Glasgow Gove, Macron’s wood and politicians going green

The signs are all there. Climate change, as distinct from climate change rhetoric, is finally entering the political mainstream. And Britain and France are among those leading the way.

This week, in a speech to promote the UN World Climate Change Conference, to be held in Glasgow from November 9-19, the Prime Minister unveiled his plans for the better, greener Britain that he says is about to take root after the years of Brexit rancour. The nation’s cars will go all-electric, or hydrogen-powered, after 2035. As for hybrids, viewed by the Chelsea tractor lobby as the last word in ecological chic, they are just sooo last decade. And when we get out of the cities and into the countryside, there will apparently be nothing but wind farms, solar panels – and trees – stretching as far as the eye can see.

The next day, not to be outdone, Emmanuel Macron decreed that in future all public buildings in France, as well as urban development projects in which state and local government have invested, must be made at least 50 per cent from wood or other bio-sourced materials. Not only that, but at least 100 urban forests are to be planted in the nation’s towns and cities to boost supplies of oxygen and act as sponges for carbon emissions. Végétalisation is to be the name of the game, with its epicentre in Paris, half of which, according to mayor Anne Hidalgo – now in the middle of a hotly-contested election campaign – will be covered in greenery by 2030.

Similar radical reforms have already been mooted in the Nordic countries and the Netherlands, while in Brussels, the new Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, and her team have promised that the next ten years will be a decade of renewal, not just in politics and the economy, but in terms of the EU’s support for a healthier, more sustainable world.

I haven’t seen what Greta Thunberg has to say about the latest assurances. My guess is that she would approve each of the individual initiatives, but with the deadlines brought forward to yesterday, with veganism and a new range of hemp-based clothing and footwear mandatory from 2025.

Thunberg, recently turned seventeen, is the thorn in the rosy glow now surrounding so much of green politics. She demands action this day, and by action she means a 180-degree shift aimed at breathing new life into every oxygen-starved, plastic-filled nook and cranny of the planet.

Many world leaders, though not New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Katrín Jakobsdóttir of Iceland and the President of the Maldives, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, would like Thunberg to conclude – conclude being the operative word – that, having delivered her message, she should now return to Stockholm to study for her high school diploma. But they may have to wait a while yet. The young Swedish activist is not about to leave the world stage while there remains so much to be done.

She will, however, not be alone in the limelight. Green politicians are popping up like weeds. They are everywhere, replacing the old mantras of left and right with the call of the wild, growing their representation in national parliaments and, as this month in Austria, demanding seats around the cabinet table.

Not that everyone outside of the explicitly green ranks is ready to accept laggard status. Among the commitments inherited by Boris Johnson when he entered Downing Street was the hosting of the Glasgow conference, known as COP 26. The PM ­– who once described himself as a green Tory – is determined to make the event a success, unlike all but a couple of its 25 predecessors. He considers it the perfect, artisanal platform from which to show off his eco-credentials and, more to the point, the UK’s advances in the fields of renewable energy, electric cars and high-tech, eco-friendly gadgetry.

The trouble is, he needs someone to take on the job of setting the agenda and presiding over the actual event. But, having sacked his original choice, Claire O’Neill, a former minister, on the grounds that Dominic Cummings doesn’t think she is important enough, he has so far been unable to find anyone to wield the gavel. David Cameron and William Hague have both said no, while Caroline Lucas, the sole Green Party MP, though promoted by the BBC’s Question Time as a National Treasure, would not go down well with the Tory faithful.

Who, then? Some reports have suggested that when the Good Ship Royal Sovereign, driven by the wind and festooned with solar panels, sails up the Clyde towards the as-yet-undecided conference venue, it will be under the captaincy of Michael Gove, currently serving out his time as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Gove would fit the role perfectly well. He is diligent, smart, Scottish and believes in tackling climate change, if not climate rebellion. But he will be aware of the fact that little of lasting consequence is likely to be achieved in Glasgow and that, if it is, Johnson will take the credit.

On the other hand, what if he were to succeed? What if he wrote his name all over the Glasgow Accord?  Overnight, he would go from Nearly Man to Man of the Moment. The world would be his Arbroath smokie.

Back on Planet Earth, bushfires continue to ravage Australia, an iceberg as big as, well, Iceland has broken off from Antarctica and is about to enter the open sea, and Norway, while lecturing the rest of us on the virtues of a battery-powered future, is simultaneously bent on stepping up its production of North Sea oil and gas.

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, continues to believe that climate change is a hoax and that whatever might or might not need to be done in the future is for others to worry about, not the America First generation. After all, as he has asked himself many times without receiving a satisfactory response, what has posterity ever done for him?

But we should be thankful for small mercies and grateful that leaders across the world, including Johnson and Macron, are at last taking climate change off the back-burner (powered as it is by natural gas) and looking at ways of making the Earth a better place for the generations as yet unborn. You have to start somewhere, and Glasgow is as good a place as any.