Shepway's Inconvenient Truth

I don't do film reviews very often, so I'll keep this one short. Having watched "An Inconvenient Truth" a couple of weeks ago, you have simply got to see it. if you haven't seen it, buy the DVD (from the Shepway Lib Dem shop is ideal, and makes us a few pence), from your nearest shop, borrow a copy. Whatever - watch this film.

The theme of the film is climate change. The Lib Dems has been the most environmental Party for a number of years, and our Environment Spokesman Chris Huhne MP leads us in pushing for a green tax shift - forcing a change away from polluting, and towards reducing, recycling and reuse.

But we can't just have good national policies. We have got to set examples locally and even personally.

As a great example, Shepway Lib Dem Treasurer Darren Briddock has recently switched his car for a "dual fuel" one that also runs on Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) - a mixture of propane and butane, often called autogas. Autogas vehicles emit less CO2 pollution than petrol cars, and less other pollutants too.

Our Secretary Maureen Speller is a recycler and reuser par excellence, including composting household waste for use on her garden and allotment.

Season and I are certainly less good than Maureen - but we're trying. We're most of the way through the "checklist" at www.climatecrisis.net/pdf/10things.pdf and have also signed up to "off-setting" our Fiesta's carbon emissions through www.targetneutral.com.

targetneutral.com is a not-for-profit scheme to "offset" the CO2 emissions that driving produces. The money goes towards alternative and renewable energy projects worldwide, and is monitored by an independent panel of environmentalists. The scheme calculates how much you emit through driving each year, and therefore the amount you pay to neutralise those emissions.

"Off setting" is by no means a solution, but hopefully it will help mitigate some of the effects of our C02 emissions. But of course, the best approach is to reduce emissions - car sharing, using public transport, and driving less.

There are lots of other steps you can take - for instance, changing light bulbs for energy efficient bulbs (now half price at Tescos!), keeping your car tyres are at the right pressure, turning down your thermostat and more.

This is the start of the sort of change we need to be making, but as Kermit noted, it's not easy being Green. But we can no longer duck the issue (or, frankly, lots of people are gonna drown), and we could and should lead the way.

And importantly, our Councils should be doing the same. And I hope every Lib Dem elected locally will push to make sure that our local District, Town and Parish Councils do ALL they can to be as environmentally friendly as they can be - cutting edge, seriously, properly, really green.