In 2022, England has seen rising energy bills across the country, and the Conservative government has called for removing environmental protections in order to meet these energy demands. The English Greens have put forward a five-step plan in order to cope with these demands without harming the environment.
The Green party’s co-leader Carla Denyer said, “Everybody has the right to a warm home, yet this year could see millions of people across England and Wales being forced to choose between heating their homes and eating”. She also mentioned how the conservatives have just paid lip-service to combat climate change after the climate talks in Glasgow, but their actions are not consistent with their rhetoric.
The Greens 5-Point Plan is:
- Provide an emergency grant to homeowners, landlords and councils to fund immediate insulation improvements to those at risk of fuel poverty.
- Extend winter fuel payments to all by providing each household with an additional £320 to help them pay for spiraling energy costs and avoid fuel poverty.
- Make the polluters pay by introducing an immediate windfall tax on oil and gas company profits and a longer term policy of a carbon tax.
- Invest in domestic energy security by massively ramping up onshore and offshore wind and solar and reintroduce the feed in tariff at a high rate for homes and community projects.
- Scrap the National Insurance (NI) increase, abolish the lower rate of NI on higher earnings and temporarily remove VAT from domestic fuel.
The pandemic has brought about unemployment and pay cuts which makes the energy crisis worse for those in a lower socioeconomic status. However, the pandemic has also increased wealth for those at the top. Britain created a record number of billionaires during the pandemic, up to 171, and their wealth grew by one fifth.
The Greens now wish to take aim at CEO pay. They called for a 10:1 pay ratio mandated into law, so that CEO salaries are no more than 10 times higher than their lowest earning employee. The latest figures in England show that CEOs of FTSE 100 companies make more in four days than the median year salary of the rest of the country.
Another co-leader of the Greens, Adrian Ramsay said, “There can be no justification for astronomical pay for a tiny elite while the majority of people are struggling to get by”. The Greens mission is to push the conservative government to act on these measures by binging it to the public’s attention. Currently, the Greens only have 1 seat with 2.7% of the popular vote.
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