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Baroness Thatcher and the Moment of Climate Retreat

February 28, 2020

All Baroness Thatcher’s realism had gone by the publication of the 2002 book Statescraft, which she reportedly recognised was her last book. She was, sadly, becoming increasingly fragile and unwell. However, there is little mark of this fragility on the writing style or the forcefulness of her arguments.

This section of my exposition, includes more comment on the Baroness’ arguments than previously. This is because they need to be challenged, and because they seem incompatible with the positions she took while PM.

The section, “Hot Air and Global Warming” comes in a chapter defending capitalism from its critics.

Her main focus in the surrounding section is on refuting prophecies of doom:

the better things are and the greater the reason for optimism, the louder the voices prophesying doom seem to become… taking the longer perspective, global gloom is out of place… Was there ever an age when children had better prospects, all things considered, than those born into the world today?
p.444

She argues capitalism and liberty are responsible for this success. We might wonder if capitalism and liberty are always, and indelibly, joined even by pointing at British History (certainly the path is not straightforward, and has a lot to do with the militancy of the working and middle classes, and their suspicion of capitalism), but she argues:

We should be very wary indeed of turning aside from the path that has made us rich and free, simply because some group of experts or a collection of NGOs advise it
p.445

She argues Malthus, who suggested that the direction of humanity was towards mass death because population always increased faster than food supply, was simply wrong. This is despite her earlier warnings about population increase as being a problem, and the obvious fact that certain levels of human population (200 billion??) may be unsupportable by the planet in nearly all circumstances. Indeed population increase in non-western countries seems to have become one method the contemporary right has developed to blame climate change on other people.

Thatcher argues that people like Malthus, underrate “mankind’s ability, given the right framework to invent and adapt” (p.447) Indeed, but it is still theoretically possible that there may be times in which the speed of the problem-increase overwhelms people’s invention and adaptation. TThere is no guarantee we have not reached, or will never reach, that point. We may not have, but that is a hope not a certainty. In her words the “right framework” may not be present or even possible.

She generalises her response to Malthus to the problem seers of today:

Today’s doomsters have broadened their attack. It is not just population growth by economic growth… that they dislike…. Many of the gloomiest warning were associated with a group of international experts calling themselves the Club of Rome
p.447

This pessimism was supposedly a dominant force in the years leading up to the 1980s. This may be something of an exaggeration: if it was dominant, surely people would have done more to face the problems?

Only when Ronald Reagan entered the Oval Office did we hear an alternative, optimistic message – that our free-enterprise democratic system had the moral, intellectual and practical resources to overcome any challenge.
p.448

Again this is a hope, not a certainty. It is not proven for ever, and cannot be proven in advance. And why should our “moral, intellectual and practical resources” not include Government policy and direction? After all, neoliberals seem to recognise the rights of governments to direct people to keep the neoliberal system going, all the time.

She rightly emphasises that cutbacks, through policy, are not the only methods:

we are constantly assailed by warnings that we cannot go on consuming. But we hardly seem to reflect upon the extraordinary way in which we get more and more out of less and less…. Less farmland is producing more food. There has been a dramatic fall in the number of famines.
p.448

there are, of course, still natural disasters. But it is by scientific and technological advance that we predict them, plan for them and cope with them. That advance occurs in free-enterprise capitalist societies, not in sclerotic socialist ones
p.448

So government planning for disaster is not impossible, and we can use science to predict such possibilities.

Before opening her section on global warming she remarks:

We should, therefore:
Recall how wrong the doomsters have been and take comfort from the fact.
Learn the lesson that as long as a free political system, a free society and a free economy are maintained, the ingenuity of mankind is boundless
p.449

That human ingenuity has been very great, does not mean that it is “boundless”, can solve all problems through uncoordinated profit driven action, that such profit driven actions can solve the problems in the time available to avoid mass suffering, or that these actions will not have unintended consequences, which require more action to remedy.

The section on global warming opens with a long footnote refering to various books and articles which she has read on the matter and which have persuaded her. Non of these writings are by climate scientists, or from scientific publishers, or scientific journals. They are all from corporately sponsored neoliberal think tanks, such as the Reason Public Policy Institute, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, Centre for the New Europe, and the Institute of Economic Affairs.

These are ‘research’ establishments, who’s results and opinions can be predicted in advance. They largely appear to say what their sponsors require. It could be suggested that these documents serve primarily propaganda purposes, and aim to oppose ‘action on climate change’ to ‘capitalism’, and suggest any planned climate action must represent dictatorial socialism. They do this to defend the established corporate profit of their sponsors. It is, perhaps surprising, that the Baroness decided to listen to them, rather than to scientists in the field. But, these neoliberal thinkers are her primary in-group, and if it was possible to stop her identifying with scientists and get her to completely identify with neoliberalism then that would make science less persuasive to her.

“The doomsters’ favourite subject today is climate change. This has a number of attractions for them. First, the science is extremely obscure so they cannot easily be proved wrong. Second, we all have ideas about the weather: traditionally, the English on first acquaintance talk of little else. Third, since clearly no plan to alter climate could be considered on anything but a global scale, it provides a marvelous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism.
p.449

There is no reason to assume that while global action might provide a “marvelous excuse” for socialism, it could not also provide an equally marvelous excuse for encouraging transnational capitalism to work its supposed magic – unless one of the prime directives of neoliberalism is liberty for the transnational corporation from any form of responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

She gives some examples of exaggeration.

