{"id":70991,"date":"2023-07-24T07:34:07","date_gmt":"2023-07-24T06:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=70991"},"modified":"2023-07-24T07:34:07","modified_gmt":"2023-07-24T06:34:07","slug":"leadership-is-not-about-following-the-pack-but-that-seems-to-be-what-the-right-wing-wants-when-it-comes-to-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2023\/07\/24\/leadership-is-not-about-following-the-pack-but-that-seems-to-be-what-the-right-wing-wants-when-it-comes-to-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership is not about following the pack but that seems to be what the right wing wants when it comes to climate change."},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote a tweet yesterday that caused quite a lot of reactions. This was it:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

One reaction was this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Gary Lineker then got this reaction:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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\u00a0come from China and the USA and so whatever we do is of no consequence.<\/p>\n

I disagree with that claim, for at least three reasons.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Second, leadership requires that someone take the lead.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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:
Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108,74,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-green-new-deal","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70991"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70996,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70991\/revisions\/70996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}