UK
Recession & rising temperatures are more reason for radical climate action – not less
‘We have no alternative in the labour and climate movement but to double down on building the radical policies we need to address the multiple crises we face today’Sam Mason
As Labour abandon’s its green prosperity “alternative” in favour of fiscal responsibility, and the economy tips back into recession, Sam Mason argues that we must double down in the labour and climate movement on building the radical policies for we need.
The day Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves finally ended speculation over the £28 billion so jubilantly committed to back in 2021 could not be more poignant. Perhaps it was unfortunate timing, and not a good news story at the best of times, but certainly careless on the day the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announces that global warming is estimated to have exceeded 1.5C across an entire 12-month period for the first time. As the economy slips into recession, and the latest release of the UK Government’s Fuel Poverty Statistics shows a deepening crisis, what further evidence could be needed for a ‘green’ investment plan? And one which prioritises a decades overdue homes insulation programme?
Abandoning the £28bn pledge follows a year that has seen climate records shattered, and the UK itself battered by ten storms between September and January alone. These may not have been as devastating as the wildfires in Chile or flooding in California but it still puts enormous stress on the UK’s cracking infrastructure and, not least, the emergency and energy workers that have to respond to these.
In January, following months of floods and extreme weather in the UK, Matt Wrack of the FBU said “If Labour doesn’t spend this money, it will put our members at risk” along with the public – clearly a message from an affiliated union that has not been listened to.
In the midst of a continuing cost of living crisis, and high energy bills, it was always clear that tackling the climate and biodiversity crisis was about tackling these, too. Indeed, only last September Ed Miliband said that Rishi Sunak was bankrupt of ideas in response to his rolling back on climate policy. He rightly argued that this backtracking would “put up costs for working people, threaten investment and jobs, and lead to climate delay, loading more costs on to families.”
So what’s changed?
Starmer and Reeves can spin the decks on their broken record of how the Tories trashed the economy so their hands are tied but its an argument that doesn’t square. When parading their “clean energy superpower” mission as a new chapter in Labour history, they seemed to have skipped over the bit when the Attlee government went ahead with creating the NHS and building council homes despite being told it was unaffordable.
It’s telling perhaps the lack of response to the questions put by the Greener jobs Alliance last October on Labour’s financial approach to green issues. In letters sent to Rachel Reeves and Angela Raynor, they set out the many questions most of us have, but have yet to receive an answer. Unfortunately, grand statements about having “a world-leading agenda on climate and energy” doesn’t deliver jobs or security for workers, let alone the communities they live in.
The £28 billion was never enough and the Green Prosperity Fund pales into comparison compared to the plans for a green industrial revolution put forward in the 2019 manifesto. Those proposals were not perfect but did offer a real alternative that was developed out of extensive discussion with trade unions and communities. It recognised the need for public ownership and public services to lead on decarbonising our economy and society with energy, rail, mail and water in public hands. And it linked green investment with improving people’s welfare such as warm homes, or accessible and affordable public transport as basic as a bus service.
These are the radical labour and climate movement policies we need to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss while making people’s lives better. That means making energy a public good and nationalising current assets, addressing the energy efficiency of our building stock and localising food production. This would create millions of jobs – whether in renewable energy, construction for new infrastructure including green steel, transport, education, and a decarbonised food system. It also means recognising and valuing work in the care and health sectors, along with nature recovery which are vital to people’s welfare.
State intervention in industry has been tried and failed by Labour before. The workers inquiry by the Coventry, Liverpool, Newcastle and North Tyneside Trades Council into Labour’s attempt in the 1970’s concluded that “never again can we leave politics to the politicians”. After the debacle of the £28billion we can only conclude the same and why we need to develop workers plans in alliance with communities and the wider climate movement to win the future we so desperately need.
As the Welsh socialist writer Raymond Williams, said “To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.” To do this we have no alternative in the labour and climate movement but to double down on building the radical policies we need to address the multiple crises we face today.
Sam Mason is the coordinator of the Climate Justice Coalition trade union caucus. You can follow the Climate Justice Coalition on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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Starmer tears up Labour’s green pledges
Starmer has U-turned slashing £28 billion a year for climate investments to just £5 billion a year
Keir Starmer meeting king Abdullah II of Jordan at COP 28 last year in Dubai
Starmer has U-turned slashing £28 billion a year for climate investments to just £5 billion a year
Keir Starmer meeting king Abdullah II of Jordan at COP 28 last year in Dubai
(Picture: Keir Starmer on Flickr)
By Thomas Foster
Tuesday 13 February 2024
Tuesday 13 February 2024
SOCIALIST WORKER Issue 2892
The planet is burning as Labour backtracks on its £28 billion a year climate investments pledge. This is Starmer’s latest betrayal, choosing once again to side with big business.
