By dropping the £28bn green pledge Labour are saying it doesn’t want the support of people like me

Part of me is surprised that it took Labour this long to walk away from their £28bn a year green investment pledge. By this point it’s clear that they are committed to running on the platform of “we cannot afford to do anything nice,” which they think is the sensible, grown-up thing to do. This is why Keir Starmer committed to keeping the two child benefit cap despite the fact that it’s driving families into poverty. If Labour won’t help starving children, then what chance does the environment have?

I guess protecting us all from the looming environmental disaster and making sure that the natural world is not irreversibly damaged, is the sort of thing that craft beer drinking metropolitan lefties like and is not a priority for the real people that Labour cares about. That is, people from Nuneaton who want to drive a 4x4 a hundred yards down the road to get milk six times a day and have a diet consisting entirely of meat, and will be damned if anyone wants to tell them this is a bad idea.

Labour would rather be on the side of the people who eat raw steak outside vegan food festivals instead of telling anyone who voted Conservative in 2019 that they might want to change their minds about a few things (apart from who they will vote for). At this point, Starmer’s plan might be to change the Labour party’s logo to a tree and see if they can confuse 2019 Tory voters into voting Labour by accident.

Investing in left behind regions

The Guardian called dropping the pledge “wrong, wrong, wrong” but swing voters don’t read the Guardian so that’s fine. Hopefully, The Daily Mail and The Sun have run stories about how this shows that Labour are sensible, grown-up politicians and now that they have dropped the £28bn a year pledge their readers should switch to voting Labour. Although, I have had a quick Google and the coverage hasn’t been great.

There is more going on here beyond the old divide between city dwelling lefties with blue hair who like nice things - like not dying - and the people who Labour really care about - who are presumably pro-hungry children and anti-clean air (if the backlash to the ULEZ is to be believed). There is a strong economic argument for investing this £28bn. It would create jobs in areas of the country that have suffered from post-Thatcher deindustrialization and have lower levels of economic growth, lower wages and lower living standards.

The industries of the future

This sensible economic policy was also about making Britain a world leader in green technology, a key industry now and in the future. This is about protecting the future from more than rising sea levels, it’s about protecting the economy from falling behind other nations and making sure we all have jobs and growth industries after we stop using oil for everything. America and the EU, not known for their radical left policies, are both investing heavily in green industries.

Even China is pumping money into solar and other green technologies (as well as burning vast amounts of fossil fuels). Surely, everyone from Workington to Walthamstow can agree this pledge was a sound economic plan?

A tactical error

Of course, all of this is to stave off Tory attack lines aimed at the policy. Now, so the thinking goes, Labour MPs won’t have to answer difficult questions, such as how will the £28bn be paid for: tax raises, borrowing or cuts elsewhere? The problem is dropping the pledge has now opened up the same Tory attack line on any number of other policies.

Now every time Labour MPs are asked about plans to make it easier for people to better insulate their homes or to set up a green energy supplier, (both good ideas) instead of being able to say the funding for this will come out of the £28bn they will now have to answer the awkward tax, borrow, or cut question on every single policy.

Strong arguments

There is tactically a case that this is the wrong decision. You can also defend the pledge on the basis that it makes economic sense to use the power of the state (who can borrow at low interest rates) to invest in the industries of the future and to try to locate these in parts of the country that suffer from the lack of jobs and lower standards of living. This is better than leaving it to the free market, which will inevitably locate more jobs where it is most efficient: in London, the South East and other large cities.

There is also the case that with the world facing dangerously high temperature rises, and other alarming environmental warnings, then we need to start acting now and drastically to protect the future of life on Earth.

Anti-saving the environment. Pro-cheap mortgages

Starmer is unmoved by all this. I’m sure it’s been pointed out to the people at the top of the party. Labour are mainly concerned about winning the support of the people who don’t care about the future of the planet or the British economy. Or at least, don’t want a government that makes it a priority. Y’know, Tory voters.

These are the people who want everything to stay pretty much as it is even after years of Tory ruin; rising homelessness and child poverty, economic stagnation and crumbling schools, the NHS on its knees, etc. etc. These people are only switching to Labour because Liz Truss pushed up the cost of their mortgages.

People like me

This is the last, of many signs, that Labour doesn’t care about people like me. I don’t mean people like me who voted for Jeremy Corbyn and support socialism - both of which I did/do - I mean people who want a Labour government that will change people’s lives for the better.

If Labour doesn’t want the support of people who want to improve society, clean up the environment and feed hungry children then Labour doesn’t want my support and I don’t want to support it.

The left needs to acknowledge the problem with the Green New Deal narrative, but it’s still our best hope against climate disaster

Support for the Green New Deal has become a shibboleth on the left. We’re very much in favour of it, but what exactly is it? Most people encounter it through frantic online discourse or tweets like this, which are quite abstract and are light on details of what the GND (Green New Deal) actually involves.

Underneath the discourse about the GND is a simple and effective narrative: if we do the GND, we can sort out the environment and get a more socially just society. This is a great bit of political communication. It bundles a lot of complexity up in one simple narrative that is hard to oppose. You would have to be a very swivel-eyed right-winger to be opposed to avoiding an environmental catastrophe.

Once you get into the weeds of the GND narrative it gets more complicated. There is a simple narrative for it: we need to stop the looming climate disaster, and a series of simple narratives against it: this is socialism by stealth, it will destroy the economy, it means we can’t eat meat anymore.

 Simple narratives

All these simple narratives overlook the complexity of the GND and what it involves. The focus on simple narratives has led to the GND coming to mean whatever you want it to mean, whether you’re for or against it. The repeating of these simple narratives has led to the GND being criticised from the left, including by Aditya Chakrabortty who wrote in the Guardian:

“Depending on which specs you had on, the green new deal either looked all-American and utterly painless – or it was internationalist and out for bankers’ blood. And down the years, the contradictions have only multiplied.”

The narrative in favour of the GND overlooks the inconsistencies in the GND itself. What will it cost? Who is the opposition to it, beyond the people who love oil companies so much they want to see the whole world burn?

The different flavours of Green New Deal

The reality of the GND is more complicated, and varies more internationally, than the simple narratives about it would have you believe. In the US, the GND is both a vague commitment passed by Congress and a more detailed plan (that Congress has not been presented in bill form, let alone passed) to fix the problems with the American environment and the economy.

In the UK and Europe, the GND is more about the transition to a green economy in a socially just way, closer to the plan in the US that is supposed to make good Congress’s commitment.

Chakrabortty wrote on the different flavours of GND: “For AOC and today’s US left, it is about jobs (albeit ‘green’ ones, a term far easier to deploy than to define) and infrastructure; for Lucas, Labour’s Clive Lewis and others currently pushing a green new deal through parliament, it includes citizens’ assemblies and a shorter working week. It is both ‘a green industrial revolution’ in the north of England and debt cancellation for the global south; both low-carbon Keynesianism and nationalisation of the energy industry.”

Embracing the complexity 

As well as the different meanings in different countries, the different flavours of GND contain lots of policies that are complex and distinct from each other. It’s easy to get lost in the policy details, which don’t communicate well and aren’t easily understood even by people who follow politics in detail. How much do we have to cut down meat consumption by? Is nuclear power part of the solution? These are big debates in themselves within the GND.

It is possible to talk about the GND and embrace its complexity, whilst keeping the focus on the narrative of “if we do a GND then we can sort out the environment and get social justice”.

John Oliver discussed the GND on his show, Last Week Tonight, in 2019. Oliver gets into the details in a funny and engaging way, as is his USP as both a comedian and a political commentator. This shows it is possible to engage with the complexities behind the GND narrative and keep your discussion accessible.

Policy suggestions

In under 20 minutes, Oliver covers the most important points. The right exaggerates what’s in the GND and how it will restrict our lives. The actual resolution passed by Congress doesn’t ban cars or meat. He says that the resolution contains: “No detailed specifics on how it will achieve its goals.” This is true and is one of the major flaws with the GND in America. He includes Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying that the resolution passed by Congress is supposed to start a conversation about what will be in the final plan.

Oliver goes on to suggest policies that could be part of the plan to achieve the GND commitment passed by Congress. These include more nuclear power, better public transport, carbon dioxide pricing and carbon dividends. All good things, but the cases for them needs to be made strongly to convince the public to embrace these changes as they haven’t been passed by representatives in Britain or America.

Whilst discussing the details, he sticks to the simple narrative of why the GND is good and necessary. Oliver said “the planet is on fire” but he also addressed the vagueness of what the GND has committed the government to actually doing.

Passing the Green New Deal into law 

What Oliver doesn’t discuss, and what those advocating for a GND frequently miss out, is what it will cost. He also doesn’t address the related and frequently overlooked problem of how the GND is supposed to be passed into law by countries, such as the US and UK, whose electoral politics have become bitterly divided over everything. Chakrabortty wrote in the Guardian article above:

“This isn’t just a debate over words; it is a battle between rival visions of the future. When Ed Miliband enthuses in his recent (and good) book, Go Big, about moving to a wartime economy with a vast ‘carbon army’ retrofitting draughty homes, he is talking about a green transition that is done to people rather than with them. And it turns voters off.” 