President Clinton on a visit to China, which poses a serious strategic challenge to the US, confided to his host, President Jiang Zemin, that his greatest concern was the prospect that ‘your people may get rich like our people, and instead of riding bicycles, they will drive automobiles, and the increase in greenhouse gases will make the planet more dangerous for all.
p.450

While all Chinese driving petrol fueled cars does present a real problem, the actual remark seems unlikely and her source is an article in the American Spectator rather than any government record. But rather than dismiss recognition of the problem as foolish, we should wonder what the solution might be, or at least wonder how we might avoid the problem. Previous versions of Thatcher might have recognised this as a problem requiring governmental help to overcome.

She then refers to Al Gore saying:

‘I believe that our civilisation is, in effect, addicted to the consumption of the earth itself.’ And he warns: ‘Unless we find a way to dramatically change our civilisation and our way of thinking about the relationship between humankind and the earth, our children will inherit a wasteland.’
p.450

This is possibly true. It looks more likely to be true now, than might have done then, but the statements are not that incompatible with statements in Thatcher’s own speeches. She was, at one stage, able to wonder if all economic activity was compatible with survival.

The fact that seasoned politicians can say such ridiculous things – and get away with it – illustrates the degree to which the new dogma about climate change has swept through the left-of-centre governing classes.
p.450

These comments do not seem that ridiculous, or to be dismissed on the word of some pro-corporate think tank, without further evidence.

She remarks she was active in the anti-chloroflurocarbons debate, and successful. But the greenhouse gas effect “was a more difficult issue, because the science was much less certain.” As we have seen, she had always recognised this uncertainty worked both ways. By 2000 the climate science was far more certain, but perhaps she had not read it, becoming more interested in defending neoliberal capitalism than in the science?

I was more sceptical of the arguments about global warming, though I considered that they should be taken very seriously…. there was, in fact, rather little scientific advice available to political leaders from those experts who were doubtful of the global warming thesis…. By the end of my time as Prime Minister I was also becoming seriously concerned about the anti-capitalist arguments which the campaigners against global warming were deploying…
p.451-2

That some “other side” is facing a problem by advancing their own arguments in their normal fashion does not seem an excuse to argue the problem is not real. It should give people an opportunity to present better policies, and to defeat that other side yet again.

the choice might appear to be between preservation of the climate and preservation of prosperity. This is, of course, how left-of-centre opinion wished and still wishes to portray it
p.451

“Might appear” is not the same as “must appear.” Does she have to accept this supposed left-of-centre opinion as the only possible approach? Again why not recognise the problem and present better arguments?

Personally, I’m inclined to wonder if the issue was not politicised by the neoliberal think tanks, who wanted it to seem like the political action of defending capitalism and capitalist ‘liberty’ was incompatible with the political action of dealing with climate change. If so, then they succeeded, but there may be no necessary incompatibility; that would have been a possible approach, if you were not primarily interested in preserving fossil fuel corporation profits.

She moves on to illustrate the bias of anti-global warming arguments and their anti-capitalism.

When President Bush anounced the US would not sign the Kyoto Protocol.

“The French Environment Minister said, ‘Mr Bush’s unilateral attitude is entirely provocative and irresponsible’.
[While the EU Environment commissioner] issued dark if unspecified threats against US business [and] Britain’s own Environment Minister.. described the American decision as ‘exceptionally serious’ [but ruled out sanctions].
p.452

Whether you believe in the perfections of capitalism, or not, these comments seem pretty mild. They didn’t involve much more than an expression of disappointment that the President of the world’s biggest economy was going to put the possible future of the world on hold and thereby disrupt the pretty minor global action and promises required by the Kyoto Protocol. There is nothing necessarily anti-capitalist, or unreasonable, about objecting to this.

Kyoto was an anti-growth, anti-capitalist, anti-American project
p.453

This is an assertion and no evidence is presented. The US was then the world’s biggest economy and, both at that moment and historically, was the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Given this, it does have more responsibility than other relatively low emitters, and this means, that it has more actions to take and more wealth to take those actions. Kyoto is only anti-capitalist to the extent that neoliberalism supports capitalism without responsibility or honour.

in matters of public policy it is as important to recognise what we don’t know as what we do… The golden rule is: all government interventions are problematic, so intervene only when the case is fully proven
p.453

We do not know for sure, it is not fully proven, that Capitalism can solve this problem. The passage of events since Statescraft was published implies it cannot, yet we still do not act. Previously Thatcher recognised that the results of global warming could be worse than predicted; we are by its very nature, going into uncharted territory and do not know exactly what is going to happen.

She argues, referring to “some experts,” that the long term trend of warming is “not relevant to current concerns” (P.453). Presumably these are experts from the think tanks, not climate scientists. Again this case is not proven. However what Thatcher did not say is also significant, in terms of contemporary denial. She did not say that scientists were part of a conspiracy, that the science was being faked, or that the science itself was biased by leftist politics.

Secondly, CO2 is not the only greenhouse gase “so exclusive concentration on CO2… is bound to mislead.” (p.454)

This position is probably true. However, it means we should deal with all greenhouse gases, not just CO2. We should in fact return to Thatcher’s earlier position that there is a general systemic issue with ecological destruction and change. Climate change is not the only problem.

Third

There is now, as always, nothing that the liberal intelligentsia likes to believe more than that ‘we are all guilty’ But are we? The facts are unclear.
p.455

So what if this is true? And it is not proven. This does not change the problem. That the problem may harmonise with biases in some intelligensia (clearly she is not talking about the neoliberal think-tank intelligensia here) does not mean it is necessarily untrue. It does not mean we should stop research, stop looking at the latest research or try to mock research by real scientists, that you disagree with.

