Tories are naturals at environmentalism – this green and pleasant land runs in true blue veins – The Sun

LISTENING to the hysterical Extinction Rebellion marchers, it would be easy to believe that the leader of the Labour Party invented “the environment”.

The hippy protesters see Corbyn’s scruffy anorak and anti-capitalist policies and jump to the conclusion that they’ve found a kindred spirit.

According to this half-baked narrative, Boris Johnson is the bogeyman. In the embarrassingly narrow minds of climate activists, Boris is a capitalist, and capitalists are all clones of Donald Trump.

If Trump is willing to tear up the Paris climate change agreement, then it stands to reason that Boris will be gagging to do the same. The problem is that it doesn’t stand to reason. At all.

Boris Johnson’s compassionate, One Nation, quintessentially British form of Conservatism bears little if any resemblance to Trump’s brash, American regime. And on the environment, there’s a Grand Canyon-sized gap between the two.

“Environmentalism” — the desire to protect the environment — may have been hijacked by the Left in recent decades, but in Britain it finds its natural home in the party which announces in its name a desire to conserve.

The country and coastal folk who make up the vast majority of the Tory party have always cared deeply and keenly about the natural world, particularly the oceans.

SILENT FURY

Like true patriots, they are proud of our rich maritime heritage, relish our island status and have the impulse to conserve running through their veins.

While the jumped-up young activists who have been wreaking havoc in London were still in nappies, Shire Tories were quietly campaigning to turn their party green.

And boy, did they succeed. When Michael Gove was appointed as Environment Secretary in 2017, green campaigners on all sides of the House of Commons fell over each other in self-indulgent outrage.

Caroline Lucas fumed that she could not, “think of many politicians as ill-equipped for the role of Environment Secretary”, while a soundbite-savvy Ed Davey declared pompously that the appointment was, “like putting the fox in charge of the hen house”.

Yet to the silent fury of his detractors, and to the glee of the party, he took the environment seriously.

Within months of his appointment he had criticised US president Donald Trump for pulling out of the Paris agreement on climate change, insisted that all abattoirs be fitted with CCTV and announced to astonished colleagues that his priority was a “green Brexit”.

And the Conservative Party followed where he led. In the past year alone, the Government has doubled maximum litter fines to £150 and launched a Clean Air Strategy commended by the World Health Organisation as an “example for the rest of the world to follow”.

It has also announced a new package of measures to protect animals, appointed a Tree Champion (yes, really), and approved the release of beavers in the Forest of Dean, Gloucs.

But that, it seems, was just the tip of the iceberg. Freed from the shackles of the EU, it seems almost certain that Britain under Boris would become a world leader in environmental standards.

From banning the export of plastic waste and going carbon neutral by 2050, to allocating £600million for electric vehicle infrastructure and setting up new international partnerships to tackle deforestation, the Prime Minister’s manifesto pledges look like he means business.

The same cannot be said for Extinction Rebellion’s misguided hero Jeremy Corbyn.

Labour’s renationalisation plans would throw a spanner in the efforts to tackle climate change and promote clean growth.

According to industry body the Energy Networks Association, a nationalised system would be very poorly placed to invest in the new technology needed to decarbonise, as it would have to compete with other government spending priorities.

BURNT TO CINDERS

And though the Labour leader talks the big talk about “green industry”, his ludicrous pledges on the environment are unravelling faster than he can invent them.

To the fury of activists, the party has already carried out a screeching U-turn on its vow to turn Britain carbon neutral by 2030, having realised — rather belatedly — that it would mean scrapping cars and rationing meat. More row-backs will follow.

Why? Well, you need only look to China — responsible for 28 per cent of the world’s plastic pollution — or Venezuela — where the Amazon rainforest is being burnt to cinders — to see that communism and environmentalism are fundamentally incompatible.

At first glance, Boris’s promises on the natural world look understated. But dig beneath the surface and you will see they are anything but.

Egged on by Carrie Symonds, his environmental crusader of a girlfriend, the Prime Minister has produced one of the greenest manifestos in Conservative Party history.

It’s time for the protesters who waltzed around London to admit that Jeremy Corbyn has nothing for them and join the real green revolution. The Shire Tories will welcome them with open arms.

Source: Read Full Article