The Problem

On 27th November 10 of the UK’s leading experts in the climate emergency spoke to a room of 1250 politicians and various sector leaders about the broad ranging implications of climate change. Did you hear about it? Do you know what was discussed? Well not if you rely on mainstream broadcasters for your news. The BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky news gave it no coverage whatsoever. To be clear this is not some fringe group, it was chaired by Professor Mike Berners-Lee, an expert in carbon footprinting, and the speakers included several published academics, economists and former high ranking military. 81 MPs and 52 peers attended the event which our public service broadcasters chose to completely ignore despite having a legal duty under the Communications Act 2003 to inform the public on major national issues. So not great work from our friends in the media, maybe pay a bit more attention to the end of the world eh guys?

But what was said at this briefing then? Well to attempt to summarise a 3 hour event in a short paragraph is pretty futile, but essentially it did a pretty thorough job of defining the many and varied ways in which we are fucked. Everything from the basics of our failure to halt emissions and thus the continued temperature rises to upcoming tipping points (and one we have already sailed past); the obvious demolition job we’re doing to nature, particularly in the UK; the massive economic damage that comes from unpredictable and extreme weather; the national security crisis as a result of global instability, resource conflicts and potentially huge immigration numbers from drought and flood ridden countries; the loss of our own productive farmland to drought and inconsistent temperatures; the health issues from pollution, loss of nature, heatwaves and probably the mental and emotional toll of being part of the end of the fucking world.

To be a little more specific:

• Professor Tim Lenton explained the potential future of the UK climate in the event of one particular tipping point occurring (-20C for 3 months of the year and virtually no ability to grow our own food) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmd6MDiJmQU
• Professor Paul Behrens covered how drought, fires, floods and heat extremes will drastically reduce our food production in the UK - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvjJ8Ag0-z0
• Professor Nathalie Seddon, the UK already only has around half of its biodiversity remaining, only 14% of rivers are in good health, without a living healthy biosphere there is no stable economy, no food or water security  - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1imjeUBTW58
• Lt General Richard Nugee - His Iraq battle group had zero combat deaths but 5 heatstroke cases requiring UK return, 250 needing treatment. Climate change is a threat multiplier, fueling instability, sparking competition for resources, triggering new conflicts - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LESyq9XmgY
• Professor Hayley Fowler: 1 in 4 English homes at flood risk by 2050 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VUM-crZ4Eg
• Institute of actuaries quoted as saying “We have left it too late to tackle climate change incrementally. It now requires transformational change.”

Transformational change. Finally, someone said it.

The sad truth is however that when speaking to a room full of MPs and business leaders you can only be as transformational as your audience will tolerate. So the 'transformation' on offer? Green investment. Carbon pricing. Policy incentives. Each with a lovely little bonus of achieving some economic advantage, or being a nice votewinner, maybe making a bit of money for some keen entrepreneur. These are the same tools we've been using for 36 years, just... more of them. They diagnosed an emergency condition requiring a transformational approach, then prescribed slightly more of the same pills.

The problem is clear - they're pitching to the people currently in power, genuinely major transformation is likely to undermine that power so naturally those people won’t be keen. But after yet another utterly pointless COP producing another unenforceable agreement that half the signatories will ignore, it should be obvious: the current political system isn't up to this task. Real transformation can't come from convincing the powerful to be nicer. It has to come from the rest of us.

So if transformation has to come from ordinary people, why isn't it happening? Polling shows 74% of us are concerned about climate change. We care. So why aren’t we making it happen? I think there are a couple of reasons.

First: people say it’s too late, not enough people care and we’re fucked no matter what we do, so why ruin our economy trying. Those with this view particularly like to point the finger at China or the US and claim that we're too small to make a difference so no point beating ourselves up over it. This is a truly pathetic take from a country that claims to be ‘Great’ and ‘world leading’. Fuck what other people are doing, take some responsibility for your own actions! The second school of though, although ‘thought’ is perhaps overstating it somewhat, is that things will probably work out, we’ve survived potential disasters before, the human race is adaptable, and besides surely someone somewhere is sorting it out for us. Again this is avoiding responsibility, ‘someone else’ isn’t going to fix this for us. Especially if that someone else is a capitalist.

