As the Guardian has noted in an email this morning:
A group of Conservative politicians and their allies are attempting to derail the government's green agenda, leading climate scientists claim. The Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) has gained widespread media coverage in the past month, attempting to link the government's net zero agenda to the cost-of-living crisis and calling for cuts to green taxes and an increase of fossil fuel production. Michael Mann, one of the world's leading authorities on the climate and author of The New Climate War, said the group appeared to be attempting to drag climate policies into a culture war, which he described as a “dangerous new tactic being used by those opposed to addressing the ecological emergency”.
The fact that right-wing populists have not, to date, made a big fight back about climate change has always been a little surprising. They were, for a long time, at the heart of climate change denial. They remain the major proponents of the claim that markets can address all issues arising from climate change without any involvement by governments.
Denial did, of course, eventually fail them. The evidence that climate change is happening is overwhelming. It is said that this group of MPs do not deny that.
The claim that markets will, by themselves, address the issues arising from climate change is very obviously false. The fact that most of the investment still made by major oil companies is in carbon-based energy production is the clearest evidence of that. The inability of any market to manage almost any issue relating to the future that is of consequence to human well-being is a further indication of this failure. The whole process upon which business decision-making is based literally discounts the future consequences of current action.
As a result, a new line of attack is emerging. The claim is that it would be nice to have a future, but that we cannot afford it at present, and so we will have to forgo it. The nihilism inherent within this is all too obvious, except I suspect to those who are promoting it, who would appear to very largely be middle-aged men who are keeping their fingers crossed that they will make it through life before any of the consequences of their actions are really apparent.
The problem for them is that, as with their other claims, this one is very obviously false. We can, of course, afford a future. What we cannot afford is the future and the maintenance of existing property rights which are based upon the extraction of rents based upon the capture of the natural resources of the world in which we live to benefit the financial well-being of a few at cost to the vast majority.
So, for example, we literally cannot afford the existing returns to land that are forcing rents to the highest level in more than a decade, and increasing house prices, and all of the resulting fundamental threats to the cost of living and well-being of most families in the UK.
Nor can we afford the excess profits earned by energy companies, which also filter through into food pricing and so many other issues, all of which arise from resource exploitation.
The simple reality is there is as such no cost of living crisis in the UK, or around much of the world. There is instead a cost of resource exploitation crisis. It is the rents that people must pay to access the basics of living that are causing people to live in the financial stress that far too many suffer. And it is to the maintenance of this stress that this group of Tory MPs is dedicated.
We have a choice. We can have the future that we and our children want. Or we can maintain the current system of exploitation of the planets and the people who live upon it. What we cannot have is both.
The issues that we face is how to resolve this conundrum, but only one outcome is viable.
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No doubt a certain oaf called Steve Baker is involved?
And culture wars are another sure fire indicator of the fascist world we live bequeathed to us by Hitler and Stalin.
Correct on the first one PSR. ‘Buffoon Baker’ strikes again, spreading his particular brand of idiocy like a muck spreader spraying manure over a field.
As for the second, is it not the case that the right have nothing else left other than culture wars to get people voting for them. All their policies have been shown to be nonsense or lies. The supremacy of the market? The 2008 crash, energy crisis, housing crisis… Brexit? the lies are now being revealed.
So all that’s left is constant culture war rubbish to appeal to the ignorant, frightened and desperate. Divide and conquer, divide and rule. That’s it.
How do you suggest we deal with Russia and Saudi for the price they charge us for energy. Let’s be clear this isn’t about BP is Shell.. pricing is determined by Russia and the Saudi states for natural gas and oil.. they are causing the energy price inflation which is hurting the U.K. consumer more than anything – how do you suggest we deal with it?
If we had invested in renewable we would already largely be free of them now
It really is not hard to work out what to do
The irremediable flaw at the heart of neoliberalism is now being revealed to the public in ways the Conservative Party and Government can no longer hide from public awareness. Rishi Sunak is following the flawed script written by another Goldman Sachs political graduate, Timothy Geithner; whose catastrophic role in Obama’s presidency as Treasury Secretary, which led to the irredeemable fissure between Main Street USA and the Washington-Wall Street coalition to protect the Banks and Wall Street by sacrificing Main Street. The 10m mortgage foreclosures pursued by the Banks finally broke Main Street basic trust in Government and Constitutional procedure in this period may be seen as the root cause of the Tea Party, of public rage and division, and finally the outrage of Trumpism. Read Neil Barofsky, ‘Bailout’; after all he worked in Obama’s Administration as a high-level Fraud Prosecutor in TARP, and saw the Obama Treasury in action close-up.