Even detailed discussion of the GND, like Oliver did on his show, overlooks these details because their complexity is too much for anyone who isn’t a professional GND advocate to embrace.

A simple and effective narrative

I can understand why GND advocates don’t address these complexities; a simple narrative will connect with people better. “Take back control” massively oversimplified the complexities of Brexit, but it was something people understood and could get behind. “Take back control” could mean whatever you want it to mean, so long as you voted for Brexit. Perhaps the same can be true of the GND. The narrative is simple so that it can be whatever you want it to be.

There is energy and momentum behind the left-wing movement for a GND and its support goes beyond the left. This is partly because the GND is underpinned by a simple and effective narrative of “if we do a GND then we can sort out the environment and get social justice”.

 For positive change

If we can get the narrative to spread further, then it will be an effective way of mobilising support behind a program to sort out the problems with the environment, our economy and society. However, it can only achieve this when it’s combined with policy specifics that address the inconsistencies in the different flavours of GND. 

The first stage of spreading a simple narrative about positive change is working well. Now, we need more consistency behind the GND and a way to explain the complexities of the policies contained within it in a way that highlights how they will improve all our lives.

All this is needed to turn support for a narrative into a program for political change. If we can do this, then the potential for the GND is massive. It could be the point where we start to reverse the hurtle towards a climate disaster. 

"Extinction Rebellion-11" by juliahawkins123 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

The choice facing the Green Party

One of (many) endless debates on the left is the Maximalist vs Minimalist solution. If you don’t know what this is, don’t worry. It means you haven’t spent hours of your life debating politics in damp rooms above real ale pubs with lots of bearded Marxists. There are many ways to do politics on the left and that is just one of them. 

The Maximalist vs Minimalist debate comes in many forms, but it essentially boils down to: should we use democratic means to take control of some aspects of the state and use these to build power for a wider revolution, or push for a revolution that will change everything? Some change now, or lots of change later?

Minimalists argue that if the left gains some power and legislates for some change - say a shorter working week or better working conditions or better housing - then the people are more likely to support a revolution, as they have seen the benefits of radical left changes. Maximalists argue this is compromising with institutions that will never bring about real change, and that only a full revolution can improve the lot of the people. Lenin was a Maximalist. Rosa Luxemburg was a Minimalist.

A more modern debate

This debate might seem quite 1910s and that’s because it is. A more contemporary version of this argument is: should the left moderate it’s policies or language to win some power and deliver some change then use this as a base to win democratic support for wider change, or should the left argue for a total transformation for society?

This debate has divided social democrats from socialists, socialists from other socialists, the people who think Ed Miliband was on the right track from the people who think that Jeremy Corbyn was on the right track, and generally been an excuse for people on the left to hate each other instead of getting things done. The debate has divided the Labour Party, but soon, this issue will be dividing the Green Party.

The Green Party

As the Greens become more successful, they will be faced with a dilemma: do they stick to a radical plan to change all of society to be greener and fairer, or do they moderate their ambitions to take control of the state, use its power to change society somewhat and then build a consensus for greater change later?

Once a party starts down the path of moderation it becomes easier to compromise values or policies to win the support of the electorate as it is. It’s easy to say: “We’ll make some noise on topics such as immigration, house building or the culture war to win more votes and gain power, then we can use this power to affect positive environmental change.”

Power, even a small amount of it, is a useful thing for any radical organisation to have. Once you have power, over a council or national assembly or in Westminster, then you get access to a range of tools to effect the change you want to see in society. You can use power to help people who need help and to build a consensus for greater change. However, to win power, compromises might have to be made with many voters' intransigent conservative views.

Will the Greens compromise?

You can stay committed to your full vision and fight for a revolution, but this is challenging. Convincing every one of the need for revolution is harder than triangulating on what voters already think to get some power from the current system. Also, it’s easy to have transformative goals when you are far from power and there’s nothing to gain from compromise.

The Greens have been good at picking up the votes of left-wing Labour supporters who are dissatisfied with the current Labour leadership. A leadership who are willing to compromise several values important to left-wing Labour members, so that the party can win over more voters and take power. I voted Green in the London Assembly election this year because I was so disappointed with the compromises Keir Starmer is making. This is fertile terrain for the Greens, but how far will it take them?

As they pick up more voters, from Labour or previous non-voters, and get closer to taking over councils or winning seats, the temptation to moderate the Green vision to win power will grow stronger. For example, the Greens now control Lancaster City Council through an alliance with the Tories. Will this cost them left-wing votes in the future? If I lived in Lancaster, I would see this as a compromise too far and not vote Green again. Will this compromise to gain power increase or decrease Green support? We’ll have to wait and see.

Ineffective compromise

This is just one council, but it shows the dilemma facing the Greens. Many younger, more left-wing voters, which Labour are losing to the Greens, are dissatisfied with how Labour has compromised to gain (or try to gain) power in the past. From Tony Blair abandoning the commitment to Clause IV, to Ed Miliband’s control on immigration mugs, to Starmer’s praise for the troops.

It’s worth noting that although Labour is trying to compromise on its radical vision to win power, the party is going about this in a ham-fisted way that is losing them the support of the voters that Labour won during the Corbyn years, without winning back the voters they lost. Ineffective compromising can be as bad for the party as ineffective radicalism.

The Green dilemma

It’s easy for the Greens to win voters from Labour’s left when there is nothing to be gained from compromising on their radical vision. Can the Greens hang onto this radical support when faced with the chance to moderate their message or policies to win power? How will the party react?

A well-timed compromise could win them power to start the process of changing this country. Or it could cost them all the support they have. Or it could win them power then bind their hands in a way that makes power meaningless. Labour has had all these fates at different points, which will be the Greens?

"Extinction Rebellion-11" by juliahawkins123 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

Seaspiracy is weakened by framing the environment as a consumer issue

Politics and food are deeply entwined because what you eat is a powerful statement of your identity, but also because food shopping is where individuals can use their consumer power to create change. You may think that your purchasing habits are insignificant, but the boycott of South Africa was partly responsible for the end of Apartheid. Lots of people changing how they shop can have a big impact.

It’s hard to talk about the politics of food without thinking about this consumer choice framework. If we stop people from buying Soda Streams and Israeli dates, can we stop Israeli settlements in the West Bank? Debates around buying Fair Trade or sustainably sourced produce stems from the Gandhi insured idea that we should use our consumer power to be the change we want to see in the world.

Seaspiracy vs The Cove

It is with this in mind that I approached Seaspiracy, a new Netflix documentary about the fishing industry. The film begins by looking at whaling and dolphin killing in Japan. Seaspiracy makes a case that these practices are unnecessarily bloody and cruel, although this subject is covered more effectively by the 2009 documentary The Cove.

The film quickly moves on from this to explore the environmental impact of the fishing industry, first in Japan and then all over the world. I consider myself to be reasonably well informed about environmental issues, but I was flabbergasted at how destructive the fishing industry is.

Oil spills and garbage patches

Perhaps the most impactful moment of the film is when it argues that the BP Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 was a net benefit for marine life, because it caused a temporary stop to fishing. This fact was not only surprising, but brought home to me the impact of an industry I had naively assumed was largely benign. I had made this assumption because, even in news sources that report on environmental stories, there is little reporting of overfishing and pollution from the fishing industry.

The film draws an interesting parallel between the high level of concern over plastic straws, and other single-use plastics, against the lower level of concern about the environmental impact of the fishing industry. One thing I didn’t know is that nearly half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is fishing gear the industry abandons.

(Un)sustainable fishing

The contrast between the two is important, as single-use plastic is seen as an issue that can be tackled with consumer power - simply stop buying single-use plastics - whereas it’s much harder to change how the fishing industry goes about catching fish. Shouldn’t we only buy sustainably sourced fish and thus change the fishing industry using our consumer power, I hear you ask? Well, Seaspiracy doesn’t think this will work.

Seaspiracy shows that buying sustainably sourced fish is not an effective way to stop the damaging practices of the fishing industry. The film demonstrates that there is no way to accurately inspect the fishing boats whilst at sea to make sure they are fishing according to sustainability standards.

In one interview, a representative of the body who certifies that the food we buy is sustainably fished, admits that their representatives don’t check all the boats that are supposed to be catching sustainably sourced fish and can be bribed even if they did see unsustainable practices.

The role of government

The film concludes that the only way to protect ocean life is to eat less fish, once again framing an environmental issue as one of consumer choice. The focus on using consumer power to affect environmental change is not just limited to issues of fishing, it is a key part of many environmental narratives. Framing an environmental problem as an issue of consumer choice places the emphasis on individuals to address these big problems and overlooks the role of collective action in tackling them.

