Where have all the flowers gone?

Leaving the light on is a crime, at least according to power giant RWE npower, which is sponsoring primary schools around the country to set up 'Climate Cop Academies'. Kids who join are urged to spy on whether their parents and siblings leave taps running, boil full kettles for just one cup of tea or leave lights on in empty rooms. These 'offences' are reported to the school on crime cards. A cute idea? I don't think so. As one teacher raged in the Islington Tribune "the idea that [pupils] are going to use this scheme to inform on their parents is really like something out of 1984.”

Tackling climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our age. But does it really help to suggest that leaving a light on is a criminal act? It certainly does not help that the sponsor of this modern day Hitler Youth is npower, one of the UK's worst polluters. In December, the Western Mail revealed that npower's Aberthaw power station is the largest emitter of CO2 in Wales belching out 7.4 million tonnes of the greenhouse gas a year. Npower also owns Didcot power station in Oxfordshire which emits 9.3 million tonnes annually. Worse the fly ash from the coal boilers at Didcot is dumped into the beautiful but sadly convenient Radley Lakes, a wildlife site with 15 Biodiversity Action Plan protected species. Town green status may yet protect the Lakes but there is no excuse for npower dumping ash that can readily be recycled into building materials, reducing CO2 emissions in the process.

Ten years ago, CO2 barely figured in our national consciousness. Now it is ruling the roost, especially in Whitehall. Over the next few years we can look forward to a plethora of government schemes to reduce carbon emissions and to the acres of sprawling regulations that will go with them. But by concentrating so much on CO2, the government is in danger of damaging our rural landscape and communities.

A recent report to Defra claimed that local food from farmers markets produces more carbon emissions than food shipped long distances to supermarkets. So to be environmentally friendly, it implied, we should shop more at supermarkets. Nonsense. I buy local food to support our farming friends, to protect the landscape I love and to keep rural communities viable. Do I have to push my trolley through Tesco to reduce emissions a bit, if that means that Shropshire farmers have to shut up shop? Must I put up with the sight of a forest of turbines on the windy hills of the Borders, just because they may help us emit less carbon? Am I to eat genetically modified food because it might be more carbon friendly than organic produce, as someone somewhere has claimed?

Let me make my position clear. I believe that climate change is happening and I agree with the scientific consensus that mankind's carbon emissions are a significant driver of that change. I am convinced that we must urgently reduce our carbon emissions. But dominance of CO2 in politician's thinking could be bad news as far as the landscape and rural communities are concerned. Just as it is bad news that businesses like npower can get away with persuading kids to shop their parents, while it pollutes the atmosphere and dumps ash in wildlife sites.

Andy Boddington