I have a feeling of de'ja vu. The one time European Research Group of far-right Tory MPs, that did no research, that then morphed as the Covid Recovery Group, that sought to increase Covid infection rates, is now morphing again. It seems it will now be the Climate Action Group, of something akin to that.
A new backbench group is being set up for Conservative MPs disgruntled at the potential political cost of scrapping petrol and diesel vehicles and decarbonising homes this decade, who want to challenge the climate orthodoxy from those in Number 10.
The plan is to argue that climate science is wrong, and we can't afford it anyway. Farage is already trailing this on GB News. Destroying the economy and national health is not enough, the aim is to trash the planet as well.
As Politics Home also notes:
Insiders agree the number [of MPs ] so far is not significant – but when deadlines are actually at the door, or constituents come to them in large numbers, many more Tories could speak up.
I never thought that climate change would, in the end, get an easy ride; it simply conflicts too strongly with the libertarian narrative for that to be the case. Climate change requires collective action for a common good that is always going to be anathema to those on the right. Now we have due warning that the right wing are lining up to demand the right to take us to oblivion. The narratives need to be honed now. This one is the fight for survival, and we have to win it.
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I see that the Tax Justice Network is preparing to advocate a Carbon Dioxide tax with a border adjustment which should eventually mean that collective action required to gain the common good is coming if people jumped on board.
Obviously they are aware that in some countries the base amount in benefit claims would have to rise. But this is an acknowledgement that tax can change things.
I agree with you. And the right seem to have control of most of the media. Am I naive to put my hopes in a Progressive Alliance at the next election? (Isn’t it Europeam Research Group btw?)
Corrected
You have it give it to the Neo-liberals – they know how to act together and hold the line – be-proactive. It’s such a shame that it is for such malign purposes.
It just reifies the lack of leadership and togetherness in the opposing (and more likely factually based) view. This just emboldens the Tories and makes their counter-claims even more audacious.
Checks and balances on power? I don’t see any any more – do you?
All I have noticed recently is that everyone seems to be buying and using new SUVs. We’ve been choking ourselves into oblivion since Beeching.
What is the SUV thing about?
Actually….it is all about debt creation, of course
Yes – debt creation of course – AND the use of debt to make us feel good, to make us feel affluent and powerful and safer in the face climate change.
But when you look at the piles of scrap cars left after flooding, the SUVs are no different to a hatchback or saloon. They’re all toast.
We are on a hiding to nothing.
Maybe….
The most powerful lobby groups in the world are, tobacco, arms, and fossil fuels.
They have the money to promote their damaging interests and they have the most to lose when governments take action to limit their activities. And we have seen just how easily populists can manipulate the minds of the poorly educated in recent years with Brexit and the rise of the far right.
With fossil fuels, they don’t only have the population’s obsession with gas-guzzling cars to help them, they have the political alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia whose entire economies rely upon our consumption of oil.
But the groundswell of opinion may prove too much for even the vested interests of the fossil fuel industries. The consequences of climate change are no longer something we warn about happening in the future, we’ve already hit the first tipping points. Flooding in London and Germany, fires in America, Italy and Greece; these events are happening now and they will get worse. The vested interests of everyone else on the planet are now under immediate and real threat.
Germany may become the first nation to elect a Green leader when Chancellor Merkel steps down (it’s a close run contest). The old ‘they’ll never get elected’ argument is increasingly being cast aside by the ‘we have got to do something now’ argument – the world has changed and unless we change with it, climate change will increase exponentially, threatening our very existence.
You right but you are also wrong. Yes, tobacco, oil, arms all figure but don’t forget the sugar industry (who suppresses info on the harm sugar does in our diet), big pharma, big accounting and the likes of Dupont who have poisoned us all with Teflon – all this by using the same tactics as Imperial Tobacco. And that is on public record BTW.
The best lobbying group in the world though is the pro-market, anti-State profit driven Neo-liberal one that gets backed by the super-rich so that nothing is allowed to exist or move unless they can make loads of money out if it or where they offer funding to those who fight these issues on the condition that they ‘moderate their approach’.
By rights we have a right to know what our Governments are discussing with these organisations. We have to start asking.
According to Muzzacato the medico/pharma/insurance lobby is the second biggest in the USA behind the arms industry.
Where the USA leads we tend to follow.
Tobacco is small compared to the NHS and pharmaceuticals alone is four times tobacco.
I was referring to the most harmful lobby groups and I don’t believe pharma is in the same category as tobacco, arms, or fossil fuels when it comes to the damage inflicted. And much as I share Pilgrim Slight Return’s view on the damage done by the unrestrained free market, the main point of my post was about the impact of fossil fuel lobbying and the vested interests of the far-right on the climate emergency.
