Earthiness

Today is Earth Day, apparently.

Environmental awareness has never been a sexy topic, and possibly plumbed the depths of uncoolness about 15 years ago, thanks in no small part to Michael Jackson's Earth Song. "What about elephants - have we lost their trust?" Oh dear.

Well, it now seems that green issues are making something of a comeback in popular culture, and disturbingly, the man who's brought them back to centre-stage is none other than Conservative leader David 'Tubs' Cameron. Of course, the issues themselves are largely being brushed aside by the mainstream media in order to focus on the "look at this Tory flip-flopper bigging up the environment to eat into the Lib Dem swing-vote" angle. And fair enough, I suppose.

A look at the party websites gives a pretty good idea as to how seriously they are taking the environment as a voter issue ahead of the May 4 local elections. Once you skip past all the (ill-judged, I thnk) Dave-the-Chameleon stuff, Labour's site currently features a speech by Gordon Brown to the UN where he demands "a new $20 billion fund for developing economies to invest in alternative sources of energy and greater energy efficiency". You can also read their official policy on the environment here. The Conservatives have also plastered green-friendly rhetoric across the front page of their website. Only the Liberal Democrats have chosen not to run with the environment as their main campaign issue ahead of the elections, although you can also read their policy on the subject here.

A BBC reporter (forget which one) summed it up pretty nicely a few days ago by saying "All three parties want to reduce carbon emissions. Where they differ is by how much."

It's interesting to see that local elections are the chosen platform for pushing the green platform, whereas the general elections were all about the war in Iraq (ok, not entirely, but it certainly got George Galloway elected, and that's bad enough). What I'm wondering is, when the eventual Brown vs. Cameron election battle begins in a few years' time, will carbon emissions be swept aside once again? Local green-friendly policies are one thing, but it's only at the national level that the thornier issues such as regulating CO2 levels from the airline industry can begin to be tackled. The pessimist in me is afraid that the environment will only become a big enough problem on which to elect a prime minister once it's too late to do anything to reverse the damage.