She remarks that the IPCC report “is a great deal more tentative than some alarmist assertions” (p.455). Previously she could admit that getting scientists to agree on a general proposition was difficult. The reports are likely to be tentative, by their nature.

Carbon dioxide levels have increase as a component of the atmosphere by nearly 30 per cent since the late eighteenth century, probably because of past deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels. But in any one year most CO2 production is not related to human beings
p.455

The question is whether this issue of the smallness of yearly human production of CO2 is relevant. Essentially, she mentions the importance of the cumulative effect of emissions since the late eighteenth century to dismiss it.

In fact, less than 5 per cent of the carbon moving through the atmosphere stems directly from human sources – again mainly: burning fossil fuels and deforestation….
p.455-6

She previously understood that small persistant changes can have complex consequences. Now she apparently does not. Things become simple and linear.

“The more closely one examines specific proposals to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere by emission controls alone, the more costly and economically damaging they become.
P.456

In that case, the sensible thing to do is to suggest better procedures. She has been prepared to engage in economic distortion and taxpayer subsidy when she considered it useful in the past, so why not now? Cost is never an excuse to do nothing. Surely we can rely on the ingenuity of capitalists to deal with the costs? Perhaps it will spur them into action?

The problem of acceptable costs, is acceptable to whom? Is people being driven from their homes by rising sea levels, drought or unbearable temperatures an acceptable cost of keeping profits high?

it will be be necessary to resolve many remaining uncertainties before risking action that makes the world poorer than it would otherwise be by restraining economic growth…
p.457

Apparently, for her, there is no imaginable paradigm in which capitalism could flourish without growth, and so we must be completely certain before acting against something which would likely cost economic growth. What would allow such certainty is not described.

Climate change doe not “mean the end of the world: and it must not either mean the end of free-enterprise capitalism”

There is no reason it should – if pro-capitalists are prepared to engage with the problem, or with other people.

Once her allies suggested to her that her beloved free-enterprise capitalism was being challenged by ‘socialists’ because of the problem of climate change, the Baroness appears to have suffered a major failing of confidence. She was previously famed for not backing down when she thought she was right. Here she did.

Her back down was so complete that she did not advance the case that free-enterprise should be encouraged to face up to the problem, and she did not propose non-socialist measures to deal with the problem. When faced with socialist opposition to many of her actions as PM, she continued; she did not say, “oh well we can’t do anything”.

However, faced with the apparent choice proposed by the think tanks of either pro-capitalism or action on climate change, she collapsed and allied with her mentors and supporters.

Therefore her path brings up the issue of whether it is possible for neoliberalism to actually deal with climate change or other problems, at all. At one stage she could, but the more she listened to neoliberal think-tanks the more this became impossible.

Tags:climate change, complexity, Disinformation, neoliberalism, politics
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Baroness Thatcher and Climate Change: The Beginning of Problems

February 26, 2020

I have shown that, for at least three years, Baroness Thatcher had a consistently pro-active, public approach to climate change. This needs more elaboration by reportage of her behaviour in Parliament, and through the legislation she supported, but it could be possible to argue that her position got stronger as she went along. Despite uncertainties in our knowledge, she stated that: it was better to be precautionary; it was wise to listen to scientists; governments had to act and make policy; economic action should not destroy the environment and the future prosperity of our grandchildren; economic growth could help fund the changes; we all had to act together, and; prosperous countries had to help less prosperous countries avoid the mistakes ‘we’ had made.

However by her 2002 book Statescraft she had retreated from all these positions. The problem is to explain the path she followed.

This post will start to study the transition by briefly mentioning a few speeches from the period after her Prime Ministership, and then look at her 1993 autobiography The Downing Street Years. Another post will consider Statescraft, as this post is long enough, already.

The general argument is that she was becoming concerned that environmentalism and climate action was socialist in orientation, and that rather than propose a neoliberal and non-socialist solution, she began to retreat away from plans for action, into a hope that largely unregulated markets would solve the problem. There was to be no inhibition to economic growth or corporate liberty. This was not the only response she could have taken.

In the long run, it appears that neoliberalism cannot deal with environmental catastrophe, without losing its prioritising of corporate liberty and support for established corporations. The theory is so restrictive that it does not have enough ‘solution generating’ capacity for the neoliberal world to survive.

Some Post PM Speeches

A speech the ex-prime minister gave to the South African Institute of International Affairs, is short, but clearly presents one problem for the later Thatcher’s relationship to environmental policy, namely the issue of economic growth. She begins by acknowledging the importance of international action and the reality of climate change. She is not yet dismissive of this. But there is another more important reality to be acknowledged.

There is much to be done to tackle the causes of climatic change and to curb pollution. And it requires action at the international level. At least as important, though, is for individual countries and communities to take pride in and conserve their own particular environmental legacies and treasures.
Perhaps the most important truth we should bear in mind, however, is that conservation of whatever kind is costly: and so wealth must be created to pay for it. It is, therefore, a romantic myth—and indeed a dangerous falsehood—to claim that economic progress must result in environmental destruction.
22 May 1991

It is perhaps surprising, then, not to hear claims that representative governments must regulate to ensure that ‘economic progress’ and wealth creation is not destructive to the environment we need to survive, or is compatible with such environmental survival. Such a point seems to have been more amenable to her in the past. But if her neoliberalism is biased towards maintaining corporate liberty to do whatever they like at any cost to others then perhaps it is not.

