Parliament starts back today after a lengthy recess, although listening to MP-s talk this past few weeks, you’d almost swear that this summer never happened. Temperature records all over the country -as with the rest of the world- being broken over and over again; prolonged droughts leading to widespread crop damage and reduced yields, billions of pounds of lost productivity (scarcely offset by increased sales of electric fans and air conditioners), infrastructure failure, thousands across Europe dying from heat stress, wildfires on an apocalyptic scale -you might think that after 60 or so years of scientists warning that human activity was leading to climate armageddon, the time had finally come when politicians at home and abroad would deal with the problem with the urgency the situation demanded. That would after all, be the only sane course of action for any political leader with even a modicum of common sense. Surely, the realisation would by now have been forced upon everyone -political elites and the man on the street alike- that there was no more time to waste. The kind of change needed could no longer be deferred. It was now or never. Do or die.
For someone who’s studied these things for pretty much their entire adult life, I was naively optimistic when Burhnam came to power, as I tend to be at the appointment of most new PM´s (I have even had high hopes for David Cameron in 2010 when he pledged to lead the greenest government in ever -shortly before he revised his position to ´cutting out all the green crap´). I really should know better at this point, but my natural optimism always gets the better of me. Only Liz Truss I felt was so thick that she couldn’t grasp the scale of the changes vis-a-vis energy, security and the environment, that are so urgently demanded. Alas, each Prime Minister in turn, flattered only to deceive in terms of environmental policy, paying lip service to the problem whilst failing to acknowledge its full scope, severity, and urgency, only kicking the can further down the road so that future leaders will be compelled to take even more drastic action.
So part of me is not the least bit surprised that the latest face of the uni-party has so soon into the job announced himself to not be a serious politician, just the most recent front of the clown show. You can hardly write it. We need a Marshall plan for the planet, we get a ban on disposable BBQ´s. Talk about fiddling while Rome -or London, Paris, New York or wherever- burned. It would be farcical if it wasn’t so tragic, as if this was a satirical TV show about a political dystopia, rather than real life.
The policies which Andy Burhnam has indicated that he will be pursuing though, go well beyond the merely disappointing: expanding military spending (there is a truly existential crisis here in the UK right now although to listen to British politicians, you´d swear wasn’t really happening), whilst at the same time they are asking us to spend vast amounts of money for an entirely made up one, as is the case with Russia. It’s fair to say that the Russians are a threat to the UK only to the extent we keep doing really stupid shit to provoke them. Tens of billions of pounds could be saved every year by conducting a less hostile foreign policy. We cant reason with nature however, and it should be obvious to everyone right now the current direction of travel is leading to us all to catsastrophe.
In spite of this however, we have seen the new PM show his willingness to provoke Russia by providing Ukraine with ballistic missile technology, drones, and other military hardware, affirm a commitment to further raise UK defence spending (with all the massive opportunity costs -in terms of real human security- this entails), and appears set to allow new drilling to go ahead at 2 sites in the North Sea.
Other significant policies which he inherited and hasn’t talked about a great deal, cast even greater light on the UK governments deranged direction of travel for the next few years, include the scandal of data-centre development, and its recent reclassification as strategic infrastructure which will grant Ministers the power to impose large-scale operations on localities over the heads of local residents and panning authorities. These mega data centres pose a risk to human health as well as to wildlife and are intrinsically damaging to the environment. Noise and electromagnetic radiation are hazardous to health and well being, while the facilities demands of electricity and water are unsustainable at the best of times. Data centres in the UK used 5.9% of all electricity consumed in the UK on 2026, and the government wants to quadruple capacity within the next 10 years. These projects are all connected to the grid -indeed, designated essential infrastructure- but the government could easily require them to power their own centres´ operations with renewables, although this does nothing to address the issue of the water requirements of such industries -which in light of the drought experienced throughout the country this year and the hosepipe ban for households across England, should really foreclose their construction unless they can cool their equipment in a sustainable way.
Years ago now, sometime after the Tories got in following the New Labour years, they announced that they were going to be introducing drastic spending cuts for flood defences. I remember thinking at the time that this was akin to placing a massive bet on rain not falling. Obviously this is a somewhat foolish wager in this famously wet and rainy country, at the best of times. But in the context of a rapidly warming planet and an increasing likelihood of more frequent, as well as more severe weather events, such a decision represents the height of folly, although it does at least fit in with a long and shameful litany of decisions regarding the climate, energy, and infrastructure investment, as well as pretty much anything environmental, taken by successive UK governments.
So as we head into what might well be the wettest autumn ever experienced here in the UK, brace yourself for more government inaction on climate change. Hope you or your family don´t end up with your homes flooded. Pray the worst of the long range weather forecasts don´t completely come to pass. Fingers crossed our politicians start taking notice of the elephant in the room, realise that when London goes about 40 days in a row over 35 degrees centigrade, and there’s forest fires blazing out of control the length and breadth of the country, it really is time to start taking climate change ultra seriously, and to allocate the resources necessary, whatever they might be, to avert the most catastrophic of future climate outcomes.
Just dont hold your breath.