Consumers do hold a lot of power in our capitalist economic system and by shopping with the environment in mind we can send signals that might cause industries to change. I’m not for a second saying we shouldn’t consider the ethics of what we spend our money on.

However, the problems facing the environment are not just ones of consumer choice. In a world where 71% of emissions comes from 100 companies, there is a vital role for governments to take on these mega-polluters as even consumer power isn’t enough to get them to change. They must be compelled to change by the only thing more powerful than industry: the government.

Employment and the fishing industry

Seaspiracy focuses too much on consumer change as a solution to the problems of the fishing industry and not enough on what can be done by the government. It also fails to explore the impact of the collapse of the fishing industry, following everyone stopping buying fish.

The film takes aim at the subsidies that Western governments give to fishing and blames them for the environmental damage that results from these subsidies. Although it is correct that by supporting the fishing industry the government is supporting the damage it does to the environment, subsidies exist to protect sources of employment. Many economically depressed coastal communities depend on income that comes from the fishing industry, which is kept going by the subsidies.

The film does not adequately explore what the impact of everyone stopping eating fishing would be on the people who work in the fishing industry. It does explore the effect that industrial fishing from Chinese fishing boats has had on small-scale fishing in Africa. It argues that small-scale fishing is no longer sustainable because of the impact of large industrial Chinese fishing.

When fishing stops being a viable source of food and employment, it pushes the former fishermen into either piracy or trading in bush meat, the latter of which the film blames for the recent Ebola outbreak. Seaspiracy shows the negative effects of unemployment in the African fishing industry, but it doesn’t stop to consider the effect of shutting down large industrial fishing operations that employ many more people in other countries.

A powerful argument

Seaspiracy powerfully portrayals the huge environmental impact of the fishing industry. It’s horrifying to see the devastation that this industry causes, and more needs to be done to stop this damage before it becomes irreversible.

The film makes a powerful argument to stop eating seafood as a means to prevent the destruction of our oceans. I agree that we should stop using our consumer spending to support the fishing industry, but by framing this as only a matter of consumer choice, the film is missing the broader social change that is needed so that government power can be brought to bear to protect the environment from exploitative industries.

If we think of the environment as something that can be fixed at the checkout, we ignore the complex political issues - from food distribution to employment - that are mixed in with the environmental protection that together are needed as part of a broad political response to the environmental crisis we all face.

How can British Rail’s failed Modernisation Plan teach us to ‘build back better’?

If we are to reshape our economy to achieve net zero emissions, our transport system must change radically. At the same time, as we emerge from the pandemic, there’s plenty of discussion about how we could ‘build back better’.

What historical precedents can we learn from? Policymakers could start by taking a look at the expensive disaster that was British Rail’s 1955 Modernisation Plan. This story may be well known to train geeks like me, but I am convinced it should be more widely understood. We could learn a lot from it.

After an initial post-war boom, by the early 1950s the newly nationalised British Rail was losing money as traffic began to shift to the roads. Aiming to reverse this, the £1.24bn Modernisation Plan – a staggering £29bn in today’s money – was announced in 1955.

With such an enormous remit and budget, how did they get it so wrong?

The vision seemed sound. Electrification and diesels would replace steam traction, freight handling would be streamlined, and signalling and stations would be brought up to date. The failure of the plan was a combination of incompetent execution, political pressures, and most importantly, fundamental miscalculations about the future. The two main areas in which this can be seen were traction and freight handling.

Initially, BR had continued to commission new steam engines, despite electric and diesel traction being increasingly used elsewhere, notably in the oil-rich US. Superficially that made sense. Steam locos used domestically-produced coal, when mining was one of Britain’s biggest employers. However, by the 1950s, this was beginning to look like a mistake. As labour costs increased, the labour-intensive nature of steam was becoming a problem.

In the decade of the Clean Air Act, railway yards and stations were becoming unhappy neighbours with their towns and cities. It also contributed to a PR problem: the perception that the railways were old-fashioned, dirty and reminiscent of the bad old days of pre-war life, in contrast with the dynamic consumerist happiness promised by car advertisements.

Unable to afford widespread electrification, diesels were the answer. Buying in proven designs from the US, when Britain had always built its own trains, was politically a non-starter. Instead, the idea was to trial prototypes from a range of British manufacturers, with the best performing types to be adopted as standard and commissioned in large numbers. So far so good. Until someone decided it wasn’t happening fast enough.

The result? BR started panic-buying batches of the untested prototypes. I’ve often wondered what back-handers might have been part of the procurement process here. But whatever the reason, instead of a standardised fleet, they ended up with a mixed bag of too many incompatible types from different builders. Some were so unreliable that they ended up being scrapped after only a few years. For some, the sight of a broken-down diesel being towed by a steam engine seemed to encapsulate the incompetence of the organisation.

Freight handling, too, needed huge work to modernise. At the time, most freight was conveyed in mixed trains and inefficiently handled at small facilities at most stations, much as it had been since Victorian times – as can be seen in this fascinating period video.

The Modernisation Plan’s answer was investment in vast, partly automated new marshalling yards around the country designed to sort trains wagon by wagon. These worked well, but by the time they opened in the early ‘60s, it was obvious that they were a giant waste. They would have been helpful a couple of decades earlier, but by now, lorries (aided by new motorways) were making the traditional mixed goods train a relic of the past. The new yards were a bang-up-to-date solution to a previous era’s problem.

The Plan’s failure was an enormous missed opportunity. Despite the investment, by the early ‘60s, BR was still in deficit. The government lost patience and shifted to a programme of cuts, which today are remembered as the infamous ‘Beeching Axe’. This set the tone for decades. The railway was a ‘parallel’, declining transport system, and what voters wanted was more spending on roads.

These assumptions persisted for a long time, but now themselves seem outdated. Faced with the threat of climate change, we need a transport revolution far greater than the changes BR attempted in the ‘50s, but at the same time we need to learn from the past.

A couple of themes ran through BR’s mis-steps. One was planning for the past, not the future. Another was a fundamental lack of imagination. Those empty white-elephant marshalling yards were an attempt to modernise the old, disappearing railway – a bit of foresight would have suggested investment in containerisation and bulk handling facilities instead.

We could be about to make a similar mistake with electric cars. Clearly, EVs will be a major part of the solution to drive down emissions. But EVs cannot solve the other problems of car culture, such as congestion or parking in cities. BR’s bad investment in too many types of diesel locomotives reminds me of the need to standardise EV facilities too. If we are not careful, we’ll end up with a plethora of incompatible battery charging systems and connectors.

Another of BR’s errors was simply replacing steam with diesel on a like-for-like basis, rather than recognising diesel power’s inherent advantage of less down time, meaning fewer locos should have been needed overall. Have we really thought properly about the possibilities of electric cars? Does a higher initial cost, but much reduced servicing requirements, make communal ownership schemes more viable, for example?

Whatever the advantages of EVs, a more pertinent question would be, should we even be seeking to replicate today’s car-centric transport system? With ever fewer numbers of young people owning cars or even acquiring driving licences, we have arguably already passed ‘peak car’, yet this is hardly ever reflected by policy-makers obsessed with the private car. BR’s Modernisation Plan seemed oblivious to the wider context of road building and increasing car ownership; today’s transport policy must avoid such a silo mentality.

On today’s railways, the myopic focus on speed – just like how BR focussed on wagon-load freight despite foreseeable trends away from it – seems to me to be a mistake. HS2 will lower journey times between some cities, but trains are already the quickest method for intercity travel. The emphasis instead should be on increasing capacity, and lowering ticket prices – that’s what most people actually want.

It’s also important to recognise when existing technology is the obvious solution. Electric express trains are the most effective and cleanest method of transporting people between cities ever invented. Just as the electric commuter train is the fastest and cleanest method of mass transit within cities. This doesn’t require any new technical innovations – just investment. It’s scandalous that some of Britain’s main routes are still entirely diesel-operated. Investment in overhead wires might not have made sense in the ‘70s or ‘80s, but times (and passenger numbers) have changed.

But the overarching lesson of the Modernisation Plan is that it isn’t just about having enough money to spend. In the 1950s BR demonstrated the risk of blowing a fortune on the wrong things because of outdated assumptions. To adapt to the coming green revolution, we need to ask ourselves what the transport system of the future will look like. Policy makers need to be asking people – especially young people – what their transport system should be for. Otherwise we’ll only end up trying to solve yesterday’s problems, just like BR did.

"British Railways Brush Type 2 D5500 (Class 31, 31018)" by Stuart Axe is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Why the environmental movement needs mindbombs and critiques of capitalism

Getting people to care about climate is difficult. Years of raising awareness about the looming environmental catastrophe have not resulted in popular demand to enact systematic change. The far less existential threat of Covid-19 has had a far bigger impact for the simple reason that people saw an immediate danger to themselves and acted.

