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From the Fringe: Leadership in a Global Age - The Economy, The Environment and Globalisation

Mon, 21 Sep 2009

The Liberal Democrats have been praised as the only political party "that gets it" by one of the country's leading environmentalists.

Speaking at a fringe event at the Liberal Democrat conference, economist, academic and journalist Noreena Hertz contrasted Nick Clegg's leadership on the environment with Labour and Conservative failures.

Ms Hertz linked the impending climate crisis with the current financial crisis, saying that both were global problems that needed global solutions.

She said that failures to regulate the banking industry had been mirrored by failures to regulate the world's pollutants.
And she claimed there had been a failure of intellect in both financial and environmental fields - with governments failing to challenge the status quo in either despite increasing evidence that the policies of bankers and polluters would lead to disaster.
Ms Hertz said that Labour had failed to invest in renewables, with Britain almost at the bottom of European league tables. She also criticised the Government for failing to take on the pollutants.

The Tories could not be taken seriously now they no longer talked about the environment and aligned themselves with climate change deniers in Europe, she said.

Mr Hertz added: "The Liberal Democrats get the environment in a way that other parties simply do not. They get that in a global age we need global solutions.

"The Liberal Democrats get the need to address market failures, and they get the power of the green pound. The other parties have omitted this from their narratives.

"The Liberal Democrats put as their number one priority creating a sustainable economy – that’s absolutely correct. I believe that Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats get it.

"We need leadership right now who have the vision, intelligence and the policies to lead us into a green and economically-safer and securer place.”

Speaking at the event, Nick Clegg contrasted Conservative isolationism with the Liberal Democrat's internationalism - which he said was essential to tackling climate change.

"Climate change is the greatest challenge that any generation has faced in a long time," he said. "And it is borderless - beyond human boundaries.

"It makes the nation state absolutely redundant. You either congregate power where it counts - super-nationally - or you are useless."

He added: "Power in a modern world is power shared. But people like the Tories think that the 19th century state still makes sense in the 21st century world."

Nick also called for power to be devolved downwards, allowing communities to take control of tackling climate change in their own neighbourhoods.

He said the Danish example, where co-ops of local people ran windfarms, showed what could be achieved if you empowered communities. Labour, he said, had failed to learn that lesson and for them it was now too late.

Watch a video of Noreena Hertz's response to the Climate Clinic debate here.