Bloomberg Zero interview: climate, energy and the economy

Thanks for having me.

I think the first thing to say is the climate crisis is inextricably linked with all of those areas. So, we can't talk about housing, for instance, without talking about the climate crisis. Let me give you an example. In the UK, we have some of the least insulated homes in Europe. They're incredibly energy inefficient.

That's awful for people's bills because it means you're turning the heat up and actually it's just escaping the home. That's awful for the climate as well and climate emissions. So, what we need to be doing is insulating every home in Britain that needs it. That could be creating hundreds of thousands of good green jobs that could then be paid properly where people are treated with dignity and care. So, that's just one example of where you could look at any sector.

You could both look at what the sector is and how that impacts our environment and climate. More widely though, in terms of a future green government, I want to see a major investment in renewable energy, in making sure that we're investing in solar panels, wind turbines, in fact, even tidal of the future. I want to make sure that we're looking at how do we support workers in the workplace. Of course, that's a worker's rights issue, but it's also a climate adaptation issue. We know we're going to be facing hotter summers, colder winters.

We need to make sure when people are in the workplace, they have decent working conditions. Then, we need to look at the impacts of a climate crisis. Things like wildfires and floods that we're seeing both here in the UK, but right across the world, we're seeing in increasing amounts. Now, people will often say wildfires and floods aren't necessarily the climate crisis and that's true, but the repetition of extreme weather at the extremities we're often seeing, it is entirely the climate crisis. We both need to reduce, mitigate our emissions by making sure we're transitioning our behaviours.

Also, we need to make sure that we adapt because sadly, a lot of the climate risks are already baked in now. The UN Secretary General has said, this is the crucial decade of action. I'm sure we'll get to this in the conversation, but I think the most important frame everyone needs to look at right now, particularly from an economic point of view, is what is the cost of inaction versus the cost of action. We needed to do this decades ago. We can't rewrite history.

So, let's make sure we take the action now.

Well, I think we need to look at the short term and the long term. So, let's start with the short term. This is Trump and Netanyahu's war. It's a deeply unpopular and illegal war, and I don't want to see the UK anywhere near it. But actually, whether we're involved militarily or not, ordinary people are paying the price for this war because we are seeing energy prices rising.

In the UK in particular, and I know this is similar right across the world, energy prices were already too high. We were already deep into a cost of living crisis. So, it is completely unacceptable to even imagine energy bills are going to rise further. The government needs to intervene. They need to step in.

At the moment, we have an energy cap up until June. I've been talking about putting £8.4 billion aside to make sure that bills don't rise higher than that. Now, it's looking each day, as time goes past, they might rise higher than that. So, we need to go right back and look at how else do we subsidise people's energy bills? The fundamental principle here, though, is we cannot allow people to freeze in the winter.

We cannot allow people to live in damp and mouldy homes. And it's the government's job to intervene. The longer term, though, is the much more important conversation in terms of making sure we don't keep facing these repeated climate shocks and these energy risks. And in fact, there was a report from the Committee on Climate Change that showed that if we decarbonised by 2050, that would cost less than just one single time of these energy shocks that we keep having. So, this inaction is costing us badly, both in terms of our energy bills, but also in terms of the climate crisis.

So, what would I do in the long term? We need to have a conversation about something like a rising block tariff to make sure that people's energy bills up until a certain point are actually free. Now, that's complicated, because if you have someone who's disabled or with a long-term health condition in the house, you're likely to use more energy. So, there is a conversation about how do you make the thresholds work? How do you also still encourage demand efficiency to reduce the demand that people are making?

But also, we need to look at a much bigger system of how we produce our energy and where it comes from. And of course, the biggest answer of all is we do need to transition. We need to move to renewable energy. It's much cheaper than oil and gas economically. And of course, it's also vital for tackling the climate crisis.

Yes. So, my proposal isn't actually for borrowing for this specific measure. It's actually about taxation. I want to bring capital gains tax in line with income tax. And the reason why that's important is right now we're taxing earned income more than we're taxing unearned wealth.

