London elects a new mayor on 1 May. In a new series, we examine the scientific policies of the main candidates.
Katherine Nightingale
The Green Party’s contender, Siân Berry, is an engineering graduate, former medical writer and crusader against ‘Chelsea tractors’. She’ll use the mayor’s considerable planning clout to make London a cleaner, safer and greener place.
Air to breathe
Pollution on some London streets regularly exceeds air quality maximums. “One study that monitors air pollution by the second, found that a person can get 10–20% of all their air pollution crossing one road,” explains Berry. She will remove ‘cattle pen’ railings, preventing sheep-like herding across roads and reducing time spent where the pollution is highest.
Berry also cites air pollution and carbon emissions as reasons against the expansion of Heathrow Airport, along with the noise pollution in surrounding areas. “The climate change argument is completely clear—we can’t fight climate change and build more airports, full-stop,” she recently wrote in her New Statesman blog.
Berry supports Ken Livingstone’s proposed £25 central London charge for highly polluting cars and the Low Emissions Zone but is against an ‘ever-expanding’ zone and wants to look into more sophisticated options such as targeting the most polluting vehicles on congested streets at busy times.
Slower, smoother, greener?
Berry will impose a 20 mph speed limit on London’s roads to reduce congestion, pollution and accidents. “If 20mph is the maximum speed limit no one is trying to accelerate between traffic lights,” she says.
Walking and cycling will also be encouraged, with more pedestrianised areas, a tripling in the cycling budget to £150 million by 2012 and free bikes schemes.
“It’s more about reducing the need to travel,” she says. “When that comes to planning it’s ensuring that everything that people need is nearby and not centralising everything.”
Energy: less is more
High-tech solutions to decreasing energy usage are not for Berry. “There’s a lot you can do without spending a lot of money,” she says. “We’ve got the London Plan, the planning rules for London, and we can do a lot with it.”
Making buildings more energy efficient is a must. Using the London Plan, Berry wants all new buildings to get 25% of their energy from local, renewable sources by 2010, with further 25% increases every five years until 2025.
She also wants to incentivise homeowners to generate their own energy. Current methods for selling energy to the grid are too complex, she says. By simplifying the rules and providing low cost loans, she wants 100,000 roofs in London to be fitted with either photovoltaic electricity generation or solar water heating by 2015.
Berry is “disgusted with the decision to continue to use nuclear energy”. “It’s too expensive, it’s risky, it’s not renewable; it won’t last as long as we think it will. It’s a waste of money, give us that money and we’ll build a secure electricity supply with renewables.”
She will also continue to explore the use of hydrogen buses. The city’s ‘fleet’ of three, at £1 million each, are “expensive but worth a try”.
Diversify and strengthen
The mayor has a general responsibility to pursue economic development for London. Berry wants to build a stronger, more diverse and resilient economy—and that’s where scientists come in.
“I would love to see more people involved in technology and manufacturing—there’s virtually no manufacturing going on in London, which is a real shame and will cause more problems in the future.”
Innovation is going to be required, for example, to find attractive and efficient solutions to insulating the 66% of London’s homes that lack cavity-walls. Berry will require developers to set aside 50% of space for small businesses, to provide space for enquiring minds.
But innovation should not come at the cost of affordable housing for local communities. Berry is against the proposed UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation, saying that the sale of public land should be used for local housing and employment.
Green oases
Green roofs, those that are either wholly or partly covered with vegetation, would become part of the London Plan for new buildings. Not only will they provide insulation, says Berry, but also provide habitat for birds and insects—the ‘bedrocks of ecosystems’—and a little recreational respite for us Londoners, perhaps even an allotment.
Gardens, front and back, will be protected under planning laws to prevent ‘garden grabbing’ for housing, or simply parking your gas-guzzling car.
Larger animals will benefit from the recently approved grid of wildlife corridors in East London. The grid will provide much-needed habitats for animals with specially constructed green ‘walkways’ to make sure biodiversity can move between habitats and mix it up a bit in the gene department.