Blue, green and Goldsmith.

Zac Goldsmith, describes (in yesterday’s Guardian) the view of some in the government, that ‘addressing the environmental crisis can only happen at the expense of the economy‘ as being ‘a flawed position‘. He goes on to attack the ‘hugely controversial proposals to reform planning‘ as being based on a weak argument since ‘With some 250,000 plots ready for development in the south-east alone, and a system that approves roughly 90% of applications, the problem clearly isn’t lack of space or an insufficiently permissive system’.

This attack on the ungreen Osborne elements of the Conservative Party is disguised, partly, as an attack on ‘green groups’, based on the letter in the Observer signed by Jonathan Porritt and others a while ago.  It’s always a joy to sit back and watch old-Etonians falling out in public – give me excess of it!

Goldsmith defends the government’s record on climate change and energy policy – where there is a Liberal Democrat (said to be the least popular Cabinet Minister amongst Tory voters) at the helm – but fails to mention the other letter in the same Observer signed by wildlife NGOs which also criticised the Chancellor.  Maybe that is because Zac Goldsmith doesn’t care about wildlife (though I think he does) or maybe it is because it is very difficult even for a Tory MP to defend the record of a government that has cut funding of nature conservation at a greater rate than that of almost any other sector, has decided to review the habitats regulations because of their supposed impact on the economy, is moving towards an unscientific and uneconomic cull of badgers, has failed to grasp the nettle and designate marine conservation zones, has not improved the design of agri-environment schemes so that they deliver value for money, has not reformed the Forestry Commission, does not want to introduce vicarious liability for land owners whose staff break wildlife law and who are moving to weaken environmental protection in the planning system.

Zac Goldsmith castigates Porritt and others for always criticising the government in areas where it should sometimes be praised; he is right, but the logic of his argument is that NGOs should be more vociferously criticising this government on its performance for wildlife because it is failing badly.  Let us hope that wildlife NGOs are hatching up some fiendishly cunning plot to sort this lot out, as at the CCF conference in Cambridge last week there was a lot of muttering about ‘what are the NGOs doing?’ on this subject.  There is time – let’s wait and see.

But meanwhile, let us also hope that there are many more like Zac Goldsmith in the Conservative Party who will speak up and speak out, or at least work away behind the scenes to put back some greenness into government’s actions on wildlife.

Zac Goldsmith is an accomplished poker player – I like the way he plays his cards.  Whilst this will surprise some readers of this blog, I have to say that I can even imagine myself voting for Zac Goldsmith and I can say no fairer than that (although the chances of me moving to Richmond or him turning up in the run-down centre of Corby are, admittedly, both pretty slim).

More Guardian comment here.

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