Climate change is the biggest challenge we have. It's bigger than. Any war we've ever fought. It's bigger than any political crisis we've ever had. That's because it's existential. Now, the Tories are in denial about it and are withdrawing their support from government policy on the issue. Why? What are they playing at?
This is the transcript:
Where did the climate consensus go?
Climate change is the biggest crisis that we face.
It is bigger than any war we've ever fought.
It's bigger than any political crisis that we've had.
This is existential.
We know that COP29 has not really delivered for the developed countries of the world.
We know that the UK government is not doing enough to deal with the problem in the UK and that puts it amongst most of the governments in the world.
We need to keep temperature change to 1.5 degrees and the likelihood that we will is now very low and diminishing rapidly. We are, therefore, facing a potential calamity as the rate of climate change increases, and the degree - the literal degree - by which temperature will rise on average is growing towards two per cent and maybe well beyond.
You would have thought that this would be the point at which a political consensus would emerge in the UK and even be reinforced, but that is not the case. What seems very obvious is that Kemi Badenoch is, as the new leader of the Tories, wanting to deny that climate change is an issue, and is most certainly seeking to oppose anything that Labour is doing on it - inadequate as what Labour is doing is.
In other words, the climate consensus that we had in the UK, which was rather surprisingly created by Theresa May, when she put a net zero obligation into UK law at the end of her premiership, is breaking down. And it's breaking down deliberately.
It's not breaking down because there is no longer a consensus around climate change. In a sense, that's history. 95 per cent of people probably now accept that climate change is human-made and that we have the responsibility for addressing it. Certainly, climate science is settled, for all practical purposes, on that simple, straightforward fact. But politically, Kemi Badenoch is in denial of that science.
And she's in denial of that public opinion as well. That public opinion is particularly, of course, shared by younger people, and maybe not by those to whom she is seeking to appeal, the average over 70-year-old Tory voter and Tory party member. But, amongst everybody else, the concern is rising. So why is she in denial about climate change?
I wish I could answer that because I genuinely don't know.
I don't know why anybody is in denial about climate change when it is so very glaringly obviously happening.
The fact that we get flooding on a scale that we have not had not only in decades but for very much longer than that. is a very clear indication that something quite extraordinary is going on inside the world's environment.
Just the fact that we are seeing changing weather patterns, not just in the UK, but around the world, is further clear evidence of that.
That the severity of storms is growing is further evidence.
And the fact that, of course, there is a drought in much of the Middle East, and water is drying up, quite literally, is yet more evidence.
But the likes of Kemi Badenoch say this doesn't matter - we can transition to live with these arrangements. It is of no consequence that water levels are going to rise. We can manage that or whatever it might be and GDP will be very little affected. So, what are we worrying about?
This is all based upon some economics done a while ago by a chap called Nordhaus, who won a Nobel Prize for claiming that, actually, the consequences of climate change weren't that significant when it came to GDP and, therefore, we really didn't need to worry. And as Steve Keen and very many others have shown, the work that Nordhaus did was absolutely and utterly wrong because he assumed that we could survive extreme climate change without any consequence for the quality of human life whatsoever, which is complete nonsense.
But the Tories are in denial about this. I genuinely worry about this fact because, for me, climate change has always, since I was really quite young - I think I was 13 when I first became aware of the issue, and we're therefore talking about 1971, for me - climate change has always been a matter of major concern.
The fact that we might destroy our chance to live on this planet was something that I worried about as a teenager, and I worry about just as much now.
Most of the young people I know also worry about it quite reasonably because the damage that my generation has caused will have consequences for them and will have to be dealt with by them if life on earth is to continue in the way that they would quite reasonably desire.
Now, that continuation is possible, but not without planning. And this is where the Tory position is something that I find so difficult to explain. If it is possible to manage climate change, and the science suggests that it still is, and that we could still end up with outcomes that are acceptable, why do the Tories not want to ignore that?
Is it that they want to condemn us to a future that is so unpalatable that none of us want to think about it?
Or is it that they are just plain straightforwardly ignorant about the possibility because they believe that everything comes down to the present and how much we can earn in it?
I come down to the unfortunate conclusion that they just think everything is about the present and making money.
They're wrong. It isn't. And the climate change consensus that we had, imperfect as it was, is something that has to be restored.
If Kemi Badenoch does not do that, I think her time as Tory leader is going to be limited. She has to understand that the people of this country are worried about climate change, and if she doesn't, she'll have to go.
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The election of Trump has given the far-right everywhere, including the UK Tories, permission to join him in that wierd climate-denial space. It seems it’s no longer the case that politicians are merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic – they’re deliberately steering right for the ice-berg! Talk about disaster capitalism….