The failed solution

Which is my neat little segue into part two of my rant. Capitalism has had 36 years to fix the climate crisis and has failed. Not only has it failed but it is actively preventing us from finding solutions and in the meantime is making everything much much worse. The IPCC formed in 1989 which marks the point at which global warming became accepted fact worldwide. Since that time capitalists have acted entirely rationally within the system they created. They have continued to maximise profits and growth as capitalism requires by spreading disinformation, lobbying governments, creating complex financial instruments to profit from climate change, and most tellingly building concrete bunkers on private islands to protect themselves from the inevitable!

In the meantime our politicians tell us that if we only provide the right incentives then the market will provide. Just keep trying, regulating a little less here, taxing a little less there, and eventually the mighty power of the markets will kick in and save us all. Well I won’t repeat the usual misattributed Einstein quote about insanity because it’s been done to death already and it doesn’t change anything. But anyone still believing that the incremental approach is the way to go has not been paying attention. To be completely clear - capitalism requires perpetual growth, not just for the wealthy to profit, but to pay back debt, to fund pensions, to justify investment - capitalism needs everything to get bigger every year. That means more production, more consumption, more energy. Renewables can't keep pace with that kind of growth. We're running up a down escalator and congratulating ourselves for moving our legs faster.. 

This constant economic growth is making it impossible to cut out, or even significantly reduce fossil fuel use. For all the incredible work being done on renewables, and all the impressive stats about the percentage of electricity generated by renewables, the latest massive offshore wind turbines being installed etc etc, the truth is that fossil fuels still provide 80% of UK energy. After 35 years of effort, billions in investment, incredible renewable technology, and massive public will. Eighty. Fucking. Percent. The problem isn't that we're not trying hard enough - it's that capitalism requires growth, growth requires energy, and we cannot physically build renewables fast enough to both power growth AND replace fossil fuels.

So this is not a failure of policy, not a failure of one particular government or even the multiple horrific Prime Ministers we’ve endured over recent years. This is purely capitalism doing its thing. Maximising profit for the few, prioritising economic growth over stability and security, and externalising its costs onto the poor and the planet. That is why we have gotten nowhere near solving the climate crisis in the last 36 years, and the simple fact is we do not have another 36 years to waste. Every year of delay makes the solution harder to find, we hit more tipping points, face more extreme weather events, more of the things the National Emergency Briefing warned about. Capitalism won’t fix this, if we do not make significant changes to our political and economic model then we will not solve the climate crisis. It is that simple. 

Another way?

So what would an alternative look like? Socialism? Communism? Am I just some loony lefty marxist? Well no I don’t think I am at any rate, personally I don’t consider fixating on a specific ideology to be very helpful. What matters is finding a system that can respond to a looming existential crisis with real action rather than obsessing over quarterly profit reports. If you consider that radical then that’s your call, I consider it pragmatic  Anyway I’m not in it for the revolution, I just want to save the planet, whatever that looks like. 

But for starters I just would rewind a bit and look at those two schools of thought I mentioned. What do they have in common? Essentially it's a ‘somebody else’s problem’ field in action (nod to HHGTTG fans). Either we’re too small to sort it ourselves, or someone else will fix it for us, either way it's not our problem to solve. This for me gets to the heart of the matter. People don’t feel connected to anything, they don’t feel like they make a difference. If you feel that then why would you care? Why would you try to fix anything if nothing you do makes a difference? Why try to participate in democracy if all it means is a vote every 5 years and the same useless bunch of pricks get in every time anyway? Why try to improve your local community if big business can just come along and shit all over it in the name of growth? Why bother?

