Up next in 10
Fossil fuel producers should be forced to pay for firefighting helicopters following the outbreak of blazes in the UK, the Green Party's leader has said.
00:00 | Zack Polanski stands by his comments
06:38 | Could drug legalisation help fix our prison overcrowding?
09:49 | Zack still supports Jason Arday
At a press conference on Wednesday, Zack Polanski made the plea as he warned: "We are facing the biggest threat to this country since the Second World War."
He also urged Prime Minister Andy Burnham to "be truthful, be brave" and block new drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, including in the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields off the Scottish coast.
#simonmarks #zackpolanski #greenparty #heatwave #climatechange #ww2 #lbc
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0:00
I'm delighted to say that Zach Polanski, the Green Party leader, is with me in the studio
0:04
Mr Polanski, welcome back to LBC. It's very good to have you here tonight
0:08
Good evening. Thanks for having me. Can I interrogate this claim that the climate crisis is the biggest crisis since World War II
0:16
I think the climate crisis is bad. I think it's getting worse
0:20
But it's not quite on the level of the blitz, is it
0:24
I mean, you said today that the scenes that we've seen playing out on our television screens are, frankly, apocalyptic
0:32
I mean, are they? Or was it just a bit of a nasty fire on some heath land in Suffolk
0:36
I think it almost doesn't matter what a politician thinks about this. It matters what the science thinks or what the science knows
0:43
And in the last couple of months alone, we've seen 3,000 people die as a result of the extreme heat
0:49
Just yesterday, I was in Oxfordshire where I saw trees that were scorched. I saw cars burnt out. I saw local businesses decimated. In Suffolk, there was a fire. There
0:57
was the equivalent of 200 football pitches. And the really important thing to know is this. We
1:02
might be uncomfortable right now in the extreme heat that we've had in the past couple of weeks
1:06
Next year or the year after, it's not like it plateaus. It's not like this is the new normal
1:11
It is going to get worse and worse and worse until conditions are literally not habitable
1:16
So, yes, I think this will absolutely outshadow some of the threats that we've faced since the
1:22
But I do wonder if you're engaging in hyperbole, and particularly when you refer to that 3,000 figure relating to heat-related deaths
1:30
because that's based on a survey that has been published that is using estimates that are not based on the actual counts of deaths this year
1:43
The paper's authors say the rapid nature of this ysis precluded access to observed death counts for England and Wales
1:53
So we don't actually know that there have been 3,000 heat-related deaths in the country
1:58
I would expect it would probably be more. And the reason for that is common sense. But it could be much less
2:02
Well, if you have a kidney condition or a heart condition, then excess heat, extreme heat, is not going to do you any good
2:10
If you're an older person or someone with a long-term health condition, literally struggling to breathe because of the heat
2:16
not being able to open the windows, this is all going to cause immense problems
2:20
So this is a health emergency. And actually today I was joined on stage by a former soldier
2:25
a firefighter, Chris Packham, and a doctor. A doctor who was talking about how much burden
2:32
this is putting on the National Health Service that is already struggling, but actually more and more people having to be admitted into A&E
2:39
or to their local health service because of actually the weather and the extreme weather
2:43
It's important to say that climate change is not the weather, but what the climate crisis is doing and the burning of fossil fuels is doing
2:50
is making wildfires and the extreme heat more frequent and more intense
2:54
And that will continue for years to come. What we can avoid, though, is total breakdown
2:59
And the way we do that is by reducing our emissions and stopping new drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea
3:05
But that requires the Prime Minister to take this crisis seriously. and that's exactly why I framed today as a reality check
3:12
because he became the prime minister during a heatwave. I don't blame him for the heatwave
3:16
He's only been prime minister for a month. That would be totally unreasonable for a couple of weeks. But it's extraordinary that there's been no emergency meeting
3:23
no national strategy, no real detail whatsoever about what he intends to do about the climate crisis of the extreme heat Talk to me about the extent to which you think fossil fuel companies should be on the hook to pay for a response to this You made the proposal that they ought to be funding
3:40
the purchase of firefighting helicopters. And I have to say, I was pretty staggered to discover last week
3:46
that we basically haven't got any, and the ones that we had weren't even in the UK
3:50
they were over in Cyprus. Do you want them to be paying for more than that
3:55
Yes. Well, the first thing to note is if we had decarbonized by 2050, that would cost the government less than a single energy shock
4:04
And we've had two of them. So first of all, we know that the reliance on oil and gas is not
4:08
leaving us with any energy security and energy security is national security. So ultimately
4:13
we need to invest in renewables, wind, solar and tidal. We need to move away from fossil fuels
4:18
That being said, BP has doubled its profits during the Iran war. Barclays, its profits have
4:24
gone up by a third. And we know that they've been advising clients to profiteer off the extreme heat
4:29
These are companies who are behaving grotesquely, incredibly irresponsibly. And I think there's a
