u/Appropriate_Bell743

My understanding is that Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and associated actions are becoming the popular economic basis of the Greens.

My understanding that at its heart MMT requires a sovereign government to issue its own currency to control its fiscal policy. This enables the kind of actions one hears being advocated. On the other hand the Eurozone forces for states to share a currency managed independently by a European Central Bank. Countries are forced to limit their deficits under the EU's Stability and Growth Pacts.

My other understanding is that for the UK to rejoin the European Union the UK would lose its opt-outs. It'd be required to join the Euro. The opt-out carved out by Gordon Brown would not longer be available.

This suggests that enacting policies consistent with MMT would not be compatible with EU membership for the UK unless the UK influenced the other Eurozone members to agree -- a difficult pathway. They are in conflict -- do people agree?

The other side:

The other side of this are deep values on ecology and climate change where undoubtably being a part of the EU is a positive step. It is also something we should wish from the perspective of European solidarity, removing borders, etc.

The UK is not well placed to be more ecologically ambitious in its pesticide policies or other concerns than the EU. So much of the UK's food is imported from the EU that it's very challenging to see how genuine divergence beneficial to ecology could happen. In fact we are witnessing the opposite where the UK's often behind EU policies.

The UK's long term climate goals are considerably strengthened by the regularity of the EU's approach along with the diplomatic and economic power of this far larger block.

It's notable that the EU is leading on innovating long haul aviation via carbon pricing but the UK can only be a follower. It's notable that the EU's introduction carbon pricing to all parts of its economy matched to social funds with the UK always a bit behind. There's no UK ETS2 seeking to rapidly decarbonise home-heating, transport, etc. like there is in the EU.

How do people see this playing out? It's not some abstract discussion as it is highly likely that there could be a coalition in 2029 where EU membership (or at least a referendum) would be on the cards if the Greens, SNP, and LibDems pushed for it.

If there is a conflict would people sacrifice some of the radical economic ideas possible from MMT to be a part of the EU? Or would they risk climate regression under a future right-wing government via being outside the EU? Where would their priorities be?

This is the most disgraceful action of this government to date. They are prioritising the ability for British holiday makers to travel undisturbed over Ukrainian children.

Lifting sanctions on Russian oil/gas will mean Putin gets more revenues. This will mean that more money is spent on bombs. We are choosing a minor benefit in oil/gas security and costs over the innocent lives of Ukrainians.

We are choosing to make all domestic UK oil/gas consumption directly linked to the plight of these people. We are doing this to minimise the fallout from the actions of our so-called allies US and Israel. We must oppose this action or give up having the label "Green".

Green MPs must be protesting this in the strongest possible terms.

I would first caveat that no heat pump user should use a default electricity tariff. However, the energy price cap is illustrative about the general trends.

Compare July 2025 to July 2026:

1. Electricity: 1.16% increase from 25.73p/kWh to 26.03p/kWh
2. Gas: 13% increase from 6.33p/kWh to 7.16p/kWh

Now, some of this are due to policy changes made by the government. However, given there's only 5% VAT on gas it is inherently the case that electricity has more room for manoeuvre. Electricity has tons of added policy costs which could be shifted without too much unintended consequences.

Combined together this means that the heat-pump user will be experiencing far more consistent heating costs over this period of crisis than the gas boiler user. For those who want sustainable bills which fluctuate less during crises the choice should be obvious.

How to educate the public about the need to innovate to reduce price volatility is a hard problem but these data certainly helps.

This year we are expecting a super El Niño. The last super El Niño caused the loss of 3-4% of the entire global population. This was in 1877.

The difference now is that this is on top of 150+ years of manmade climate change and the US/Israeli caused disruption to one third of seaborn fertiliser trade.

No-one knows how bad it will be this year and going into 2027. Thankfully this is not an experiment which we do regularly. We don't know what percentage of the population which will be affected as billions of us live more affluent lives but there are many more of us. We can choose to think of climate as a single-issue topic so not discuss this but this doesn't mean climate change forgets about us.

This year we are about to face a collection of crises where our dependence on imported oil and gas combines with the consequences climate change. Both the ways to make us more robust in this crisis and the way to make such future crises less acute come from radical decarbonisation of the global economy.

We should be wanting to be ahead of the national and international discussions here so that the ideas we put forward are practical, proactive, and meet the demands of this crisis. We should have a clear viewpoint on what to do about global food supply beyond merely blaming a national government for inflation and shortages.

We should be driving the culture of ideas on this.

What are the ways to rapidly pivot the UK population from dependency on imported oil and gas? It's certainly not through merely subsidising the energy price cap. We should be thinking far more deeply than this.

What are the ways to rapidly reduce the UK's food demand -- of which much ends up as waste -- so that we minimise the issues caused by acute hunger for the global poor?

There are global shortages of:

• Fertilisers
• Diesel
• Petrol
• Natural gas
• Kerosene

This means that inflation will be impactful in almost every part of the economy. Only those living very decarbonised lifestyles will be partially spared. Inflation is the key killer of public opinion and ultimately what made the previous Tory administration unpopular -- beyond their other obvious failings.

Whomever takes power now will own the upcoming crisis. They will be forced into impossible choices with the option to subsidise energy costs like Liz Truss not possible due to the bond markets. It's not also easy to not care about the bond markets.

Starmer is unpopular. Deeply unpopular. This will increase over the next 12-18 months if he stays in power. The obviously best move for anyone anti-Starmer is to wait this out then put the knife in then. It's possible to take power in 18 months then be associated with some level of economic recovery.