The pledge promised substantial investment in green industries, technologies and jobs. But over the last year, the Tories have focused their attacks on Labour’s green spending commitments.
And so the pledge is “effectively being stood down,” Starmer said last week. Just a month ago, Starmer defended the plan as “a fight I want to have”. But flight, not fight, is the route Starmer has gone down.
Rather than standing for a sustainable future. Starmer has capitulated. He lines up with the Tories to attack migrants and trans rights and now does the same on climate change.
The U-turn comes as the European Union’s climate service found that global warming has exceeded 1.5 degree Celsius for an entire year.
This is one of Starmer’s most substantial U-turns yet. The commitment was Starmer’s flagship policy when launched in 2021 and at the centre of Labour’s plans to boost Britain’s economy.
But the pledge has been watered down to less than £5 billion a year. This is a tiny sum compared to the existential threat of climate change.
In 2021, Labour shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said she’d be Britain’s first “green chancellor”, boasting about Labour fighting for “a fairer, greener future”.
Reeves has since changed her tune. “I think people have heard loud and clear from me that economic responsibility is the most important thing for me,” she said as she supported the backtracking.
Instead, Reeves aims to be an “iron chancellor” of economic caution. There are no illusions why this retreat has happened. A Labour shadow cabinet member said, “It had to go.
We couldn’t head into an election with this big, huge target for the Tories to fire at.” Labour will always bow to electoral pressures rather than carry out transformative change.
The party is more worried about proving its worth to bosses than the future of our planet. There has rightly been fury from climate campaigners.
Rosemary Harris, North Sea campaigner at Oil Change International, said it is “a slap in the face and a betrayal” of “future generations impacted by the climate crisis”.
Head of politics at Greenpeace, Rebecca Newsom, blasted Starmer for showing “weak” political, economic and climate leadership. And a recent opinion poll showed that the pledge was one of the most popular Labour policies.
But Starmer doesn’t care about what ordinary people want, he cares about being a safe pair of hands for the capitalist class. Once again, the Labour leadership has caved like a house of cards in the wind.
Our climate heads to catastrophe as temperatures continue to soar
Global temperature rises have exceeded 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels across an entire year for the first time.
And this comes as the Atlantic Ocean currents reach a tipping point of collapse. Keeping temperature rises beneath 1.5 degree Celsius is critical to limiting long-run destruction.
But from February 2023 to January 2024, the world reached 1.52 degree Celsius of warming, according to the European Union’s climate service.
And we are currently on track to heat our planet by 2.7 degree Celsius by 2100—a level that threatens to undermine the conditions for human life.
We are facing climate catastrophe. We must act urgently to cut carbon emissions and slow global warming—but bosses and politicians are not doing enough.
The rise “far exceeds anything that is acceptable”, said Professor Bob Watson, former chair of the UN’s climate body.
“Look what’s happened this year with only 1.5 degree Celsius —we’ve seen floods, we’ve seen droughts, we’ve seen heatwaves and wildfires all over the world.”
And the world’s sea surface is also at its highest ever average— another sign of climate records continually being broken.
But “the real danger is that there are so many other crises around us that there is no effort left for the climate crisis,” said Reinhard Steurer, a climate researcher. “We are overburdened with other things like inflation and wars all around us.”
The vast array of capitalist crises could distract from the need to tackle climate change. And large corporations—who are responsible for the majority of carbon emissions—continue to massively pollute.
A study last week found that the Atlantic Ocean currents are nearing collapse. The vast system of ocean currents are key to regulating global climate.
The currents carry heat and carbon from the warmer tropics to the Artic Circle, where currents then cool and sink into the deep ocean.
The process distributes energy around the world and mitigates against global warming. But the process is disintegrating.
Artic sheets melting is causing freshwater to flow into the sea, preventing the sinking of warmer, saltier water from the south. The study says, “This is bad news for the climate system and humanity.”
The lead author, Rene van Westen said, “What surprised us was the rate at which tipping occurs” and if a tipping point of collapse is reaching “it will be devastating”.
All climate indicators point towards a dangerous future. But climate collapse is not inevitable. The world can stop warming if net zero carbon emissions are reached.
“That means we can control how much warming the world experiences, based on our choices as a society,” says Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth.