Sunak is now delivering the same prescriptive neoliberal, banking Holy-writ; translated into British, Conservative Newspeak, with much the same results in broken dreams, unfilled promises and the profound suffering of ordinary people; but only a grotesque parody of government, and with a single creepy purpose; to reduce the population to a dependency culture on submission to a life in permanent bondage to banks through mortgages and loans; a life of finkncialised serfdom to neoliberalism’s valueless values. Let me explore the latest version of the Sunak neoliberal playbook; the solution he has invoked to solve an energy crisis caused solely by Conservative Government’s abject failure adequately to manage or plan the national energy requirements and risks, over decades.
Sunak’s solution is centred on a classical hedge-fund/banker’s stratagem. He is implementing a £200 discount on every consumer’s October energy bill. Be very clear about this; this is not a discount, it is a classic banker’s move to turn a payment into an opportunity to extract a rent. It is not a gift, it is not a discount – it is a loan. Indeed it is a completely new kind of loan that only an ideologue, neoliberal, hedge-fund/banker could even imagine in a dream, never mind actually implement such a mad, crackpot, out-of-control idea to anyone outside the lunatic far-right: this “discount” is the invocation of a very British socio-political coup: it is a compulsory loan. The neoliberals have finally reached the end-game: they are financialising even people. We are now just debts; and the banks (through a compliant government) are all our creditors. We are at their disposal. Doubt me if you will, but this is how ‘This is Money’ describes the £200 Sunak energy discount: “The £200 energy bill rebate is not optional, meaning that every eligible household in the UK will have the lump sum deducted from their energy bills in October.”
Rishi Sunak is quite likely to be the next PM. Good luck with that; but do not say you were not adequately warned beforehand. The best you can hope for is that it ends badly, quickly. As for me? Scotland, get me out of here!
Beam me up, Scotland 🙂
To this SE England based Englishman that has an attractive ring to it John. I wonder whether the only hope for democracy in Britian is an independent Scotland.
John,
Thanks for your input,enlightening as always.
Dd
Thanks for another supremely coherent analysis of this problem. I was drawn to your pertinent comment that: ‘The nihilism inherent within this is all too obvious, except I suspect that those who are promoting it would appear to very largely be middle-aged men who are keeping their fingers crossed that they will make it through life before any of the consequences of their actions are really apparent.’
This may be the consequence of the extreme right wing being abandoned by their parents in boarding schools. As a result they learned to care only for themselves with scant feelings for future generations, even their own whom they also sent to boarding schools. This probably also explains their opposition to assisted suicide. They don’t trust their own children not to baulk at seeking their inheritances early!
I should make clear that the non-optional “rebate”, wil therefater compulsorily be reclaimed in £40 instalments over five years. The purpose here is not just to achieve a banker’s solution; but to establish a banker’s precedent, with a Parliament and Government seal of approval – the endorsement of sovereignty: the compulsory loan, the repayment; people as financialised serfs. Neoliberals will sell this filth as “freedom”.
I am inclined to agree with you
Richard,
I think this move is a critical issue. It actually goes to the heart of the matter, the financialisation of values. The American economist and Economic Historian Michael Hudson examined this matter in a very scholarly work, ‘…. and forgive them their debts’ (2018); taken from the Lord’s Prayer, but a theme througout both Luke and Matthew, New Testament, and drawing on a long tradition – the Debt Jubilee. The sub-title of Hudson’s work provides an insight into its importance: “Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year” (not the Queen’s!). Hudson shows that the Sumerians had a much better grasp on the essentials of economics and finance, than Neoliberalism.
Hudson analysed the modern problem recently in ”Creating Wealth’ Theough Debt’, (World Review of Political Economy, 2019), in which he focuses on a double-crisis, of: “austerity stemming from debt deflation, while public health, communications, information technology, transportation and other basic infrastructure are privatized by corporate monopolies that raise prices charged to labor and industry. The debt crisis spans government debt (state and local as well as national), corporate debt, real estate mortgage debt and personal debt, causing austerity that shrinks the “real” economy as its assets and income are stripped away to service the exponentially growing debt overhead. The economy polarizes as income and wealth ownership are shifted to the neo-rentier alliance headed by the financial sector.This veritable counter-revolution has inverted the classical concept of free mar-kets. Instead of advocating a public role to lower the cost structure of business and labor, the neoliberal ideal excludes public infrastructure and government owner-ship of natural monopolies, not to speak of industrial production. Led by bank lobbyists, neoliberalism even opposes public regulation of finance and monopo-lies to keep their prices in line with socially necessary cost of production.To defend this economic counter-revolution, the national income and product accounts (NIPA) and gross domestic product (GDP) measures now used through-out the world were inspired by opposition to progressive taxation and public own-ership of land and banks. These statistical measures depict finance, insurance and real estate as the leaders of wealth creation, not the creators merely of debt and rentier overhead.What Is China’s “Real” GDP and “Real Wealth Creation”?Rejection of classical value theory’s focus on economic rent—the excess of mar-ket price over intrinsic labor cost—underlies the post-classical concept of GDP.”
