The Guardian has reported this morning that:
Labour, the Scottish National party and the Liberal Democrats have backed calls for a televised climate debate between party leaders ahead of the election, warning that time is running out to tackle the global heating emergency.
School strikers, students and pensioners' groups launched a campaign at the weekend to try to force political leaders to discuss the climate crisis live on television ahead of the December poll.
I am pleased to note that they add:
On Monday, Jeremy Corbyn supported the proposal, saying the upcoming election was the “last chance to radically change course, or face the threat of a hostile and dying planet”.
Corbyn is right.
This is, by far, the biggest issue in this election. It's much bigger than Brexit, although I'd suggest that is just a proxy for it. Those who are pro-Brexit are by and large older, and so indifferent or in denial of climate change, or are opposed to regulation, which tackling climate change will require.
So, bring it on, I say. Let's have the Green New Deal debate. We need it.
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maybe need to have one on YouTube/Facebook/Netflix or something? Telly stations resolutely refusing to allow SNP near anything at the time of writing. Would also reach the generations not watching telly any more?
An idea….but I am not sure my amateur production would get far
awww! wasn’t dreaming of you doing it yourself. You are already a very busy man.
There are several companies up and running with technical nous in the alternative media – the trick would be to get participants to agree to something so novel.
Hazel says:
“…..the trick would be to get participants to agree to something so novel.”
I don’t think recruiting participants would be the problem, I think the difficulty is getting it out to a mass audience.
And in such a way that the audience doesn’t immediately flip channel. Having said that, if it’s a younger generation you want to target ‘they’ keep telling us the youngsters don’t watch telly any more they live on their portable devices and don’t ‘do’ sentences.
Hazel says:
” Telly stations resolutely refusing to allow SNP near anything at the time of writing.”
Telly stations are well aware that whatever else might happen in the GE the SNP is not going to be forming a UK government. Neither will the Lib Dems.
The General election is English business, Corbyn vs Johnson with the apparently very real possibility of it becoming a three way contest if Farage is as good as his word and Johnson is arrogant enough to think he can handle a full slate Brexit Party challenge.
As the campaigns develop and maybe the result is still looking like a hung parliament English telly might begin to consider the nuances of Lib Dem and SNP seats in a confidence and supply role.
It’ll be a couple of weeks before we find out the nature of the Brexit Party position when they are forced to announce candidates and whether they will skirmish in target seats or go full-on.
Brexit continues to be what it has been from the start , a matter of how the Tory Party of England resolves its internal differences. 17.4 million people think it’s about them. That’s an indication of how many of the people you can fool and for how much of the time.
The Brexit Party has the candidates and I am told by a candidate they have all been assured they need not fundraise as all the required funding is already available for them
Nick Cohen of the Guardian reported that Farage persuaded 3000 of his followers to cough up £100 each for the privilege of possibly becoming a candidate for his party. They were encouraged to canvas but none of their names were taken when they arrived. The next day they received a mass email to say they had not been selected. I suspect that is where the funding has come from. Nice con trick and demonstration of how he regards his followers.
And as he also noted – those selected were remarkable predictable
UKIP and the elite, I’d say
The wealthy, their professional flunkies and their cheerleaders all know how money is created and how the GND can be funded. That’s what frightens them.
Labour is either not fully cognisant or is afraid to make it clear.
It, therefore, risks falling in to the usual elephant traps about “tax and spend,” “a debauched currency”, “national indebtedness”, “economic ruin” and “class warfare” and being pushed in to them by the forces of reaction.
And demonising specific capitalists puts a foot on the edge. It appears Labour does not have the wit or competence to apply Elizabeth Warren’s approach which focuses on a fundamental change in the rules governing capitalism. The futile ideological desire to somehow supplant or supercede capitalism appears to remain undimmed among many in Labour’s current high command.
It simply will not secure sufficient political traction to secure a Labour win.
What a waste of effort.
A debate among politicians ( not scientists or economic scientists then ) about the man-made and natural elements of climate change. What would be the point? The same politicians insist that the science is settled. It would be like debating plate tectonics as a cause of continental drift.
There’s also the risk that the politicians will make claims which are unscientific and which the fact checkers later rip to shreds e.g. that deaths from extreme weather are going up or there are more droughts or that RCP8.5 is possible.
It would be far better to have a programme about the topic made by the scientists. I’ll take education of voters over posturing to them any day.
The point of this debate would not be about the man-made or natural contributions to climate change, precisely because the science is settled – and most are at least paying lip service to that. The debate would be about what these politicians would do to prevent the worst impacts of that change, how they would steer the economy into a different direction, how they would protect those most vulnerable, how they would measure progress, what they would do on the international stage, etc. All of those are political, not scientific, questions.
There are plenty of programmes of scientists talking about the issue and what needs to be done. What we need is politicians spelling out how they are going to make it happen – and for people to see which of them are serious and which are just blowing smoke.
I agree with your conclusion
@ Spen Kneemore:
Are you saying that deaths from extreme weather and drought frequency aren’t increasing? A very rapid search will show you that both are increasing (although the drought situation is apparently muddied slightly by reduced frequency but increased impact).
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/global-warming-and-health/
https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/highlights/report-findings/extreme-weather
https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/global-changes-drought-conditions-under-different-levels-warming
What do you mean by RCP 8.5 is possible? Surely not that it is ok to continue as we are and not reduce greenhouse emmissions?
