Speech given by Blue Environment Party leader, Godfrey Spickernell
“I am here as the leader of a new party: the Blue Environment Party, which is a centre-right alternative to the Green Party.
Many reasonable citizens have reacted against the green agenda. This may be because they do not identify with some of the people who are green, or, it may be they perceive that the green agenda has been hijacked by left-wing parties.
We have forgotten that it was Mrs Thatcher who first warned us about climate change back in 1988 with the words: ‘No generation has a freehold on this earth. All we have is a life tenancy – with full repairing lease.’ As an Oxford-trained chemist, she really knew her stuff.
We need to go back to that tradition. We need a new party that allows centre-right voters to tackle environmental issues on their own terms. It is too important a matter to be left in the hands of the left. We are all in this together, and both sides of the political divide need to unite in the face of the climate threat.
Climate change is a more certain threat to our survival than nuclear war, and in the opinion of many, equally catastrophic.
The question is: what to do about it? Quite simply, we need to stop using carbon. There are only two ways of doing this that I know of: either through carbon rationing, as proposed by the Green Party; or by replacing income taxes with carbon taxes, which will incentivise us to find something better.
The Blue Environment Party prefers a tax solution, because with proper incentives human ingenuity can overcome any problem and turn it into an opportunity. We must find solutions that are optimistic, and run with the grain of human nature – our future should be not back to the Flintstones, but rather forward to Star Trek.
When I studied Chinese, we frequently came across the sayings of Chairman Mao. One of his favourites sticks in my mind: ‘A single spark can start a prairie fire.’ Our aim is to spark a debate right here in Chelsea & Fulham that will fan out across the world.
Thank you.
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