It is not an ideological fight versus the right…As the Chinese would in no way be described as being on ‘the right’ , you need to observe that in China a total of 247 gigawatts of coal power is now in planning or development, nearly six times Germany’s entire coal-fired capacity. China has also proposed additional new coal plants that, if built, would generate 73.5 gigawatts of power, more than five times the 13.9 gigawatts proposed in the rest of the world combined !!!Last year, Chinese provinces granted construction approval to 47 gigawatts of coal power projects, more than three times the capacity permitted in 2019. By comparison the UK has 3 (yes, just THREE) active coal fired power stations with a capacity of…… wait for it…….a massive 4.52Gw, and these will be switched off in 2024.
You think China is on the left?
“You think China is on the left?”
No my point is it’s not a left v right ideological battle. More importantly the issue is how to convince the regimes that are often beyond reason.. like China, Russia and those in the Middle East
And the UK is considering a new coal mine in Cumbria and a new oil field off Shetland. The fact is that we have a far-right government that talks a lot about climate change but does very little, and when the US was under far-right Trump, it withdrew from the Paris Agreement and reversed any progress the US was making.
What you failed to mention about China is that it also has a greater reliance on nuclear and hydro power than any other nation, it has invested heavily in cleaner transport systems (including electric vehicles), and it has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2060 (after a peak in 2030). Of course, that is too slow and won’t be enough but if our leaders set the wrong example, we have no leverage to persuade others to take more urgent action.
It isn’t the case that only the ‘left’ are taking positive action but it seems to be the case that the far-right are either in denial or prepared to sacrifice the planet, most likely for short-term personal gains.
China also has more wind power than any other country. That is always forgotten.
The launch of the youth led ‘Green New Deal Rising’ gives some hope that upcoming generations certainly get it – in spite of the best endeavours of the Daily Telegraph
http://www.progressivepulse.org/economics/green-new-deal-rising-is-both-our-youths-and-our-future
The problem is that this group of people are the modern continuation of people who believe in winners and losers.
History has taught them through never ending wars, colonisation, financial dealings, privilege in all its forms that as long as they belong to the group which comes out on top they will be ok.
This mindset will probably prevent them from understanding until it is far too late to even attempt to slow down global warming.
They must have descendants but even so that seems to make little difference.
Donald Trump’s thoughts on buying Greenland and the search for another planet to go to shine a light on how they think.
But like it or not, for once we are all in this together and a failure to acknowledge this will only waste time.
Thanks
Agreed
This is one of many so called think tanks or research groups funded by the right or ultra right. It fits in with the general trend of which Tax Justice and the New Statesman form part, as does the withdrawal of opposition from HM Opposition under the toothless Starmer. It is all depressingly in the same direction. Alok Sharma, the chair of COP26 feels no qualms in calling the meeting last chance saloon for the planet while approving gas and oil exploration licences. This is at the heart of what it means to espouse right wing philosophy. It ALWAYS rejects facts that require policy changes that will or even MIGHT impact on the freedom of the elite to highjack the wealth of the globe. The ideology is an absolute bar to abandoning short termism. It actually doesn’t matter that people like Sharma see (more or less) future reality. Their ideology prevents the adoption of policies to address these global problems absolutely regardless of the consequences. It is cultural blindness and the effect is identical to utter, mindless stupidity.
Realistically, I see no possibility of the world’s governments (who can’t see past telling the peasantry what they want to hear in order to secure the next election) and business leaders (who think “long term” means next quarter’s reported earnings) implementing the disruptive, expensive and unpopular measures needed to prevent the atmosphere reaching a tipping point (probably before the end of this decade) where natural forces (e.g. the release of methane from defrosting permafrost in Siberia and northern Canada) take over and plunge the world towards a climate catastrophe.
Perhaps we should give up concentrate on how we might deal with the consequences (droughts, floods, hurricanes, tropical desertification etc.) rather than kidding ourselves that we can somehow prevent the inevitable.
I’m almost glad that Sue and I were never blessed with children and therefore grandchildren.
But giving up is exactly what these evil *&€^%$£s want us to do and there’s no way I’m going to do that.
Nor me…..
Piketty suggest only wars reset capital vs labour – with destruction of physical capital, and millions dead. Either this now happens because of the impact of climate change – or because we preempt it and destroy fossil fuel capacity etc by our own actions, and replace it with carbon sero capital and produciton?
Aditya Chakrabortty was saying similar things recently
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/22/covid-climate-crisis-politics-individualism
Typically good Aditya