For those of us who want to change society to mitigate the worst of rising global temperatures, there remains the elusive goal of finding a message that will cut through and finally effect real change. A message that will escape the echo chambers of middle-class lefties and convince people of the immediate need to act.

Social media noise

Social media seems to be the ideal tool for this as it allows climate activists to go directly to the public without the need to filter their message through the traditional media, much of which is hostile to the message that rapid social change is needed. However, more than 15 years of social media (Facebook was founded in 2004) has not moved us any closer to achieving the goal of a widespread awakening to the need for environmental change. 

There is a lot of noise on social media, so for a climate message to cut through it needs to be attention grabbing. Remember it needs to hold people’s attention in a world where Donald Trump and Kayne West are creating a lot of noise.

Mindbombs

To find what works in the age of social media, inspiration can be drawn from the pre-digital age. It’s worth looking at Greenpeace, who pioneered a strategy they called the “mindbomb”. A 2015 article by Karl Mathiesen defines the mindbomb as: “an image that sends a collective shock through the world leading to action.” This can be seen as a precursor to today’s viral memes.

The original Greenpeace mindbomb was footage of a Russian whaling ship, hunting whales with harpoons in the Arctic, shot from a rubber speed boat in 1975. Over the years Greenpeace has been adept at creating images that stick in the public's mind and prompt action.

Jerry Rothwell, who directed an award-winning 2015 film about Greenpeace called How to Change the World talked in Mathiesen’s article about the importance of bearing witness to an event in creating mindbombs. “Things like Ferguson, the witnessing of an event can still have the power to get people to active and out on the streets and protesting,” he said.

The problem with relying on social media

So, we need to create social media mindbombs that grab attention. However, to cut through all the noise on social media these mindbombs have to be really attention grabbing. Rothwell had criticisms of many contemporary activists, he said: “There’s been a tendency within the organisation to just paint a banner and hang it off a famous building and I think that just doesn’t wash, it’s just not interesting enough.”

There is a problem with relying on social media to deploy mindbombs to spread a story, which is that social media can distract us from or distort our goals. Social media is very good at getting our attention. It’s on our phones, carried with us everywhere we go and is constantly using push notifications to get us to stop what we’re doing and pay attention to it. Social media is good at holding what psychologists call the “spotlight” of our attention - i.e. what we are focusing on right now - but in doing this it distorts our desires and goals.

Distorted goals

Former Google employee and winner of the Three Dots prize James Williams explains this in his book Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy that as well as distracting our spotlight, what we are paying attention to now, social media can distract our “starlight”, which is our ability to navigate by our higher goals and values, our guiding stars.

Williams argues that social media distracts our starlight by changing our actions so that we are no longer guided by our values, but instead we are guided by the goals of social media platforms. Williams says that when our starlight is distracted it makes us want simple pleasures over complex ones and short-term rewards over long-term ones. It means that we can’t live our lives according to the values we want to live by.

This happens when reach, shares, clicks and engagements on social media take the place of our higher goals such as changing minds or prompting people to take action. 10,000 shares is not 10,000 people convinced. It’s probably not 100 people convinced. It’s just more time spent on social media, seeing more ads and having more of our data extracted to sell to advertisers.

Owning the libs or being owned by platforms?

This becomes political when a movement’s higher goals become replaced by reaching people on social media. Political movements become distracted from their starlight when they focus on increasing their metrics on social media platforms instead of winning people over to their cause. This happens when a political movement believes that 10,00 shares is 10,000 people convinced.

This can be most easily seen with the America right. They have become obsessed by sharing videos of Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson “owning libs” as their support shrinks to a narrower and more radicalised section of society. The US right’s goals have been replaced by that of social media platforms to such a degree that they are constantly sharing content that holds attention, whilst not stopping to think that a video of Shapiro shouting over a college student isn’t convincing anyone who wasn’t already signed up to their agenda.

Stories not content

This should be a lesson for the environmental movement when creating social media mindbombs. Yes they get attention, but are they serving our goals or the goals of social media platforms? It might be better to create attention grabbing stories, rather than attention grabbing social media content.

We need a story that people can believe in, that becomes their goals or starlight. When we are all motivated by our starlight to make this world a greener, fairer, better place changing the world will be easy.

Middle-class, hipster environmentalism

As middle-class environmentalists it's tempting to make this story we want to tell a reflection of our values and lifestyles. Our advocating for economic change needs to go beyond wanting the economy to be based locally, producing organic craft beer and avocado toast. These specific examples are deliberately stereotypical, but they serve to make the general point that we mustn’t make the story we tell about a greener future one where we shop differently but everything else is the same.

Something that appears cool and desirable to middle-class Westerns might not be desirable to everyone. Vijay Kolinjivadi, in an article for Al Jazeera, said:

“In theory, ‘coolness’ just is. It is imbued with all the things that reflect deep relational values of care, affection, creativity, connection, authenticity, and meaning. It should have no racial, gendered or socio-economic boundaries and likewise, have no impact on those fronts either.

“In practice, it involves the reproduction of a particular way of being which invariably sets in motion new avenues for capital to expand, allowing everything that has meaning to be hollowed-out and commodified for profit.”

A critique of capitalism

We need to be aware of a story that is environmentally progressive, but doesn’t include a critique of capitalism, racism or other power systems that are preventing the social change needed to stave off an environmental catastrophe. The story we want to tell needs to be transformative in many ways and not just environmentally.

We see this with gentrification. When middle-class people move into an area of a city, we often see a focus on green living reflected in the changes to the local economy, such as zero-waste shops or organic cafes opening.

This overlooks the damage done by gentrification to lives of poor people. As Kolinjivadi said: “In the process, the implicit socio-economic violence behind gentrification will be invariably ‘greenwashed’ and presented as development that would make the area more ‘sustainable’, ‘beautiful’ and ‘modern’.

“Thus, immigrant-owned grocery stores, halal butcheries and community centres will soon be replaced by vegan chain restaurants, hip vintage clothing joints, organic food stores and coffee-shops galore, as landlords push out poor tenants to make space for more well-to-do ones.”

A story that wins support

The story we tell about the change we want to see in the world must not be a story about changing consumer patterns, but instead focus on ”resistance on externally-conceived and profit-driven developments as a moral and even survivalist imperative and work to re-establish community through solidarity economies, replenishing those relations severed by the growth-centred logic.”

If we want to win over people to believing in our story about a better, greener future then it needs to offer more change than making everyone an environmental hipster. It needs to tackle the root causes of injustice, such as capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia. etc.

Planet of the Humans

Now is a time where we need challenging narratives about a better future where we have overcome the problems created by capitalism or racism. Optimistic stories about the environment are threatened by eco-fascist narratives, doom and gloom narratives about there being no hope and narratives about the environmental movement itself being suspect.

The most recent example of the latter is Michael Moore’s new film Planet of the Humans, which spreads disinformation about the climate movement. To give you an idea of bad it is, singer-songwriter and climate activist Neil Young described the film as: “erroneous and headline grabbing TV publicity tour of misinformation. A very damaging film to the human struggle for a better way of living, Moore’s film completely destroys whatever reputation he has earned so far.”

Moore’s film blames overpopulation for the looming environmental disaster and spreads disinformation about how the green movement has distracted attention from overpopulation as the cause of climate breakdown.

Unexpected praise for Michael Moore from the far-right

Moore doesn’t offer any answer to the question of “what do we do about there being too many humans?” The audience can make up their own mind and many people have jumped to the worst possible solution. Unsurprisingly, this focus on too many humans as an environmental problem has led to the film being heralded by the most extreme parts of the right.

Bill McKibben, one of the people Moore targets in the film, wrote a response in Rolling Stone where he reports that “Breitbart loves the movie” and that so does “every other climate-denier operation on the planet”. I don’t think it was Moore’s intention to make a climate film that energises the far-right (I think he wanted to bolster his reputation as an edgy provocateur by taking on the liberal establishment), but his environmental narrative of too many people aligns with the far-right narrative of certain groups of people being a threat to society. 

This is what happens when the basis of the narratives we tell about the environment are not positive stories about the better world that we can create. Doom and gloom stories can be easily co-opted by eco-fascists and turned to their ends.

Freeing people trapped by doom and gloom narratives

This is why the environmental movement needs mindbombs AND critiques of capitalism. We can win people over to the idea of a better tomorrow, with an attention-grabbing story that offers solutions to the loom environmental catastrophe that tackles many of society’s social and economic problems.

Our narrative needs to be informed by what worked well in the past, such as Greenpeace’s mindbomb approach, which can be adapted for a social media age. However, we need to be aware of the problems of social media and make sure that the goals of tech platforms do not substitute our goals. We must be guided by our Starlight, which is our goal to make a better future.

There are many people captured by environmental doom and gloom narratives who think that the problem is too many people and not our economic and political systems. Our story about a better tomorrow can free these people and make the world a better place, if we can tell it right.