A post-autobiography speech in San Paulo, Brazil, makes a similar argument, even diminishing Brazils efforts to conserve what have been called the ‘lungs of the world’:

It is our task to help people out of poverty to a more rewarding and fuller life. And impressed as I am by the efforts that Brazil is making to conserve its ecological heritage and indeed the world’s environment through effective management of the rain forest, I am not one of those who thinks that we have to give up on growth and dash the hopes of those who depend on it for a better future.
16 Mar 1994

The speech goes on to attack wealth redistribution which

involves high taxation and sometimes confiscation, both of which penalise the very effort and talent that we need to build up more business, thereby providing more jobs and creating more wealth.
16 Mar 1994

In a speech to people at Leningrad State University, while stating the importance of international action, comes down to blaming socialism for the problems.

all the nations of the world have a duty to to tackle the threats to our environment. There is much to be done to deal with the causes of climatic change and to curb pollution. And it requires action at an international level. But we also must observe that it is the socialist countries which geared their industries to meeting production targets rather than to satisfying customers, unfree systems which neither respected human rights nor nature itself, which are the principle culprits. And it will be the advanced technology and the new wealth generated by free enterprise which will provide the means of restoring the world’s environment.
29 May 1991

A talk to Japanese youth, shortly after the speech in South Africa, makes similar points.

It is only in recent years that we have begun to understand how seriously we have together upset the balance of nature. Acid rain, the threat to the ozone layer, global warming—these are problems which have to be overcome by international cooperation. And never has the international community worked together more closely than in meeting the threat to our global environment.
But the point I would most like to make to you today is that sound science, not sentimentality, must be the basis of our approach. And the system best able to develop that science, most willing to apply it and best able to generate the wealth required to pay for it is free enterprise. Green socialism is no more an answer to the world’s environmental needs than was the smoke-stack socialism of Eastern Europe which poisoned our rivers, disfigured our buildings and rotted our forests.
5 Sep 1991

It appears that she is starting to consider that maintaining the neoliberal economic system is more important that maintaining the ecological system, and that the system as a whole will ideally solve its own problems through wealth generation. Science should not clash with neoliberal priorities. This ‘invisible hand’ of God fantasy, is something we have learnt is idealism at best, delusion at worst. Baroness Thatcher appears to be polarising the environmental debate, for her own rhetorical and thinking purposes, so that a complex discussion is reduced to a dispute between: a) total ‘green’ control, and stifling of prosperity (‘smokestack socialism’), and b) leaving the environment to unregulated markets. This is not a logical, practical, or inevitable division. It is certainly not the only position which could be taken. While it apparently makes clarity, it seems to be an unrealistic, or unreal, clarity that obscures reality.

The Autobiography: The Downing Street Years (1993)

Her Autobiography must have been being written in the late years of the her rule and more or less immediately immediately after her loss of the leadership of the Conservatives on the 28th November 1990. It usually takes quite a while to prepare a book this thick, with possible legal consequences, for publication. Consequently, the contents may be earlier than some of the speeches quoted above, and could be more moderate. The Conservatives continued in government under John Major, until Labor gained government in 1997 under Tony Blair. So it was addressed to a still Tory UK.

The relevant section of the book is entitled ‘Science and the Environment.’ It is only a few pages long.

It begins:

“In 1988 and 1989 there was a great burst of public interest in the environment. Unfortunately, under the green environmental umbrella sheltered a number of only slightly connected issues”
p.638.

She separates these issues into four:

1) “concern for the local environment… essentially and necessarily a matter for the local community”
2) “overdevelopment of the countryside” [but this is simple] “If people were to be able to afford houses there must be sufficient amounts of building land available…”
p.638

There is a slight contradiction here, as point 2 does not imply a particular respect for local environments, or for allowing the community to make descisions which conflict with the interests of developers, but it is a difficult position. If you support, what others call over-development, then you cannot support local control. The Baroness sides with developers, does not push the issue, and possibly is unaware of the problem.

3) “standard of Britains’s drinking water, rivers and sea.” [This is actively being remedied as can be seen by the] “return of healthy and abundant fish to the Thames, Tyne, Wear and Tees” and
4) [Atmospheric pollution]
p.638-9

She feels it necessary to separate issue 4 from the others as follows:

“I always drew a clear distinction bewteen these ‘environmental’ concerns and the quite separate question of atmospheric pollution. For me the proper starting point in formulating policy… was science. There had always to be a sound scientific base on which to build – and of course a clear estimation of the cost in terms of public expenditure and economic growth foregone.”
p.639

In this book the Baroness appears to consider the possibility of foregoing economic growth to solve a problem, or cost to the taxpayer – not perhaps as desirable, but as possible. It seems the cost should be known in advance for planning purposes, and to help judge actions, and not because some any cost will be considered too great for action. She is indicating politics is about practicable balance.

She then talks about science in general. There are two problems with science funding in the UK:

1) [Too much funding is directed at defence] and
2) “too much emphasis was being give to the development of produces for the market rather than to pure science… As someone with a scientific background, I knew that the greatest economic benefits of scientific research had always resulted from advances in fundamental knowledge”
p.639

In this passage she appears to be identifying with ‘pure’ scientists, and her past career/education. The example she gives is also illuminating, and indicates her sense of participation in the scientific process.

“It was, for example, the British Antarctic Survey which discovered a large hole in the ozone layer… I took the closest personal interest as the scientific evidence was amassed and analysed.”
p.640

This progresses to the problem of climate change, and the whole passage should be quoted at length.