4:34
conversation to be had of should they be making a single penny's profit at the same time as we're
4:39
seeing parts of our countryside on fire and people struggling to have spaces that are habitable
4:45
This is before we even mention wildlife, by the way. Wildlife rarely gets a look in here
4:49
but actually that's being decimated by the fires as well. So ultimately, I think the fossil fuel
4:53
companies are responsible. And I think rather than making excess and record profits, we should
4:58
be using that money and using it both for wildfire prevention and also to fund a fire service that is
5:03
badly struggling. And in what form would that requirement on the fossil fuel companies to
5:09
come up with the ready cash take? I mean, you'd put a toll on them, you'd tax them. How would you
5:16
do that? Well, I think the first thing to say, and it's not about tax actually, is to remove fossil
5:20
fuel subsidies. At the moment, we give fossil fuel companies £2.7 billion every year in tax breaks
5:26
That makes no sense. There's some of the wealthiest companies around that are making record profits
5:30
Why are the government subsidising them? Second, there already is a windfall tax. That's true
5:35
But it's only in place till 2030. Again, that doesn't make any sense. Let's make it permanent
5:39
right now. And then finally, I think it's about closing some of the loopholes that there are
5:43
around the windfall tax, where far too often the oil and gas companies are getting away with not
5:47
paying up. And when you talk about creating free accessible cool spaces in every local area
5:53
what are you talking about? You're talking about, for example, making sure that every public library
5:57
has got air conditioning so people can go and hang out there during a particularly hot day
6:02
What does that look like? That's right. This is something that the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan
6:06
I think is doing well. He has something called a cool spaces map, which means that anyone in London
6:10
can have a look on a very, very hot day where they can go to cool down. Now, London is an exception
6:15
in this and it's not happening around the rest of the country and I do hope there's some more in
6:20
London as well there's some places that have lots of cool spaces and some that have less so but it's
6:24
really really important that if people are living in homes that are overheated and they need somewhere
6:29
to go and the park is is too hot sometimes to actually have a space where people who are
6:34
vulnerable or older or just want to cool down have a space they can go and actually breathe
6:39
we've only got you for a few minutes can I ask you about some other issues in the news
6:43
We've talked in the last hour of the program about early prison releases. Do you think that the government should make Harper's Law retroactive
6:51
or in some other fashion find a way of keeping PC Andrew Harper's killers in prison
6:58
I do think it important that where people have committed heinous crimes they are kept in prison I think we need to look at a holistic view of this We putting far too many people in prison i talked a lot for instance about needing to legalize and regulate
7:11
drugs it doesn't make sense that people are going into prison for small drug offenses i'm also very
7:16
concerned about women in prison the vast majority of women are in prison for non-violent crimes some
7:20
of them are in prison for stealing nappies or baby food now i want everyone to obey the law
7:25
but ultimately i think people accept that if people are living in poverty and that they steal something
7:30
for their baby, then that's an effect of austerity and poverty rather than something they should be in prison for
7:34
Now, the reason why that matters is if we're putting less people in prison, there'll be more prison spaces
7:38
it'll be less overcrowded, and it'll be a much more obvious choice to say that people who are dangerous to the public
7:43
should be kept in prison. But what would you do about the killers of PC Harper? Well, in the details of that
7:48
that's ultimately going to be up to the judicial system, and I don't think it's helpful when politicians wade into individual cases
7:53
But I think I've made the principle clear that where someone is a danger to society, if someone's murdered someone
7:58
and that clearly falls into that category, then it doesn't make sense to have this early release
8:03
It's also a lot of audacity for Kemi Badenoch when she comes from a Conservative party
8:07
that for 14 years have pushed for prisons into overcrowding, committed austerity and not protected prison officers
8:14
I think it's a little grotesque to see her wading into this conversation. But you wouldn't necessarily support a change in the law
8:20
to make Harper's Law retroactive? Well, I don't think it should ever be about one particular individual case
8:24
but I do think it's about the principle. And the principle is that we are letting people out of prison who are not safe to society because of austerity, because we can't afford to
8:34
That's an absurd place for the government to have got themselves into. We hear constantly there's no money left
8:38
But the 50 wealthiest families in this country own more wealth than 34 million people
8:42
Let's use some of that wealth and actually fund our public services, including prisons. I'd like to ask you about Joshua Bonehill-Payne, who has withdrawn today from his quest to become a conservative member of Somerset Council
8:56
This is, of course, the former neo-Nazi, claims to be a former neo-Nazi
9:01
Do you think Kemi Badenoch has got things wrong by keeping him on in an advisory capacity to the Conservative Party
9:09
Well, the judgment just seems a little bit incoherent. These were grotesque anti-Semitic remarks that he's made more than grotesque, literally a neo-Nazi
