Department for the Environment

                        

The wellbeing of a country depends on its environment.  Let us start in school, where the study of the environment will have a significant place.  There are two major impacts on the environment.  The first is through mass exploitation.  The second is the after-effects of industry and domestic residence.  Mass exploitation includes mining and agriculture.  Industry and domestic residence impact on the environment incrementally.  This government will see it’s responsibility to the environment as an international problem requiring an international solution.  Cleaning up your own corner using profits from the exploitation of the rest of the world is not acceptable.  Steel for car manufacture comes from recycling, and iron ore removed from the Amazon basin.  Industries that follow the capitalist principle of the cheapest player wins, are likely to also be the dirties.  Just as multinationals appear to have no home to be responsible for, so environmental policy needs to be in neutral and in international hands.  Of course this is fraught with complications.  Where does one country get the steel it desires, to produce banned weapons?  Another country is desperate for precious metals, at any cost.  The international community must take charge, because individual countries are likely to fail.  We must not be 'the beautiful Switzerland’, while our neighbour's poison themselves to death.

The main environmental policy will be:-  

• The removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.  We do this by making fossil fuels obsolete.  This policy ties in with the transport policy.  The petroleum that is created is to be used on vehicles that require this technology, such as aviation and heavy vehicles such as lorries and tractors. 
• The public transport system will be incentivised to such a point that private travel is considered ‘not necessary’, both financially and efficiency of time. 
• Localities will be organised with local elected committees to oversee not only rime and public order, but also how the environment is policed.  This will include safe streets and parks.  Also consider how local environment scan be made more attractive.  Less desirable areas will have professional support to transform the environment, changing the desirability of area, and increasing house prices, improving the value of assets.

The department For the Environment will link with planning policy to ensure that a third of the land is prioritised for wildlife.  A third will be exploited for food and a third will be given over to the functioning of as modern society including communication, power generation, urban development and industry. The two third not prioritised for nature will however still be environmental priorities.  

Environmental policy will also fit with immigration, ensuring that the movement of people fits with where people are needed, with the infrastructure they need provided.   

Just as the European Union has a macro-developmental perspective, so this country will need a wider perspective too.  The European Union is able to see that the financing of a bridge in Greece is in the interest of nationals as far away as the UK, because it will stimulate the commerce and growth needed to sustain the whole community.  Britain will need to join this perspective on the development of Europe as a functioning entity.

The Department for the Environment will work with Universities to attempt to find ways that natural diversity can be maintained and enhanced, involving as many people in the community as possible.  From an early age, responsibility for the environment will be engendered through education and practical service.  It will also be a part of pre-requisite training required of people wanting to settle in the UK.