Two news stories from the past week cannot failed to have escaped any readers attention: wildfires on a vast scale across the world, millions of hectares of land burned to ashes, killing countless animals, a handful of people, and destroying billion of pounds worth of property. But while here in the UK, we have become used to seeing such enormous firestorms in news reports from other countries, what we have never seen before are such devastating fires causing such havoc right here at home. And obviously, events such as the midlands fire recently will come as no surprise to anyone who spent the summer here in the UK, with heat-wave following heat-wave, and the almost entire absence of rain the whole time; this in turn should come as no surprise to anyone who knows that these weather events had been predicted since at least the 1970´s (although there were in fact writers in the 1870´s theorising the effects of rising atmospheric CO2 as a result of of industry and pollution). So with all this in mind, and people sweltering in what might well turn out to be the coolest summer any of us experience the rest of our lives, the countryside parched, crops failing, and climate armageddon unfolding on the news in real time, you might think that finally, the seriousness of situation has impressed on everybody -the political class as well as the man on the street- the absolute necessity of meaningful and urgent action on climate change to save us all from impending environmental disaster.
You might think. But for someone who’s understood the the scale and urgency of the change needed for at least 30 years now, and has been utterly dismayed by the lip service paid to tackling environmental problems engaged in by politicians who ultimately do sweet FA, who has seen golden opportunity after golden opportunity for governments to implement significant changes, squandered because of political expediency and lack of will. So really the announcement this week that Burnham is considering allowing companies to drill in the North Sea (the forerunner to the announcement that companies will be drilling in those 2 new sites), is neither shocking nor surprising, just frustrating and dismaying.
In a sane world, the UK would be running entirely on home grown renewable energy at this point -as would most other countries worldwide. The first edition of ´The limits to growth´ report was published by The Club of Rome in 1972. The report showed that absent political intervention current trends of unsustainable resource use and accumulation of environmental pollution would lead to a massive crash in the world economy and global population, by the middle of this century. The report´s logic was impeccable: it is impossible to have infinite growth in a finite world. Human ingenuity and technological advances can push back upon natural limits for a while, but ultimately cannot remove them; unsustainable human activity is possible for so long because resources accrue on geological timescales, while environmental sinks -the soil, the air and waterways – can absorb so much pollution before abruptly becoming toxic. But we’ve been overshooting the carrying capacity of the planet for some time (currently with a human footprint the equivalent of using 1.5 earths), and unless we can step back from the brink and govern ourselves in such a way that we live sustainably within natural limits, nature will decide a fate without regard for human welfare. Faced with the opportunity of collectively making the decisions to step back from the brink and to live within ecological limits, our leaders have consistently decided to roll the dice instead, kicking the can further down the road, time after time.
Consider the reaction of the US and UK governments when faced with the threat of Nazi Germany over-running the European continent, with all the opportunities to enrich the armourers and industrialists that entailed. Think about the colossal financial resources mobilised to rebuild Europe as part of the US´European Recovery Act, better known as the Marshall Plan. Think about the Manhattan project, or the missions to the moon. Mind the action taken by governments here in the UK, (rightly for wrongly), as well as worldwide, to tackle Covid 19. These few examples plainly show what is possible when governments perceive the necessity of undertaking sweeping economic and societal changes as a matter of politcal urgency, so its not hard to deduce that the long- running, pathetic response in the face of the mother of all existential crises, is entirely down to a lack of political will on the part of governments, best explicated by the phrase ´he who pays the piper calls the tune´. By now we pretty much all know who that is.
There should be a domestic -.to say nothing of an international- outcry against the climate vandalism indulged in by successive governments. The planet is burning. Where is the rage at the political class, and their collective failure -going back decades- to take appropriate action so that we wouldn’t be where we are now? It’s so depressing. We should be demanding the executives in the fossil fuel industry who orchestrated a campaign of misinformation, along with the media that propagated their lies and the politicians they bought off from acting truly in the people’s interests, face the equivalent of the Nuremberg trials. Needless to say, there is no such widespread outcry. Yet.
The climate crisis is here, and our Prime Minister is essentially fiddling while the country burns. Grant new licenses for drilling in the North Sea? Are you fucking kidding me? Of course this will be sold to the public as a sensible ´bridge´ to a green economy, and one that will pay for the green transition, rather than locking in more fossil fuel dependency for another generation, and to the sole financial benefit of the companies doing the drilling, with perhaps a handful of jobs for a few local people, mostly making sandwiches or cleaning the bogs. It will be presented as victory for energy security, rather than an enormous backward step at a stage in the unfolding crisis when it must be clear that time has now completely run out, and that what we need is not an ´orderly transition´ but an unprecedented effort to transform the economy and society, at break-neck speed.
We need a Marshall plan for the planet, not the extraction of the last drop of oil from the North Sea. We could wage total war on the climate change, rather than on nature, and it would bring much greater economic returns than a war on Russia, which our government seem intent on. We gave up any chance at leading the world through this inevitable Industrial Revolution, with all the massive intellectual, scientific and financial benefits that would have necessarily entailed, as political parties of varied stripes instead chose the path of least resistance. In spite of the missed opportunity though, nevertheless diverting most of the military budget to averting climate disaster would be the most enlightened move any politcal leader in this country, or elsewhere, could make, and would go a long way toward making people truly secure (with the second most enlightened being to keep the military and find the money for tackling climate change elsewhere).
We cant make up for lost time, but we can stop doing really stupid stuff that can only make the problem worse, such as drilling at the proposed Jackdaw and Rosebank sites. We need proper leadership, from politicians unafraid to take the tough decisions, which in practice means standing up to the powerful vested interests in the fossil fuel lobby and related industries, and an acknowledgement that we will all have to make sensible changes so that ultimately we can all lead better, sustainable lives.
It is certainly true that the UK could go almost completely green in terms of its energy supply within 5 years, subject to sufficient effort being applied. No doubt if oil and gas supplies were suddenly cut off completely from the UK, this would mostly be managed in just a year or 2. However quickly green technologies can be brought online though, there is always a lag between the decision to implement a green policy, and its effects filtering through the system. Indeed, some further warming to the planet is already, ahem, ´baked in´, so to speak. We therefore need to make every conceivable effort, and right away.
The extreme weather events featuring on the news each day, should mean that any politician arguing for more global warming (which is what they’re effectively doing by backing any new fossil fuel projects or infrastructure), should be laughed at. It should be apparent that the cost of adequately tackling climate problems, absolutely pales next to the cost of carrying on with the status quo. But it’s just Groundhog Day all over again. One more new PM, more broken promises on the environment, and another 30 years of dirty extraction in the North Sea to line the pockets of the donor class.
History will condemn us.