9:17
Now, I've said today, and I do believe that people can rehabilitate. I've looked into more details of this particularly individual
9:22
and actually he often creates AI videos, including of myself, that I would say are pretty distasteful
9:30
and not just of myself but other political leaders as well. And so I think there's a question of judgment here
9:35
about yes, people can rehabilitate, and I think it is important that the space for people to say sorry
9:40
but not just say sorry, actually show they're making amends. But I would say current behaviour also suggests
9:46
that there's lots of questions about this particular individual. And can I ask you finally about Jason Arday
9:51
Cambridge Professor of Sociology and Education. Back on July the 30th, you signed an open letter in support of him
9:58
saying that there was an orchestrated and grim effort to delegitimize a young working-class academic
10:04
for the sin of being successful while black. Today, the University of Cambridge launched an investigation
10:13
into Professor Arday after growing credibility questions allegations that more than 100 passages in his 2015 PhD closely resembled an earlier thesis
10:28
Glasgow and Ohio State saying he never held the visiting professorships that were attributed to him on his Cambridge biography Cambridge removing reference to an additional master degree Do you still stand by him Well I don know Jason And the reason why I signed that letter is ultimately it was saying that we should have
10:47
a fair process, that the university should have a fair investigation and that this shouldn't
10:51
be judged by social media or by the Telegraph newspaper or indeed people who have been accused
10:56
of racism in the past who were pointing accusations at Jason. I support what Cambridge are doing
11:01
I think where there are questions to be asked, then, of course, people should be investigated. And I've just heard that while we've been on the air
11:08
Jason Arday has resigned from the University of Cambridge with immediate effect
11:14
So what's your reaction to that? I think the whole affair sounds pretty sad
11:18
Again, I think it would be good, actually, if the investigation still was carried out
11:22
because I think it would be good to know the truth. But ultimately, I think these things should be about fair process
11:27
and transparency rather than trial by media. And I've got to ask you
11:30
should you have known more about him before you signed that letter
11:35
No, the letter was about principles, and the principles was about the university being able to conduct an investigation if it needed to
11:41
It had already done, I think, two investigations and found there was no problem here
11:45
or the allegations were unfounded. And so it was about essentially saying that people of colour, particularly in society
11:53
can sometimes be held by higher standards. Now, it might be that he has plagiarised or he's not conducted himself properly in the investigation
12:00
would reveal that. But I think it's important that there are investigations, that those are
12:04
transparent, and that those happen before the media come for individuals, which we've seen over
12:08
and over again. And finally, finally, for listeners who are curious about what you announced today
12:14
with regard to climate change, but who don't buy the argument that this is the greatest crisis that
12:20
the country has faced since World War II, how would you persuade them that it is? Well, I think
12:26
even if you don't consider that true, tackling the climate crisis doesn't have to be
12:30
some kind of sacrifice. Actually, it's ways of lowering bills, of making sure
12:35
that we have investment in new jobs, in a new green economy. It's ways of making sure that we are mobilising
12:41
this country to really get behind a central mission, which is clean green energy
12:45
We need to do that because of a climate crisis, but to be honest, it's full of benefits
12:48
anyway, so whether you agree with the assessment or not, it's very clear
12:52
that this is something that Andy Burnham should be getting on board with. And finally, finally, finally, will you
12:56
comfortable, I mean, you're talking about climate change, you're talking about issues that are
13:02
central to the history of the Green Party. And there are many people that will say, well
13:07
often you haven't been talking about the climate crisis, you've been talking about other things
13:11
as you've moved the party further to the left in your leadership. Was it comfortable today to you
13:18
sort of coming home to those issues? Do you regret not talking about them more earlier
13:22
I've actually been talking about the climate crisis ever since the day I was elected as leader
13:26
And what's striking today is that despite the fact I announced a press conference for BBC just didn't mention it at all during their news broadcast, it feels when Nigel Farage runs a press conference, there's an hour conversation beforehand about what he's about to say
13:38
Then they run it live and then they talk about it afterwards. The Guardian criticised all political parties just a few days ago, saying no one was talking about the heatwave
13:47
That, first of all, wasn't true. I've been talking about the heatwave a lot. And second, they haven't, as of time of recording, mentioned the press conference at all today
13:54
So I think there's a wider issue in the media about not talking about the climate crisis and heat waves
13:58
So commendation to you and LBC for doing an hour about it. It's the most important issue of our time
14:02
and it's important that the media are talking about it. Well, we are going to talk about it for the rest of the hour
14:07
Thank you very much indeed for coming in tonight and being game with three finally questions there
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