Ecofascism, Malthusian economists and why we need less fearful stories about the environment

Fear is a powerful motivating force. The fear of Covid-19 made us change our entire society very rapidly from one that seemed perfectly designed to spread the virus to one that is perfectly designed to contain it. 

It makes sense that fear would be a strong enough motivator to do the kind of society wide changes that are necessary to stop a climate disaster. The data tells a simple story: that if we don’t change our behaviour soon there will be huge impacts and massive suffering caused by climate change. Amping up the fear of this makes sense as a strategy to encourage the changes that are needed to prevent a climate catastrophe.

This seems self-evident, but decades of raising awareness in the hope that fear of a climate disaster would lead to a more environmentally friendly society have not worked. The story being told by the environmental movement has been consistent, but temperatures and CO2 levels keep rising.

Avoiding an oncoming train

A report from Futerra entitled Sell the Sizzle outlines the problems with a story that uses fear as a motivator for environmental action. The fear of danger is only a good motivator if the way to avoid danger is clear. The fear of an oncoming train works well as a motivator to avoid being hit by a train as the solution is simple: get off the train track.

A more recent example is Covid-19. Fear of coronavirus (and what it can do to society if it spreads unchecked) created social change because it's clear what you need to do to stop the spread of the virus: stay home. It’s that simple.

Sell the Sizzle says that when the solution to the frightening thing is not clear, the fear response produces a sense of resignation rather than action. Narratives about how we’re all doomed unless we change our lifestyles don’t work if it's not clear what we need to do.

Climate stories and white nationalism

The narrative of doom and gloom used by the environmental movement is creating more problems than just failing to motivate the change to society we need. It’s also feeding into the rise of far-right politics and white nationalism.

In an article for Gizmodo, Brian Kahn outlines the ways in which white nationalists have been using climate rhetoric. He describes Patrick Crusius, a white nationalist who killed 23 people in a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, and a manifesto he posted on 8chan that contains “ideas central to the mainstream environmental movement.”

Crusius wrote: “[O]ur lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country. The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations. Corporations are heading the destruction of our environment by shamelessly overharvesting resources.”

The rise of ecofascism

Kahn explains how rhetoric like that used by Crusius is part of a new trend in far-right politics towards “ecofascism,” a right wing ideology that links white nationalism with a twisted form of environmentalism. What ecofascism and the mainstream environmental movement have in common is they both tell a story of a society that is sick, dying and ultimately doomed. Both say: through our decadence we are destroying the world and we need to turn the clock back to a simpler, better time to avert a disaster.

The idea that stories about a looming environmental disaster should fuel the far-right makes sense when you think about how people react when they’re afraid. Fear of something bad happening can be a good motivator, to make someone stop smoking or go to the gym more, but fear also brings out the worst in us. It makes us act suddenly, or do things that if we were calmer we wouldn’t do.

Fear leads to other negative emotions such as anger and hatred. Anger at whoever caused us to be afraid. Hatred of the people who have awakened these fears. This is especially true when our fear relates to things like our homes, our children or our futures. Things we feel strongly about. Things that stories about environmental doom and gloom play off.

If everyone is afraid of environmental devastation in our future then they’re likely to want someone to blame, someone to be angry at or someone to hate. For a lot of people that is the corporations who have poisoned the planet or the politicians who have failed to constrain them. However, for some people their fear about the future is causing them to hate the people they already fear and hate: immigrants, poor people and people of colour. This is the fuel that sustains ecofascism.

“Overindulging in apocalyptic thinking”

In the Gizmodo article above, Kahn interviews Betsy Hartmann, a professor emeritus at Hampshire College, who studies the connections between white nationalism and environmentalism. Hartmann said: “There is a deeply problematic, apocalyptic discourse about climate and conflict refugees that is quite common in liberal policy circles and even documentaries.”

She also said: “The environmental movement in the U.S. has, I would say, overindulged in apocalyptic thinking for a long time. There’s that kind of apocalyptic bridge and then the nature-race-purity bridge. What’s so horrifying and shocking to me is that these [far-right] manifestos are openly Malthusian environmentalist arguments. I don’t think we saw that quite as much before in the armed white nationalist movement.”

18th century economists and 21st century problems

Mentioning Thomas Robert Malthus is interesting. Malthus was a cleric and economist who had “ideas” about the problems of a growing population. In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus set out his thesis that people, mainly poor people, would breed and breed and there would not be enough food. 

Malthus predicted mass starvation in the near future and said that charity, or state aid, to help the poor would only make things worse as any attempt to alleviate the suffering of the poor would lead to more poor people and thus not enough food. The solution, according to Malthus, was to stop people breeding so much.

A lot of problematic environmental stories that are fueling ecofascism are descended from Malthus’s ideas. When we tell stories about how there aren’t enough resources on planet Earth to sustain the human race at the rate at which we consume, we risk drifting into telling Malthusian stories about how the problem is that there are too many people. This leads people to suggest 18th century economic solutions to 21st century problems, i.e. there should be less people. It’s easy to see how this fuels ecofascism.

A question of distribution

The problem with Malthus’s work is that it’s too mathematical. He only considered that there were too many people and not enough food. He didn’t look at the social or political reasons why there wasn’t enough food. He didn’t consider distribution or power structures that keep people hungry. 

Eleanor Penny said it best in a recent essay on Malthus when she said: “His problem is more fundamental: he framed human suffering as purely a scientific and mathematical question - recasting the effects of a brutal economic system as the dispassionate mechanics of nature. He rewrote a political problem of production and distribution as a biological problem of reproduction and consumption - distracting from its causes, exculpating its architects from any responsibility, and blinding us to possible solutions.”

Modern Malthusian environmental stories

The environmental stories we tell risk drifting into these overly simplistic Malthusian narratives that can fuel ecofascism. Stories that paint a picture of a world where poor people of colour have been driven from their homes by a climate disaster and have to move to richer, whiter nations are Malthusian.

These stories make us - those of us in wealthy countries - worry about how our nation will accommodate climate refugees. They make us worry that there won’t be enough to go around in the climate-addled future. They make us frightened of poor people, people of colour and migrants. They fuel ecofascism.

We tell these stories with good intentions, to motivate people to change the world for the better, but stories about climate refugees are only fueling the fear of migrants that spread white nationalism and fascism. If the story is that the problem with the environment is that there are too many people, then we all know what a fascist solution for the problem of too many people is.

Hartmann said when interviewed by Kahn: “Using this highly militarized and stereotyped Malthusian discourse about poor people of color is dangerous and counterproductive.” She added that: “I would say the internet and right-wing media certainly plays a role in spreading them. But we can’t ignore how Malthusian ideas about overpopulation and the environment are taught in high schools all over the United States.”

From Malthus to Michael Moor

The lesson to learn is that we need to tell stories about the environment that are more complicated. Stories that take into account social and political issues and not just the fact that we are consuming too much or that there are too many people.

There is a serious risk of the stories we tell about the environment - with the best of intentions of improving the world for everyone - spread a message that white nationalists and ecofascists can use to spread their ideas. Penny said: “Everywhere we read lazy affirmations that we are the problem; humanity and its fatal tendency to multiply is plundering the earth of its natural wealth.” Even Michael Moore is at it in his new documentary Planet of the Humans, which lays the blame for the worsening environment on there being too many people.

Somewhere to jump to

As the Sell the Sizzle report found, promoting fear without a plan a clear plan for what we’re changing into to avoid disaster doesn’t work. We can’t jump out of the way of the train without somewhere to jump to. If we are going to use fear of an environmental disaster in the stories we tell to motivate change then we need to identify where we’re jumping to. If it’s not clear, people will blame the wrong people or people in general for the looming environmental disaster, or reach for the usual scapegoats.

We need somewhere to jump to. We need to talk up the positive aspects of the new society that we are going to build that will be fairer, greener, healthier and happier.

Jumping towards a solarpunk future

Recent examples of stories about positive vision of a future can be found in solarpunk: an art, literary and design movement that is centered showing what a greener, fair future might be like. Its rebellion against the dystopian futures of cyberpunk, a genre very much concerned with frightening narratives about environmental devastation. Solarpunk gives us something to aspire to whilst showing us what a better future would be like.

There are many problems with fearful environmental narratives. They don’t motivate us to change society for the better, they promote at best nihilism about the future and at worst ecofascism. We need better environmental stories.

The solution to too much pessimism is some optimism. We don’t need stories with a naive optimism that things will just get better. We need stories that say that if we all pull together, a better world for everyone can be achieved.

"Extinction Rebellion-11" by juliahawkins123 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

Why Labour needs a narrative about how the country can rebuild better after lockdown

Recently, I wrote about how the Labour Party needs a new narrative to start winning again. Labour needs to tell a story, which connects with the electorate, about how things would be different under a Labour government. This story needs to resonate with people outside the echo chambers of left-wing social media and reach out to people across the country.

