If the responses to last week’s Paris agreement on tackling climate change are anything to go by, you’d think politicians were warming to the issue. David Cameron said that ‘this generation has taken vital steps to ensure that our children and grandchildren will see that we did our duty in securing the future of our planet’. But the political excitement around the summit was not part of a trend, but a mere spike in interest. Politicians don’t talk very much about green issues at present. They barely discussed the environment at all during the election, and generally see it as being of such low salience that they needn’t talk too much about it.
But there are some in the Tory party who don’t think that’s the right approach. The Conservative Environment Network – an organisation which had a curious relaunch last year with Michael Gove where no-one mentioned climate change – has some polling conducted by Ipsos Mori which its co-chair Ben Goldsmith thinks is evidence that the environment is a political priority. The survey, of 1,000 16-21 year olds and 500 36-65 year olds in September of this year was designed to work out whether there was a huge difference in attitudes between very young voters and those in the groups more likely to vote. It found that protecting the environment figured in the top five issues for both groups when they were asked ‘which of the following issues do you think will have risen in importance’ by the time the generation below has reached their age.
Both groups were also more likely to agree that ‘protecting the environment will become more important while other issues become less important’, with 44 per cent of 16-21 year olds and 37 per cent of 36-65 year olds agreeing with that statement. In those two groups, 26 per cent and 33 per cent respectively said ‘there will be no change in the importance of the environment and other issues’, while 15 per cent and 19 per cent respectively said that ‘protecting the environment will become less important while other issues will become more important’ (for the 16-21 year olds, 15 per cent said they didn’t know, and 11 per cent of the 36-65 year olds didn’t know).
Now, once again, these questions didn’t refer to climate change, but the environment more widely. When it came to climate change specifically, a majority in both groups either strongly agreed or tended to agree that ‘climate change is not well understood’ and that ‘climate change is not well explained’. A majority in both groups also tended to disagree or strongly disagreed that ‘I am not concerned about climate change because it will mostly affect people in poorer countries’.
What the CEN are particularly keen on is that no major party gets much credit from these two groups of voters when they’re asked who they trust most to protect the environment. The Green Party gets 45 per cent of 16-21 year olds’ backing on this particular question, an 37 per cent of 36-65 year olds, while the Tories get 5 per cent and 8 per cent from these two groups respectively, and Labour is on 7 per cent and 6 per cent. The question of the environment is the only matter on which Greens are going to poll at the dizzy heights of the high thirties and mid forties. But that both main parties are starting from a low base on this matter has encouraged those green Tories that their party can, if it puts its mind to it, attract voters if, as this poll suggests, they become more interested in the environment.
The question is how will the Green Tories really change their party’s message on the environment? It’s still not clear whether protecting the environment should include a party talking about climate change, or whether in the interests of attracting voters, it would be better if it didn’t. And there isn’t yet an approach to the climate and the environment that is identifiably Tory, as opposed to just clever PR involving huskies. But given there is a leadership contest coming up in the next few years, there’s certainly an opportunity for this group in the Tory party to make its case.
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