When the UK government is about to host an important international conference, you just know it will be an opportunity for one of Boris Johnson’s bravura bluster-and-lies performances. And so it turned out, as he grandly announced the government’s march towards a zero-carbon strategy. Only it isn’t so much a march, as a dawdle. It would be funny, were it not for the fact that climate change and the COP26 conference are such urgent issues.
Announcing the government’s half-baked strategy on Tuesday, Johnson deployed his full repertoire of bad jokes, bombast and exaggeration. As usual, it was more smoke and mirrors than serious policy. Almost without exception, the experts on climate change greeted the government’s strategy with dismay or outright anger.
Referring to the government’s own data, Kevin Anderson, for example, (he is professor of energy and climate change at Manchester University) told the Guardian: “Scour the associated spreadsheets and the numbers reveal a story of subterfuge, delusion, offsetting and piecemeal policies – all dressed up as a shiny new strategy for Cop26…the UK’s total carbon budget is more in line with 2.5-3C of warming than 1.5-2C.” (October 20)
You will get your heat-pump subsidy in 800 years
Another comment, from Rebecca Newsom, head of politics at Greenpeace UK, was equally scathing. “This [government] document is more like a pick and mix”, she said, “than the substantial meal that we need to reach net zero. Extra cash for tree planting and progress on electric vehicles doesn’t make up for the lack of concrete plans to deliver renewables at scale, extra investment in public transport, or a firm commitment to end new oil and gas licences.”
One of Johnson’s keynote announcements was a government subsidy for the installation of ground and air-based heat-pumps, although almost laughingly, the amount offered is only enough to fit 90,000 homes. The other the 13m homes will have to wait, we suppose, and a quick calculation will show that this wait might be 800 years! The heating of poorly insulated homes and commercial premises is one of the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions, yet there is nothing on offer from the government for the insulation of the millions of homes that need it.
Mixed into Johnson’s jumble of offerings there were meagre new support measures (more accurately re-cycled old announcements) on infrastructure for electric vehicle and for nuclear energy. Unfortunately, the main thrust of the new ‘hydrogen’ policy will be towards so-called ‘blue hydrogen’ from fossil fuel rather than ‘white hydrogen’ from the electrolysis of water. Carbon capture technology was also flagged up, although this is an untested technology still in its infancy and many experts believe that it is littered with pitfalls.
On the other hand, government policy was significant for what it didn’t say. There is to be no embargo or slow-down in issuing of new licenses for oil and gas exploration, no small thanks to the lobbying of the big oil giants, many of whom were represented in the meeting that Johnson addressed.
Neither is there going to be any shift towards developing cheap public transport. For the Tories, the car is still king, although it increasingly looks, if petrol and diesel are phased out as planned, as if electric cars will become the preserve of the minority who can afford them.
Government suppressed its own ‘nudge unit’ report
Ironically, at the same time that the government announced these barely thought-through ‘zero-carbon’ measures, it suppressed a report from its own Behavioural Insights Unit (the so-called ‘nudge’ unit), which had recommended important changes of direction, including a government push on dietary changes towards a more plant-based diet and curbs on aviation.
The government has consistently refused to address the questions of land use and diet, even though every expert on climate change links the large-scale breeding of animals for meat as a global issue of concern. This issue was trivialised by Johnson in his bad “no hair-shirts here” joke. Yet this ‘nudge-unit’ research paper recommended a shift of “dietary habits” towards plant-based foods.
The same report also flagged up the fact that government policy is currently for an expansion of airports, noting that there are generous tax exemptions given to aviation, one of the highest emitters of carbon dioxide, through aviation fuel. “The UK government can lead by example” the report said, “and recognise the hugely impactful signal it sends to, for example, approve airport expansions, or financially support the airline industry with little demands for decarbonisation in return.” Iteven suggested that a more realistic transition to net-zero could be through policies that reduced the number of frequent business flyers.
Given that so much government policy is either dictated by big business and the headline writers of the Daily Mail and the Sun, it is not surprising that there was no mention of this paper or its recommendations in Johnson’s Tuesday briefing. Shortly after being published by the Department for Business, it was hastily deleted.
Policies based on a wing and a prayer
As regards, the government proposals for investment, they hang on a wing and a prayer – and a ‘hope’ that the private sector will come up with £50-60bn of green investment. This is much like his promise of “440,000” new jobs, in that it is a number sucked out of his thumb for good effect, with no basis in concrete proposals.
Johnson’s address was to a gathering of representatives of big business. He even quipped that “$3 trillion is in the meeting”. But the big multinationals represented are not going to base their future investment decisions on what is in the national interest. They were present in the meeting, apart from wanting to appear ‘green’, to see what was in it for them. In no way can they be part of the solution when they are 99 per cent of the problem, forever lobbying behind the scenes to keep oil, coal and gas in the centre of energy production.
