Planet care, please…

Great to see our members engaging in the policy debate: this piece from Martin Jewitt is in response to the discussion around the Labour Party environment policy which can be found on our Policy page

One thing I would add to this policy paper is the need to avoid cutting off the planet’s nose to spite its face! 
I’m concerned that biofuels and solar farms take up land needed for food, production of wood pellets takes up sustainable forests (example in Estonia – Hazel Sheffield, Guardian 14.1.21), the mining of cobalt and lithium for batteries is already resulting in bad working conditions (Guardian Weekly 8.1.21 Spotlight Environmental) and Elon Musk is building a big electric car plant at Grunheide, Brandenburg at the cost of valuable woodland (GW 8.1.21 Spotlight Europe).

So the pressure is going to be to take short cuts which could make I’ll thought-out policies which are self defeating. There probably needs to be some form of inbuilt monitoring system as part of government policy. We also need to learn from success stories such as Bristol (GW 1.8.21 good news).

Martin Jewitt, FHLCP member