It is obvious to anyone who has had any sort of long-term involvement in environmental politics and climate justice that popular perceptions have changed considerably over the years of the new millennium. Similar changes have also occurred within the scientific community; whereas climate scientists of the year 2000 would have hedged their bets, today those same scientists have no hesitation in declaring that droughts, floods, wildfires and rain deluges are all caused by climate change and global heating. More and more people also recognise this.
Climate justice and social justice
The change has posed a challenge to any politician who professes to care about the climate, and the imperative to be clear has never been greater. This year, 2024, will almost certainly see a UK general election – the only question is when – and so we can expect that all the political parties will, sooner or later, be presenting their manifestos. At that time, it will become the responsibility of all of us to carefully scrutinise exactly what they propose to do to mitigate the effects of climate change because there are now clearly two distinct courses that humanity could follow.
To be more precise, there are two different kinds of ‘green’ politics, and we need to be clear on what is being offered; this point was exemplified last November at an environmental rally in Amsterdam. Greta Thunberg was seeking to include the need for global opposition to oppression in the overall fight against climate change when a man climbed onto the stage, grabbed her microphone, and declared that he had come to attend a climate meeting, not to hear a lecture on politics.
Existential questions in an age of existential risk
To simplify considerably, we need to ask our UK politicians a series of basic questions about their attitudes, and the following is a list of possibilities:
- Do you believe that the protecting the planet can be satisfied by continuing with ‘business as usual’, or do you think that new ways of conducting our affairs are necessary?
- Do you believe that every human on this planet has the right to expect equality of access to the benefits of modern life, or do you feel that the global wealth divide is set in stone?
- Do you believe that our tiny planet will be capable of meeting the needs, and ambitions, of eight billion people (rising to over ten billion by 2100) if every person and every nation perpetually pursues the policy of economic growth, or do you agree with the 1972 ‘Club-of-Rome’ report that there are very definite ‘limits to growth’?
- Humanity currently consumes a known number of units of energy annually. This is distributed in a grossly uneven manner around the globe. Do you believe that the disparity should be ‘levelled-up’, and do you believe that the availability of renewable sources of energy will be capable of fully replacing all the energy we consume from fossil sources?
- Following that, do you recognise that the greatest users of energy will need to accept the necessity of a radical, permanent, reduction in their consumption?
- The manufacture and distribution of all our sources of green energy are currently in the hands of private, often international, companies, who obviously benefit from the considerable profits created. Do you feel this is the correct way forward, or do you think that such enterprises should be owned by the people, with the profits being directed to social improvement?
- Do you believe that the burning of fossil fuels can continue indefinitely because the process of carbon-capture and storage is about to rescue us, or do you recognise that this process is still highly experimental and is unlikely to be available on global scales for decades?
- Similarly, do you believe that fusion power is just around the corner, or also still decades away from practical reality?
- Do you believe that our only hope lies in the significant expansion of fission power, or do you feel that the problem of the disposal of high-level nuclear waste remains unsolved and therefore presents a powerful argument against it?
- Green energy sources such as wind turbines, solar panels, and electric motors rather than internal combustion machines, demand enormous and growing supplies of exotic materials, in particular, the metal lithium which is essential for batteries. It is estimated that the ultimate need could rise 50-fold over current extraction. What safeguards would you demand for the environment and for the rights of indigenous nations in those regions of the planet where these materials are to be found?
This is far from an exhaustive list; no doubt others will be able to add to it.
Faced with an inevitable choice
Each question is posed as a direct choice and it is recognised that compromise positions may be possible, but the dichotomy seen in the list could be summarised in one simple question: ‘Do you believe in a continuation of the current, global capitalist way of doing business, or do you believe that some form of global socialism will prove necessary?’
Put that another way: ‘Do you feel that what we call the free market – that is, manufacture for profit – is capable of both meeting our needs and of operating with the constraints of planet Earth, or do you believe that humanity cannot hope to get through to some sort of long-term stability without carefully agreed international planning and a fair and equitable allocation of the limited resources available – that is, manufacture for need?’ These questions apply to all parties presenting their case in a general election.
The fact that I have posed these questions at all should be clear indication of where my own politics lie. As a long-term supporter of the Labour Party, I await with keen interest to learn how they propose to face what I perceive to be the most significant question about the future of humanity on its one-and-only planet.
