Climate change is here and even though we are a small contributor what we do matters enormously, not in absolute terms, perhaps, but symbolically. Recently there has been a push back against even modest action. Given the overriding and critical nature of the problem, action on Climate should be cross-party and consensual. Recently it has descended into political knock about to which Labour has responded by backtracking, at the same claiming it needs to apply realism to its previous policy stance and delay action. In this short essay I explore the politicisation of climate as an issue, and explore what we should actually be doing.
20th Sept. 2023 reported all over the media, this report is from The Guardian.
Rishi Sunak announces U-turn on key green targets
A case in point, it was an originally a conservative scheme, the London Mayor has a statutory duty to improve air quality but couldn’t get central government clean air grants.
It then descends into a political squabble https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/23/london-cannot-bid-for-national-clean-air-funding-mayor-says?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
And https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/assembly/ulez-expansion-in-october-2021 'This Assembly notes that to date, the Mayor and London Boroughs have so far been excluded from applying to the Clean Air Fund…'
And for a factual roundup from the LSE https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/the-truth-about-londons-ultra-low-emission-zone/
'The creation of the ULEZ was first announced by Boris Johnson in July 2014 when he was the Conservative Mayor of London, and was confirmed in March 2015 after a consultation . It was backed by the then Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, who also agreed to provide funding to help its implementation. The ULEZ was initially scheduled to take effect in Central London from 7 September 2020'
House of Commons Library, Insight, 2 June 2021. This is a useful roundup of the UK position with global emissions and temperature trends
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/uk-and-global-emissions-and-temperature-trends/
The final section called Carbon from burning fossil fuels …'The UK ranked 17th with 1.1% of global emissions.'
Our World in Data, United Kingdom: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-kingdom,
see, What share of global cumulative CO2 has the country emitted?
The Good Law Project took the government to court on the basis that it had set targets but no actual plans on how to meet them
Labour has said it wouldn’t reverse any of them if they are approved before it takes over https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/uks-rosebank-oil-field-development-gets-go-ahead-2023-09-27/
More to come https://www.offshore-technology.com/news/uk-announces-100-new-north-sea-oil-and-gas-licenses/?cf-view
Information about the how a what a green new for UK deal would look like
https://greennewdealgroup.org/the-green-new-deal/
And the EU getting organised here
Although some, including Yanis Varufakis are sceptical about the funding, 'Unlike their US counterparts, EU policymakers still face the roadblocks of no money and no common treasury'
Labours backtracking is described here
How a green new deal can be paid for is described here
https://neweconomics.org/2019/11/five-ways-to-fund-a-green-new-deal
Chatham House is a long standing foreign affairs think tank, hardly noted for its radicalism
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2023/09/rishi-sunaks-speech-will-make-uk-harder-take-seriously-cop28
Alok Sharma, is one of the politicians across party lines understand the issues https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/24/alok-sharma-challenges-rishi-sunak-show-us-how-uk-can-meet-green-pledges?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
'Sharma said he welcomed ''the prime minister’s re-confirming unequivocally that the UK will meet our international agreements,'' but added more needed to be done: ''Ministers must urgently show how they plan for this to be achieved,'' he said.'
The question is, just as it was for the leaderships of Trump and Johnson, how bad does it have to get before democratically minded individuals reclaim the Conservative and Republican parties from the extremists who have taken over their parties.
This paragraph could expand into an article in its own right, being the first industrial nation gave us a lead, being small means that relative declines against big countries is inevitable. The crux of the issue therefore is not about being biggest, but about is living standards (at this time they have been static for 18 years) and quality of life. The decline is thrown into sharp relief when you can’t get the services you need. It’s a mistake just to look at economics in isolation, if the economy is doing well according to economists but the majority of people aren’t feeling it surely there is something wrong with the economic analysis. There is a lot of new thinking going on in economics since 2008, it doesn’t seem to have registered with politicians yet.
Poor investment and low productivity, recent round up by the TUC
https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/uk-near-bottom-oecd-rankings-national-investment
One of the big 4 business consultancy operations, another source not noted for its radicalism. This is as reported in The Guardian; Great British slowdown has hamstrung our economy – thinktank
The view of Britain that emphasises the Great and looks backwards, it has 1940’s themed days in nice rural villages (e.g. Pickering), ignoring the realities of the blitz in urban areas (like Hull). My dad was a D-Day veteran and would have found this misty-eyed nostalgia offensive.
News Agents Podcast The News Agents, detail investigation finds that equalising income tax on capital with incom tax on work could raise as mush as the entire annual benefits budget - enough to make a start on big moves in the GND
https://uk-podcasts.co.uk/podcast/the-news-agents/why-we-need-to-talk-about-wealth
Richard Murphy is an advocate of modern monetary theory, he is also a Professor of Accounting, it is through his detailed and forensic examination of how tax actually work that he sets out the ways money can be raised without hurting ordinary people or business.
This is a link to one
you would do worse than follow the development of the taxing wealth report., see also
The United Kingdom is ranked 23rd out of 38 OECD countries in terms of the tax-to-GDP ratio in 2021. In 2021, the United Kingdom had a tax-to-GDP ratio of 33.5% compared with the OECD average of 34.1%. In 2020, the United Kingdom was ranked 25th out of the 38 OECD countries in terms of the tax-to-GDP ratio.
https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-united-kingdom.pdf
The point is we may have higher tax then we have had historically but we are not exceptional and by no means at the top of the list, therefore in line of the theme of this essay, the idea that we are massively overtaxed is simply the product of looking inwards (parochial) and not outwards (globally)
This is middle Britain, not eco warriors
Finally a loss and reparations fund was agreed, the costs fall disproportionately on people who are not responsible for Global Heating, it should not have taken so long and it still needs to be adequately funded.
Op Ed piece, This is my plan to raise the trillions the climate crisis demands