The future of the EU and the participation of each country, indeed each part of each country is something that we Europeans shouldn’t take for granted as some countries such as the UK are showing signs of leaving the EU altogether. Be that as it may, local elections in the UK for the European Parliament will take place on the 22nd of May, giving voters a chance to elect somebody to represent them. In Voice of Russia's Eco Plus programme, it's permanent host John Harrison discusses the ongoing elections with Pippa Bartolotti, the Welsh leading Green Party EU candidate and the Leader of the Green Party in Wales highlights some of her party’s policies.
To try and understand some of the environmental issues involved, we zoom in on Wales, which is a region of the UK with a population of 3.1 million with a mixed agricultural and post-industrialist economy. Wales represents the interests of vast swathes of Europeans who live in areas which are not focussed around international investment in capital cities, and whose policies have to be down to earth and actually work for ordinary people.
Is EU membership important for Wales?
It doesn’t mean at the moment. West Wales and the Valleys are as poor as Romania. And because of this low economic activity rate Wales gets something like 2.2 billion every year from the European Parliament to help improve the standards of living. We wouldn’t go there missing that amount of money from the UK government.
What is the Green Party's Job Creation Policy?
The survival plan is really about looking to the future. The big industries of tomorrow are going to be highly technical, we have design and engineering base and as we are energy-based economy, renewable clean energy has got to be the way forward, especially for a country like Wales that has at least twice the amount of clean renewable energy that it could ever hope to use. We tend to be dragged into fossil fuels like fracking etc., all the things which are yesterday’s news really. Because of progressive political group we are quite impatient to start moving forward to reducing energy use and to creating new sources of energy.
But I did a calculation and this calculation revealed that it is cheaper for the UK government to put solar panels on every roof in the UK and there are some 20 million roofs, than it would be to build 4 new nuclear power stations. And this doesn’t count the costs of decommissioning which usually are socialized. What concerns me, and here we come to a much wider issue which is the issue of democracy, is that this awful fuel lobby is enormous. MEP told me the other day it might get a thousand lobbyists for the fossil fuel company fund, angling for a say in policy at a European level. You maybe get 1 lobbyist from an organization like Friends of the Earth. So, we have a disproportionate representation at all levels when it comes to lobbying groups and also I think the other key thing to remember is that the renewable energy businesses and business models do not fit with the fossil fuel business models. Essentially they can’t work it because it is a different business model, it is reasonably low investment to get going and there is practically no investment on an ongoing basis whereas with the fossil fuel, we are talking about petrol, chemicals, for example, it is a high cost. So, the business model is entirely different. They want to maintain this business model for as long as they possibly can.
How do Greens communicate their ideas?
The same way as in the saying that I picked up some years ago “don’t raise your voice, improve your argument”. We have been improving our arguments and we are reluctant to raise our voices. But for example I was called “tough” myself the other day when I was trying to explain what climate change means. It is not like a big CGI 90 foot wave with monsters. It is actually not so small and awful disaster taking place around the world and we are talking about floods, draught, all the local disasters that are affecting communities all the way around the world. And these are tragedies for those communities even if the bulk of people don’t get to feel it directly. It could be you any day. We never know what is going to happen next.
We’ve seen fires, we’ve seen continent of North America be set by enormous weather systems, which have caused huge amounts of death. We all pay in food price hikes, we pay in insurance hikes, we will eventually pay in other ways. We have climate refugees who have no legal status. Your question is the right question because we have to try to find a way to communicate what this really means. The environment sector in the Westminster government is climate change denier itself. Of course Westminster government is very pro-fracking because all their mates are going to make a lot of money out of it.
What is your position on the 'Transatlantic Trade and Investment partnership’?
TTI is not comfortable with it. The negotiations are taking place in secret, which means it makes them even more uncomfortable. BASF is taking EU to court because EU banned certain pesticides implicated in the death of bees.
I heard Philip Morris Tobacco took Uruguay to court for 200 million dollars because of health warnings on cigarette packs.
We make democratically elected governments very vulnerable. So, they will be taken to courts. They will step in front and behave as their corporate masters dictate. This is what we would call the corporate taker of democracy. If it ever gets passed, can we stop it from being passed? This is the lid on the coffin of our democracy.
