|
Ken Livingstone's
startling pessimism On February 3rd the Mayor of London met the London Green Party in the sumptuous reception hall at the top of City Hall. The meeting, which has become an annual event, was well attended by London's Greens, a good 200 of us, and the Mayor gave us good value for money. The speaker's table had the Mayor and Jenny Jones as the main contributors (Darren Johnson had another commitment) and the proceedings were run with an expert and light touch by our very own Shahrar Ali.
Ken, Shahrar and Jenny enjoy a light moment with the audience at Ken Meets the Greens on 3 Feb. Photo by Adam White The
Mayor spoke very warmly of his relationship with the Green Party,
alluding to the substantial benefits he could see arising from a
Red/Green alliance. But he did criticise us for our persistent attacks
on New Labour. He referred to the outcome of the GLA elections which
reflected that Londoners had shifted to the right sufficiently to
deprive New Labour of an outright majority on the Greater London
Assembly. He said the Tories were still the main force behind this
shift. (What the Mayor studiously ignored was the extent to which the
shift of New Labour to the right was a significant factor in their loss
of seats on the Assembly.) The main part of the meeting was given over to London Green Party members putting questions to the Mayor most of which he answered knowledgably and fairly. But one of his answers was startling in its honesty. It was his answer to my own question (throwing all pretence at modesty to the winds), "Does the Mayor view with pride, concern or indifference the fact that London's Ecological Footprint* Is the same size as Spain?" The
Mayor did not answer the question as such, but went directly to its
logical import. What
he said was, in effect, (I did not take notes at the time) the
planetary ecological/environmental crisis, of which climate change was
but one of a long list of concerns, albeit the most serious one, had
progressed to the point where it was "too late" [ed. you can
quote him on that, I did take notes] to begin the task of changing our
style of living to that which the planet could sustain. In short the
Mayor acknowledged that the way we live in the West is manifestly
unsustainable and there is insufficient political will to bring about
the necessary changes in the required time-scale to prevent an
environmental collapse in the not too distant future which would lead to
unknowable pressures on the very fabric of society as we know it. As
a minimum, I would conjecture, if there had been a reporter at the
meeting it would have made the headlines of the Evening Standard the
next day. Brian
Orr *Ecological Footprint Analysis measures the amount of renewable and non-renewable ecologically productive land area required to support the resource demands and absorb the wastes of a given population or specific activities. |
|
First appearing in Greenlight, February 2005 edition |