We need a society run sustainably by ordinary people, not by the ruling classes for profit.
The planet is burning as Labour backtracks on its £28 billion a year climate investments pledge. This is Starmer’s latest betrayal, choosing once again to side with big business.
The pledge promised substantial investment in green industries, technologies and jobs. But over the last year, the Tories have focused their attacks on Labour’s green spending commitments.
And so the pledge is “effectively being stood down,” Starmer said last week. Just a month ago, Starmer defended the plan as “a fight I want to have”. But flight, not fight, is the route Starmer has gone down.
Rather than standing for a sustainable future. Starmer has capitulated. He lines up with the Tories to attack migrants and trans rights and now does the same on climate change.
The U-turn comes as the European Union’s climate service found that global warming has exceeded 1.5 degree Celsius for an entire year.
This is one of Starmer’s most substantial U-turns yet. The commitment was Starmer’s flagship policy when launched in 2021 and at the centre of Labour’s plans to boost Britain’s economy.
But the pledge has been watered down to less than £5 billion a year. This is a tiny sum compared to the existential threat of climate change.
In 2021, Labour shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said she’d be Britain’s first “green chancellor”, boasting about Labour fighting for “a fairer, greener future”.
Reeves has since changed her tune. “I think people have heard loud and clear from me that economic responsibility is the most important thing for me,” she said as she supported the backtracking.
Instead, Reeves aims to be an “iron chancellor” of economic caution. There are no illusions why this retreat has happened. A Labour shadow cabinet member said, “It had to go.
We couldn’t head into an election with this big, huge target for the Tories to fire at.” Labour will always bow to electoral pressures rather than carry out transformative change.
The party is more worried about proving its worth to bosses than the future of our planet. There has rightly been fury from climate campaigners.
Rosemary Harris, North Sea campaigner at Oil Change International, said it is “a slap in the face and a betrayal” of “future generations impacted by the climate crisis”.
Head of politics at Greenpeace, Rebecca Newsom, blasted Starmer for showing “weak” political, economic and climate leadership. And a recent opinion poll showed that the pledge was one of the most popular Labour policies.
But Starmer doesn’t care about what ordinary people want, he cares about being a safe pair of hands for the capitalist class. Once again, the Labour leadership has caved like a house of cards in the wind.
Our climate heads to catastrophe as temperatures continue to soar
Global temperature rises have exceeded 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels across an entire year for the first time.
And this comes as the Atlantic Ocean currents reach a tipping point of collapse. Keeping temperature rises beneath 1.5 degree Celsius is critical to limiting long-run destruction.
But from February 2023 to January 2024, the world reached 1.52 degree Celsius of warming, according to the European Union’s climate service.
And we are currently on track to heat our planet by 2.7 degree Celsius by 2100—a level that threatens to undermine the conditions for human life.
We are facing climate catastrophe. We must act urgently to cut carbon emissions and slow global warming—but bosses and politicians are not doing enough.
The rise “far exceeds anything that is acceptable”, said Professor Bob Watson, former chair of the UN’s climate body.
“Look what’s happened this year with only 1.5 degree Celsius —we’ve seen floods, we’ve seen droughts, we’ve seen heatwaves and wildfires all over the world.”
And the world’s sea surface is also at its highest ever average— another sign of climate records continually being broken.
But “the real danger is that there are so many other crises around us that there is no effort left for the climate crisis,” said Reinhard Steurer, a climate researcher. “We are overburdened with other things like inflation and wars all around us.”
The vast array of capitalist crises could distract from the need to tackle climate change. And large corporations—who are responsible for the majority of carbon emissions—continue to massively pollute.
A study last week found that the Atlantic Ocean currents are nearing collapse. The vast system of ocean currents are key to regulating global climate.
The currents carry heat and carbon from the warmer tropics to the Artic Circle, where currents then cool and sink into the deep ocean.
The process distributes energy around the world and mitigates against global warming. But the process is disintegrating.
Artic sheets melting is causing freshwater to flow into the sea, preventing the sinking of warmer, saltier water from the south. The study says, “This is bad news for the climate system and humanity.”
The lead author, Rene van Westen said, “What surprised us was the rate at which tipping occurs” and if a tipping point of collapse is reaching “it will be devastating”.
All climate indicators point towards a dangerous future. But climate collapse is not inevitable. The world can stop warming if net zero carbon emissions are reached.
“That means we can control how much warming the world experiences, based on our choices as a society,” says Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth.
We need a society run sustainably by ordinary people, not by the ruling classes for profit.
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