OVER the last two months, I have spoken to hundreds of Brightonians on the doorstep, encouraging them to vote for Labour in the upcoming council election.

The responses I have received have been quite encouraging. In some ways, this is not very surprising.

According to a residents’ satisfaction survey published by The Argus in December, “nine out of ten people living in the city said they are more satisfied with it as a place to live now than they have been for five years”.

However, some of the people I have spoken to indicated they were undecided or ambivalent.

A few people have told me they want to vote for Labour, but they care very much about the environment, and could be tempted to go Green.

In every instance, I have explained to them how ambitious the Labour manifesto is on environmental issues.

But people often seem to assume the Greens have a much better environment platform.

That is easy to understand... they are literally called Greens.

But having read both the Green and Labour manifestos, I know it is not quite true that the Greens are standing on an environment platform that is anywhere near as ambitious as Labour’s.

The Argus:

So I decided to produce a graphic that lays out the environment pledges of both parties side by side so that people can compare them.

It is important, I think, that people actually look at the environment platforms both parties are standing on and not simply assume that one is better than the other.

One could look and find they believe the Greens environment platform is better.

I wouldn’t agree, but that is perfectly OK.

But all of us environmentalists have a duty to actually look at both environment platforms before making any determination.

The graphic makes doing that an easy and straightforward affair. To be sure, the Greens are not bad on the environment.

Their platform is respectable in its own right. Their record on the issue, however, is nothing to write home about.

The city had one of the worst recycling levels in the whole country under the last Green administration and they were cutting down trees like a raging typhoon across the city, in one case attracting protesters from across the country.

Also, many Brightonians are still scarred by the memory of the bin strike under them.

To be fair, Labour also needs, and has promised, to look at ways to improve bin collection in the city as well as educate people on how to dispose of their garbage properly when a bin is full.

But the Labour Party’s environment platform is clearly more ambitious than the Greens and is exactly what is needed to match the enormity of the environmental crisis we face, not just as a city or a country, but as a world. Environmentalists ought to vote Labour on May 2.

Johnbosco Nwogbo