Nuke the consultation – let’s have a debate!

Greenpeace and the courts have delayed New Labour’s energy white paper. That’s no victory – for you, me or the planet. Co-written with Joe Kaplinsky

Last week, from leafy Canonbury, North London, Greenpeace said it was ‘obviously a sham’ (1). Then, at the High Court at the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, central London, Sir Jeremy Sullivan, a bespectacled critic of John Reid’s anti-terrorist detentions, declared it a sham, too, judging it ‘not merely inadequate but misleading’ (2). Finally, from offices in Victoria, trade and industry secretary Alistair Darling admitted that, though New Labour had initiated it, ‘we got it wrong’ (3).

Clearly, the public consultation launched by New Labour in the wake of The Energy Challenge, its ‘Energy Review Report’ of July 2006 (4), has had its critics.  But when Greenpeace activists applied for the review to be made the subject of a judicial review, on the grounds that Energy Challenge had not presented proper information on the costs of nuclear power nor the disposal of nuclear waste, they struck no blow for democracy. Greenpeace’s legal manoeuvres are not a challenge to undemocratic government practices, but rather an extension of them. For proof, look at Alistair Darling’s response. He decided not to appeal against the unelected knight in a wig. Instead, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) will go on fudging the hard arguments that need to be had about the money and engineering that surround new nuclear plants and radioactive waste. Its method: to launch another obscure public consultation on energy.

Greenpeace, we should not forget, is an unrepresentative lobby group. To support it, you need only pay £3 a month on direct debit – and, in association with the Co-operative Bank, you’ve been able to get your very own, PVC-free, Greenpeace Visa card for seven years now (5). In the name of generations of children still unborn, and in the name of the planet, Greenpeace arrogates to itself the role of impressive gadfly to the bourgeoisie. Greenpeace insists that, in its nuclear policies as elsewhere, New Labour is not setting the right environmental example for the ignorant masses to follow. In its campaign against toxic chemicals, Greenpeace seeks to ‘raise public awareness’ about the dangers of industrial pollution (6); on road transport, it wants higher taxes – ones that ‘actually influence purchasing behaviour’ (7). In short, Greenpeace wants to rein in the consumption and habits of the masses.

We can be sure that Greenpeace will look forward to the new round of DTI consultation – closed doors, e-mails and all – with relish. From the photo-opportunism and eventual sinking of the Rainbow Warrior (1985) to Brent Spar (1995), Greenpeace has always preferred media stunts to genuine public debate. (Even one of their founding members has said as much – see A whale of a time.) But for its part, New Labour’s commitment to nuclear power is much more timid than Greenpeace likes to imagine. Indeed, both opponents and advocates of nuclear power in Britain base many of their arguments on a common political premise: fear.

At the time of writing, the DTI has yet to make clear how its new round of nuclear consultations will take place. But its statement on the outcome of Mr Justice Sullivan’s judicial review is worth quoting: