My Green New Deal and Finance for the Future colleague, Colin Hines, had this letter in The Guardian this morning:
Nesrine Malik is right that Labour's continued electability will depend on it meeting the desires of the “left behind”, not just the relatively “well ahead”, and will involve huge investment in public infrastructure, secure work and the spreading of opportunity across the nation. Labour could achieve this by redefining growth as the increase in economic activity directed towards rebuilding public services and turbo-charging a green transition in every constituency. This must include retention and recruitment in these sectors through adequate pay levels, and in the process also boosting the businesses connected with them.
Older people are often accused of only supporting policies that appeal to their self-interest. Yet baby boomers like myself are worried about what the future holds for our children, grandchildren and indeed ourselves in terms of the health and care system. This concern could be turned into “intergenerational solidarity”, were Labour to prioritise encouraging the redirection of domestic savings and hence positively involve millions of savers in this transition. This would involve ensuring that all new ISA funds and 25% of new pension contributions are invested in social and green infrastructure projects.
“Savers for intergenerational solidarity” could be the funding rallying cry to improve people's lives and decrease the insecurity felt by many. This would also increase Labour's chance of re-election.
Colin Hines
Convener, UK Green New Deal Group
Those familiar with this blog will recognise the idea in savings. It comes from the Taxing Wealth Report.
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I’ve sent this and a couple of your other growth related blogs to my MP Ian Murray (the newly appointed Sec of State for Scotland. He’s interested in what you have to say, Richard, so perhaps if you were minded to reach out to him directly and offer to meet with him in person to have a conversation about your thinking, it might happen.
Can you mail me your links?
Much to agree with. If I may a (real) project example.
A building that produces 24/7/365 loads of heat – which it ejects to atmosphere. Just on the other side of the road – various fields used to produce crops. There is sufficient heat to heat a 50/50 mtre greenhouse – which could be locally or socially owned (JV farmer/land owner and locals?). Fresh local furit & veg – year round with the main operational expenditure (OPEX) – heat – reduced to zero. Local employment etc. Deliver fresh fruit/veg in boxes to locals. These are the sort of projects that need to be funded. Real project by the way – in the process of fleshing it out.
Keep going
For perspective…. on UK gas flaring……also ejecting to atmosphere….
Petrochems corporations are simply extracting the Michael as well as profits.
“It is estimated that during 2021,…… flaring of fossil gas,…. with a market value of $55 billion,…. was enough to support the import gas requirements of Germany, France, and the Netherlands.” ieefa.org
That is 3% of production, of a non-renewable energy source.
“Over the past 10 years, the UK has wasted some 13 bcm of natural gas through flaring and venting, releasing 45 million tonnes of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, exposing oil and gas operators to £1 billion of ETS payments and £2.6 billion in lost gas sales.” ieefa.org
Solutions are very high carbon taxes on offshore production, and emissions trading penalties, but the underlying attitudes are incredibly persistent.
The negative outcomes from pushback, inertia, unmet expectations and the practices of corporate fossil fuel companies dwarfs transitional arrangements.
The total absence of an emergent sustainable resource management approach, some 30 yrs into the supposed transition is deeply depressing, as there will be no substantive behavioural change without a revision of attitudes and hegemonic patterns.
One of the strengths of capitalism is always promoted as its adaptability, but it isn’t.
Transactionalism is such a strait jacket.
Thanks
brilliant, simple answer, as Richard says, keep going, for these kind of ideas are the future. To me there are a thousand similar, so obvious, so easy to implement with the correct political will, foresight and imagination.
What is the rationale for saying 25% of of new pension contributions should be invested in social and green infrastructure projects? I would have thought that, in view of the urgency of the situation, a much higher percentage, 75% say, would be appropriate.
Pragmatism.
But it also relates to the approximate tax subsidy
Go higher and there might be reduced pension saving
Always the pragmatist…..!
Well what’s the point of not being pragmatic.
Keep it up. Stick with it.
I’ve always unconsciously considered myself a ‘baby boomer’ but when I saw the phrase above I started to wonder just where was the line between generations and discovered that I was actually considered to be one of the ‘Silent Generation’.
So I feel that I can justifiabley be annoyed at these children in government demonising those in need today when it was the taxes of my generation that provide the healthcare and education and even financial support where needed that they enjoyed. (And didn’t leave them with loans of thousands to pay off if they went on to university!)
Sorry Richard, rant over.
“…all told, the question of how bad things will get is not actually a test of the science; it is a bet on human activity. How much will we do to stall disaster, and how quickly?”
“… it is human action that will determine the climate of the future, not systems beyond our control.”
“The climate system that gave rise to the human species, and to everything we know of as civilization, is so fragile that it has been brought to the brink of total instability by just one generation of human activity.”
“… we assign the task to future generations, to dreams of magical technologies, to remote politicians doing a kind of battle with profiteering delay.”
“Nowhere else in the known universe is a single planet as suited as this one to produce life of the kind we know, as Fermi’s only children. Global warming makes the proposition seem even more precarious. For the entire historical window in which human life evolved, almost all of the planet has been, climatologically speaking, quite comfortable for us; that is how we managed to get here. But it wasn’t always the case even on Earth, where it is no longer comfortable, and only getting less so. No human has ever lived on a planet as hot as this one; it will get hotter.”
“Climate change suggests another kind of sphere, manufactured not out of technological mastery but first through ignorance, then indolence, then indifference—a civilization enclosing itself in a gaseous suicide, a running car in a sealed garage.”
‘The Unhabitable Earth, A story of the Future”, David Wallace-Wells
On the general area of directing UK savings towards UK investment, this from the Standard: https://www.standard.co.uk/business/pension-rachel-reeves-ftse-b1171525.html
Why?
A completely mad idea
And I know she thinks I am mad. If she can dine up with such a bizarre idea,I’m know why
Does this “intergenerational solidarity” involve me not getting my full state pension which is due in 3yrs even though I have paid NI from the age of 18 to 65?
Far from it?
Why?