This needs to be a story about how things will be better after the Covid-19 crisis. As I write we are still in lockdown, the virus is a major threat, people have lost of their jobs, the economy is likely to experience a huge contraction and there is no clear sign of when we’re likely to get back to anywhere near normal. Right now, people need hope to get them through this difficult time.

What would give us hope is a narrative about how the world will be better post lockdown. We don’t need a story about how we’ll get back to normal. Normal wasn’t very good for a lot of people. It wasn’t good for the people with low paid insecure work. It wasn’t good for the people on Universal Credit who are struggling unable to feed their families. It wasn’t good for the people living in poor-quality housing. It wasn’t good for the people who don’t have anywhere to live at all.

The planet cannot afford for us to go back to normal

Normal wasn’t good for the environment. We have less than 12 years to make some really serious changes to the way we live if we’re going to avert the worse of the environmental catastrophe. Before March this year, it didn’t look like it was possible for human society to change so dramatically. Then we found that, given the will to act, huge social changes can be delivered quickly. The planet cannot afford for us to go back to normal after the Covid-19 crisis. We need a new normal, for the sake of both the environment and the people who inhabit it.

There are encouraging signs that some people within the Labour Party are thinking about the need to rebuild differently after the Covid-19 crisis. In a recent Guardian article former Labour leader and current Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband said that “the current moment is a contemporary equivalent of what happened after 1945.”

He added that: “It’s never too early to start thinking about the future, to think about what kind of world we want to build as we emerge from this crisis. I think we owe it to have a sort of reassessment of what really matters in our society, and how we build something better for the future.”

Miliband gave a few more specifics saying: “I think we should be aiming for the most ambitious climate recovery plan in the world,” and that: “That should be nothing less than the government’s ambition. The old argument that you can have economic success or environmental care is just completely wrong.”

Engaging young voters

The need for this to be a green recovery is especially pressing for a key group of voters, a group that has remained loyal to Labour through Miliband’s and Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and the ups and downs of Brexit: the young. Of course in British politics, the young is everyone under 45. I don’t feel young, but apparently I am, which is nice.

The divide between young and old is one of the starkest dividing lines in politics. The young generally voted Remain and are more engaged with Black Lives Matter and trans rights. On the whole, the young favour more left-wing economic policies and, crucially, care more about the environment than the old. The environment is a key issue for us young voters and leading with this is a good way for Labour to keep the young onside.

The young are also much more likely to be hit hardest by the recession that is currently unfolding (just as we were more likely to be hit hardest by the last one). A recent study from the Resolution Foundation found that more than 600,000 more young people could become unemployed this year because of coronavirus.

Own the future

A narrative about how the country could be a better, fairer, greener place after Covid-19 is what young people need now to give them hope that something good can come from the suffering that the coronavirus has unleashed. While Tories are struggling with the present - enforcing the lockdown, keeping the economy on life support, dealing with whatever stupid thing Dominic Cummings has done this week - Labour need to own the future. They need to tell a story about what happens next.

This story will energise young voters who are already fired up about Labour. It will also reassure them that Kier Starmer’s Labour party values their support as much as Corbyn’s Labour did. It will also offer them encouragement that issues that they are concerned about, from social justice to the environment, are the ones a Labour government will champion.

A story about what a better post-Covid-19 world is what the country needs right now. It’s a story that can transcend the group of people who already support Labour, break out of the left-wing social media echo chambers and bring the country together behind the vision of a Labour government.

Why this should be the environment election

Will the 2019 election be the Brexit election that 2017 wasn’t? It’s still early in the campaign and the main debates of this election are yet to be set, but it looks likely to dominated by the various party’s stance on Brexit and how much of it there should be. 

This is a shame, as this should be the environment election. We have only 12 years to cut carbon emissions by 45% to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees and most of the key decisions on that will affect whether we make this target or not will be made in 2020. This means we don’t have long to make a substantial change to our society in order to avert a climate catastrophe. We need to start the debate as to how this will be achieved as soon as possible.

Huge effects on politics

The breakdown of the natural environment will affect every other area of politics. It will have huge implications for our economy, energy production, health, transportation, immigration, defence, food production, education, science and many other areas. It will touch every aspect of our lives and have any number of as yet unforeseen effects. Destruction of the natural environment will cause more conflicts and more movement of people, which will further make politics unstable. It will be hard to achieve any other political goals whilst dealing with the fallout from a climate catastrophe. It’s important that we use this election to raise everyone’s awareness of this and to begin the discussion about what we want our politicians to do about it.

Why won’t it be a major issue?

There a few reasons why this won’t happen. Ultimately, most people don’t care enough about the environment, certainly not enough for it to change their vote when weighed against other issues. It’s becoming a more politically salient issue, especially amongst younger voters who will have to deal with more of the long-term effects of climate change. This is partly because of the hard work of people like Greta Thunberg and groups like Extinction Rebellion who are keeping the profile of this issue high, despite a lot of other political noise.

In Britain, Brexit is sucking the oxygen out of the political debate. It’s hard to get the attention of the voters and start a conversation about a different issue when Brexit is in the news so much. Brexit is the issue that is right in front of us and it’s getting more attention than climate change, which seems far off and abstract.

An election to resolve Brexit

It has been said that an election would be a way out of the quagmire that is recent British politics. Months of deadlock in parliament has paralyzed politics and made it impossible to get anything done. One way to look at this, is that the environment might be better served by using this election to resolve Brexit, one way or the other, and thus allowing the system to move again so that the climate can be the focus of politics.

I’m not convinced by this argument, as we don’t have enough time to wait until Brexit is resolved before we look at stopping a climate catastrophe. Whatever happens in this election it won’t resolve Brexit; it will run on for years and years and by then it will be too late to stop the rising global temperatures from causing massive devastation. Also, this election isn’t needed to resolve Brexit as the last parliament looked it was going pass Boris Johnson’s withdrawal deal.

A warning from Australia

The UK needs a debate on climate change. This would allow everyone to understand how serious the situation is, have all the facts and options at their disposal (or as much of this as possible during the brief time where most people focus on politics) and then we can make some kind of collective decision about what we should do, or at least indicate a vague direction.

There are risks to making this election all about the environment. For example, what happened in Australia earlier this year. With record temperatures and huge wildfires burning, the environment became a major issue in the 2019 election. The Labour Party promised to do something about it and the Liberal Party (who are, confusingly, the centre-right party in Australia) said not only that they would ignore the issue, but turned it into a battle in the never-ending culture war. Scott Morrison’s Liberal Party won, which set the cause of reducing carbon emissions and tackling rising temperatures back by years. The fact that this happened in a country already experiencing serious problems due to the climate emergency is very worrying.

Despite this warning, we should be taking the opportunity of a general election, that almost no one wanted, to focus on the most important issue affecting the country. Politicians of all parties need to acknowledge the seriousness of this issue or else it will derail their entire agenda for decades. There should be a public debate on how we can avert a climate catastrophe. This is the only way to begin to find a solution to the problem of rising global temperatures that threatens everyone.

"Extinction Rebellion-11" by juliahawkins123 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

Will there be a technology fix to the climate emergency?

Is there a technology fix for the climate emergency? It’s a question that’s on a lot of people’s minds. In a recent episode of Slate’s Political Gabfest podcast, host David Plotz said that he was so depressed by the inaction from politicians on the environment that his only hope of averting a catastrophe was a technological breakthrough.

I can understand where this desire comes from. The environmental destruction that humanity will face if temperatures rise by more than two degrees is scary. It will mean very destructive weather, huge displacement of people, food scarcity, political unrest and loss of life. It’s completely understandable to want a scientist in a lab somewhere to suddenly discover a way out of this.

The complete political paralysis on the issue of climate change encourages this kind of thinking. Politicians either deny the plainly obvious danger of rising global temperatures or acknowledge that it is a problem, but are completely ineffectual at delivering a solution. Even the Green Party, who acknowledge that the climate emergency is the biggest political issue of the day, are unable to gain much attention and are more likely to be in the news discussing Brexit than the environment. It seems more realistic to expect a Hail Mary technological solution to appear instead of a political one.

Transformative technology

It’s possible that a completely transformative technology will solve all of our problems. Maybe scientists will discover a stable and safe way to do nuclear fusion. This would produce vast amounts of power by turning hydrogen into helium and produce little or no waste. This technology has been 30 years away since the 1970s and despite significant recent breakthroughs it might not appear before we do irreversible damage to the environment.

Where we get our power from is only one thing that has to change to solve the climate emergency. Plastic waste, vehicle and factory emissions and other problems need to be tackled. In every area, there is a technology that could save us, but we cannot rely on them being ready in time. Also, securing funding for the research that produces these technologies is a political decision that must be weighed against other priorities from providing social care to education.

There is certainly a role for technology in the fight against a climate apocalypse. More and better sources of clean energy would be helpful. However, we must acknowledge that the climate emergency is a political issue. There are political barriers to getting more of our power from renewable energy or recycling more or having more environmentally buildings.

