The Tories’ rebranding won’t wash: being green is about more than fluffy bunnies | Molly Scott Cato

Up to their necks in Brexit chaos and with Corbyn’s Labour snapping at their heels, the Tories are trying again with a somewhat tired strategy to escape the label of the “nasty party”. They are having another go at acting like environmentalists, this time combining it with being nice to animals. At the helm of this more caring narrative is environment secretary, Michael Gove, tasked with resurrecting the idea that blue is the new green.

The public have come to regard the Conservatives as people who believe it is fine for hounds to catch and tear apart a fox because animals don’t have feelings anyway. The manifesto commitment to overturn the foxhunting ban and more recently refusing to back Caroline Lucas’s amendment to the EU withdrawal bill on recognising animals as sentient beings, have left the Tories looking cruel and heartless and has led to a huge public backlash. In response we have had a plethora of new “pro-environment” policy announcements from the man who has promised a green Brexit, and it would be churlish not to admit that these are welcome.

There has been the outlawing of the trade in ivory; reversing the manifesto pledge to hold a vote on foxhunting; a promise to ban bee-killing neonicotinoids; and backing the reintroduction of beavers to the British countryside; as well as explorations into a deposit scheme for bottles and the outlawing of microbeads in cosmetics.

This has been backed up by Theresa May writing for the Guardian and some manic and repetitive tweeting from Tory MPs about how much they love animals, while endlessly repeating the refrain that the idea that Conservatives don’t regard animals as sentient is fake news. The Tories even seem to have succeeded in wooing some conservation and wildlife groups. The commitment to a new post-Brexit environment watchdog has been particularly well received – ignoring the fact that it was the Tories who abolished exactly this sort of public body seven years ago.

The problem for the Tories is that being green is about so much more than fluffy bunnies. While individual policies on animal protection are welcome, in a nation full of animal lovers they are easy wins. They also ignore the central lesson of ecology, a lesson that Gove and his fellow Tories have never been able to grasp: that life on Earth is one system. Nature abhors not only a vacuum but also compartmentalisation. Those lovely beavers and polar bears need somewhere to live; more than compassion and concern they need a habitat. And if you let a fracking company pollute the waterways or throw subsidies at fossil fuels then the beavers will die and the polar bears will starve.

When Michael Gove first started down his green Brexit route I suggested we put him in special measures. As Greens we find it hard to trust him to protect the environment because he is part of a government that has introduced so many damaging policies over so many years. There is a long way to go from special measures to outstanding, but if that’s where he wishes to move to I suggest he is assessed on three key issues.

First, will he persuade his government to ban fracking and go all out for renewables? Fracking poses huge threats to some of our most fragile and treasured landscapes and will expose communities and wildlife to noise, air, light and water pollution. The government remains committed to this destructive industry and in the recent budget, Philip Hammond left Britain’s renewable energy industry out in the cold with no new subsidies for low-carbon electricity generation until 2025.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a way of extracting natural gas from shale rock formations that are often deep underground. It involves pumping water, chemicals and usually sand underground at high pressure to fracture shale – hence the name – and release the gas trapped within to be collected back at the surface.

The technology has transformed the US energy landscape in the last decade, owing to the combination of high-volume fracking – 1.5m gallons of water per well, on average – and the relatively modern ability to drill horizontally into shale after a vertical well has been drilled.

Second, will he phase out toxic glyphosate, Europe’s most used herbicide, linked to cancers and other health problems as well as having damaging impacts on soil and biodiversity? Banning neonicotinoids was easy, especially since the latest extensive study that confirmed their devastating impacts was mainly funded by two major neonicotinoid producers. Banning, or, as the European Parliament recently voted for, phasing out glyphosate, is an altogether more testing challenge for Gove. Especially so since his government recently voted to support the renewal of the license for glyphosate for a further five years.

Third, a genuine test of the Tories newfound love affair with animals, will be to see if Gove can persuade the government to end the badger cull, described by a government appointed Independent Expert Panel (IEP) in 2013 as “ineffective and inhumane”. The government recently gave the go-ahead for further badger culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset.

But Gove’s true colours cannot be tested against a series of discrete policies. Green politics just doesn’t work that way. The biggest test is whether Gove and the Conservative government are able to understand that the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts; whether they can see the wood as well as the trees. If Gove and his Tory colleagues can’t grasp that they will never be awarded a green star.