This is a counter-revolution, largely being conducted with huge resources throughout media and social media (who can now distinguish between politicians, spads and journalists?). Of course, you can’t. Nobody notices, and nobody cares – because only those who don’t care can be sure that their neoliberal voice will be heard everywhere; selling serfdom as freedom.
Debt Jubilees are avoided and hated by neoliberals; like sunlight falling on a vampire! In crises, of course they become necessary, even for neoliberals (Financial Crash, War, Pandemic nd on and on); but then hastily forgotten; but the neoliberal resort to them is only when it is already too late, and the recovery is then never satisfactory; and it is therefore worse when the next crisis erupts. All because we are trying to protect an unsuable theory. Hudson neatly summarises the distorted reasoning of Austrian (neoliberal) ‘utility’ theory: “Focusing on consumer psychology instead of production costs, it claimed that there is no difference between value and price. A price is whatever consumers ‘choose’ to pay for commodities, based on the ‘utility’ that these provide—defined by circular reasoning as being equal to the price they pay.” (Creating Wealth, p.3 of 20)
Thanks
Allow me to make this clear. Debt Jubilees are embraced greedily by Neoliberals when in a jam; but solely – for bankers; The Sumerians used Debt Jubilees to protect the public realm and the economy from greedy creditors. Neoliberals use Debt Jubilees in a crisis to protect the banks from their own geed and stupidity, and ensuring the public realm foots the bill. There is nothing more to it than that.
I’m still thinking about what this actually means. We know that if you have a household of four people, say two adults and two mature children, the household gets the benefit of the initial discount but should that household then splinter into four individual households (Mum and Dad separate and they and both kids all get their own individual place) then over five years each individual household will each have to pay back that entire initial discount, making this more of an involuntary form of taxation rather than actual assistance.
Will it work the other way though? What if two separate households (him and her) both get the initial discount and then move in together making one new household? How much will get levied on that household’s bills in that case? No-one seems to be talking about that. Of course, their moving in together leaves one existing household empty. Suppose it’s taken up by someone immigrating here from abroad. Will their bills still be inflated to pay back a ‘loan’ they never got? Again, this feels more like a dwellings tax than any form of assistance. Be interesting to see where this goes over the next few years.
Totally relevant questions
The question of who repays this unwanted loan is something that has been bothering me. I have not seen any explanation of how it will work when households change, either merging, separating or death of the utility account holder. Plus the new households forming in future who will not have had the £200 but will presumably have an extra £40 annually added to their bills. It sounds like a scam!
It is a scam
If suppliers price their customers out of being able to buy their products, they end up with no customers and go bust. Serves them right, and their greed solves the problem they created in the first place. Suppliers that scream for government support should be firmly told NO just like with a naughty child.
But we have many markets that are rigged…
Mr Walker,
Your energy supplier doesn’t supply your energy; a network provider supplies your energy, and you may not even know who they are (you only find that out in a crisis – like a serious storm – then you find your supplier only suplies the price, nothing else: nothing). It is an effective monopoly, because you only have one electricity supply into your property.
In what way is the rail network competitive (but it is subsidised)? Meanwhile a friend of mine informed me two relatives have just paid £400 for a rail trip to Manchester. How does that supposed “free” market work? It doesn’t. A collection of subsidised or bust operations providing an elaborate and grossly inefficient ‘service’ that competes with nothing, does not promote a green agenda, or any agnda save phony neoliberal ideology.
Very many of Britain’s supposed ‘markets’ are not free, especially those providing critical services; and if they were free they would go bust. The public are being serially ripped-off by effective monopoly power in many areas of business; but presnted as if they are free market operations.
We don’t need fancy highbrow waffling. The simple fact is that BP and Shell have announced disgusting obscene profit.
If they had any consciences between them then they would raise the wages of their staff. The hourly rate for staff working in bp petrol stations hovers around £9. How they pay that little when they gloat about “having more money than they know what to do with” is again disgusting. On a general note this obscene greed by those at the top exploiting those at the bottom was made much worse by Margaret Thatcher. We are still suffering from her “let the market decide” mantra today and it is not going to improve while you have the likes of bp, shell, santander, lloyds bank, etc etc etc making huge profits and paying a pittance to those who make them that profit and we get the likes of Tony Danker and his predecessor Caroline Fairburn continually arguing to keep wages down by falsely claiming “businesses cannot afford it” and “higher wages will cost jobs”. We have all been brainwashed by these types of arguments and the fatcats are laughing all the way up the sweeping driveways of their mansions.
The working class have been assigned to the scrapheap and they are mostly powerless to effect any change to this grossly unfair system.