Environmental issues are no longer a “vote winner” in the race for the general election as the public worry about matters closer to home. 

While front-running political parties have stood on environmental platforms to jump ahead in the polls, over one-third of students from across the University’s four campuses ranked jobs and the economy as the most important election topic, in a recent RiverOnline survey. Green issues accounted for nine per cent of the vote. 

Zac Goldsmith, Conservative MP for Richmond Park, said: “Somewhere along the line, the political and media elite decided that the environment isn’t a vote winner. When five front bench Conservatives delivered significant green speeches day after day for a week, not one of them was picked up by the press.”

Mr Goldsmith, who has advised Conservative leader David Cameron on environmental policy, told RiverOnline at the end of last year that the Tory manifesto would be the “greenest of any party in the developed world, ever”, but at its spring conference in Brighton last month, green issues did not figure as one of the six themes the Tories will be using to contest the election.

However, Liberal Democrat MP Ed Davey believes that a sustainable environmental policy is key to ending the recession and believes the potential to save costs is worth the investment in energy-efficient buildings and infrastructure, like the country's first combined heat and power plant in Woking which he recently visited.

Mr Davey also thinks that effective taxation could get people to use environmentally-friendly modes of transport.

"We need to put a realistic cost on pollution and waste, and at the same time attach a value to the sort of things we want to encourage" - Zac Goldsmith

The Lib Dem representative for Kingston said: “Green issues are fundamental to our approach to ending the recession - it is significant to what we do. Liberal Democrats have always passed bills around energy conservation when we have had the chance to change the law.”

Both share the view that persuading the general public to buy into energy conservation is the most problematic part of implementing green policies and that new marketing strategies must be sought to make the environment a money saver rather than an arduous chore.

Mr Davey added: “People have so many other things going on in their lives so we have to make the task of reducing energy consumption easier. I think you have to initially sell green issues as money savers."

Mr Goldsmith, in an article for the Evening Standard, played down the notion that voters would be forced to choose between the environment and the economy, looking towards a taxation system, like Mr Davey, that rewards and penalizes people and businesses accordingly.

“We can safeguard our economy and the environment at the same time. We need to put a realistic cost on pollution and waste, and at the same time attach a value to the sort of things we want to encourage.”