Yesterday Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett joined representatives from Oxfam, Greenpeace UK, Friends of the Earth and even green Dragon Deborah Meaden in a Stop Climate Chaos event to raise awareness of the economic benefits of green business.
Natalie Bennett, Green Party Leader (centre), joined over 200 representatives of the Stop
Climate Chaos Coalition to send the message “Green is Working” (Image:SCC)
From 9.30am, members of the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition, an organisation which campaigns against environmental damage, gathered at Westminster’s Methodist Hall in London to take part in a demonstration that ‘Green is Working’.
Hundreds of people, including members of the public, representatives from non-governmental organisations, and social groups then marched to the Treasury, to unveil a banner based on Saatchi and Saatchi’s now infamous ‘Labour isn’t working’ 1979 General Election campaign poster for the Conservatives.
Featuring a folded white shirt, tied with a green tie, the banner states: ‘A third of the UK’s economic growth is from green business. It’s time David Cameron took the green economy seriously. #green is working.’
The opening statement is taken from the CBI’s September report, entitled ‘How the UK can make the most of green growth’, which shows that show green business is the only sector bucking the recession, with 4.7 per cent growth from 2010-11, providing an extra £5.4bn of economic activity.
It is a message the Green Party has been publicising – and used as part of its campaign in the run-up to the General Election of 2010: the green economy is vital and must lead the UK’s economic recovery.
Ms Bennett said: ‘It was great to see such a wide range of groups represented, from the Women’s Institute, RSPB and PCS to the World Development Movement, Christian Ecology Group and Tearfund. These groups represent strong nationwide concern about the government’s chaotic handling of energy policy.
‘Even the CBI says that green measures are absolutely crucial for Britain’s economy, a view we have long known to be true.’