I think that's both bad in terms of the money that comes into the Treasury, but also there's a fairness angle here. It can't be right that the 1% are allowed to hoard wealth because actually that's really bad for our economy. It means once they've bought assets and there's nothing else to buy, they buy our democracy, they buy our media channels. And actually what I'm arguing for is we need a fairer taxation system. Now, does that mean I don't also want to have a conversation about borrowing in the long term?

Yes, I do. But when we're borrowing, ultimately we want to make sure that the majority of that borrowing is for investment rather than consumption. In fact, I had a conversation with the Nobel Prize-winning Joseph Stiglitz, and he talked about the distinction here that governments for a long time have borrowed for consumption and how that doesn't particularly work. And we saw that with Liz Truss' mini-budget. That's why, here, I want to use taxation to fund that energy subsidy.

But in terms of investing in the just transition and the infrastructure, then yes, absolutely, that should be about borrowing. But it's clear that that's borrowing for investment in the long term to make sure that money is coming back into our economy and dealing with the climate crisis over the longer term.

Well, I think the first thing to say is that the antithesis of this argument that my opponents often make is absolutely absurd, because ultimately the only place it can go is that the UK will be at war with Russia. And so that is clearly the scenario we need to avoid. And so when I talk about negotiation, and when I talk about diplomacy, I always want to make sure and make it really clear that it's not about walking in and giving someone everything they want. It doesn't even mean, necessarily, meeting them face to face. I think what I'm saying is highly uncontentious.

I'm just saying that teams from the UK and teams from Russia should be maintaining an open dialogue in the way that they often do, and in the way that Trump is doing with Putin and Trump is doing with Netanyahu, two people that I see as running oppressive governments or regimes at the moment. And so I think it's any politician's job and particularly a political leader's job to keep the door open to negotiation and to peace. That's very different from saying that's easy, that it’s something that I think is highly possible or even likely. But I think the moment you've shut down that option, what you're essentially then doing is giving the biggest payout ever to the military. I obviously have an issue with that in itself.

But the much bigger issue I have is that millions of people will die. And so I don't think that can ever be an option. In terms of negotiating with Putin, I think that becomes a much bigger conversation. I think it's important that the sanctions do remain in place. He's launched an illegal war in Ukraine.

We have seen thousands and thousands of people die. And there doesn't seem to be an end to the kind of oppressiveness of which he seeks to put on a region that has its right to self-determination. This argument, by the way, is consistent with the argument I make for the Palestinians, too. Again, I don't think it's contentious to say that I don't think innocent people should die. And I think when people live somewhere, they should have the right to decide who makes the rules and who governs over them.

So that's morally consistent. I think in the longer term, there was an interesting report out from the Joint Intelligence Chiefs in the UK. This is the head of MI5 and MI6. And it talks about real security in this country. And actually, real security in this country looks like tackling the climate crisis, having pandemic resilience, and taking cyber security seriously.

So of course, we need to consider our national security. But I think we need to consider it as a mix of lots of other elements that often get missed out of the conversation because we get obsessed with the idea that there's an imminent invasion from Russia. That doesn't look like it's on the cards. It doesn't mean we shouldn't take it seriously in the long term. But I don't see that same level of severity given to the climate crisis, which is not a distant or abstract threat.

It's right here, right now. And that's what we should be investing in.

Well, the first thing to say, as you said, people want to see us deal with defence today, the threats today. And I agree, the threats today are wildfires and floods that are coming down the track. In fact, this summer, we could see one of the hottest summers ever. We've certainly experienced that a few times over the last few years. And we saw a flood in Valencia just a few years ago where, tragically, people lost their lives.

Now, I've chaired the Environment Committee in London for a few years now. And I also am the current chair of the Fire Committee. And so I speak to fire officers all the time who know the real threats of the climate crisis. And something that someone who works for the Met Office said to me on record was the only reason why people didn't die in floods in the way that they have done in Valencia is pure luck. London is not ready right now to deal with some of these impacts that we might experience.

And so we need to be making sure that we're building flood defences, that we're making sure we're investing in our fire brigade. I'm always worried about what I call the domino effect, that you have a moment where you have, say, wildfires that scorch the earth, which then means it's much easier for flooding to happen a few days later, because then the earth isn't as porous as it might be. And so you see impacts of one climate risk hitting another climate risk. Then you have firefighters who are exhausted. Then their resources spread around the country.

And suddenly you're really getting into a disaster scenario. Now, I don't want to use hyperbole. There's lots of ways we can make sure we mitigate for that. And the fire brigade do incredible work, particularly in London, but fire brigades right across the UK and indeed around the world. But we can't fight with nature.

And unless we make sure that we mitigate our emissions and invest in climate adaptation, those risks are going to come down the track. Now, on nuclear, I think it's important to say that the UK security adviser, Jonathan Powell, not someone whose politics necessarily align with mine all the time, said that Iran were at the negotiating table. They were literally ready to make a deal. And in fact, a representative of Oman said, we're a couple of days away from that happening. So it's important to recognise that in this conversation, what happened was Trump came in and assassinated the Ayatollah.

We now know the new one could be even more hardline than his father. So this was a war with no plan. It was deeply irresponsible. And I don't want the UK anywhere near those decisions. So when people talk about nuclear and how do we denuclearise, I want to be clear, I want to see multilateral disarmament.

I don't support nuclear weapons. So it would be an absurd argument for me to want to eliminate the UK's nuclear weapons, but be fine with other countries having nuclear weapons. I want to see global leadership. And in fact, the UK has signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, as have many other countries. We just haven't stuck to that.

And so we need to get back to the negotiating table. And then the final thing I'd say, because it often gets missed here, is we've still not seen any evidence that Iran have nuclear weapons. And it's all very reminiscent of Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction. What we do know, or we strongly suspect, is that Israel has nuclear weapons. In fact, it's the only country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons.

Now they have a strategy, I believe it's called strategic ambiguity, where they don't confirm it or deny it. But the House of Commons in the UK in our parliament has a record that says it is a very strong, likely possibility, that's accepted around the world that Israel is in possession of nuclear weapons.

Well, Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish prime minister or president, is leading the way on this. He's been very vocal both on Trump and Netanyahu's war, but more widely on speaking about the need for a more compassionate system of migration. Now, that sounds different to your conversation, but of course, these are all international issues where we need people to come together and we need global leadership that both looks after the people in our own country, but also recognises we don't exist as an island. Well, we are an island, but actually we exist within a world where it's made up of multiple islands and multiple countries, and those do need ultimate cooperation with each other. So although we exist as an island, you can't operate in some kind of autarchy where you don't have any negotiation or trade with anyone else.

So I think what needs to happen here is, first of all, we need to recognise that Brexit has been an absolute disaster for the UK, both socially and culturally, economically, but frankly, in terms of our military and security as well. So what I want to see is a commitment to rejoining the European Union. Now, there's a question about whether Europe would want the UK back, and I think that's a legitimate and open question, but I think it's time for us to start making those conversations. As I say that, there are lots of European countries, particularly our European Green friends, who say very openly that Europe would be happy to have the UK back. But of course, for negotiation, I'm not going to pretend for a second, it wouldn't be complicated, but I think it's about time someone started naming that.

And in fact, when I've been saying that over the past few months, I've been pleased to see the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, is now following with what I've been saying. So that's a good step in the right direction. Second, I think we need to recognise how much reliance we have in this country, in the UK, on the United States, particularly for our military. In fact, 86% of our arms exports come from the USA. I don't think that's tenable.

I also don't think it's tenable that Trident, our nuclear capability, hasn't had a successful test case in the last 10 years. And in fact, we are reliant on the maintenance from the United States. Tony Blair said that it would be unthinkable for us to use our nuclear weapons without the assistance of the United States. Now, I think that was problematic 10, 20 years ago. I think it's beyond problematic when Donald Trump is in the White House, because I don't think we can rely on our real security for him to be in a good mood that day, or whatever might be on his mind, or however he's feeling towards the UK.

And frankly, the words that he's been saying towards Keir Starmer, a man that I don't often defend, have been outrageous. That is not how someone who's supposedly an ally treats another ally. So the whole point I'm getting to here is I think we need to do one of two things. I think we need to rebuild our relationships with our European neighbours. And also, I think we need to look at economic sovereignty for the UK.

And that includes energy independence, that includes military independence. It means not relying so heavily on other countries, particularly unpredictable countries like the United States, and actually taking our own real national security and energy security and independence more seriously.

I personally wouldn't, because I think we've seen over and over again how dangerous that can be for a country and their economy. And so that's exactly the kind of thing that we would need to negotiate. But for me, that would be a probable red line.

I think there's two prongs to this. So the first is about inflation busting, and I'll talk about that. And also then there's about business and productivity. In terms of inflation busting, we need to bring down people's bills. And actually, that's because what we're doing is removing people's purchasing power.

If people are struggling just to get by, just to pay the rent or heat their homes, then of course, they're not going to be buying a coffee at the local cafe, going out for a pint at the end of the week or picking up a present from mum on the way home from work. We really need to make sure that we're removing ourselves from an economy, which we used to be, where people used to earn money by making things that people need. And far too often now, we're an economy where people make money by owning things, by selling them or renting them to other people. And that's just not working, because the gap between the super rich and the poor is getting wider and wider. So in the speech, I talked about things like rent controls.

If we'd frozen rents in autumn 2022, we would have saved on average £3,300 per household per year in rent that was just going into the pockets of landlords. The reason why that's important is that then would have been £18 billion of purchasing power, where people who are renters would have had that money to put straight back into the economy, which would have been good for small businesses, medium businesses. In fact, it would have been good for everyone. What we have is a situation where people even who are living in social housing previously, there's been sold to private housing, and is then being subsidised by a welfare bill, where that money from the government is going straight into the hands of landlords. That makes absolutely no sense.

Because actually, what we could be doing is making sure that money is going around the economy rather again, than being hoarded. On productivity and investment. I think this is really interesting. So I had a conversation recently with the economist Mariana Mazzucati. And she talks a lot about missions and missions for government.

Now the way Keir Starmer has done this, I would argue is completely the wrong way around. His mission is economic growth. And what I would argue is that's not a mission. That's what happens when you've got the missions, right, you get economic growth at the end of it. Actually, the mission should be things like reducing inequality, tackling the climate crisis, empowering communities, and then you have criteria of exactly what you're measuring.

And these missions should be cross cutting. When you're thinking about tackling the climate crisis, you should think about housing, education, the environment, how do all of these places move to tackle the climate crisis. Once you've got that plan, and you're clearly communicating that plan, you're communicating with the bond markets, you're communicating with private business, because they're not ideological. They just want to know that there's a clear plan that they can invest in or that they can be involved in that is going to bring clear returns and spending multipliers when we invest in the economy. What we have right now is very short term thinking, particularly with the Office of Budget Responsibility, where we're in this bond market doom loop, where we're often just thinking about the next six months and spending multipliers get limited at the end of six months.

What that is doing is creating the very market jitters that it was designed to avoid. And we just end up in this awful loop, we need to be looking much more long term, including speaking with business to invest in tackling the climate crisis. So when government works with business, it shouldn't be business dictating to government about what they're doing. But neither should it be government strangling business and telling them how to do things. The best people to innovate are businesses, the government should be giving money or contracts conditionally, as long as they meet the mission targets that the government are setting.

And so there's a whole relationship between government and business that this government's got completely wrong. In fact, governments since Thatcher have got really wrong, because we've pushed far too strongly towards privatisation and towards profit margin. There is absolutely a role for business, but it should be about making sure we're protecting and empowering our communities and utilising business to provide social good and social purpose to the country.

Of course, I think it's a brilliant goal. And I'm really pleased to see that goal is set. There's immediately questions though. So for instance, the government launched Great British Energy, we're now 18 months on, and I still think no one's quite sure what Great British Energy is. And we hear this conversation a lot with nationalisation.

So let's talk about the water companies. We privatised the water companies, we're one of the few countries in the world to have private water. And that means that up to 30% of bills that consumers are paying, or citizens are paying, go straight towards servicing the debt and to shareholder dividends. This is despite the fact we have water companies in the UK, pumping sewage into our rivers and seas, and then charging us extra for that privilege. We should be bringing the water companies back into public hands.

Now when someone says, how would you afford to do that? Wouldn't that be very expensive? I interviewed Feargal Sharkey recently, who's a water campaigner on my own podcast, Bold Politics. And he talked about something called appropriate value. Now what this means is the government could take the water companies into special administration, and then recognise that the value of the debt is much higher than the cost of the repairs.

So actually the water companies, because of what shareholders have done, are effectively worth nothing. We should be buying back the water companies at zero cost to taxpayers, and then making sure we're bringing down peoples' bills by actually having a water company that works. And by the way, again, this is a way to reduce inflation, because what we're doing is making sure we have an economy that works for everyone, and not just private business.

Well, I think we need to look at energy in the round. So the first thing I think we need to do is decouple gas from energy, because right now that's inflating the price. And it's ridiculous, and there's absolutely no need to do it. We also need to be putting gas into a strategic reserve, looking at something like a RAB model, or indeed nationalising our gas system. The fact that Thatcher nationalised water companies, I think in 1984, then British Gas in 1986, I think is generally recognised as a disaster.

Now, whether you nationalise the grid, or whether you nationalise energy in terms of the retail, and the big six, our proposals that we're looking at at the moment as a Green Party, I always want to answer questions really directly, but we're also three years away from a general election, and energy in particular, is highly unpredictable right now. But we're having those conversations with experts right now in terms of what the policy offer is.

Well, I reject the premise of the question, because actually, if we built in the UK and made sure we were investing in manufacturing and investing in productivity of the UK, this is a longer term aim, we can't do that tomorrow. Then of course, that would be cheaper. That would then create green jobs. And this is exactly what I'm talking about when I talk about a just transition, moving towards making sure that if we're shutting oil and gas industries down or the steel industry, for instance, we can't just remove those industries and not have jobs for people to go into. The key part, though, is that those jobs are co-designed right now with the workers involved.

We can't turn to people later and say, sorry, you've lost your jobs, there's no job to go into. We know these transitions need to happen. So what the government should be doing right now is sitting down with the workers, particularly the trade unions, and looking at what those industries of the future look like. There's one other thing I want to say, though. The clean energy mission, in theory, I support it and there are good moves.

I cannot condemn enough the Rosebank oil field. This is the oil and gas in the North Sea. Now, we don't know what the government's decision is going to be yet. But the fact that they've not ruled it out worries me deeply. For those who don't know, the Rosebank oil field will have cumulative emissions of 28 of the lowest income countries around the world all put together.

This would be an absolute climate catastrophe to extract oil and gas from the North Sea. Now, we know the Reform Party and the Conservative Party are trying to push the idea right now, because of the energy crisis, that we need to look at our own North Sea oil. This is geologically incoherent. We have extracted most of the assets from that. And ultimately, what we're doing is kicking the can down the road.

So not only is it bad for the climate crisis, it also doesn't make any sense in terms of the amount of money we put into fossil fuel subsidies, which aren't bringing money back into our economy, but are just putting money into an industry that needs to have its last days. And we need to be moving towards a just transition. And finally, when we do extract that oil and gas, we're selling the international market anyway. So to come to your question, it's not even benefiting this country. So we absolutely need to say no to the Rosebank oil field.

And I can't say that with enough clarity.

