Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast.

We are the charity and think tank that is all about achieving ambitious leadership for the environment.

In this episode, our executive director, Sean Spears, interviewed Hilary Ben,

Labour MP for LEED Central and co-chair of the IPPR's Environmental Justice Commission.

Places are different. Circumstances are different. And even if you had free public transport,

in rural areas and market towns, it's through using their cars that people are able to get to work,

take their kids to school and go and shop. So it's no good applying the same policies there that you

might apply in the centre of a big city.

The Commission was established to develop a people-centred vision for tackling the climate and nature crises

alongside existing social and economic inequalities.

They discussed the Commission's key aims and findings, including the costs of inaction,

and the policies needed

to bring about a rapid green transition that is fair and just. The law of the public, like any

change, would say, I get that we need to change, but show me how. So delighted to have Hillary

Ben on the podcast today. And Hillary, you were co-chair of the IPPR's Environmental Justice

Commission, a kind of huge enterprise, as far as I can tell, really intense, intensive process

of talking to people across the country and really wrestling with the problems of how to

resolve the nature and climate crises. Probably an unfair question to start

with, but what was your main takeout from the Commission? What was it telling us that we've got

to do that we're not doing now? We thought long and hard about how we can ensure that the

transition to a net zero future is fair, because if it's not fair, then you risk securing and keeping public

consent. And we use at one point a rather striking phrase where we say the public has a veto on net

...