Let's take the 2019-2024 parliament where Brexit, covid then Ukraine dominated. Let's imagine that the Tories had waited until late 2023 to replace Johnson with Sunak. I think it's a hard ask to claim that their fortunes would be worse now.

My prediction is that Labour will change the leader now or in the next few months. By 2027 this successor will be the most unpopular leader in the UK's recent history and Labour will have no cards left to play.

• Freezing energy prices in July to stop them going up by over £300

There is no way to square the circle. This is a fossil fuel subsidy.

This means freeing domestic gas prices which only have VAT at 5%. This means households will be buying gas at subsidised prices. Subsidised by taxpayers.

• Further measures to tax fossil fuel companies and the extreme wealth of billionaires and multimillionaires

You might point the second part but this doesn't work due to us being a net-importer of fossil fuels. We have no way to tax US Texan LNG exporters or Saudi Armco.

We only tax domestic production so it's a tax on British producers only. It's a huge subsidy for US LNG exporters at a time where we should be hitting not helping the US. Why do we advocate helping the US economically in this moment using our taxes?

Now, it has not been agreed by the Green's membership that we are now a party which accepts fossil fuel subsidies. Has the Energy PWG agreed to this fossil fuel subsidy?

What's the most shocking about this is that I expect I'll get responses from people buying the logic of the fossil fuel companies who try to square the circle arguing that such policies aren't subsidies. They are. For decades greens have been showing clearly how they operate so it is appalling we've sunk this low.

We need to amend the amendment ASAP:

• Freezing energy prices in July for low-income households to stop them going up by over £300.

Restricting this policy to low income households means it is no longer so bad.

Now, beyond climate concerns this policy is amoral. Beyond the fact it uses UK taxes to help US companies it is bad. It is bad because it mostly hurts the global poor who compete on international energy markets for the same gas.

There's no point pretending to care about the global poor then do policies to benefit wealthy UK homes (as not income tied) to maintain demand which hurts the global poor.

A fantastic consequence of the party's desire for close alignment to the EU (or full membership) is we will inherit many of the EU's new Green New Deal climate policies.

We know now that the EU's ETS2 is happening albeit postponed by one year. This means that the anomaly where there's no carbon price/tax on domestic gas or road fuels will be ended. A small €0.01-0.02/kWh (~10-20%) increase in domestic gas will enable the EU to fund its social climate fund. This is what's meant by climate justice where the polluter pays but the proceeds are used to help the most disadvantaged decarbonise.

Now, given its Green Party policy to align to the EU with this being a clear consequence wouldn't it be more honest to be direct about this? Short of the UK government fully aligning to the EU we should be pushing for the UK's ETS2.

From 2028 all parts of the EU's economy will be encompassed with climate legislation. The dream of Greta that there's no climate leakage will be almost satisfied. Imports get climate tariffs due to CBAM and all domestic production/consumption covered by ETS/ETS2. The only loophole remaining is for the rich taking long haul flights (additionally being tackled).

Given the we are a passionately pro-EU party shouldn't we be pushing for more rapid alignment to EU climate policies ahead of any rejoining? This would marginally increase domestic gas prices but in a cost-neutral manner as it'd fund insulation and heat-pumps.

It seems a huge omission for us to end up being less radical on climate than the EU. It's a failure of green ideals if we don't push to be more ambitious than the EU. The EU represents the slow but sure pathway to decarbonisation based upon the notion that climate change is bad but not a crisis. If the greens are to stand for anything it is that climate change is a crisis so radical policies must follow.

Thoughts? Remain less radical than the EU or more ambitious?

There's no decarbonisation of the UK without decarbonising heat. The UK consumes vastly more gas for home-heating than it does for electricity.

What's more it's geopolitically very risky to depend on gas as it means relying on US LNG imports and thus creates a politics of dependence. We can't act against US interests when we rely on them to stay warm.

The good news is that other European countries seem to have cracked this. 50% of all new heating systems in Germany are heat-pumps. The vast majority of installed heating systems in Nordic countries are heat-pumps. France/Italy install as much as Germany also.

The UK has:

• Generous grants (£7500-£9000)
• Financing options (0% many building societies)
• Varied tech supported (A2A heat-pumps and A2W heat-pumps)
• Cheap off-peak electricity prices via smart-tariffs
• etc.

Despite this something is lacking. Home owners (landlords or private) are reluctant to do the financially and morally better choice.

We are in a unique position to push hard on this as Hannah Spencer worked installing heat-pumps. We must be drawing upon her wisdom to better understand the UK slow rollout.

There are few options better than decarbonising heating to minimise the negative fallouts of the energy supply shock due to Trump's illegal war. On top of the climate emergency there must be a sense of emergency to solve this.

The article is behind a paywall so I can summarise. Currently flights within the EU/UK/EFTA pay a carbon price under the EU/UK's Emissions Trading Scheme. This is a carbon price which would theoretically increase year on year if the EU stopped decarbonising.

There are loopholes which include flights to places outside the EU. This is partly a legacy of the Obama era's Act of Congress. Now, the EU is proposing to add ETS to all outbound flights from the EU including those to third parties. This will receive tons of opposition so it is worth supporting at a political level.

My family will be travelling to Amsterdam the first Saturday of half term (23rd May) to take the Nightjet for Austria.

How long should we leave for the biometrics check? Do we need to do anything ahead of our arrival? How does it work for a 3 and 6 year old?

Are we talking about an extra hour, 30 minutes, or 10 minutes? We are also going Eurostar onwards to Austria/Italy in August. Do we need to repeat this process then?