There has been a lot of critical reaction to James Hansen’s modest and reasonable callfor a junking of the current Copenhagen negotiations in favour of something else that would actually effectually address the climate emergency that we now face.

Most of those reacting negatively to this key intervention from the leading voice of contemporary policy-engaged climate-science don’t appear to ‘get’ the very good reasons why James Hansen of NASA has said that a mediocre agreement at Copenhagen – which is all that we could possibly get now – would be worse than no agreement at all.

The ’solutions’ on offer at Copenhagen are almost exclusively based around carbon offsets and carbon trading. These would make no meaningful contribution toward tackling the climate crisis for all sorts of reasons (a superb inventory of why can be found at The Corner House, but most crucially because they would mean that, just like with Kyoto, there is no ‘hard’ cap on total emissions.

A carbon trading system that allows offsets against emissions that allegedly would have happened without the system being in place, even if it works, offers no guarantee at all that overall emissions will fall, let alone fall at the rate that they need to fall at if we are to have a chance of keeping the world to within 2 degrees of over-heat.

Thus it may in one important respect be serendipitous that the Copenhagen talks seem in any case likely to fail.

The CRU hack at the University of East Anglia may even have a silver lining.
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Earlier this month, I was narrowly beaten in my quest for a seat representing Eastern England in the European Parliament. The Green Party vote rose massively, by 60,000, to 140,000 (9%) – but this was still 1% short of what was needed to win a seat.

This was obviously very disappointing; but what made it worse was the knowledge that a systematic campaign by the LibDems to stop me from winning may have been what made the difference between me winning and not. Of course, there is nothing wrong with one Party trying to stop another Party from winning; to some extent, one might even say that that is what Parties are for (though it is unfortunate, to say the least, that the ‘FibDems’ did this when they had little prospect either of losing their seat nor of gaining a second seat – and when the all-too-predictable consequence of what they did was letting in a second kooky climate-denying UKIP MEP, instead of a Green…). But what is wrong is to stop another Party from winning by systematically misrepresenting the facts about the electoral arithmetic…

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Nothing is certain until the votes are cast, but the polls over the last fortnight have been very encouraging to the Green Party, putting us on an upward trend. UKIP last week commissioned a ComRes poll that put the Greens across the ‘South East’ (which includes my Region, Eastern) in third position on 16%, and on 11% nationwide. This week, the Green Party commissioned a ComRes poll that had UKIP on 17% – and us on 15%, only just behind UKIP – and ahead of the LibDems! That hasn’t happened since 1989.

In fact polls ahead of European elections usually underestimate the actual Green performance. It’s worth remembering that before their historic 2.2 million-strong vote in 1989 the Greens were polling at about 7-8%, but the actual vote turned out to be 15%.
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Recent polling since the expenses scandal broke shows the Greens have been reaping the rewards of public anger at the main Parliamentary parties. Some indicate we may even receive a result rivaling the 15% highpoint of the ’89 election.

A ComRes poll this weekend put the Tories at 28%, Labour at 20%, the Lib Dems on 14%, below UKIP’s 15%, with the Greens on 11% and the BNP on just 4%. A YouGov poll out yesterday showed that could be the tip of a more radical, positive mood: 34% said they may vote Green at this election.

But here’s the funny thing: the primary focus of the media, and the BBC in particular, has been on the BNP. It remains a party that appears to be falling short of expectations for them.
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The next big electoral test in this country is the Euro-elections, next June. I’m the lead Green Party candidate for Eastern Region, one of our two top target Regions (the other being NorthWest) for the Euro-elections.

So what?, some of you may ask. “What has all this got to do with me? What do I, as a Socialist / Labour supporter / LibDem / independent care about the Green Party’s performance next June?”

The answer lies bang in the centre of the ‘remit’ of Liberal Conspiracy: because of the electoral system that the Euro-elections are fought under, and because of the arithmetic.
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Around the blogosphere and in the press, a number of British right-wing commentators (notably Peter Hitchens and Iain Dale) have already come out in support of McCain’s VP pick Sarah Palin.

It is good to see these Tories lining up in support of her. It makes pretty clear just how skin-deep the Cameron ‘revolution’ has been.

Let’s remind ourselves of some of what Palin stands for:

* Palin opposes abortion even in the case of rape or incest. She believes, that is to say, in (for example) the right of a father who rapes his under-age daughter legally to ensure that his daughter bears his grandchild. Yes: Palin believes that rapists and incestuous predators have the right to see their babies sired, as long as they succeed in forcing conception. (Her 17 year-old unmarried daughter Bristol is pregnant); Palin would insist on the law forcing Bristol to take the baby to term, whoever its father was, whatever the circumstances of the conception.)

* Palin doesn’t believe in evolution, and thinks creationism should be taught in state schools.
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