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TALKING POLITICS

CIWEM Executive Director, Nick Reeves, reviews a new book by Colin Challen, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group.

Now here's a thing. A politician who has chosen not to write about himself or to publish his diaries. Rather, a Member of Parliament who has chosen to write about the much more important and urgent issue of climate change - a subject Prime Minister Gordon Brown acknowledges that Colin Challen 'is an expert on.'

As the founder of the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group, Challen created the perfect vehicle for his relentless campaigning on the need for radical action to avert climate catastrophe. And as a member of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee he has contributed to Bills and legislation on environmental affairs, including the historic climate change legislation.

Too Little, Too Late: the politics of climate change is a unique take on the arguments for urgent action because it is presented from the point of view of an elected politician who is also knowledgeable, who has taken great care to understand the science and who isn't afraid to mock and admonish his own profession.

Though a politician, Challen is no apologist for the political system, and even hints at the shortcomings of democracy at a time of great danger. In this book he condemns the inability of all political parties to work together to form a consensus and a meaningful response to the very real prospect of a four degree rise in global temperatures. Consequently, he predicts that catastrophe may ultimately be the driver that shifts policies to a level adequate to the task.

'Less is more needs to become our new political Hipocratic oath,' writes Challen. And his belief that it's far better to use less whilst we still have the choice to make collective decisions, rather than have it forced upon us by harsh reality, is a compelling one.

Trying not to adopt an anti-materialist stance, but arguing for a re-evaluation of the true worth of things, Challen reminds us that we have the know-how to make things last longer and to waste less. He argues with evidence and candour, and without political guile, that we can no longer measure self-worth in terms of material things if we are to adapt to a world bent out of shape by a changing climate. 

A fascinating read, this book is different from the rest. It is proof positive that at least one politician is able to rise above self-serving party politics and offer very clear solutions that his procrastinating colleagues should take very seriously.

Too Little, Too Late: The politics of Climate Change by Colin Challen, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group, is published by Picnic Publishing (ISBN: 9780956037008) and costs £9.99.

Extracts from the book will be published in WEM (The Environment Magazine).