“‘Global Warming’ was another atmospheric threat which required the application of hard-headed scientific principles. The relationship between the industrial emission of carbon dioxide… and climate change was a good deal less certain than the relationship between CFCs and ozone depletion. Nuclear power production did not produce carbon dioxide – nor did it produce the gases which led to acid rain.. However, this did not attract the environmental lobby towards it: instead they used the concern about global warming to attack capitalism, growth and industry.”
p.640

We here see the beginning of a problem… The science was not absolutely certain as to the intensity of the effect, something she admitted earlier, but then she also admitted the effects could be worse than predicted. However, the environmental lobby was apparently attacking the basis of neoliberalism.

She does not give any examples of these attacks on “capitalism, growth and industry”. The Soviet Union had collapsed so they were not promoting any effective position at all. China would not release its first “National Climate Change Assessment Report” until 2007, and while this needs more research from me, was not interested in the early 1990s – certainly it seems unlikely China would have been interested in attacks on growth and industry. As far as I can tell the attacks are also not coming from Labor in Australia, Bill Clinton and the Democrats in the US, or Labour under Neil Kinnock or John Smith. The so-called ‘Climate Justice Movement’ is usually said not to arise until 1999 or later. Nuclear energy has been a subject of dispute since the 1950s: it is not loved by everyone other than environmentalists. So these attacks, other than anti-nuclear movement (which was usually not an attack on capitalism, but on the use of radio-activity), were not mainstream and they were unlikely to affect policy.

Later in the book she writes about nuclear power and the need for it, and the cost to the taxpayer and electricity customer, with little sign of hesitation.

I felt it was essential to keep up the development of nuclear power. The real cost of nuclear energy compared with other energy sources is often overrated. Coal-fired power stations pour out carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and no one has yet put a credible figure on what it will ultimately cost to deal with the resulting problem of global warming.
p.684

Here she can admit a cost for not dealing with climate change. She remarks that using nuclear energy would lead to higher charges for customers, but “This was tolerable if not popular.” The costs of decommissioning nuclear power meant they had to be “removed from the privatization” of electricity, and the costs of the decommissioning born by the taxpayers (p.685).

This shows that Mrs. Thatcher’s neoliberalism can run to interference in the economy and added prices to consumers, if it seems necessary for the nation or, if one is less kind, it is necessary to support an established industry, or the selling off of public goods to the private sector. The point is, that whatever the interpretation, Thatcher did sometimes believe the government (and consumers) can absorb costs if necessary for a project’s success.

Despite these reservations about the possible actions of unnamed environmentalists, she worked on her Royal Society speech for two weekends, and expected significant coverage as it was important. So we can assume that speech reflected her considered views and was meant to be widely heard and discussed.

In her autobiography, she quotes one abridged passage from that speech:

For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world’s systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself…..
In studying the system of the earth and its atmosphere we have no laboratory in which to carry out controlled experiments. We have to rely on observations of natural systems. We need to identify particular areas of research which will help to establish cause and effect. We need to consider in more detail the likely effects of change within precise timescales. And to consider the wider implications for policy—for energy production, for fuel efficiency, for reforestation…. We must ensure that what we do is founded on good science to establish cause and effect.
p. 640-41.

She removes references to greenhouse gases “creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability,” possible sea rises, high temperatures in the 1980s (now exceeded), the report of the British Anartic Survey, action taken against Acid rains, and “half the carbon emitted since the Industrial Revolution remains in the atmosphere”. But the general message remains.

In the prepared speech, there is a line about the brightness of the TV lights stopping her from seeing her audience. But as she said in her book:

“it is an extraordinary commentary on the lack of media interest in the subject that, contrary to my expectations, the television did not even bother to send film crews to cover the occasion”
p.640

Given that the BBC was a supposedly leftwing black beast; if they did not come, it hardly leads us to think that Climate change was a source of much interest to the left, or the subject of much leftist agitation at the time. This suggests that Thatcher was, to some extent, reacting to a phantom – but this requires more research. What groups had annoyed her or who had warned her of the problem?

Going back to her earlier discussion on science and environmentalism, she concludes that her policy on the global environment:

“went to the heart of what differentiated my approach from the of the socialists… economic progress, scientific advance… themselves offered the means to overcome threats to individual and collective well being. For the socialist each new discovery revealed a ‘problem’ for which the repression of human activity by the state was the only ‘solution’.. The scared landscape dying forests, poisoned rivers and sick children of the former communist states bear tragic testimony to which system worked better, both for people and the environment”
p.641

So without her presenting any evidence of the reality, or social power, of the dire connection of socialism and environmentalism, she was possibly becoming aware that climate change policy could be used to attack neoliberalism and her record. One possible explanation is that she was becoming aware that her record was not showing the success she had imagined, and its attraction was wearing thin, but that is purely speculative.

However, this imagined (?) anti-neoliberal movement presumably could provide neoliberals with an incentive to show how a reliance on capitalist ingenuity and adaptability, could deal with the problem. There was no need for complete retreat. Economies have rules, and realities that businesses have to deal with so we would expect capitalist to adapt to new rules, which might prevent ecological destruction and maintain economic growth. Thatcher’s Neoliberalism still has a way forward to climate action. Why, indeed, should she let these unnamed ‘socialists’ take the high ground, especially if she supported the better system?

She has not yet retreated from recognition of the problem, or the need for a solution, but a pathway of retreat is possibly being indicated, and it comes directly from her assertion of neoliberalism.

Tags:climate change, neoliberalism, politics
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Margaret Thatcher’s Environmental Themes as PM

February 25, 2020

As we shall see in the fourth of these posts, after some period of retirement, Margaret Thatcher argued that she was not that into climate change action. But there are recurrent, and obvious themes in her talks as Prime Minister. These speeches, and one TV interview, cannot be dismissed as a mere phase as they stretch from September 1988 to November 1990. I am making little commentary here, mainly just quoting her. More examples could be found in these speeches, and more in other speeches; this is not an attempt to be definitive. Apologies to everyone not that interested in a frustrating history.

