Party of a Different Color

"Vote Blue, Go Green" is the new slogan of Great Britain's Conservative Party, unveiled in April before local elections that saw the Tories gain ground on Prime Minister Tony Blair's beleaguered Labour Party. Linking the Conservatives' traditional color, blue, with the green of environmentalism reinforced a message that David Cameron, the 39-year-old Conservative Party leader, has been stressing since he was chosen this past fall as the Tories' new standard bearer: This is not the Conservative Party of old.

In one of his first official acts as party leader--facing off against Blair during Question Time in the House of Commons--Cameron chose to echo complaints by Britain's environmental groups that Blair talks much but does little about climate change. (Blair, who once called the Kyoto Protocol "not radical enough," has pledged to reduce Britain's greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent by 2010, but his government now admits it will fall short of that goal.) Ben Bradshaw, the Labour Party's environment minister, fired back at Cameron, charging that the Tories have made "no clear commitments on climate change" and "need to set out new policies, not platitudes."

"David Cameron is trying to out-Blair Blair," says Sir David King, chief scientific adviser to the British government. King, whose warning in 2004 that climate change poses a threat more serious than terrorism helped fuel public concern in Britain and beyond, adds, "Cameron is repositioning the Conservatives to capture the middle ground, and there is no question he sees the middle ground as dealing with climate change."

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