Guest election blog – Green Party by Ross McNally

I am a young environmental writer and socialist, and a zoology graduate from the University of Reading. Having only been eligible to vote in the previous two General Elections, I have only ever voted Labour. I have spent the last four years in an increasing state of despair at how the current Labour leadership has abandoned all pretence at a transformative progressive vision for the country and shredded all credibility before even taking office, including on its environmental policies. Therefore, I have been drawn towards The Green Party, which is offering a genuine alternative, centred around environmental sustainability. Below is a brief review of the most important environmental content – and omissions – from The Green Party’s manifesto.

Things I like:

• Genuine protection for biodiversity: the Greens are committed to protecting 30% of UK land and sea by 2030, in keeping with the global 30×30 target adopted at the COP15 in 2022. They emphasise that this will be genuine protection, with nature given the ‘highest priority,’ rather than the meaningless designations that British protected areas have come to exemplify. Part of this protection includes a commitment to ban bottom trawling ‘in UK MPAs and other waters’. This is somewhat vague – will it be a total ban in all UK coastal waters? – but at least it meets what should be the bare minimum threshold of stopping one of the most ecologically destructive practices taking place inside so-called Marine Protected Areas. The Greens are pushing to take water companies back into public ownership, so that profits can be reinvested into updating infrastructure rather than lining the pockets of foreign shareholders. Greens are also pushing for a Rights of Nature Act, to confer legal personhood to nature with all the rights that come with it.
• Access to nature: The Green Party supports an English Right to Roam Act, which would follow the model currently in place in Scotland, effectively extending this across England. With the public currently only having access to 8% of England, and less than 3% of waterways, most people are currently locked out of our own country and prevented from easily engaging with nature. A Right to Roam would enable people to more easily access the countryside close to where they live.
• Reducing the impact of farming: The Green Party manifesto does quite a rare thing in British politics. It acknowledges the substantial environmental impact of agriculture, and proposes ways to mitigate this. They would phase out the most harmful pesticides, including glyphosate, and we would not see annual ‘emergency’ authorisations for the use of banned neonicotinoids. All pesticides would be subject to rigorous environmental tests before authorisation. The Greens also acknowledge the disproportionate impact of livestock farming and the need to curb meat and dairy production, which will be crucial to meeting its 30×30 target.
• Green energy: The Green Party will phase out fossil fuels by granting no new oil and gas licences and ending subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. They will aim for wind to supply 70% of the UK’s electricity generation by 2030 (wind currently accounts for less than 30%). Regional investment banks and minimum thresholds for community owned renewable energy projects. Greens want £29 billion of investment over the next 5 years to insulate homes, with £12bn of this to retrofit social housing stock and £17bn as grants for private homes. An additional £9bn would be made available in grants for heat pump installations. Greens would introduce new building regulations to ensure that new homes meet Passivhaus equivalent standards, and that all newbuilds were fitted with solar panels and low carbon heating systems like heat pumps.
• Green transport: The Greens aim to end the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2027, supported by an extensive scrappage scheme worth £5bn by the end of the new parliament, plus the rapid rollout of charging infrastructure. Greens want a road tax proportional to vehicle weight, to end the scourge of SUVs. They oppose all new roadbuilding plans in favour of much greater investment in public transport, including public ownership of railways, gradually followed by taking back ownership of rolling stock, as well as local authority control and funding of bus services. Bus services would be increased in rural areas, and bus travel would be free for under-18s.

Things I don’t like:

• No nuclear energy: while some may have reservations about the upfront cost and construction time for nuclear power stations, they’re an extremely efficient and perfectly safe way of producing clean energy, and should certainly be included as part of a resilient and sustainable energy system. The senseless opposition from the Greens is a failure of long-term thinking, and borders on misinformation.
• Unjustified support for trophy hunting bans: it’s important to separate the industrial scale shooting of gamebirds in Britain, which should certainly be banned, from lower impact trophy hunting of individual animals. While we may feel moral objections to trophy hunting, in many parts of the world it is a valuable source of revenue that makes community conservation possible, makes conservation competitive with other land uses and reduces human-wildlife conflict. Trophy hunting isn’t a threat to any CITES-listed species imported to the UK, and until we have apex predators back in Britain, well-regulated domestic hunting of deer can be a useful way of controlling populations.

Things that appear to be missing:

• Just transition for the livestock industry: The manifesto should have been more explicit in the need to end livestock farming, which is among the greatest single environmental threats both as a source of greenhouse emissions and as a source of water and air pollution, as well as a disproportionate use of land. The manifesto should have been clearer on a just transition for the livestock industry, much like the transition for oil and gas workers.
• Keystone species reintroductions: As part of its plan for nature, The Green Party should have clarified its position on the reintroduction of keystone species. There is still no strategy for wild, unenclosed beaver releases in England and Wales, despite several free-living populations already expanding. It was made clear to the Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee last year by Professor Richard Brazier of the University of Exeter that wild boar, bison and elk should be removed from the Dangerous Wild Animals Act, which creates unnecessary obstacles to their reintroduction; the Greens should have addressed this. A trial reintroduction of the lynx is also long overdue, and with the Lynx to Scotland partnership currently engaged in consultations with local stakeholders, the Green manifesto could have given a position on this.

Would I vote for these environmental policies?:

In my view, there is no contest in this election. If you’re interested in environmental restoration and the inextricable links between environmental, social and economic justice, The Green Party is the only party proposing change on the scale and speed that’s required to address the evermore urgent climate and ecological crises we face. With a Labour majority virtually inevitable, it nevertheless seems that under Keir Starmer, we’re going to get another Tory government in all but name. It’s therefore vital to have an increased number of Green MPs in parliament to hold them to account over environmental policy as well as other issues.

This is one of a series of opinion pieces on the political parties’ 2024 general election manifestos. This piece was not originally commissioned by Wild Justice but was submitted by a newsletter subscriber. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Wild Justice.

If you think you could produce a review of one of the 2024 general election manifestos then we would need to receive it as soon as possible, but in any case before 26 June, in a similar format to that above, as a word file and with a .jpg or .png image of yourself, the author. Send any potential texts to admin@wildjustice.org.uk and we will look at them. We’ll let you know if we want to publish your piece and we may be able to pay you a small amount for it.