Well, I think steel is the obvious one where we're not getting it quite right. But we could get it right if we invested in it in the way that we need to. And in fact, I was at Port Talbot, which is one of the big steel factories in Wales, a couple of weeks before it shut down. Now, no one knew it was going to shut down for certain. But even being there for a few hours and having conversations, it was very clear what was about to happen.

But the government back then did absolutely nothing about it. And then we had the Labour government under Keir Starmer stepped in. And at one point, it sounded like he was going to move towards a system of steel nationalisation, which makes absolute sense both economically, and also culturally and socially for making sure that those towns and those cities have purpose again in terms of the reindustrialisation that has been removed from them. And they stepped in with half measures, not enough has nearly been done. And again, it just seems this reluctance from the government.

It's almost like they've forgotten that government are there to do anything. Everything they do is very light touch. And they just kind of want to step back and let the market sort it out. But we've seen for decades, the market has not sorted it out. And particularly with a lot of these industries that we're talking about, where there's monopolies, that doesn't make sense to allow the market to sort that out, because there's no choice anyway.

So even if you're the biggest free market, liberal, the privatisation of these industries doesn't make any coherent sense with your philosophy. I'm less interested with philosophy, though. I'm not an ideologue about this. I'm pragmatic. I want to see cheaper bills for people.

I want to see a better industry. And I want to see jobs for British people. And then the final thing, I do accept that this is some of the language that has come out of the United States. But this is not a Britain first strategy. I still want to make sure that we're trading with other partners.

And there will be some things in this country that we can't manufacture, and particularly critical minerals, which is another environmental conversation about making sure that we have supply chains that are much more ethical, that yes, will cost a little bit more sometimes to make sure that they're ethical. But I think that's a cost worth paying to make sure that we're not dealing in child labour or wage slavery. And at the same time, though, you can tackle that profit margin by if you're manufacturing in the UK, you're bringing the price down in another way. So actually, what you're effectively doing is making sure that you have a proper economy that also has morality built into it too.

Well, the answer is partly in your question, because we need to get rid of the word radical, because actually, these policies are common sense. So to pick up the conversation we're just having, one of our Green MPs, Carla Denyer, is putting forward a bill that's essentially saying rather than putting money into fossil fuel subsidies, we should transition those billions of pounds and actually put them into the training and skills of the workers of the future in green energy and green industry. Now, the reason why that's important is far too long in our British political discourse. But frankly, around the world, the cost of getting to net zero and the cost of decarbonisation has been pitted against the cost of living. And that's why we've often seen reactionary and particularly far-right forces, but sometimes centrist forces, kick back action to tackle the climate crisis.

But there was a report out this week from the IPPR, who talked about actually, this has all been distorted often by a right-wing media. The vast majority of people in the country, both in the UK, but actually this has been done globally as well, want to see action on the climate crisis. They're worried about rising temperatures, they're worried about the effects that will have for their family, their children and their grandchildren, and they want to see a just transition. What they're concerned about, and I share this concern, is that they don't want to pay the price of it, if polluters, the big corporates, aren't paying their fair share. So in terms of how do we make sure that we're presenting a vision and a plan that people can get behind and support?

I think it's about populism. Now, populism, often people baulk away from, because that's the language of Trump and Farage. But I would say they absolutely aren't populists. Populism is about the 99%, the vast majority, the caring majority in this country, against the very, very wealthy elite, the 1%. Nigel Farage and Donald Trump literally come from the wealthy elite and look to protect the interests and the wealth of the wealthy elite.

What I'm talking about is a populism that protects the 99%. So I've said in every decision we'll make, there'll always be three questions. And here are the three key questions. How do we make life more affordable for everyone? Second, how do we back the caring majority over the very wealthy elite?

And third, how do we protect our planet for generations to come? And I think when you have these three questions as your guiding star, what you're ultimately making sure that you're doing there is not taking vested interests from private healthcare, from oil and gas companies, from arms trade companies, from gambling companies, all of which for Labour government have taken lots of money from, including £4.1 million from Quadrature Capital, an asset hedge fund with money invested in all of these awful industries. And actually, what I'm looking to do and the Green Party is looking to do is to have two vested interests, to protect people and protect the planet. And I think when you make sure that's your guiding star, I'm not going to pretend for a second it's easy. There will be difficulties and there will be trade-offs, but I think that makes sure you keep communicating with the public in a way that makes sense to them and you lay out the plan in a way that makes sense to them.

