Climate Change at home; a distinctive position for Labour

The environment is the world in which everyone must function. As it changes [and it surely does] unless people adapt, our ability to function will be affected. Efforts across the globe to reduce or reverse climate change have fallen foul of both the enormity of that task and the impossibility of all nations agreeing and acting in concert. Those who advocate mitigation as the political response to climate change are left with Canute’s task. The parties of the Right have now adopted a laissez faire, non-interventionist approach, based on adaptations after the event and motivated by short-term profit opportunities. Labour has been unfortunately silent, failing to define mid- to long-term objectives for energy supply, population density and location or land use. Your Britain barely has a mention of the subject. This is unsatisfactory not least because it leaves Labour bereft of a counter to Tory policies, such as they may be. With values including long-termism, localism and mutuality, Labour must address this vacuum, which fails those whose needs are explicitly omitted from the thinking of the Right – the majority.

Climate change impacts societies in a variety of aspects to variable degree: drought; wind; flooding; temperature; sea level; disease and social conflict resulting from population pressures.  In this country the greatest impact is likely to centre on housing, which coincidentally brings it into greatest relevance to voters. There is already a need for a huge affordable house-building programme which may be exacerbated by inward migration from countries more severely climatically affected. Sea level rise may affect coastal communities including major cities. Housing will become uninsurable in flood plains. Energy and water usage need mitigating in the housing stock as a whole. These are issues which a failed market model cannot decide, driven purely as it is by building what profits private sector developers, currently sitting on land banks on which thousands of homes could have been built.

Communities [perhaps defined as counties for this purpose] need to determine their own needs informed by national plans. Local government must have the duty and the wherewithal:

·         to prioritise land use, between flood protection, food production, economic development, infrastructure and housing;

·         to obtain, compulsorily if need be, at current use values, the land needed to build energy-efficient houses for people of all income levels and family sizes;

·         to access the capital required to build the resource-efficient homes the future local population will need to buy or rent; 

·         to decide on infrastructure needs according to population plans;

·         to invest in energy generation and water usage consistent with local natural resources.

Managing these pressures will most effectively stifle risks of civil dissent or unrest, whilst engaging local voters in a global issue which may otherwise appear beyond their influence.

In short, Labour should adopt a policy of predictive adaptation to climate change; delegating implementation of an integrated approach to local needs to re-envigoured, democratically accountable and properly financed County/Unitary Councils. National Government should invest in understanding and advising on population and climatic sciences; in financing the Local Authorities; and mandating standards for design and insurance of homes for all.