Talk - Lewes Climate Concern

“Lewes is ideally placed to turn itself into the greenest town in the land”, Polly Toynbee tells me. She will be speaking alongside Norman Baker MP, tonight at the launch meeting of the Lewes Climate Concern campaign. “The first step is to make sure that everyone is environmentally aware”, says Toynbee of the plans to expose as many people as possible to the messages of Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and David Attenborough’s ‘Climate Change - Britain Under Threat’ by sending out copies to community groups and holding free public screenings. “If we start local we can then move outwards and conquer”. “It is useful to have a working model to offer others on a wider scale”, continues Toynbee, “Other towns have started doing great things. Like Woking, who have invested hugely in carbon efficiency programmes. Woking’s a conventional Tory suburb, too, whilst Lewes is a little Liberal Democrat oasis in the heart of a great Tory county. And it’s already known for being a green town, and for its community attitude.”
So is the collective effort to face the threat of global-warming issuing in a new era of non-partisan politics? I wonder. “Well traditionally this sort of collective endeavour has been associated with the Left but now everyone’s competing to see who can be the greenest. And it’s good to have that competition. There’s no doubt that the Tories are moving in some radical directions - like their plans to put extra charges on flights. All that wailing in the right-wing press is enough proof of that”. ER