And the final thing I'd say is this, and this is something one of my political heroes Zohran Mamdani has said. I think he was quoting Ed Koch, so I'm quoting him, quoting someone else. But if you agree with me on seven out of 10 things, great, let's work together, let's make it happen. If you agree with me on 10 out of 10 things, go see a psychiatrist, because that's weird. I don't need to agree with the British public on everything.

I think what we can agree on though, is as a climate crisis hurtling down the tracks, an energy crisis, which is pushing up our bills, those are the results of political choices. We shouldn't trust the people who have made those political choices. We should trust people who are going to make different political choices and a different plan. And that's how we're going to make hope normal again.

I totally disagree. The bit I agree on is that we do need base load power. That's just science. Batteries are getting better and better. I think we clearly need a lot of investment in batteries.

Also, we need to look at renewables at wind and solar. Now, people will say the wind doesn't blow all the time, the sun doesn't shine all the time. Absolutely true, but they are intermittent. We know we can predict when these things are going to happen. That, along with technology around demand supply, about making sure that we're connecting community energy, there's lots of ways to do that.

No one's talking about eliminating nuclear right now altogether. There is a moment for a transition here. Also, we know we have interconnectors. We can connect so we can import the wind power and the solar panel from other countries too, like France and Spain and Germany. Again, I think there's a way of doing this where you're connecting a lot of the ways of producing energy in a way that connects everything.

Community energy is highly, highly important. Now, it can sometimes sound hyperbolic to say that I think community energy is part of tackling fascism. I want to say exactly what I mean by that. I think one of the reasons we're seeing the rise of the far right in our communities, or some of our communities, is because people feel. In fact, they don't just feel.

They know that politics is being done to them rather than with them. People feel like they're not involved in decisions, money is being spent, and they feel like their communities are disintegrating, that they're being frayed at the edges. Actually, what community power gives us the opportunity to do is make sure that wind, solar, energy is in their community, in the community energy. Then actually, they can make money off that. They can go back into the grid.

With that money, they can be then spending it on the community. We could have participatory democracy where those communities, along with the town council or their local MP, decide how that money is being spent in their area. I think that's a way of bringing communities together. I'm not being utopian and idealistic. Does that mean we'll always agree all the time?

Does that solve everything? No, it doesn't. I think we need to be looking at the principle of subsidiarity, which is that power should be at the most local level it can be. That's power, both democratic power, but also energy power too. The problem with nuclear and these huge infrastructure projects is that does the opposite.

It puts the power in big corporation of the infrastructure, whoever's built it. With community energy, what you're doing is spreading that power around the community so people are actively involved. Is there a one-size-fits-all solution here? No. Any politician who tells you they have the answer to the increasing problems of the world, whether it's Trump, wars, energy, is lying to you.

Also, it's never going to be one answer. It's about recognising we need to do what works. We need to have all of these options in a basket, and we need to make sure that we're investing in the future, making sure that we're putting people and their communities first.

AI is a nuanced conversation because there are opportunities and benefits here. I don't think anyone should be a philistine about technology. There's lots of examples where technology has improved people's lives, made us more efficient at work, so we're able to spend more time doing the things we want to do. But the premise of your question is entirely right. We need to make sure that governments...

I think about Peter Kyle, who's one of the ministers in government. When the government became the administration, they said that they were going to work with creative workers to help them to unionise to get better deals. But actually, what Peter Kyle did is went straight to Amazon and some of the tech bros and actually allowed them to have the first deals, which meant that the trade union congress for trade union of workers, creative workers, or who represents the union, was understandably very miffed about this and said, you haven't protected workers in this at all. The biggest issue, though, I think around AI, or one of the biggest issues is around the planned data centres. We know that they are incredibly energy consuming.

