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Just 21% of Tory MPs put the environment as their top priority, compared with 75% of Lib Dem MPs and a mere 40% of Labour MPs, says a survey for House magazine highlighted by ConservativeHome.

So what is the Tory top priority? 81% said international security, 38% financial stability and 38% NHS privatisation reform. These are all of course valid political concerns, but putting them in that order proves a remarkable lack of understanding about the threats and opportunities environmental politics throws at us.

It seems to me that the environment, climate change, natural resource availability and consumption and so on, well, these are the major threats to international security facing us this century. And, whilst I would contend that most of our Lib Dem MPs have so far shown little understanding of this, things like the "green tax switch" could be a massive force for economic stability and equity, not just means to an environmental end.

Neither MI5 nor the Royal Navy can control the weather, or help ensure we don't have hundreds of millions of the world's coastal have-nots displaced and looking for a culprit amongst the haves of the world to blame for their plight. The City of London cannot keep us warm when Russia turns off the gas taps, and especially if it's under seven meters of water!

ConservativeHome concludes by suggesting that the new candidates selected for seats under Cameron's leadership will be more attuned to Cameron's priorities. Maybe, but who is selecting them? What priorities do they have? Is not the party membership likely to reflect those they already have representing them? They won't all be selecting flip-flop wearing trustafarian environmentalist milionnaires.

Technorati Tags: conservatives, Dave the chameleon, tories, environmental politics

One of the good things about this medium I've found is that nothing is ever permanent (well I suppose it might be on an MI5 backup somewhere but I doubt it!). Blog entries get amended all the time, and sometimes readers do see the amendments in their RSS software. So, following comments it seems I have been a bit harsh on Chris Huhne's criticism of David Milliband's idea for personal carbon bank accounts.

The BBC and others reported in "Labour under fire on 'green' bid" that Chris criticises David Milliband for blue sky thinking on personal carbon allowances. I agree with Chris that such longer term floating of ideas is no substitute for getting things done now - like the LIb Dems' ideas for Tax Shifting - taxing the use and abuse of our common natural birthright such as land, clean air (through taxing pollution and the like) and fossil fuel use. But the idea is an important one, and if, as some suggest, it would take a long time to implement, it is surely good that a government minister is floating what to some might seem a barking mad idea now.

But Chris is also President of the ultimate Lib Dem blue-sky thinking lobby group of which I am secretary, ALTER (Action for Land-value Taxation and Economic reform), so he is only too well aware of the sort of long-term thinking that has to go on to achieve big systemic change.

Whilst I noticed also a Greenpeace (I think) activist on one of the news programs today saying that "it is a good idea, but one whose time has not yet come", both Chris and Greenpeace will know that there have been many groups, including my own and others I participate in, actively promoting the idea of alternative currencies as a way to create an "energy commons" that everyone can participate in.

I have to admit that my interest has been mostly in the other side of the coin - that microgeneration of electricity could be monetised in some form to create an "energy currency". But carbon, on the pollution, is just as good an idea. A carbon allowance would enable us to monetise the "commons", in this case clean air if you like, and pass responsibility to individuals, and tax them when they breach "Locke's Proviso" - a key argument for Land Value Tax.

Indeed in economic terms Carbon Allowances and currency would enable this important part of the commons to be subject to a Land Value Tax, for that is what it is.

And it need not be years away either. As they proved in Argentina it's easy to promote a new "currency" - you just announce that people can pay their taxes in that currency. In Argentina's case, local government decided when they were in the midst of their currency crisis and effectively had no money with which to trade amongst themselves that they would accept "time bank" style credits from companies wanting to pay their local rates.

Exploring different ways of accounting for our "commons" is a good thing. It will become more and more important to make people realise the real costs of living and trading in ever less obvious natural resources. A good example is the licensing of the electromagnetic spectrum - there's only so much of it out there for different technologies and how it is fairly shared out will affect who can participate in future wireless technologies. What we risk by solely concentrating on corporate carbon quotas and licensing of other natural resources is a new wave of eclosure of the commons - in this case the air itself by big business.

I would love to hear what that other Lib Dem radical currency reformer - David Boyle - thinks.

Technorati Tags: climate change, land value tax, politics, tax shifting, taxation

Surely there's some mistake here. Have a look at this snippet from MetCheck's short term forecast for today in OX3, Oxford. The earlier period from 10:00 to 13:00 has just passed so has dropped off the screen, but it was showing 1.8mm of rain in that period. It's been tipping buckets all morning. But the forecast seems to be saying that in the mid-evening this evening it will be 10.8mm (it was 11.7 earlier) in two hours as against 1.8mm in three hours this morning.

My flat is prone to a bit of rainwater flooding as the door is in a bit of a dip halfway down a hill peppered with springs and so the run off is huge. SO it will be interesting to see what this order of magnitude increase in the rain from this morning to this evening will be like!