How Green Was My Britishness

The Glorious Successor, whose charmingly craven and cack-handed brand of political courage has done so much to restore our civil liberties and get us out of the arse of the White House, has "stated his determination to make Britain a world leader" in the war against global warming. Apparently we are not already a world leader in that particular war, despite our indubitable frontality in the wars against terror, privacy, public accountability and people who write things. Gordon pointed out that Britain has "played a leading role" in "three previous technological revolutions" - including, no doubt, the Industrial Revolution which started this fossil-fuel-burning business in the first place - and now believes that Britain should seize the opportunity to create a new greener Britain with a new greener economy providing greater prosperity and high quality British jobs even as it protects the environment and provides a better green British quality of better green British life for all British green better British. Gordon also predicted that "within two decades ... more than one million people could be employed in [green, British, better] industry in the UK", which goes to show that climate change and incipient global catastrophe are not only a Challenge but an Opportunity. Gordon is "ready to consider increasing the Government's target of a 60% cut in Britain's carbon emissions by 2050 to 80%". It is just possible that Gordon believes he will not be in office by 2050, and therefore incurs comparatively little risk of actually having to deliver on such a pledge, even if mere policy commitments had much to do with New Labour's actions in any case.