They really eat up energy. We also have a water scarcity issue, if we want to add another crisis to the list. And there's real issues around water in our cities. And then we've got data centres being built that will consume some of this water. They're often in residential areas where this crisis will get worse and worse.

So one thing I'm arguing for right now is in planning law, whenever a local town or city is going to put a data centre into place, there needs to be a very clear plan about how they're going to use the energy. So particularly, there's no waste energy and that energy can be used for heating homes, but also how they're going to tackle the water issue and make sure that that water cannot be coming from a water supply that should be going to people's homes, because it's quite obvious that's a very necessary ingredient to survive existence. And so I'm really worried about AI. I did briefly mention it in my speech. It was just a couple of sentences, though.

And that's because it's an ongoing threat that's growing every single day. And I think the biggest thing we need to be doing is taking a step back and zoom out and saying, what does society need right now? What is AI ready to provide that's going to be good and going to have benefits? But yes, exactly as your question puts it, how can we harness it to make sure that it protects people and empowers communities rather than being an extractive or exploitative element within our economy that is also disastrous for climate?

I think fuel duty makes sense if you've invested in public transport and if you make sure that there's alternatives for people. There are rural communities in the UK that I go visit where I say to them, is your bus route every few hours? And they laugh and they go, it's every few days. If you have no other option to get to work, to go see family, or even just have a nice time with your mates, then it's not a surprise that people then jump in their vehicle. So the government needs to do one of two things.

Well, sorry, two things at the same time. They need to both bring in fuel duty as they're investing in public transport. But if you're not investing in public transport and making sure those routes are there, then it's utterly unfair. It comes back again to when I was talking about populism. It makes no sense at all to put this on the backs of working people, people who are driving their kids to school or trying to get to work at the same time as we're not taxing kerosene on jet fuel.

So people can take private jets and be paying less tax proportionally than someone who's driving their car because they need to. That's utterly unfair. So the conversation about fuel duty again is quite nuanced because actually there's other measures we need to take at the same time. I want to see the government invest in public transport. I want to see them ban private jets.

I want to see them tax jet fuel more and bring in something like a frequent flyer levy. So if someone is having one flight a year for a holiday or even two flights a year for a holiday, that might cost them less than it does now. If someone's flying several times a month or even several times a week, then that should get more and more expensive because people should be paying the cost of their polluting activities. Ultimately the principle always has to be the polluter pays.

Well, I'll tell you what people think it is and they're wrong. And then I'll tell you what it really is. People think that it's my social media or my communication style. And we saw this with Zohran Mamdani in New York as well. He was undoubtedly a phenomenal communicator and his social media is excellent.

But if you don't have the policies to change people's lives, then what you're doing is pretty much what Reform and the right are doing, which is just slick kind of videos and nonsense. But ultimately, it will all come collapsing down with you because reality will pick up at some point. What the Green Party and the left have had for a long time is really decent and excellent policies that will change people's lives. But often a really bad communication style, where it's been based in statistics and information, but there's been no narrative or story that can excite people or inspire people. I think what Zohran's done so well, and I'd like to think that I'm doing in the Green Party in England and Wales, is combining the communication style, so telling a really clear story and communicating the plan in a way that people understand and combining that with excellent policies.

And the very final thing I'd say is every time people talk to me about the fact that people who are polled right now, under 50s in the UK, the Green Party would come out top. We are number one by quite some way. But every time I talk about that, lots of older people in their 60s, 70s and indeed in their 80s and 90s say, please don't forget about us. We have been waiting for decades, all of our life, for a Green government or for a leader of the left to come forward and say, I'm ready to lower bills, protect our National Health Service and rebuild our public services. That's exactly what the Green Party intend to do.

And whether someone joined the Green Party a few years ago, or whether they join after listening to this interview, it's a subtle hint there, that I'm really excited because I think we need to bring our country back. We need to make hope normal again. That's exactly what I intend to do.

Thanks for having me.