Fundamentally a political problem

There is no guarantee that technology can save us. Even if the technology to fix the problems was available, there is a political challenge to get it adopted. Say, for example, France cracks nuclear fusion and can produce unlimited clean energy. Would Russia and China forgo their ability to produce their own power and be beholden to France to keep the lights on? Would France share the technology for nuclear fusion, which as a source of nearly unlimited power could also be a source of nearly unlimited destruction? These are political questions.

A technology solution to the climate emergency is popular because we can’t imagine an alternative, i.e. the people of the world coming together to fix the problem. Across the world, from Washington to Manila we are led by leaders who sow division and don’t try to bring people together. Tackling climate change, and even whether you think it’s a problem or not, has become another thing that divides us. Another chit in our endless culture war.

Political change and not technological change

The solution to the climate emergency is political change and not a technological one. Technology certainly has a role to play, but the change that is needed in the world is political. Preventing more than two degrees of global warming is a decision about what we do with our resources, which is at its root a political question.

The popularity of a technological fix to the climate emergency shows how scary it is and how low people’s expectations of a political solution are. We cannot allow our fears to get the better of us in this way. We need political action to avoid disaster.

  "Powerplant" by Nucho is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Why is the right making climate change part of the culture war?

I am writing this on the first day of Extinction Rebellion October rebellion, where young people (and some not so young people) are walking out of their schools and jobs to protest about the lack of government action on tackling the climate emergency. This should be a moment that transcends party politics, or the liberal/conservative cultural divide, where we all come together to demand the preservation of the natural environment. 

Bizarrely, there are people on the right who have the exact opposite reaction. Whenever someone prominently voices the opinion that they would rather the surface of the Earth remains habitable, a certain breed of right-wing culture warrior takes this as an opportunity to score points for “their side”. Usually via the media of the Twitter own, the lowest form of political debate. I guess “their side” is the one that wants to keep burning fossil fuels until every last living organism dies out, which doesn’t seem like a great long term political project to me.

You can see this need own environmental activists strongest in the treatment of the founder of the School Strike for Climate movement Greta Thunberg. For example this moment of pointless hostility to someone who is trying to make the world a better place from Julia Hartley-Brewer. Hartley-Brewer presumably doesn’t mind if the sea level rises as she can keep spitting vitriol at liberals in the manner of someone who never got over the teenage phase when it was painfully uncool to care about things.

Dangerous teenagers

Thunberg is a sixteen-year-old-kid who wants to make the world a better place, but many on the right act as if she is the leader of sinister hippy cult, a latter day Charles Manson. I find Thunberg really inspiring. I wish I had had her desire to roll up my sleeves and get stuck into the problems of the world when I was her age. At 16 the thing I was most interested in was finding all the Insane Stunt Bonuses on GTA 3.

You could argue that she is young and native, that she doesn’t understand how the world works because she is only 16. I don’t think she is any of these things, but I can see how one could make that argument. It’s an argument that has been deployed against teenagers getting involved in politics for as long as teenagers have been getting involved in politics.

Many teenagers are naive and lack knowledge of the world; I was when I was 16 and you probably were too. However, what I don’t understand is the idea that she is dangerous. That she leading young people towards some kind of Khmer Rouge style rural agrarian socialist death cult, which if you look at the incensed reaction of some people on the right to a young person speaking their mind you would think that was what she was suggesting.

Liberals claimed it

So why is the right making the environment another aspect of the culture war? Why are you now a “libtard” if you don’t want most of the life on Earth to die out in the next century? What makes someone want to embrace Rolling Coal, wasting their money to ruin the environment faster as means of trolling liberals?

Is it because the environment has been “claimed” by the left and therefore they are against it? Just another aspect of the increasingly bizarre culture war, such as declaring that Olivia Coleman has a left-wing face, presumably because people on the left like her.

That might explain contempt for environmental activists, but not the level of vitriol directed at the very idea that we should do something about mass extinctions and rising global temperatures. The right’s culture war on environmentalism has led to the debasement of climate science.

Anti-capitalism 

Is it because it’s seen as anti-capitalism? The free market is destroying the natural environment and the free market must be followed so therefore environmentalism is communism? I can see how the right is on the side of big business like coal, oil and car companies and they’re right that tackling the climate emergency will require more regulations and more state involvement in both people’s personal lives and the activities of companies. Many on the right have a religious devotion to capitalism and see that any intervention in the free market as the work of satan, so is this why they’re so triggered by environmental activists?

I don’t think this full explains it. There are a lot of business opportunities for firms wanting to create green products. Markets adapt to changes. Slaves and child labour were once acceptable products. So were cigarette adverts or ads for fast food aimed at children. All these things have been discarded and free market capitalism continues.

I want to be clear that I disagree with the argument that capitalism can save us from the climate emergency. I have written the opposite of that. However, I can see how someone on the right could believe that it is. A lack of willingness to see the flaws in capitalism doesn’t explain their visceral hatred of climate activists. 

Shock jocks and trolls

Some of this hated of environmentalism on the right comes from shock jocks whose role is to get as much attention as possible. They don’t necessarily represent everyone on the right. This is more of an American, Republican pathology and doesn’t reflect the views of many British conservatives who acknowledge that there is a problem with the environment, but don’t think it’s a priority to tackle it. This is a different type of idiocy, but it’s not part of the culture war.

Across the western world, as the climate worsens, there is an increasing scorn from the right aimed at people who don’t want the human race to go extinct. The shock jocks and trolls are a vocal minority, but wouldn’t have power if they didn’t get retweets. Also this does not explain the right’s desire to deny the evidence of rising global temperatures and decreasing polar ice caps. It doesn’t explain why the people who fetishise the data driven world of business, have so turned against facts and reason.

A patriotic view of history

I think that the reason the right hates environmentalism is that they see it as unpatriotic, which is ironic because it is the land they claim to love that is itself being destroyed by the climate emergency.

Let me be clear. Their objection is not that environmental activists don’t wave the flag enough (although that cultural disconnect is part of it), it is more of a fundamental disconnect about how the left and the right view the world or, more accurately, history. Environmental activism explicitly says that we have taken a wrong turn at some point in our history and this something that the right cannot stand. They cannot recast the history of their country as having a major flaw.

It’s down to the left to stop the climate emergency

The left is more open to the idea that at some point in history we took a wrong turn. The left opposes neoliberal capitalism and racism, neither of which are natural and were created by people. On the left, we can say that society made a bad decision in the past and created capitalist and racist institutions that led to suffering in the present. To us history is not glorious, it is littered with mistakes.

The left is also happy with the idea that we can correct the mistake by overthrow the current system and replace it with a better one. This is key to environmentalism. Modern Conservatism traces its origins to Edmund Burke who believed that all revolutions end in tyranny and this makes the right opposed a broad programs of change.

Environmentalism seems to be against how conservatives see themselves. They are threatened by it on a fundamental level. Thus they feel the need to pour hatred onto environmental activists. They have made the environment part of the culture war, which means they see caring about the future of the planet as a sign of weakness. If this is the case then it is the left that will have to save the environment from destruction. The right have renounced any obligation to conserve nature and would rather bury their head in the sand whilst tweeting snarky owns at people trying to make sure that our species has a future.

"Extinction Rebellion-11" by juliahawkins123 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

We need to act to stop the climate emergency

We need to do something to stop the climate catastrophe. It’s not some distant prospect, it’s something that is happening now, with record breaking temperatures in summers and polar ice melting faster than expected. Wars, the mass migration of people and political instability are already being caused by climate change. This will only get worse. 

Many scientists agree that we have 12 years to take steps to limit the Earth to 1.5 degrees of warming. Whether this can be done may be decided in the next 18 months, through a series of upcoming climate summits. It’s no exaggeration to say that time is running out.

I am not alone in thinking like this. In the last year of so there has been an explosion of climate related activity. Greta Thunberg and her school strikes have gotten the world's attention, Richard Attenborough is using his star power to change minds, Extinction Rebellion have brought a new sense of urgency to the climate movement. Many people I know are going vegan, giving up on flying and trying to live greener to make some kind of impact.

I should do something

I feel that I should do something. I shouldn’t sit on the sidelines. I want to be someone who stands up and makes a difference. We are facing a crucial point in the history of human civilisation, a crossroads, and I want to be part of the process through which humanity finally accepts that we have to protect the natural environment. We have to do something to save millions of human lives and countless other species that we share this planet with.

Brexit has paralyzed politics in the UK. Remain and Leave exchange tirades of anger and nothing changes. I feel powerless when it comes to Brexit and I’m not the only one. What I want from Brexit, i.e. to stop it, seems like such as distant prospect and our elected leaders seem heedless to our calls not to throw the country off a cliff. On the issue of climate, I feel a sense of energy. Change is essential. If politicians don’t deliver it then they will have to be swept aside to save life on Earth as we know it.

I have passion on this issue, but what should I do? I want to make a difference. I want to more than write a blog or retweet George Monbiot.

