Over the past five years, many of us involved in national politics have worked together – across the political divides – to establish a consensus on fundamental ecological issues.
These include reducing the UK’s dependence on imported hydrocarbons so we can increase energy security and reduce carbon output. We also have cross-party agreement on the need to find much better ways of slowing down the water cycle so we do not waste so much of our increasingly precious water.
And the reduction and recycling of solid waste is the third shared national agenda.
These three agendas work together. By slowing down the water cycle and reducing waste or making much better use of waste products, we can also conserve energy.
So far, so good.
But how do we translate these admirable national ambitions into results on the ground?
Part of the answer, of course, has to lie in governments adopting particular policies that change rules and incentives to move us in the right direction. The creation of feed-in tariffs in the electricity system and the establishment of recycling incentives in the local government finance system are just two examples of the wide range of national measures that are needed.
But rules and incentives will carry us only some of the way. There have to be people at the other end who obey the rules and respond to the incentives. And we won’t really make the progress we need until the culture changes from the bottom up.
This is where local, voluntary effort has such a big part to play.
Bridport TLC is a splendid example of such bottom-up voluntary effort – and I am proud to have been a supporter of it for a long time now.
Of course, given our current economic and fiscal circumstances, it isn’t going to be easy for central government or local governments anywhere in Britain to do as much as we would all like to support such bottom-up effort – and of course local governments of all kinds have to be very careful to vet all their spending. But I hope that, over coming years, we shall see support for the recycling effort at all levels of government, despite the inevitable financial squeeze.