A direct cost on consumers
Not the way to think about (much less deal with) the climate disaster:
Rishi Sunak has signalled the government could delay or even abandon green policies that impose a direct cost on consumers, as he comes under pressure from the Conservative right to create a dividing line with Labour at the next election.
Listen up. A “dividing line” between one political party and another is short term stuff. Climate disaster is long term – it’s your children and their children and their children, ffs. Making the climate disaster worse for the sake of dividing lines between political parties is like getting a manicure just before the Titanic breaks in half.
The prime minister said the drive to reach the UK’s net zero targets should not “unnecessarily give people more hassle and more costs in their lives” as he rethinks his green agenda after last week’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection.
Downing Street confirmed on Monday that the government would “continually examine and scrutinise” measures including a ban on new petrol and diesel cars by 2030, phasing out gas boilers by 2035, energy efficiency targets for private rented homes and low-traffic neighbourhoods.
Here’s an idea. How about all the Tories go for a nice summer holiday on Rhodes. Right now.
The move to row back on some green measures comes after the Tories’ opposition to the expansion of London’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) was credited for their narrow byelection victory in Boris Johnson’s former seat on 20 July.
Tory strategists believe they could replicate their win in other newly marginal seats across the country by creating clear dividing lines with Keir Starmer’s Labour, which has its own internal tensions over environmental policy since the byelection.
Maybe they could, maybe they could, but is it really worth it? On the one hand a potential slight political gain, on the other hand a planet that no longer supports most forms of life?
On a visit to the West Midlands, where he arrived by helicopter despite the journey only taking 90 minutes by train, Sunak was asked if he would stand up to Tories who are urging against net zero measures after Jacob Rees-Mogg said that “getting rid of unpopular, expensive green policies” created a political opportunity.
Well there you go. Can’t turn your back on a political opportunity, can you.
H/t Mike Haubrich
The people in charge don’t care and it’s too late anyway. In a few generations the world will be uninhabitable for humans so no point in anything really. Sigh.
There wouldn’t be a political advantage to scrapping or scaling back climate policies if there wasn’t considerable resistance to them from the voters.
The problem isn’t the people in charge, it’s the people at large.
And the people at large are hearing the message from the people in charge that it’s expensive. Not hearing the message that a stitch in time saves nine, nor that a beachfront home in York may not be impossible to find in the near future.
It is expensive, just not so dear as a chaotic world will be. Capitalists are fond of saying something along the lines that “capitalism has lifted millions/billions out of poverty”, but that’s kind of the problem; the safest space for our species to be in is nasty, brutish, and short.
Tell a species that gorges itself to death on sugar to stop doing the things that give it pleasure, well, here we are.
Democracies will never solve the problem, it requires long term thinking.
Australian governments have a life of 3 years between elections. Good if the voters want to toss out a crap government, bad for anything else.
Dictatorships will never solve the problem as the whole reason they are dictatorships is for the very few at the top to grab as much as they can while they can, without having to pause their robbery every few years for elections.
There is only one authority that can stop this in its tracks and that is the planet. It doesn’t care about us, it will go on for billions of years, with or without us.
On this matter, I am a pessimist, and my glass of water is now only one tenth full.
That’s pretty much how I see it, I’m sorry to say. I wish it were otherwise.
Rev, I’ve been a pessimist for so long I can’t remember when I wasn’t. On this issue, pessimism seems the only realistic position. I don’t try to tell people there’s nothing we can do, so go ahead, but at the same time, once we reached certain tipping points, there probably wasn’t anything we could do.
I’m working on a play about Jesus and St. Peter coming to tell the tenants of this planet they’re being evicted, and they find a world laid waste by the human tenants. I’m not sure how I’ll end it.