TV’s Chris will tell minister Ed Miliband his policy is rubbish (Image: Getty)
TV conservationist is set to tell minister to ditch one of his policies saying: “It’s rubbish.”
The government has pledged to invest nearly £22billion in two carbon capture projects on Merseyside and Teesside in England, promised over the next 25 years.
But Packham believes it is just another tactic to “prop up the oil and gas industry”.
He explained: “Ed Miliband has done some good things in energy. There’s no question. But they have also said they are going to invest £22million in carbon capture storage which I think is completely the wrong idea.
“I have a meeting with him and I will be telling him that. It’s propping up the oil and gas industry and investing in a technology that doesn’t exist at this point when California is burning. We need to be investing in things that are working now.”
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Packham has regular meetings with ministers with one telling him: “You keep us on our toes.”
He said his most recent meeting earlier this month “was about top line symbolic things that the government could be doing at this point to excite people like myself.”
He continued: “Because of the nature of my work I talk to all the environmental NGOs and ask them what conversations I should continue in order to affect change.
“I try to see the ministers two to three times a year and am in contact via email.
“I tell them if they’ve got any good news coming out that they want to amplify just drop me a line.
“I am very happy to champion the successes that they are hopefully going to make. The minister said to me: I’m really pleased you are here, keeping me on my toes.
“They are trying to do a job. I never moan at politicians but I try and offer solutions.”
Ed Miliband has been issued a warning (Image: Getty)
Packham’s new book Little Experts: Superhero Plants shines a light on the world’s most amazing plants as they battle climate breakdown.
As one of the UK’s leading naturalists and an award-winning conservationist, Packham reveals some of the most surprising and incredible facts from nature including climate-regulating heroes, essential plant-based foods and clothes, and incredible healing herbs.
And he says that one of his favourite plants is a venus fly trap – which eats insects.
He explains: “I still love the idea of carniverous plants, it takes me back to when I was a kid. Plants that eat animals. When you get things like venus fly traps that actually actively trap insects and eat them. I still find that fascinating now. I was obsessed with animal eating plants when I was a kid. They were my heroes.”
He added there were many plants he wasn’t able to include in the book such as “plants that hear things and respond in different ways to vibrations. There just wasn’t space.”