Environmental matters

At my surgery on Friday I had an interesting conversation with people concerned about a range of environmental matters.

We discussed the government’s targets for CO2 emissions, the state of the fossil fuel industry, the contribution of meat and agriculture to emissions, taxation of domestic heating fuel and aviation, family size, population growth and female education in low income countries, food miles and other important matters.

We found considerable common ground over energy conservation, helping countries out of poverty, more local produce, more holidays in the UK, better balanced diets and the role technology can play in improving our quality of life and protecting the environment. As  readers of the blog will know I am keen to promote more tree planting, to have more home produced food, to make it cheaper and easier to insulate homes, improve heating and control systems and reduce energy usage through greater energy efficiency.

I did not feel able to support ideas to make domestic fuel dearer by higher taxes given the impact this would have on fuel poverty  nor to unilaterally make UK air flights dearer  when we cannot do the same to competitors.