationally what their opinion is, it will come out pretty balanced, but that standard glosses over a lot of deeply rooted bias.
Your argument is like saying if I sit and watch my friend beat you up, not intervening because he promised me a few quid, then I'm blameless and not "anti" you in any way.
You're quibbling over semantics whilst we're trying to shine light on the destruction of irreplaceable natural resources, and pollution of our environment that will harm future generations.
If you can show Tories will preference the environment over business interests [of their donors, members] then please do so; this present argument is unhelpful.
I never understand what people mean by this criticism. I'm debating people based on the words they use and what they mean by using those words... and that's a bad thing? What else you would like me to debate them on instead? Their syntax and grammar?
And my local Conservative councillors seems to Tweet mainly about school funding and how important is is to preserve the green belt for the sake of the environment, so there you go.
Many people, such as myself, want positive action to protect the environment from damage to essential ecosystems, want preservation of green spaces, protection of native species, and such like.
Saying "the videos aren't making policies to actively harm the environment and do they're not anti-environment"is to entirely miss the substance of the argument which is that they're not doing enough to protect it and are seemingly ignoring environmental issues when profits can be made.
One often finds councillors at odds with the party as they focus much more on local issues. Conservative councillors in rural areas will be inclined to protect green belt, counter village in-fill developments, oppose fracking, etc, despite these being things the Tories as a party support (because: profits).
Tories are strong on rhetoric wrt green belt, just weak on protection.
> Environmentalism, as a movement, is an alternative world view and a substitute for Christianity.
They aren't against the environment itself. I'm sure they don't particularly care about it, but they don't hate the environment for the sake of it as far as I can see.
Not exactly, here have been very strong comments from some in the government that suggest that Britain is going to add environmental regulations to the 'bonfire of the regulations'.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-safety-...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-eu-regu...