Why is Keir Starmer ignoring the concrete and steel elephant in the room?
Moncaster, Alice
Authors
Alice Moncaster Alice.Moncaster@uwe.ac.uk
Professor in Digital and Sustainable Construction
Abstract
Keir Starmer has just announced that if Labour wins the election, they will build 1.5m homes in England, and that they will be prepared to ‘bulldoze’ any local opposition. These are persuasive numbers and statements – but who is he trying to impress? As an on/off Labour supporter, I don’t see this as an election winning approach. I’m also really scared by the (unmentioned) carbon implications of his posturing. Many have pointed out that the need to minimise the additional operational carbon emissions from heating (and increasingly cooling) the new homes hasn’t been mentioned. But what I’m concerned about even more than operational carbon is both more immediate and more definite – the embodied carbon impact of the construction. What Tory MP Duncan Baker has described as the ‘concrete and steel elephant in the room’.
