I wrote a tweet yesterday that caused quite a lot of reactions. This was it:
One reaction was this:
Gary Lineker then got this reaction:
The response is boringly typical of a widespread right-wing trope that suggests there is absolutely no point in the UK doing anything on climate change because most emissions come from China and the USA and so whatever we do is of no consequence.
I disagree with that claim, for at least three reasons.
First of all, if no one does anything then nothing will happen and the full impact of climate change will hit us all even sooner than already looks to be likely.
Second, leadership requires that someone take the lead.
Third, if everyone says they are waiting for someone else to take the lead then we are back with my first point, and nothing will happen.
In other words, it takes someone with some clout to make clear that change has to happen, and given quite how massively climate change will impact the UK (not least because of our dependence on imported food imports) it might as well be us.
Is that a failure of critical thinking on my part? I don't think so. I think it's about calling for leadership, something about which I wrote another tweet last night:
Leadership is most definitely not about following the pack, but that seems to be what the right wing wants when it comes to climate change. How very unsurprising.
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What was that wonderful term that used to appear in Board of Trade enquiries into the loss of British ships
‘Failure to command’
I follow the Horseshoe Party on twitter, i don’t think anyone, apart from you, would call the threads the post as “right wing”..,
I said that was a right wing trope.
It is.
I have no idea what else they say. I commented on a tweet.
I don’t follow the Horseshoe Party (never heard of em until now).
However, like vile-liebore, they box themselves in with a meme in this case “if the UK does something ref CO2 emissions it will make no difference cos of China & USA”. One could characterise “do something” as reducing CO2 emissions or……………….become more resilient in the face of an increasingly unstable climate. This resilience could take many forms: more local production of foods that are currently imported, better use of land for growing stuff, more embedded (zero carbon) renewable generation, which in any case is low cost. In the case of local food production, it would employ more people. “National resilience” is perhaps a more useful way of framing action with respect to the developing climate disaster.
It does not mean, a la North Korea, autarchy, but equally, perhaps we should be asking (and answering) questions such as: “why does the UK import water from Southern Spain” (in the form of fruit & veg). Why don’t we develop more vibrant & diverse local economies (which could also be low carbon).
Stating that “no point in reducing CO2 emissions cos it makes no difference” is a very sterile way of looking at a much bigger problem (well actually it is a way of refusing to look at the bigger problem)..
I thought the UK was world beating during Covid. Johnson claimed our Track & Trace, vaccine rollout and everything else we did was world beating; we haven’t got British Rail anymore, It’s now Great British Rail. The political right really should decide whether we are world leaders or not.
Showing leadership on climate change is the main challenge outside of war for any politician these days and what better way to reinforce that leadership than by setting an example in your own country. This doesn’t appear to be on the cards with Sir Keep Samer who’s clearly been taken in by Thatcherite dogma on how sovereign monetary systems work. He’s therefore a follower not a leader!
“Most emissions come from China and the USA.”
In terms of our total usage of Earth’s regenerative resources, though, the picture is somewhat different. For example, it’s no good having sparkling clean air if we can’t feed ourselves on arable and pasture land and from the sea.
We run an Ecological Footprint “bank balance”, and we can account for the spendthrift and the miser on an annual basis.
If the population of the world lived like Americans, we’d run out of regenerative resources by 13 March. If the world lived like the British, we’d be able to live a bit longer – but the Earth Bank would stop cashing our cheques on 19 May.
The Chinese? They are widely condemned, but If we used up the world’s natural resources as If we were all Chinese, we would survive until June 2.
And if we continue to live the way we do, eventually the bank manager is going to “pull a Coutts” on us. Our call on the Earth will exceed its ability to replenish this year on 2 August.
To express it otherwise, as humans we are expending the resources of 1.7 Earths this year. And the USA and the UK are *worse* offenders than China for abusing our bank balance.
https://www.overshootday.org/about/
Totally agree.
As you know, I like railways and that introduced me to China Rail’s steam locomotive fleet in the late 1990’s – the SY and SJ class in particular being used on freight and passenger traffic. It resulted in some beautiful photography I can tell you.
Steam traction in China has been reduced right down by dieselisation and even electrification. I think it my have been eradicated on the mainline but as was the case in England, it may still be operating on internal colliery and steel mill networks. But the fact is that it has been reduced significantly.
Of course the problem is what it is being replaced with – private car use and diesels – but no one can say that China has not made a contribution or that it does not continue to do so. The UK has to chip in too.
The mess we’ve got ourselves into is through the road and motoring lobby who I think are responsible for the destruction of our rail and tram/trolley bus systems as well as thinking it was a good idea to put souped up diesel engines in small cars (my diesel mechanic brother says this was a huge error).
So now we have a dependency culture on cars and the widespread use of diesel even though the major car manufacturers knew what your local car mechanic knew – that all diesels are more highly polluting until they meet their optimum operating temperature. And the start and stop nature of urban driving makes diesels more polluting. The car industry it seems set its own pollution parameters and even lied about those.
We should be pursuing the manufacturers and road lobbyists about their gross lies and self interest but all we can do is come up with half arsed excuses like this.
I’m still waiting for a public enquiry about the growth in diesel and lies about emissions. Instead, a mini-market is created for claims against the manufacturers that encourages people to seek compensation and helps others to make money out of it – just like in the credit insurance fiasco a while back.
The attitude is ‘There you go, here’s some money for the diesel car you bought on false advice, now piss off and leave us a loan’. The industry that lied and created this mess gets to call the shots again. Why?!
It simply won’t do, because we’ve got cars on the road far more polluting that we were told and which by rights should be taken out of circulation. But no – we’d rather bitch about the Chinese and the U.S. instead.
