A Member of Parliament Goes For A Stroll

Spotted walking along Brighton seafront last Sunday, Brighton’s (somewhat windswept) Green MP Caroline Lucas, with, I think, her son. So what’s the big deal about that? Well for starters, in all the time that I’ve lived in Brighton and Hove, with it's three MPs, I never saw a single one of them just Going For A Stroll. True, I often saw a harassed-looking Celia Barlow (who?) heading for the train station, but that was my only 'al fresco' spotting of a local MP. In fact, friends tell me that you’d have been more likely to bump into our (former) local Labour MPs at their maison secondaires in the south of France. While it’s true that MPs spend a lot of time dealing with constituents, it seems impossible that they can really understand what's happening in their constituency without getting out and about on foot from time to time – and I don’t mean canvassing in the run-up to an  election. So the message for Dr Lucas and MPs in general? Stroll On.

Greens in the Room and A Falling Man at Sussex University

Last Friday the University of Sussex Centre for Community Engagement hosted a “Limits to Growth Forum” organised by the Sussex Student’s Union and The STEPS Centre, (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways).  The theme for the day echoed the STEPs manifesto that “Meeting the interlinked global challenges of poverty reduction, social justice and environmental sustainability is the great moral and political imperative of our age.”  (picture from Mad Men).  About a hundred of us turned up to hear a series of high-profile speakers consider the impossibility of continuous 'infinite growth on a finite planet,' and how we might steer our economy onto a more sustainable path. Some of the most memorable bits:

• Brighton’s Green MP Caroline Lucas knocking the idea that green = sacrifice, as in “What’s not to like about efficient public transport and well insulated homes”
• Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation calling for new social norms not based on consumption (Andrew doesn’t own a car) – since only this will enable A Great Transition to sustainable economics;
• Professor Peter Victor of Canada’s York University, a pioneer of ecological economics (fittingly, by video link), whose economic models demonstrate that there is a macro-economic policy that’s consistent with reducing both green house gases and poverty (albeit with no illusions about the difficulty of getting there);
• Richard Wilkinson’s comment that he had now given the talk about his book The Spirit Level 500 times, and that 20 translations were in preparation – proving that there is a huge appetite for a more equal society. The book’s country-by-country, data-based analysis finds that more equality works better for everyone: less inequality = less social dysfunction, more happiness, and more sustainable behaviour. Wilkinson quoted his co-author Kate Pickett, “If Americans want to live the American dream, they should live in Denmark.”
• Carfree Choosers (like me) could relate to Molly Scott Cato, Reader in Green Economics and Director of Cardiff Institute for Co-operative Studies, who approvingly cited Girardet’s idea of the Regenerative City, and it’s distinction between “Petropolis” and “Ecopolis.” Libyan oil anyone? Molly thought we should think more carefully about our needs – do you want a cup of coffee, or are you expressing your status and identity? (answers on a postcard, Starbucks need not reply). 
• Professor Mary Mellor of Northumbria University, an expert in green finance and the monetary system, linked the money system with ecological unsustainability: financial crashes became inevitable when states no longer controlled the money supply. Prof. Mellor thought local currencies were A Good Thing (Lewes take a bow), and agreed that Cash Is King (Just Say No to bank credit).

The day proved, once again, that we pretty much know what needs to be done – the problems have been endlessly diagnosed (for one of the latest, see The Sustainable Development Commission Report “Making Sustainable Lives Easier).  As Andrew Simms put it, the main challenges are political and cultural.  A big message from the speakers was that positive change depended on people like us – the people in the room. But I couldn’t help thinking about the people who weren’t in the room: the kind who have access to the same information, but who don’t make the connections, and don’t change their behaviours. 
And the falling man? It isn’t only Don Draper from Mad Men.  E J Mishan described those who just don’t get it in The Costs of Economic Growth: “A man who falls from a hundred-storey building will survive the first ninety-nine storeys unscathed. Were he as sanguine as our technocrats, his confidence would grow with the number of storeys he passed on his downward flight and would be at a maximum just before his free-fall abruptly halted.”  Staying sanguine whilst in free fall is ok, but eventually we’re going to reach the ground. When we do, it isn’t going to be pretty.

Brighton Pavilion Goes Green

Whatever words you might use about the 2010 General Election, “predictable” is unlikely to feature. The people have spoken - but what have they said? Pretty much, “Labour has lost, the Conservatives haven’t won, and this is what we think of the Lib Dem revival.” But there are some shining points of light – like the trouncing of the BNP; and, in Brighton Pavilion (next door to my constituency), the election of Britain’s first Green MP. Caroline Lucas won with a majority of 1,252 over Labour, and beat the Conservatives into third place. So congratulations to Dr. Lucas, who now steps down from being Green MEP for the South East to concentrate on matters closer to home. After sharing a platform with the Green, Conservative and UKIP Prospective Parliamentary Candidates for Brighton Pavilion a couple of weeks back (see blog for 14 April), it’s great to be able to report that the right candidate won (and not just because of her warm words about my Living Streets presentation of an alternative vision for transport!). Caroline Lucas was the most knowledgeable, articulate and capable of the three participants, and displayed an admirable grasp of both national and local transport concerns. Let’s hope that, when the General Election gets re-run, as it will, Dr Lucas can hang on to the seat.

Greens vs Blues in Brighton

Two interesting political events in Brighton over the weekend: one, that we didn’t go to, David Cameron and the Conservatives, whose Spring Forum launched their election campaign, with more media than punters. Two, with more punters than media, and the one we did go to, Saturday night at the Theatre Royal - a comedy benefit, hosted by Marcus Brigstocke in aid of the Greens, whose MEP Caroline Lucas is contesting Brighton Pavilion. Star without a car Alistair McGowan’s best joke of the evening: “They say that a man’s car is linked to the size of his sexual organs.” “Me? I go everywhere by train.” More on Alistair‘s hate-hate relationship with the car, in this extract from my forthcoming book The Four Wheel Detox.