Individual change or systemic change?

I certainly could recycle more, buy less single use plastic, fly less and eat less meat. These are things I should do to lessen the environmental impact of my life. However, these are individual changes and I don’t think that is the solution to the climate crisis. A world that is not threatened by the climate catastrophe is one where we will probably eat less meat and fly less, however, it will certainly be a world without oil companies. To achieve this world there is only so much I can do as an individual when just 100 companies make 71% of global emissions.

I thought about joining Extinction Rebellion, they are the most radical and interesting group pushing for the change to our politics that is needed. However, their objective of getting a certain number of arrests from an action scare me. I am a wimp and honestly, I am not sure if I am prepared to go to prison for what I believe. This is a question I must settle with myself.

I have considered joining Greenpeace. To some degree their thunder has been stolen by Extinction Rebellion, however, media coverage is one thing but what results are Extinction Rebellion getting? Maybe it’s too soon to tell. Greenpeace have been raising the profile of the climate catastrophe for years and the sudden impact of Extinction Rebellion is partly a result of the work that Greenpeace and others have been doing for years to keep this issue in the public’s conscientiousness.

Maybe I am over thinking this when I should just start acting. I want to dive in and make a difference to avert the climate catastrophe. We all need to. We don’t have long to save life as we know it.

Radical solutions are needed for the climate crisis

I have always thought it odd when people say we need to “save the Earth”. The physical substance of the Earth will be here for billions of years after we’re all dead, no matter how we die. It’s humanity that’s under threat.  

We are in a race against time to save humanity (and many other species) from catastrophic climate change. The lives of billions of people are on the line if we don’t take serious action to reduce the impact humanity is having on the environment.

The change that needs to happen to all of human civilisation is profound. Radical politics and new economic models are needed to save humanity. Individual changes - such as recycling and cycling to work - are making a difference, but alone they’re not enough. To save humanity, we need a world without companies profiting from environmental destruction.

Swift and radical change

This cannot be done under capitalism. The destruction of the natural environment is just too profitable. Capitalism lacks feedback mechanisms that will prevent it from wiping out the human race. The incentives for profitability are all short term. There is no mechanism to forgo short-term profits to allow for capitalism to continue in the long run. Once capitalism has wiped out all the humans, the cockroaches won’t be starting businesses.

Incremental changes to human society will not be fast enough to save us from climate destruction. This will require swift and radical change. There are only 12 years to make the necessary changes to avoid more than two degrees of global warming. The changes that need to happen in such a short space of time are radical.

We live in a world where politicians are beholden to oil companies and other big businesses. Oil companies especially make huge amounts of money from destroying the environment. It’s hard to see a future where humanity and oil companies can both survive. We need to leave billions of pounds worth of oil in the ground to save the human race. Oil companies will have become extinct.

The power of the state

The state created capitalism in the early modern period and the power of the state will be needed to undo capitalism to save the environment. The state is the means for collective action that can stop the damage that capitalism is doing. However, the purposes of the project ahead must not be to transfer all the powers of private companies to the state. Currently, the state is too unaccountable for the safety of many of its citizens. Transferring much more power to the state could be very dangerous.

The powers held by private companies and the state needs to be transferred to people. It is ordinary people and their communities that have the knowledge to preserve our future. Government is seen by many people as something too distant, too abstract, to make a positive difference to their lives. These distant powers need to be brought closer to home so that people can see that the power of the government can improve their lives.

Once people can see the state making a positive difference in their community and they can see these powers at work, they will be inspired to make the changes necessary to save us all from environmental destruction. If people hold the power at a local level they can use it to prevent climate change

A positive solution

We need to move beyond capitalism. Capitalism is a threat to the future of the human race as it greedily consumes resources and destroys the environment. If capitalism is not stopped it will lead to the deaths of billions of people. The state can a positive solution to the problems of capitalism, but it needs to be reformed first.

We need radical new politics and economics to save the environment and rise to the challenge that humanity faces. However, we must not replace an out of control capitalism, reliant on overly powerful private companies, with an out of control state that is overly powerful itself.

 "Powerplant" by Nucho is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Extinction Rebellion gives me reason to be hopeful

In an age of so many political reasons to be depressed, the recent Extinction Rebellion protests should give those of us on the Left at least one cause to be hopeful. Seemingly out of nowhere, here were thousands of people willing to make a stand about what ought to be the defining political issue of our time.

People of all ages turned out to the protests in London during late April to demand urgent action on climate change, but they were predominantly – crucially – young. One image from the protests brought this home to me in particular: a young woman holding a placard stating ‘You will die of old age. I will die of climate change’.

This not only succinctly illustrate the gravity of the situation humanity faces; it also provides a counter-narrative to the lazy assumption that has persisted for far too long: that young people are too preoccupied with hipster fashions, cat videos on YouTube, their own image on social media, or whatever other supposed indicator of their shallow lack of awareness is being used to denigrate them this week.

Against this background, Greta Thunberg, climate activist and school striker, is the ideal icon of resistance for our times. Engaged, articulate and angrily speaking truth to power, she proves that today’s generation of young people are far from the vacuous, self-centred bunch they are often accused of being. She, and everyone else involved, are of course right.

Looming crisis

I don’t need to repeat here the looming crisis we, as a species, face due to climate change. We are in deep trouble. Yet, for too long, politicians have been prepared to side-line the issue; at best paying lip service and fiddling around the edges with this or that issue (as long as it’s business-friendly, of course). Or at worst, denying that there is a problem at all.

This isn’t just about climate change. Young people are increasingly aware, angry, and flexing their political muscles in a way that the establishment do not like at all. Age is becoming the defining dividing line in British politics. 70% of 18-24 year olds voted Remain in the EU referendum. In the 2017 General Election, Corbyn’s Labour would have won easily if only the under-40s had the vote. In both cases, the relevant vote share declined with each upward age bracket.

Some would put this down to naïve, youthful idealism. On the whole, I disagree. Young people are simply voting for their interests. Far from always voting to the left, and despite the ‘Rick from the Young Ones’ caricature, young people played their part in electing Margert Thatcher because they believed she offered them hope for the future. Today, the reality is stark: young people recognise that our current political consensus is driving our planet towards inhabitability, and this doesn’t seem overly appealing for those who, or whose children, will be around to see this happen.

It’s a far cry from what I remember of being a teenager myself. People of my age at the time were predominantly apathetic, aloof, and cynical when it came to politics. Granted, the era of Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’ and the supposed end of ideology, was not the most inspiring for political engagement. Even in the case of the 2003 Iraq War, an anachronistic flashpoint in a generally unpolitical era, the response of many of my peers wasn’t just to support or oppose the war. It was disinterest or, worse, ‘there’s no point in protesting. It doesn’t work’.

There’s no point in protesting

In my view, this was just another toxic legacy bequeathed to my generation by the privileged Baby Boomer generation. Along with dismantling the welfare state, and imposing tuition fees they themselves were unburdened by, they told us that they’d done the hard work for us: we protested in the 60’s and 70’s, they told us, then we grew up and discovered there’s no point – so you don’t have to bother.

Well, that orthodoxy, depressing as it was, is over. That answer isn’t good enough for young people any more.

Unsurprisingly the protests haven’t gone down well in all quarters. London Mayor Sadiq Kahn stated repeatedly that he ‘shared the passions of those protesting that the government needs to do more on climate change’ whilst imploring the protesters to call it all off, end the disruption, and go home.

This just illustrates the point of Extinction Rebellion. The time for supportive words whilst treating climate change as a side-issue, and doing nothing, is over. I understand why, in his position, Kahn has to take this law-and-order oriented approach, but like the great civil rights struggles of the past, it’s clearly going to take something more assertive than asking politely to push climate change up the agenda.

Young people are a force to be reckoned with

Even more hostile was London police chief Cressida Dick’s recent suggestion that laws should be changed to enable the more rapid arrest of protesters. The disruption caused by Extinction Rebellion is genuine – that was the point - but she should recognise how non-violent the week-long protests remained. They were free of even the fringe violence that marred earlier comparable left-wing protests, such as the G8 anti-capitalist protests in the 2000’s. It’s difficult to imagine, say, ‘Tommy Robinson’ supporters achieving the same peacefulness whilst exercising their freedom to demonstrate.

I hope that Extinction Rebellion achieves its goal of robust action finally being enacted by the government to deal with climate change. I remember, in the pre-financial crash world, occasionally someone in politics would say that climate change was as serious a threat to humanity as terrorism. Well, they were wrong. It’s much worse than that. It’s far more important than Brexit, as well. There are already some encouraging signs from Labour that the issue will form a cornerstone of its future programme for government.

But for now, if nothing else, Extinction Rebellion proves – once again – that young people are a force to be reckoned with. Political parties who ignore them could well end up regretting it as they, like our planet’s future, face oblivion.

"Extinction Rebellion-11" by juliahawkins123 is licensed under CC BY 2.0