We’ll see how far the ground has shifted.
Brexit is an imperfect proxy for climate change, but I take your point about the age differential of the two sides and therefore their perceived stake in the outcomes. I’m more inclined to regard Brexit as a smokescreen or rearguard distraction tactic. It’s one of the few rational explanations for such a protracted piece of political nonsense.
The Tory position on GND is going to be an interesting piece of footwork. Is the electorate ready to be told that Tories want to ‘get Brexit done’ so they can get on with addressing climate change without being held back by those interfering Europeans….without the audience rolling in the aisles in an unseemly display of disbelief ?
I’m not sure about this being the biggest issue in voter’s minds.
I’d much rather subordinate/embed this within a general picture of broader Labour policy improvements to be honest.
Why? Because people love their cars. Either that or they need cars to stay in a job.
This should be handled really carefully. BREXIT and Climate Change are hotly contested areas – and by that I mean there is no end to the misinformation, winding up and political gain to be made by vested interests.
Far from a debate, you might just end up in a shooting gallery.
Debates can only be had in mature society’s that have rules.
Is ours one of those?!!
Answer: Not from what I have seen.
In an ideal world of course it should be. Nothing else make any sense whatsoever. But we’re up against the same old, same old issue of macro-economics. Until this is resolved any progress (i.e. general acceptance) is going to be painfully slow and in the case of the environment possibly too late.
After years of introspection, I have no pragmatic solution as to how to over-write the household budget analogy that has been so ‘successfully’ etched in the public’s subconscious and always lurks behind any policy statement by either of our two major parties. It would take an economically literate Prime Minister with an unassailable majority to stand up and explain to the nation how it has been misled and lied to for the past 40+ years. Norwich City has a better chance of winning the Premiership.
It would be insulting to your readership to continue referencing the same arguments year in and year out. However, via emails received just this morning, I’ve read 2 articles that, in totally different ways, underscore yet again the intractable nature of the problem. I’ll give the links just in case some others who, like me (and unlike you!), have time on their hands (I found the New Yorker article especially interesting) :
‘Home Truths’ – https://www.themintmagazine.com/home-truths-2
‘Liberalism According to The Economist’ – https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/11/liberalism-according-to-the-economist.
Nevertheless, even when confronted with seemingly unassailable dogma, one must continue to promote ideas & policies that pave the way for the sustainable life of future generations. All empires/ideologies built on sand eventually collapse. Neo-liberalism is no exception. It’s just that the sand is now slipping at an exponentially accelerating rate through the hour-glass.
Thanks
This is the continuing nightmare
John D I couldn’t agree more about your sentiment and those in your two related articles.
All I would say though that the arguments are not really to do with just philosophy: they are also arguments of utility as much as anything else. If we want people to change, then they have to be offered viable alternatives (public transport) and wage and tax policy to encourage take up.
Yes – we should be concerned with the horizon and what it might bring in terms of ecological disruption, but when you have people more concerned about the short term – either what they can’t afford (if they’re poor) or what they missing out on (if they are more affluent) or how long they might have to put with both, the longer term stuff gets thrown by the wayside.
A happier society (a fairer one?) is one that is less hostile to change – less threatened by it perhaps.
I was just thinking of a way to explain government expenditure and taxes as per MMT. Some thing to replace the trope of a paying off a credit card.
“The government borrows money from it own bank to pay for the NHS etc. and the loan is paid off by taxes.”
Short and based on personal experience but has major consequences in that expenditure comes first, not taxes and that government expenditure is an investment in people and infrastructure. It also has connotations that people not paying their taxes are not paying off the loans.
Good one
John D says:
“I have no pragmatic solution as to how to over-write the household budget analogy that has been so ‘successfully’ etched in the public’s subconscious and always lurks behind any policy statement by either of our two major parties.”
On of the first rules of ‘selling’ is that the appeal that makes sales is emotion not rational consideration. If the customer wants it (to satisfy some perceived unfulfilled need/desire) the rationalisation after the fact of purchase is the customer’s problem and customers are uncannily adept at justifying the most frivolous of purchases and the more it has cost the more tenacious they are in rationalising their folly.
Brexit is a classic example of this. The appeal was all emotional but the resistance to changing a decision made whimsically more than three years ago is now rock solid. Still not really rational but rationalisations abound: will of the people being denied, ‘principles of control and self determination, degrees of xenophobia to do with both immigration and them over there in Brussels telling us what to do etc…it’s all bollox but it won’t shift.
If we are to shift the household budget psychological constraint, first the customer has to have a perceived need to satisfy. Once the desire is developed it’s time to explain how it can be paid for.
Gertrude Thunderbird, bless her, has got a lot of people fired up to want something enough to begin to want an explanation of how it is to be paid for and delivered. The Green New Deal is capable of squaring that circle. It springs forth from an MMT understanding of money supply, it is inherently committed to putting idle workers (and I don’t mean that pejoratively) into meaningful and decently paid employment, and it opens up scope for creating safe longterm savings and pensions.
Like the cartoonist said, ….. but…but…what if we do all this and make the world a better place to live in and climate change really is only a hoax ?
Whilst I wholeheartedly agree with the premise of your original post on the importance of the ecology as THE central issue in this election, I have to add that the probity of our “leaders” in parliament must be an equal concern. Without honest leadership, nothing else will be dealt with honestly. Yes, I am an idealist, but if you can’t aim high during a General Election, when can you?
Fair point