Because there is an alternative. Because we can take back control - real control, not the bullshit slogan version. People don't sabotage systems they actually own. Worker co-ops don't trash their own workplaces because they benefit from long-term success. Brexit voters burned down the EU relationship because they felt they had no stake in it, they weren’t being listened to. Voting Brexit meant having an actual impact, whether it was positive or negative was beside the point. That’s not stupid, that’s rational desperation, and it’s what happens when people feel excluded from decisions but stuck with the consequences. What we need is real democracy built from the ground up. People engaged with their communities, contributing and seeing real results. That's why we need real democracy at national scale: transparent democratic control over economic decisions, not pointless fucking theatre every five years while bond markets and corporations make the real choices.

But how do we get that?

Well here’s the rub. There are some specific things the government could start to do right now, but they won’t. People with power won’t give it up easily and many of these changes do redress the balance of power away from them and to the people. I mean that’s kinda the point. We can’t trust them to make the right decisions so we need to take that power away from them. In fact it’s not even that, we simply need to make them remember that their power comes from the people. Those in government are in power because the rest of us allow them to be, the wealthy are only wealthy because of our labour. All the power in any nation is in its people, those at the top want us to forget that. All we need to do is show them we remember. Show them that we can work together, that we can demand change together and that they cannot ignore us.

In terms of specifics? First, understand this: IPSOS polling shows that "while more people are worried about climate change's impact, fewer feel empowered to make a difference." That's the trap. That's exactly what they want - for you to feel powerless. But the reality is that 74% of people in the UK are concerned about climate change. Three-quarters of the country. This isn't a fringe issue - it's the dominant public concern. The reason it doesn't feel that way, and the reason we don’t feel we can make a difference, is because we're isolated, atomized, convinced we're alone. We're not. So join a union - or start one if your workplace doesn't have one, make sure it has a voice on environmental issues. Get on your local council. Demand participatory budgeting so your community actually controls local spending. Protest. Strike. Make it costly for them to ignore us. Work together, our strength is in numbers and in solidarity, that’s why they smashed the unions in the first place. So fucking bring them back! 

Be consistent in our national demands. Electoral reform - scrap FPTP for a system where your vote actually matters. Actively support worker co-ops over corporate extraction so that those creating the wealth benefit from it and can prioritise targets other than growth. Repeal the 1981 Full Funding Rule and 1998 Bank of England Act that force the government to borrow from wealthy bondholders instead of creating money directly. Use that monetary sovereignty to fund a Green New Deal, job guarantees for climate work, mass home insulation (If you're wondering how the government can just 'create money' without causing inflation or economic chaos see my posts on MMT). 
These may seem like separate issues but in fact they're all pieces of the same puzzle. Workers co-ops and unions give you power in your workplace. Local councils with real budgets and participatory control give you power in your community. Electoral reform means your vote actually translates into representation. And repealing those monetary financing rules gives government the ability to fund the transition, the job guarantees, the infrastructure without begging bond markets for permission. Together, they create a system where ordinary people have actual democratic control over the decisions that shape their lives - in their workplaces, their communities, and their country. Is that socialism? Well call it whatever you want, but from where I sit it's the only alternative to watching capitalism burn the planet while we congratulate ourselves on our fiscal responsibility.

But honestly?

It may all be too late anyway. We are facing an existential crisis and the people who could make the difference really don’t want to. It will be an uphill struggle to force through the change we need, not just in the UK but globally. But at least we wouldn’t be repeating the same old mistakes, fiddling around the edges while we watch the world burn, slipping into insanity as the same old political mistakes are repeated again and again. At least if we were to actually try - organize unions, demand electoral reform, repeal the rules that force us to borrow from the wealthy, build worker co-ops, take real democratic control - then maybe Britain could genuinely lead for once. Not in military power or GDP, but in proving that people can govern themselves and their economy for collective survival rather than private profit. That would be something worth being patriotic about.