I think the logic goes like this:
1. The changes required to address climate and ecological breakdown in the ways suggested by scientists are impossibly huge.
2. Being practical involves addressing things that can be changed.
3. There may be hard times and challenges ahead, but pluck, courage and traditional values will see the country through (others may not be so lucky, but that has always been the case).
3. Ensuring that traditional values survive requires taking power.
4. Trump has shown that power can be taken by criticising establishment [Neoliberal] systems as being Left and Woke while promising to focus on traditional values.
5. Many of our natural supporters and funders much prefer the approach taken by Trump, Orban etc., as strong Government will be required to bring us through the challenges we face.
There is no logic in that
Here is some logic:
“But the likes of Kemi Badenoch say this doesn’t matter – we can transition to live with these arrangements”
She better start arranging for waves and waves of mass migration on a scale no one has ever imagined.
She should explain how fighting climate change is a very important tool for fighting waves of mass migration.
As the great American educationalist/operations researcher Russell Ackoff noted in his
f-Laws , the natural Conservative disposition is to do nothing about a problem.
According to Ackoff, Liberals will do ‘something’ and even ‘anything’ and ‘radicals’ as he calls them will rip it up and start again. All he asked was that all of them did some research to understand the problem before deciding on their natural course of action.
In many ways the Tories have made doing nothing the new cult in government, made ‘nothing’ an institution. They have had plenty of time to make sure that nothing good happened anyway and also that nothing good could follow on afterwards.
My only question is what else would we expect?
In many ways I hope that the Tories continue to want to do nothing because sooner or later they will be shoved out of the way by events – just ask the people of Wales and the South about that.
And OTOH if their stance appeals to others, then we will know where we stand. The next election is Laboured’s to lose.
What was it that Harold Macmillan said when ask what he feared most”
“Events, dear boy, events”
PSR – this reminds me of a song from many years ago which aptly covers the points you make:
Busy doing nothing,
Busy the whole day through,
Trying to find lots of jobs not to do…….
Perhaps someone else knows the rest of it.
Available here https://genius.com/Bing-crosby-busy-doing-nothing-lyrics
Thanks, Richard – that sums it all up well.
Angela Merkel was asked by Katya Adler if being a scientist (doctorate in Quantum chemistry) helped her political career.
She replied that it had. She answered she said little until she had seen the evidence, arguments and the numbers.
We could do with more of this.
🙂
Thank you, Ian.
Xi Xinping has a similar background. Officials involved with the G20 have noted their thought processes in comparison to non-scientists.
We are seeing around the world the impact of approaching 1.5 degrees. We are going to blast past that very soon and the likely outturn on the current path will be more than 2.5 degrees, possibly more than 3 degrees. See https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/nations-must-close-huge-emissions-gap-new-climate-pledges-and
It may well be that GDP does not suffer too much – it does, after all, measure everything except that which makes life worthwhile – but people are already suffering. At 3 degrees it will be nothing short of catastrophic.
Agreed
As I understand it Nordhaus won the award for showing that climate change is a serious but manageable problem if appropriately designed carbon dioxide taxation is implemented. There’s no denial of the problem in there. In fact it’s Nordhaus who has been widely ignored by the Conservatives and everyone else who’s followed by not reorganising the tax system in the way that follows and not leaving international agreements (e.g. the one on aviation fuel).
Ah, so now we see your agenda. You’re an arch neoliberal troll who denies climate change.
Steve Keen ripping into the neoclassical economists about climate change:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LvyxH3O7kE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNLZWVbEa1s
I think you’re right Richard that Kemi and co “just think everything is about the present and making money.” They may also be taking a view that, although most people are aware that climate change is happening and know why it is happening, they don’t want to look reality in the face. So they are open to the idea that some tech bro or other will find a way to siphon greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and send them off to Mars, or refreeze the ice sheets. And they hope that climate change will affect somewhere else, but won’t mean they get flooded or run out of food because harvests have failed. It’s easy for a populist politician to play on those hopes, that we’ll be all right Jack and life can go on more or less as normal.
So downplaying, if not quite denying, the climate crisis could well be a good electoral strategy. And to the extent that it undermines Labour’s efforts it’s all the better.
You may well be right
“So downplaying, if not quite denying, the climate crisis could well be a good electoral strategy.”
I think it may be more complicated than good electoral strategy.
Speaking from personal experience in Florida, many Floridians have the attitude of why should they do anything if the rest of the country is not doing anything because anything that needs to be done to mitigate climate change must be done on a national scale.
This is the same argument heard on the national level. Why should the USA do anything if the rest of the world is not doing anything because anything that needs to be done to mitigate climate change must be done on a world scale.
