Meeting Michael Meacher

The Green Shop sent delegates to meet Michael Meacher, the Minister of State for Environment, the keynote speaker at an environmental conference on 30th November.

The conference organised by the Stroud MP David Drew was well attended with representative from a wide range of local groups working to further the green agenda.

Roger Budgeon and Dave Cockcroft went on behalf of The Green Shop. Roger thought the conference was very positive and felt "Michael Meacher has an extremely wide view of envionmental problems and directions. He'd clearly like to do more if Gordon Brown would let him have the money and Tony Blair's government exhibited a little better joined up government."

Roger further pressed Bob Eccles the chair of Gloucestershire County Councils Environmental committee on the lack of joined up thinking in central and local government. He asked "How can you justify GCC use of renewable energy for street lighting whilst failing to facilitate the production of renewable energy in the county." Bob gave the classic political response of "it's another departments responsibility" which is of course unacceptable, especially when the other department is Stroud District Council where Bob is also a member.

Dale Vince of Stroud based renewable energy generator Ecotricity gave an inspiring talk on the potential of wind power and new Ecotricity initiatives including teaming up with Greenpeace to take the government to court over the bailout of private nuclear generator British Energy. Dale make it clear that the UK has a huge potential for wind generated clean energy and the only thing holding it back is the planning process. "At present we have to go through the same process to put up a wind generator as we would to build a nuclear power station" said Dale.

Michael Meacher fielded a wide range of questions in a most knowledgable and straight forward manner. As a polictician he's a breath of fresh air and the environmental movement should be grateful to have such a good minister. However he clearly indicated that his hands are tied over many issues. Given a free rein Mr Meacher would be pushing a much more progressive green practice in many areas. One illustration of this is how the new landfill tax rates will generate well over £1 billion per annum, but this goes into the treasury and only a little trickles back to fund green practices.

Despite Mr Meachers friendly presentation Dave Cockcroft still felt the governments commitment to envionmental issues lacked substance and ammounted to little more than greenwash. "For me the most telling thing Mr Meacher said was that there are no more than a dozen labour MPs who make a priority of environmental issues. One of them is David Drew and I know something of his workload, he spends only a small fraction of his time on green issues" said Dave.

Michael Meacher was clearly inspired by the breadth and commitment of the envionmental practitioners in the Stroud area. "You're the ones doing the work" he said "I'm just talking about it".

We gave him a copy of the latest Green Shop newsletter so perhaps he'll be buying his christmas presents from us.

Links: Ecotricity, Seeds of Doubt, Energy 21, Stroud Valleys Project

About - Seeds of Doubt: (covered by the Soil Association speaker at the conference - this is an essential report for anyone campaigning against GM foods).

Seeds of Doubt is the first detailed look at what has happened in North America since the commercial growing of GM crops started in 1996.

This study has gathered sufficient evidence to debunk the myth that GM technology represents progress. The evidence suggests that, in reality, virtually every benefit claimed for GM food crops has not occurred.

Instead, farmers are reporting lower yields, continuing dependency on chemical sprays, loss of exports and, critically, reduced profits.

back to news headlines