As the Guardian notes this morning:
Unilever is to scale back its environmental and social aims, provoking critics to say its board should “hang their heads in shame”.
They added:
On Friday, the London-based firm's current chief executive appeared to signal a strategic U-turn for the company, which is valued at £94bn on the London Stock Exchange. In an interview with Bloomberg, Hein Schumacher confirmed plans to water down the company's ethical pledges on a range of issues including plastic usage and pay.
There really can be no surprise here. Labour is expected to win the first term of what many will think likely to be at least a two term government this year. They have abandoned their green commitments and budgets. Why wouldn't business do the same?
Rachel Reeves should take note. Her decisions and smooching around the City have consequences. It is by no means clear that they are good.
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Subverting the Labour Party to right-wing thinking surely Thatcher’s greatest legacy!
Alongside this volte face, I’d add that we’ve just reduced our emissions reductions targets in Scotland, and that the UK as a whole is fudging the whole issue of compliance with our Paris commitments as exemplified by UK airlines….
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/19/uk-airline-emissions-on-track-to-reach-all-time-high-in-2024#:~:text=British%20Airways%20was%20still%20by,2019%20levels%2C%20according%20to%20T%26E.
Having cut UK headline emissions by 50% with the conversion from coal to gas, some years ago, politicians have just sat back and used this relatively quick win to justify current dithering and loss of momentum.
The Tories have been particularly poor, but now that the free market mindset of neoliberalism and dominance of corporate agendas, value extraction and blindeyeing externalities, has permeated LINO’s business ‘friendly’ approach, it is difficult to see how the UK can reach any of its net zero targets under Labour. Depressing, ain’t it ?
What will be the difference between the IMF running the country or the Starmer Party (formerly the Labour Party)?
The myopia of government in the UK over ” green ” issues may well be influencing industry, but it will inevitably bite them harder – The costs of making up ground will escalate the later it is left, the problems are not going to go away, they are inevitable. Labour are making precisely the same mistake as the Tories….
eg My home insulation project was completed in February by closing the last very small part of the thermal envelope left deliberately as original – Gas use is now 20% of where I started 7 years ago, the work done in stages, quantifying the effects out of curiosity, but the final closure was the cherry on top.
My point is this – The cost was only ca 1,000 euro in materials, but costs spread over time – When my neighbours find out their gas bills are 5 times mine they’ll panic, but costs will have gone up and the expertise available to do the job in short supply due to demand.
Southern England has been running out of water and power for decades and little has been done to address either – Just think what an 80% drop in grid demand, or water consumption no longer being the highest per head of population anywhere in Europe, would have brought to the equation ?
London hasn’t done long-term planning since 1946, as irony would have it, when Labour actually had principles….
I told my local Labour candidate yesterday that they (Labour) need to abandon Thatcher’s ideas, because there is no need to continue them, since they were always bad ideas. I said re-nationalisation was popular even amongst conservative voters. I told them that I left the party because of Rachel Reeves and the climb down on the environment and her insistence on growing the economy on nothing. I said that the risk of not spending enough to tackle green issues due to biodiversity loss and climate change was far greater than not “balancing the books”, and that Labour has a real chance to turn the austerity narrative against the tories but has chosen to throw that away.
& his/her response was?