In May 2001, Children's Express reporters teamed up with Sky News to produce four films on key election issues as seen from the perspectives of the next generation of voters. The films included challenging interviews with the three main party leaders: Charles Kennedy, William Hague and Tony Blair. This article is adapted from the third in the series, on global warming.
Humans are slowly destroying the only home they have. Burning coal and oil traps heat in the atmosphere, and contributes to global warming. It has a disastrous effect on the climate.
In 1997 world leaders met in Kyoto and signed an agreement to cut back on the use of green house gases. But over the last few months the Kyoto Agreement has fallen apart.
John Prescott, Secretary of State for Environment, Transport and the regions, tried to play down the implications at the time: "There isn't a deal, that's unfortunate, because people wanted the deal. But that's life, we get on with the job."
But the American President was unequivocal. "We are now in an energy crisis," he said. "And that's why I decided to not have mandatory caps on CO2."
In last October's storms in England, villages, towns and cities were left under water. Global warming became a reality, and our flood defence systems weren't ready for it.
Six months later, many parts of the country are still recovering. Yalding was one of the worst hit areas. Over 300 residents have had to evacuate, and only three families have been able to move back in.
Ian Scott showed us round the flood-ruined ground floor of his riverside home. "This is six months after the event, and we have people's homes still in this sort of condition," he told us.
The government promised to help flood victims rebuild their lives. For many that help never arrived.
"We've just been ignored and neglected because we're not newsworthy any more," said Mr Scott. "There is a myriad of things that the government's promised money could be spent on. The only problem we've got is we haven't seen a single penny of government money."
Political intervention
Tony Blair says the government more than played its part in responding to the crisis.
"We put - I can't remember the exact figure, but I think it's something like £400 million into flood defences over the next 3 years. So you know, there's a great deal of money that's going into it, and there are special allocations that have been made to local authorities under a scheme which means we reimburse local authorities for problems that they've had. So, honestly, I don't know the answer to Yalding's case particularly."
Would a Conservative government have responded differently?
"We certainly want to help communities that have been badly affected by flooding," William Hague told us. "because I think this is going to be a growing problem. I think we'll have more floods in the coming years as serious as the ones that we've just had. And certainly we have to protect against the possibility of that.
"So yes, we will give help to communities that are badly affected by flooding, or that may be badly affected by flooding. And we'll try to make sure that it doesn't happen again."
America’s President
George W Bush's failure to sign the Kyoto Agreement was a huge disappointment to everyone involved in the fight against global warming. Charles Kennedy implied to us he'd seen it coming.
"Well, I think the, the new American President has very much aligned with business and commercial interests with the oil interests. He's from Texas, he's been in the oil industry himself. And so he's probably not that sympathetic to a lot of things that were involved in Kyoto. But it's a mistake. I just hope that the British Government, and all of us in British politics will press the President as much as we can to think again."
Mr Blair, however, has no plans to labour the issue with Mr Bush. "There's no point in us simply battering the ears of the American President or the American administration, because that won't work. What we do have to do, is to agree how we recognise the problem together, and then work on a different range of solutions to beat it.
"I remain myself deeply committed to the Kyoto process. I think it's very important, but I think we'd make a big mistake as a world if we said this isn't a problem."
About the teamThis article is based on the Future Voters film presented by Ben Baginsky, 15, and Danyel Edwards, 14. Produced by Chris Rogers and Children's Express. It was broadcast on Sky News.