Market led solutions? No way.
I was listening to the MMT Podcast on YouTube last night with Randall Wray providing commentary on issues occurring in the US and the UK. What struck me the most was his observation that most politicians must understand that claims of central government ‘running out of money’ or having ’empty coffers’ as I believe someone (Lucy Powell?) from the Labour Party rather stupidly claimed recently, is indeed complete and utter hogwash. That apparently no politician – and specifically, no British politician appears to have the courage to take a prominent lead on this and begin the process of enlightening the electorate underscores Richard’s entirely accurate point about the genuinely disturbing lack of leadership shown by either of the UK’s main political parties (and in all fairness, the minor ones too) on almost every major issue.
I regularly encounter people who hold a dogmatic belief that MMT (those that have even heard of it) is simply ‘printing money’ which they claim will inevitably lead to hyperinflation. Attempting to engage these people with simple observations and evidence has (for me at least) proven fruitless. With both the Conservatives and Labour attempting to outflank each other on ignorant short-termism and pandering to the press there appears to be little hope of any high profile individual willing to raise awareness of our dire circumstances with the voting public, significant numbers of who still refute either the existence or severity of climate change and its rapidly approaching impact on all of us, or our ability to fund the necessary policies to deal with this looming catastrophe.
P.S. I also had a quick look at the Horseshoe Party’s Twitter and wasn’t disappointed: “Radical Centrism” was just one of the gems they claimed to have in their hoard.
Zoe Williams, in her interview with Neal Lawson today, quotes this tweet referring to the Labour Party – “Tough on hope, tough on the causes of hope”. Despair seems appropriate.
Indeed
I read the article on Neal Lawson too and thought that was an excellent phrase which depressingly says so much about Starmer’s Labour. The unwillingness to show any kind of leadership on issues, backing off if any group looks like they might object. Ulez and green being just the latest example.
There is a real risk of voters just not bothering to vote as they can see nothing worthwhile coming from Labour which might tackle the massive damage caused by the Tories. More or less the same but a bit more competent.
As they say, there is nothing worse than a bad strategy competently implemented, which might be what Labour are offering.
Ladies and gentlemen I present you with Sir Keep Samer – “Tough on hope, tough on the causes of hope”.
In this instance I take the PSR angle. Though some Tories are stupid, in this case , I think most of MPs -and Daily Mail journalists (I heard they have a double page spread on green policies today ) DO know that what they saying about green policies is wrong, and indeed dangerous. In my view it makes it more culpable.
For today’s Tories there is nothing they will not ‘weaponise’, regardless of the rights and wrongs, facts and falsehoods. Whether it is climate, housing, immigration or anything else, all they look for are opportunities to create division and attack Labour and the Opposition.
Starmer’s response at the moment seems to be to duck, avoid and hide. I just don’t think that is sustainable, let alone admirable. At some point he needs to be prepared to take them on. It’s called leadership.
The tweet asks ‘how much clout do we have ?’
Well as a G7 member and a permanent security council member at the UN, actually quite a bit and certainly far more than most countries.
I’ve noticed the evolvement in the last few years of the anti-climate change lobby from straight up ‘deniers’ to ‘delayers’, ie – ‘yes, man made climate damage is real, but these net zero targets we set are stupid, unachievable and will ruin jobs and economies’.
It’s just mitigation for the fact that we haven’t done enough over the last two decades. and every year we fail just means a steeper hill to climb. Once upon a time a target of 3% global pollution reductions annually has now risen to maybe 10%.
In terms of the big polluters, I always look at per capita data and industrial output. China are big polluters because they actually make stuff, including most of the worlds renewable infrastructure in addition to a huge population. America, a smaller population with little industrial output compared to China and ‘western lifestyles’ and so on. It’s important to get a fuller picture.
Have you seen the rumours that the wildfires were started by an Orthodox local sympathetic to Russia.
One of the biggest available scoop and waterbombing aircraft in the Mediterannean is the Beriev Be-200. These aircraft have been leased from the Russian supplier by Greece before in 2021, Israel and Turkey to help fight forest fires. the logic of the conspiracy theory is that the fires will make us realise how much we miss cordial relations with Russia, and so make western countries more likely to support a truce along the Ukraine-Russia line of conflict.
Then again back in Britain there’s a truce already among the 2 big parties as it seems all their differences have been sorted apart from the labels on the tin.
There is a suitable response tio this theory.
It goes along the lines of ‘total bollocks.
“… recent studies have shown that extreme heat could cost the United States $100 billion annually from the productivity loss alone. If left unchecked, it could sap away one-sixth of global economic activity by the year 2100. ‘The recent heat waves and scorching summer temperatures demonstrate the economic cost of heat stress,’ Chris Lafakis, Moody’s Analytics’ director of economic research, wrote in an emailed response to a CNN query. ‘Heat waves can cause mortality and produce disruptions in business continuity. Heat waves can also stress regional power grids, driving up the cost and availability of space cooling. Workers, especially those who work outdoors, are less productive’, Lafakis added. Moody’s Analytics estimates that chronic physical risk from heat stress could reduce worldwide GDP by up to 17.6% by 2100.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/23/economy/extreme-heat-economic-impact/index.html
With every day and every massive policy faux-pas from Keir Starmer, it becomes depressingly obvious that politics in the UK has no place for leaders or visionaries.
The tories always have been useless, the Liberals are still reeling from their disastrous lap-dog coalition stance but Labour are truly losing the plot.
As amenable and hopeful Corbyn was, he seemed to lack the nous to lead labour into a position of power. But bejaybers he seems to be 100 times the leader Keir could never be.