The Guardian reports that groups including the RSPB, National Trust and the RSPCA have written to the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, who has signalled his willingness to back away from green policies should the Conservatives stand to benefit from it electorally. \u00a0They say: \u00a0\"We will not stand by whilst politicians use the environment as a political football. It is courage and leadership that we need now. ... In the past, we have mobilised many of our members collectively with extraordinary results, and our resolve to stand firm now against any and all attacks on this critical policy agenda remains absolute.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Guardian goes on: \"Speaking to BBC Radio 4\u2019s Today programme on Saturday, the Woodland Trust\u2019s chief executive, Darren Moorcroft, said it was \u201cincumbent\u201d on them to act. \u00a0He said signatories to the letter would not be shy in speaking out in the run-up to the general election. \u00a0\u201cWe will make our voices heard with regard to how people should view any political party as it runs into the general election on what it is doing for the environment. So, instead of backtracking on environmental policies, we believe every political party that\u2019s serious about winning should be setting out plans to get those good green jobs, to get cleaner air and seas, to restore our natural environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fair enough you might think, given the overtly (small p) political nature of much of the environmental NGO sector, but the tone suggests [i] that green policy must never be allowed to evolve as circumstances change, and [ii] that unelected NGO opinion formers have a monopoly on wisdom.<\/p>\n
I'm a member of one or two of the signature organisations so I'll wait for a personal mobilisation, but I'll not be quiet if they dare to tell me how to vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Guardian reports that groups including the RSPB, National Trust and the RSPCA have written to the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, who has signalled his willingness to back away from green policies should the Conservatives stand to benefit from it...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}