E3G

Newsnight: The end of green?

By Tom Burke

What do rising fuel prices and the credit crunch mean for environmental concerns?

With some commentators suggesting that the environment will now have to take a back seat as consumers worry about their wallets, BBC Newsnight explored the topic with a major feature on 27th May.

E3G Founding Director Tom Burke was interviewed for the report, and he gave a good kick to the lazy misconception that the solution is a cut in fuel price:

I think this whole idea that you are on a seesaw – that you have got the environment on the one side and the economy on the other side and you can only do one well by one by doing badly by the other, completely misunderstands what is going on with this problem.

What we need to do for the economy is get off the oil hook as fast as we can. Pretty well everything we need to do to get off the oil hook will be good for the environment.

So the really important thing is to focus on what it is that we need to do to get to a low carbon economy, not “oh dear, how do we give up doing these things for the environment in order to help protect the economy”.”