By Bev Haigh-Jones
With an election looming in a few days’ time, nothing on the horizon could be brighter than the prospect of a new government – assuming that it’s the right one, of course! All polls continue to show that there will be a new party in power and we can only hope that a change in occupant at No.10 will bring a change of attitude towards the EU – eventually.
Despite the fact that the majority of the parties standing at the election, as well as a great deal of the mainstream media, are studiously avoiding the “elephant in the room” that is Brexit, the latest British Social Attitudes Survey by the National Centre for Social Research shows that the percentage of respondents thinking that we should be outside the EU is now down to only 24%. The report from The Huffington Post also tells us that 71% of people now believe that the economy will be worse off outside the EU, and this is reinforced by comments by Dr Mike Galsworthy, Chair of the European Movement, and Naomi Smith, Chief Executive of Best for Britain.
Staying with the EU theme, the European Commission recently announced its first Net-Zero Academy, to train 100,000 workers in solar photovoltaic skills to support their Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA). This follows the successful launch of their European Battery Academy in 2022 and it will be supported with €9 million of funding. To quote from the EC’s press release,
“This Academy is the latest Commission initiative supporting the EU’s efforts to reach its ambitious targets under the European Green Deal and the REPowerEU Plan while ensuring that the industry is resilient and competitive on the global stage.”
More good news for the environment came this month, when the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Friends of the Earth in their case against Surrey County Council. The FotE website reports that:
“The Supreme Court has quashed Surrey County Council’s decision to grant planning permission for 20 years of oil drilling. The court has ruled that the council breached environmental law owing to its failure to consider the inevitable greenhouse gas emissions from burning the oil (its end use, likely to be in transport). These emissions were indirect effects for the purpose of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive and the EIA Regulations. The council’s decision to take account of only the operational emissions from the process of digging up oil from the ground meant the EIA was defective.
“The legal challenge brilliantly demonstrates the power of community and grassroots action; following five years of court proceedings, the Weald Action Group has defeated Surrey County Council, Horse Hill Developments Ltd and the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Michael Gove MP) in court.
“This Supreme Court judgment is likely to be a game changer. It could have ramifications for other proposed fossil fuel projects, such as the Whitehaven coal mine, as well as projects to extract oil from the North Sea. Fossil fuel companies have been fighting tooth and nail to avoid having to report on these downstream emissions when they seek planning permission for their climate-wrecking projects. Tellingly, the promoter of the Whitehaven coal mine, West Cumbria Mining Ltd, intervened in this appeal.”