From the brief analysis of the previous speech we can take several Thatcherian themes

We have to live with nature (life is fragile)
Humans are degrading the environment and that can destroy civilisation
Take science seriously
- IPCC is great
Recognition of complexity, non linerality, uncertainty
Economic growth important but must be bounded.
Action is difficult but must be taken
- Government spending
- recycle waste
- control emissions
- conserve country
- replant forest
- research
- Foreign Aid

So let us see how these work in other speeches by her.

We have to live with nature (life is fragile)

the health of the economy and the health of our environment are totally dependent upon each other.
27 Sep 1988

Protecting this balance of nature is therefore one of the great challenges of the late Twentieth Century
27 Sep 1988

We, who have inherited so much, must hand on a safe, secure future to our children and to their children; to all who come after us. As I said earlier this year: “No generation has a freehold on this earth. All we have is a life tenancy—with a full repairing lease.”
8 Dec 1988

we realise that once you start to fiddle about with the Earth’s balance, you are in danger.
30 Dec 1988 Interview for Frost on Sunday

We must hand on the title deeds of life to our grandchildren and beyond. That is our obligation. We here resolve to make it our duty.
7 Mar 1989

Humans are degrading the environment and that can destroy civilisation

For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world’s systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
27 Sep 1988

the assumption we have made that the atmosphere somehow would not change and what Man could do was very small compared with it—it is not very small any more! It is having an effect upon it and we have a duty to future generations and therefore, we must look very carefully because it can have two enormous consequences: climatic change—we do not know what consequence—and if it gets warmer parts of the ice cap could melt and the waters could come right in and cover certain parts of the land.
30 Dec 1988 Interview for Frost on Sunday

We rightly set out to improve the standard of life of the world’s peoples but we have now realised that we could be undermining the very systems needed to maintain life on our planet.
7 Mar 1989

carbon which was fixed in the ground as coal, oil and gas and was there over millions of years is being released back into the atmosphere over a matter of decades. We are changing our planet’s environment in new and dangerous ways.
6 Dec 1989

We have cared too little for our seas, our forests and our land. We have treated the air and the oceans like a dustbin. We have come to realise that man’s activities and numbers threaten to upset the biological balance which we have taken for granted and on which human life depends.
6 Nov 1990

It appears from the above that, as PM, recognised the general problem of ecological destruction, through the unintended consequences of economic (and other) action.

Take science seriously

the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade [this is probably a misprint] would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope.
27 Sep 1988

Scarcely a week goes by without reading or hearing of some new discovery. We learn more about the linkages between different aspects of atmospheric chemistry, between the chlorofluorocarbons and the greenhouse effect.
7 Mar 1989

science holds the key to the solution of the problem, as well as to its definition.
7 Mar 1989

On the broader front of global warming, we have had the scientific report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change.
This brought together the wisdom and scientific expertise of several hundred of the world’s best scientists. They gave us an authoritative view of the implications for the world’s climate of the enormous increases in carbon dioxide which are reaching the atmosphere year by year:
From our cars,
From our factories and our power stations,
Figures we cannot ignore.
27 Jun 1990

We know, too, that our industries and way of life have done severe damage to the ozone layer. And we know that within the lifetime of our grandchildren, the surface temperature of the earth will be higher than at any time for 150,000 years; the rate of change of temperature will be higher than in the last 10,000 years; and the sea level will rise six times faster than has been seen in the last century.
4 August 1990

The IPCC report is a remarkable achievement. It is almost as difficult to get a large number of distinguished scientists to agree, as it is to get agreement from a group of politicians. As a scientist who became a politician, I am perhaps particularly qualified to make that observation! I know both worlds.
6 Nov 1990

This last comment indicates her identification with scientists as well as politicians. This does not seem a casual idea for her.

Complexity, non linerality, uncertainty, unintended consequences

The fact that half the carbon dioxide generated by the industrial revolution is still in the atmosphere gives some idea of the size of the problem. And we’re still adding three billion tonnes a year. To ignore this could expose us to climatic change whose dimension and effects are unpredictable. So energy efficiency is crucial.
8 Dec 1988

There are still many uncertainties about it. For example, we have a lot more to learn about the mechanisms of ozone creation and destruction and about the effects of increased ultraviolet radiation on living organisms.
7 Mar 1989

Now, the damage to the environment comes from the actions of millions of people conducting peaceful activities which contribute to their health, their well-being and their work in agriculture or industry, activities in other words which are perceived as beneficial.
7 Mar 1989

The real dangers arise because climate change is combined with other problems of our age: for instance the population explosion; — the deterioration of soil fertility; — increasing pollution of the sea; — intensive use of fossil fuel; — and destruction of the world’s forests, particularly those in the tropics.
6 Nov 1990

Climate change may be less than predicted. But equally it may occur more quickly than the present computer models suggest.
6 Nov 1990

Conservatism and the environment

Conservatives are not only friends of the earth, we are its trustees. But concern for the environment is not, and never has been, a first priority for Socialist governments. As we peel back the moral squalor of the socialist regimes in Eastern Europe, we discover the natural and physical squalor underneath. They exploited nature every bit as ruthlessly as they exploited the people. In their departure, they have left her chocking amidst effluent, acid rain and industrial waste. …
31 March 1990

Capitalism is not the enemy of the environment, but its friend and guardian. As more people own property, so more people have an incentive to protect it from pollution.
This we have learned from experience and no more so than in the last ten years in Britain. So much of the wealth created by a flourishing economy has been ploughed back directly into measures to protect and enhance our environment.
In the last five years, we have cut the level of lead in our air by half…. from October this year, all new cars will have to be able to run on unleaded fuel.
This is not the record of a Government with no time for the environment. We stand for clean streets, clean rivers clear seas, fresh air, green acres.
31 March 1990

Economic growth important but must be bounded.

