My advice to the new Green party leader? It's time to expose the climate deniers
When I announced recently that I won't be standing in this summer's elections for the Green party's leadership, many people wanted to know why. My answer is that I've always been guided by the question: 'How can I make the biggest positive impact?'. I'm so proud of what Adrian Ramsay and I have accomplished over the past three and a half years: taking our party from one MP to four, from 450 councillors to more than 850, and growing and diversifying our membership. Having achieved what I set out to do, I've decided that for the next few years, I'll pour all my skills, passion and energy into being the best MP I can be for my constituents in Bristol Central, using my seat in parliament to fight for the changes this country needs.
Since becoming an MP in July last year, I have found my ikigai – a Japanese concept describing the intersection of work that you love, you're good at, and is what the world needs. There's plenty I don't love about how parliament works, but I feel incredibly motivated to be a voice asking 'why can't it be better?', and a pair of hands working with others to try to build a better country. I joined the Green party because I wanted to change the country for the better, and I believed the best way to do that was by getting more Greens elected. In 2015 I was persuaded to stand for election myself – first as a councillor, then as an MP and then, at the insistence of friends and party colleagues, as co-leader of the Greens in 2021.
I'm incredibly grateful to those who gave me that push. Few moments more perfectly capture that journey than standing at my own election count in the early hours of the morning, about to be interviewed, and hearing reports come in from around the country that we had hit our target and secured not only my seat, overturning a 28,000 Labour majority, making a total of four constituencies, along with an amazing 40 second-place results. We had absolutely smashed our previous records.
Before I got into politics I was a renewable energy engineer. I got my first job in the sector in 2008, in Newcastle. It was clear to me that there was a massive opportunity to use the skills and experience of workers in the oil and gas industry to move this country forwards. I worked on a report about making British North ports into locations where offshore wind turbines could be manufactured and then shipped. For a while, working as an engineer was how I made my contribution to resolving the climate crisis. I wanted the UK to build more wind and solar projects, faster.
It quickly became clear to me that the real barrier wan't engineering but government inaction. Since I wrote that report 17 years ago, there have been countless missed opportunities. Successive governments have held their hands up and watched as people are forced out of work, communities lose their industries, and young people made to choose between poor-quality employment at home or taking jobs abroad.
It's no wonder people feel let down, nor that the climate denialism peddled by politicians who are funded by the fossil fuel lobby is beginning to resonate. This government, like its predecessors, has allowed climate action to become synonymous with closed factories, personal hardship and decline. The reality is that oil and gas giants have exploited workers and poisoned our environment, extracting maximum profits and taking them offshore. Now the oil is running dry and the industry is dying, they're cutting their losses, laying off workers and hollowing out communities.
It's time for government to wake up and grasp what's in front of its eyes: thousands of skilled and knowledgable workers – and a booming green energy industry just crying out for the government to tap into it. That's why I've introduced the energy and employment rights bill to parliament: it would compel the government to work with unions and communities in order to secure British jobs and put the UK at the centre of the industries of the future. It would make big polluters pay for workers to learn new skills. And it would ensure that investment in the government's new GB Energy supported jobs and industries here in the UK, rather than losing them abroad.
The Green party's voice has never been more needed – not only to take the fight to a Labour government that is making all the wrong choices, but because we are the antidote to Reform UK. We offer genuine solutions to the very real grievances that Nigel Farage's party is tapping into. I'll be handing over the baton to a new Green leadership team in September, but I'm not going anywhere. I will continue to be a loud and persistent part of the Green team, fighting for the future we want to see.
Carla Denyer is co-leader of the Green party of England and Wales and MP for Bristol Central
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