This mindset needs to be broken if any meaningful climate change mitigation is to occur.
Agreed
Miami has an elevation of six feet.
I have a mate in Port Richey and that’s a whole ten feet.
Cimate change and sea rise doesn’t only affect Pacific islands
Indeed not.
It makes my house, 100 feet abve sea level, seem like it on a mountain top.
Actually, around here it pretty much is.
“Miami has an elevation of six feet.”
@Ian Stevenson
Miami Beach severely floods every times it rains, rains not storms, and there is nothing that cane be done about it even if $1Billion USD was thrown at the problem.
Perhaps the realpolitik is that there has never been the political will for or absence of lobbying against the change on the scale that is/was required. Therefore now having not really mitigated, it is about adaption. I watched ‘Captain Planet’ at primary school, it’s the hope that gets you.
The problem is with the conservatives, is literally in their name. ‘Conserve’ – they do not want to change inequality, the status quo or evolve to make a few of their issues. However, we live in a world where evolution and change is inevitable, most especially as humans as natural products of evolution. Hence, politics and economics also need to evolve, if we want any chance of survival against climate change etc. However, these dinosaurs will resist this as in the short term it may affect their privilege. Problem for them is though, even the rich (yet) can’t escape climate catastrophe and/or WWIII with nukes etc
This sounds a bit like my post on the electrification of the UK all over again.
About a year ago I got a copy of this book
A Pipeline Runs Through It: The Story of Oil from Ancient Times to the First World War
Now whats interesting is that again in the pre WW1 era Churchill, and Admiral Fisher were very much aware that Oil was the strategic wonderfuel giving the Royal Navy greater range and performance. Fisher in addition to building HMS Dreadnought had also produced outline plans for a diesel driven battleship which would benefit from the greater range possible with diesels – look at what the Graf Spee achieved and a much smaller crew.
Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty bought a controlling stake in Anglo Persian Oil, later known as BP to ensure oil supplies for The Royal Navy
Also of course in the early 1920’s the decision to convert RMS Olympic – Titanics only surviving sister to burn oil
was criticised because firstly nobody was sure how much oil was available.
OK so whats the relevance.
Well, again our forebears could and did make strategic decisions about energy supplies and technologies so why cant we. Again we dont just need to to do this for environmental reasons but strategic and economic ones.
Thanks
Thank you, both.
I often think about how, if the Grantham grocer’s daughter had not sold the family silver, state ownership of energy and transport related firms could help with decarbonisation.
Agreed
This bizarre collective turning away from confronting an existential threat has some basis in how group psychology reacts to the concept of social panic. This article discusses this phenomenon:
https://www.the-sentinel-intelligence.net/its-not-cool-to-overreact-2/?ref=ok-doomer-newsletter
Global average temperatures are already, give or take, 1.5 degrees over pre-industrial levels. We’re on track for 3 degrees or more of warming this century. Climate feedbacks, such as the reduced albedo effect due to melting sea ice and melting permafrost releasing methane plus the reduction in atmospheric aerosols as we clean up emissions (which accelerates warming), are already kicking in and are not well covered in IPCC models. They also accelerate as warming increases and are effectively irreversible. Add to this that so-called net zero plans include going significantly over safe levels of warming and then using, things like direct air capture and BECCS, which are both unproven at scale and require huge amounts of resources and land, the picture is bleak. I remain positive that if we act decisively now we can still avoid the worst outcomes but, as you say, the time for this is fast running out.
‘Exponential’.
By the time the Tories – red and blue ones – wake up to the signficance of this word it will be too late.
I think, in reality, that the Tories (and Labour), have never actually taken on climate change as a political agenda item. It’s always been in the political opportunity domain.
For a while, when it was politically expedient and the media and popularity wind seemed to be behind it, the Tories tinkered at the edge of things and did the “affordable” bits. [You could argue that the biggest one, (the removal of coal from our power generation), was more achieved by Thatcher’s war on miners, than by anything else, and was an accidental benefit of neoliberalism].
But neither Tories nor Labour have ever really regarded it as anything more than an opportunity space – Starmer did a pretty swift volte-face when it got to a point where he might have to actually put money and political risk where his ineffectual mouth is and the Tories have always done the same.
Basically, disregarding climate change action as a top-level political action item, (if not the top-level strategic political action item), is fundamentally extraordinarily stupid, given the magnitude of the imminent catastrophic impacts: conclusion – our political masters are fundamentally extraordinarily stupid and will ultimately go down as such in history, assuming, of course that there is a history to go down in; something that seems to tend towards the unlikely at present.