The future of the community demands that business does not try to prosper at the expense of the environment…. That means that the chemicals and other materials we use must be disposed of in a way that safeguards the environment. It also means we must heed the dangers posed by the greenhouse effect.
8 Dec 1988

who has yet looked at the true costs of coal and oil if we must ultimately separate the greenhouse gases they produce and prevent them from going into the atmosphere
6 Dec 1989

There are no simple economic mechanisms to govern countries’ behaviour in this field. The action we must take must harness the market and run with the grain of human nature. It was not regulation but the decisions of millions of individual consumers and the response of industry’s research and commercial initiative which has led to the development of ozone-friendly products, bio-degradable plastics and phosphate-free detergents
6 Dec 1989

Like the Garden of Eden to Adam and Even, anything which is given free is rarely valued. This is especially true of the global environment which mankind has used as a dustbin for decades.
6 Dec 1989

Action is difficult but must be taken

In the past when we have identified forms of pollution, we have shown our capacity to act effectively. The great London Smogs are now only a nightmare of the past. We have cut airborne lead by 50 per cent.
27 Sep 1988

Mr President, the evidence is there. The damage is being done. What do we, the International Community, do about it?
8 Nov 1989

we already have a £2 billion programme of improvements to reduce acid rain emissions from our power stations. We shall be looking more closely at the role of non-fossil fuel sources, including nuclear, in generating energy. And our latest legislation requires companies which supply electricity positively to promote energy efficiency.
8 Nov 1989

Our task as governments is this—
It is to follow the best advice available, To decide where the balance of evidence lies, And to take prudent action.
27 Jun 1990

Our ability to come together to stop or limit damage to the world’s environment will be the greatest test of how far we can act as a world community.
4 August 1990

The danger of global warming is as yet unseen, but real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices, so that we do not live at the expense of future generations.
6 Nov 1990

Many of the precautionary actions that we need to take would be sensible in any event. It is sensible to improve energy efficiency and use energy prudently; it’s sensible to develop alternative and sustainable and sensible … it’s sensible to improve energy efficiency and to develop alternative and sustainable sources of supply; it’s sensible to replant the forests which we consume; it’s sensible to re-examine industrial processes; it’s sensible to tackle the problem of waste.
6 Nov 1990

Promises are easy. Action is more difficult. For our part, we have worked out a strategy which sets us on the road to achieving the target…. We now require, by law, that a substantial proportion of our electricity comes from sources which emit little or no carbon dioxide, and that includes a continuing important contribution from nuclear energy
6 Nov 1990

I see the adoption of these policies as a sort of premium on insurance against fire, flood or other disaster. It may be cheaper or more cost-effective to take action now than to wait and find we have to pay much more later
6 Nov 1990

We must work together

The thing that emerges from this is that none of us can do it alone. What we could do alone would have some effect, but a small effect, and the world is getting together. There is a United Nations Environmental Protection Group which is very good and this is something that has to be pursued through that.
30 Dec 1988 Interview for Frost on Sunday

The problems will only be solved by common action and every country must play its full part and every citizen can help
7 Mar 1989

It was Immanuel Kant who said that it is often necessary to make a decision on the basis of knowledge sufficient for action but insufficient to satisfy the intellect. Let us therefore do what makes sense in any event, such as conserving tropical forests and improving energy[fo 11] efficiency. In parallel, we must intensify our scientific efforts to model and predict climate change. A new centre to do just this is being established in this country.
6 Dec 1989

Costs are inevitable

we have to do the things on environment because we have a duty to do so and most of us wish to improve the environment in any event. It cannot be done without a cost. We have to take the nitrates out of water—that will be an extra process which will cost money, but we must have the safe water—and we have to do more on the coasts and that will cost money. We have to take the sulphur out of coal—that will cost money. The answer to the greenhouse effect is, of course, to have more nuclear and if we have more nuclear, all the technology is known to look after the residual nuclear waste, that too costs money but you do not get the greenhouse effect from that.
So you cannot talk about improving the environment without being prepared to pay for the purer water and the better electricity without damaging the environment.
30 Dec 1988 Interview for Frost on Sunday

the costs of doing nothing, of a policy of wait and see, would be much higher than those of taking preventive action now to stop the damage getting worse. And the damage will be counted not only in dollars, but in human misery as well. Spending on the environment is like spending on defence—if you do not do it in time, it may be too late.
4 August 1990

Research

Britain will continue to play a leading role in trying to answer the remaining questions, and to advance our state of knowledge of climate change. This year, we have established in Britain the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research for this purpose.
6 Nov 1990

But the need for more research should not be an excuse for delaying much needed action now. There is already a clear case for precautionary action at an international level. The IPCC tells us that we can’t repair the effects of past behaviour on our atmosphere as quickly and as easily as we might cleanse a stream or river.
6 Nov 1990

Foreign Aid

So yes, we have a duty. We have to make progress. The Third World wants to make as much progress as we have, but we now have to look at how we are going to maintain that particular atmosphere which supports life, which supports the chain of animal life as well. Absolutely vital. That is why I came out with your quote.
We do not have a freehold. We have a lease of life and at the end of that lease we pass it on to the next generation.
30 Dec 1988 Interview for Frost on Sunday