The Johnson masterplan was so light on detail that even Labour’s spokesperson on climate change, Ed Miliband, was able to remark that to take only one example, there was nothing concrete proposed for the conversion of the steel industry to clean hydrogen. “It will cost £6bn for the steel industry to get to net zero in the next 15 years”, he noted, “but there is nothing for steel in this document.” (Guardian report, October 20). No doubt the owners of British steel plants will be waiting for more taxpayers’ money, before they will dip into their profits (or other government grants) to ‘green’ their industries.
What was not in the script of Johnson’s pantomime was that in the long run, it will be ordinary workers who are going to have to pay for any greening the economy. The day before his performance, the Treasury released its own report on the effects of government policy, making it clear that tax rises are inevitable. A report in the Financial Times (October 19) noted that Treasury income from fuel duty would fall as petrol and diesel are phased out. This tax currently raises £37bn a year.
‘The government will need to consider changes to existing taxes’
“The transition to electric vehicles”, it notes, “would ultimately create a temporary tax vacuum equivalent to 1.5 per cent of GDP by the 2040s which could only be partially filled by carbon taxes, meaning that new revenue-raising measures would be needed.
“There will be demands on public spending, but the biggest impact comes from the erosion of tax revenues from fossil fuel-related activity,” the Treasury warned. “If there is to be additional public spending, the government may need to consider changes to existing taxes and new sources of revenue throughout the transition.”
One of the tax-raising proposals being actively considered is road pricing. The Financial Times again reports (October 20) that “while none of the [Treasury] documents referred to road pricing — a concept which ministers are loath to discuss in public because they fear a voter backlash — experts said the government needed to start discussing how such a scheme could work”. Road pricing would mean that workers who currently are obliged to commute to work by car – because of the paucity or absence of decent public transport – will be taxed for driving, with a disastrous secondary knock-on effect on every minor rural road in the country.
Even with these relatively modest and contradictory government proposals, therefore, it is clear that costs will fall on ordinary workers. A token of the mentality of this government can be seen in the announcement by Rishi Sunak this week, that there will be a reduction in the tax levy currently being paid by the big banks.
Removing £20 a week from the least well off
In the same month that Sunak is pushing millions of families into greater poverty by removing the £20 a week uplift in Universal Credit, he is handing billions of pounds to the shareholders of the banks. That will be the pattern for all Tory policies, so-called ‘green’ policies included: higher taxes for workers, but subsidies, lucrative public contracts and tax cuts for big business.
Another option already being touted to promote green investment is a raid on public sector pensions schemes, like the Local Government Pension Scheme, which has assets of around £270bn. In the context of a socialist economy, where planning and financial resources are directed in the interests of the entire community, it would make good sense to deploy pension funds for such investments, because the pensions of workers can be guaranteed.
But in a situation where the state and its financial/economic priorities are set to maximize the profits and wealth of a tiny handful of the population, a raid on pensions has to be treated with great suspicion, because it would only be a matter of time before pensions were undermined and superannuation payments for those still in work were increased to pay for any deficits.
Resolutions passed at Labour Party conference
Labour has to respond to the mish-mash of half measures announced by Johnson, by putting forward its own green agenda. But this has to be based on the kind of radical policies passed at Labour Party conference, not the tame commentary of the Shadow Cabinet. The resolutions passed at Labour’s conference referred to a just transition and that has to mean that a transition to zero-carbon should not come at the expense of swingeing cuts in the living standards of working-class people. As things stand now, that is exactly the trajectory we are on.
Two resolutions were agreed at conference, the first one (which we previously published here), was sponsored by the FBU and was more radical that the second. This motion included these elements:
*The socialist Green New Deal that will shift power from capital into the hands of workers
*Public ownership of energy including energy companies, creating an integrated, democratic system.
*A government program creating millions of well-paid, unionised green jobs with publicly owned entities
*Creating well-financed publicly owned national and regional green investment banks.
These are the kind of radical policies on which Labour should be fighting. Climate change is not a minor issue that is resolved by a little tinkering here and there, or by one of Johnson’s circus acts. Analogies with wartime conditions might be rather overdone, but as George Monbiot has very effectively argued this week in the Guardian, a national and international emergency really does call for emergency measures. That must be the message Labour puts forward.
The power, privilege and wealth of a tiny number of people
It is entirely possible for a dramatic shift towards a non-carbon economy, without in any way undermining the living standards of the big majority of the population. But that can only happen if power, privilege and wealth are removed from the tiny proportion of the population who currently control the main levers of the economy. The big corporations that own industry, transport, banks and land must be taken over and run democratically on the basis of a national plan for zero-carbon. A ‘green’ policy is meaningless unless it is a ‘red-green’ policy.
The ideas outlined in the FBU resolution at conference should be the starting point for a socialist New Green Deal and Labour must use those kind of policies and demands to counter the empty showmanship of Boris Johnson. Unfortunately, the ‘green’ policies of Keir Starmer are, like all his politics, coloured a deep shade of pink that merges into lifeless grey. Until the Labour leadership adopt policies something like those agreed by the Labour party in conference, it will have no traction among young people and those most concerned about climate change.
