/ Chicken Dinner / 27 March 2008 /

According to ChickenDinner, Ken Livingstone is banking on the voters in the London Mayoral election being green in more ways than one, and it could be a risky tactic.

As Ken drifts further from the shore in the betting (he's currently [3.0] to back on Betfair, Boris is at [1.52]) the two main candidates put on a display of their green credentials.

The prize for most sincere environmentalist in this current mayoral election is probably not going to determine who wins the chain of office, but it hasn't stopped the leading candidates from peacocking their credentials.

Earlier this week, Livingstone unleashed his maiden speech on global warming since the campaign officially began, insisting that the city needed someone to take control of the problem immediately in order to save us from a fiery, carbon-dioxide-induced Armageddon. "No-one needs a Humvee to go the shops," he claimed.

Some of his proposals are standard Ken fare - such as a new rent-a-bike scheme and investing more in recycling - while others stray into the eccentric, such as turning the Victoria Embankment into a traffic-free beach each August. In an apparent effort to push motorists to the brink of madness, he also proposes to cut speed limits on residential streets to 20mph and police them with cameras.

Boris Johnson's initiatives include ditching "Ken's propaganda sheet" The Londoner and using the money to plant 10,000 trees in London, arguing puzzlingly that "many trees are not distributed equally around the capital," and "areas that have pleasant, clean, open spaces are less likely to suffer from crime." Boris also claimed that more trees meant there'd be less dust on the streets and provide a natural defence system on hand to absorb rainwater from flash floods. Steady on, old chap.

More impressively from a vote-capturing perspective, Boris's enviro-manifesto, which he unveiled today, included proposals to pay Londoners for recycling. Cynics may suspect this carrot will go straight back in the bag should he win, but the plan, which involves weighing each house's recycled waste and rewarding with points redeemable at shops like IKEA, is modelled on a functioning American system.

But who's the greenest of the all? Easily Livingstone - he's always championed environmental causes and reputedly bores most of his staff senseless talking about it. Johnson comes across as Livingstone-lite on the environment, but that's his intention. He is painting himself as "the lesser evil", a shrewd tactic designed to cash in on voters who describe themselves as "green" but have vested interests (their cars, their cheap holidays, etc) Needless to say these voters outnumber real greenies quite substantially. Livingstone's honesty on this issue may work against him - London may fancy itself greener than it is prepared to deliver.

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