[We give] £40 million a year to Bangladesh. I said: “Look! It is no earthly good going on relief because they have got floods. We have to get together with all of the countries in the area to try to get the soil back up there, the trees back up there, the silt from the rivers!”
You have to be careful how you do this because those countries are sensitive and you have to say: “Look, there is a problem! Please can we help!” Not: “You have got to do this, that and the other!” but “Please! Can we help? If you need help to do these things, we will put our aid to do those things!”
30 Dec 1988 Interview for Frost on Sunday

if you do not keep the trees and the forests, you do not get the rain; and also, you do not get the carbon dioxide used up, so immediately we have been talking about this on a much bigger scale and we and our Overseas Development Association are giving some of our aid to those countries who are prepared to keep their tropical rain forests.
30 Dec 1988 Interview for Frost on Sunday

the new technologies and substances which are becoming available should help others to avoid the mistakes which we in the highly industrialised countries have made
7 Mar 1989

it is the duty of the industrialized countries to help them obtain and adopt the substitute technologies which will enable them to avoid our mistakes. And an important part of that will be to help them financially, so they can meet the extra costs involved.
27 Jun 1990

A Colleague’s Comment

Recently, another now ex-leader of the Conservatives had this to say about Thatcher:

[She was] better qualified than any other politician to understand climate science and to foresee the likely course of climate change if left unchecked…. [Her] concerns led to her becoming the first leader of any major nation to call for a landmark United Nations treaty on the issue…
Four years later, as Environment Secretary, I played a small role in ushering that UN treaty into existence at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Its resolutions did not require countries to commit themselves to specific reductions in emissions, but it was significant because it was the first step….
It is important to stress that it has never been a Conservative value to be ‘anti-science’. When climate scientists speak, we should listen.
Putting one’s fingers in one’s ears and denying the problem is not a rational response. The only pragmatic approach is to listen, evaluate and act.
The fact is that we have time to avoid the worst excesses of climate change, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions to levels that will keep impacts at manageable levels.
The good news is that in Britain, we are cutting our emissions effectively and doing so is certainly not harming our economy….
This summer has shown that Margaret Thatcher was correct. We are conducting an experiment with the atmosphere and it is a dangerous one.
Thirty years ago Margaret Thatcher warned of man-made global warming. Daily Mail 16 August 2018.

Even this short collection of remarks shows a degree of dedication and realism towards the climate problem, and possibly bode well for the future – indeed had Thatcher not been deposed, and had she continued in this way, we might be considerably better off than we are now – but after her loss of office, her position ground to fixity and refusal, although it has to be recognised that the UK has a much better position on recognising the consequences of climate change and ecological destruction than Australia, Canada, or the US.

Tags:climate change, neoliberalism, politics
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Margaret Thatcher on Climate Action

February 25, 2020

After excoriating Neoliberalism in the last post. It is only fair to mention the comments of one of the founders of neoliberalism, British PM Margaret Thatcher, to show that in the 1980s things were not this far gone.

After this post, which basically just reports on one of Mrs Thatcher’s speeches, I give another post with a series of excerpts from speeches, which show her recurrent themes. She seems more radical and aware than any mainstream politician in Australia today. In the third post I move into consideration of her early post PM period and her growing turn away from environmentalism. The fourth post describes her largely incoherent but strongly neoliberal position in her final book Statescraft (2002), which basically turns away from the problem altogether. If get around to it, a fifth post will describe what she actually did in office.

To make this introductory post simple I am just quoting from one speech to the UN given on the 8th November 1989, almost exactly a year from her forced resignation. It does not completely cover her ideas, but its clear and to the point. It may need to be emphasised that she made this speech thirty years ago…..

From the end of the speech, because it is surprising:

Reason is humanity’s special gift. It allows us to understand the structure of the nucleus. It enables us to explore the heavens. It helps us to conquer disease. Now we must use our reason to find a way in which we can live with nature, and not dominate nature.
Italics added.

A neoliberal who could admit the aim of policy and reason is not to dominate or destroy nature? This is extraordinary in itself

In this speech, Thatcher claims to have been influenced, in her views, by the photos of Earth taken from space, from which came a powerful realisation.

That powerful idea is the recognition of our shared inheritance on this planet. We know more clearly than everbefore that we carry common burdens, face common problems, and must respond with common action….

[A]s we travel through space, as we pass one dead planet after another, we look back on our earth, a speck of life in an infinite void. It is life itself, incomparably precious, that distinguishes us from the other planets.

Life is precarious. This might be the only place in the universe, at this moment, with intelligent life. Certainly it is the only place we know of. That implies we have a duty to preserve it, and to recognise the fragility of the possibility of life. All present and near future human activity depends upon us preserving this planet, more or less as it is, as best we can. Mrs Thatcher presents no fantasy the elites could leave, or that the world is secondary to economics.

She gets rid of the ‘climate is always changing’ motif quite early on:

Of course major changes in the earth’s climate and the environment have taken place in earlier centuries when the world’s population was a fraction of its present size.

The causes are to be found in nature itself—changes in the earth’s orbit: changes in the amount of radiation given off by the sun: the consequential effects on the plankton in the ocean: and in volcanic processes.

All these we can observe and some we may be able to predict. But we do not have the power to prevent or control them.

However,

What we are now doing to the world, by degrading the land surfaces, by polluting the waters and by adding greenhouse gases to the air at an unprecedented rate—all this is new in the experience of the earth. It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.

In this statement she essentially recognises that ongoing ecological destruction is a major problem; our problems are not limited to climate. She mentions previous civilisations that have changed their environments and brought about their downfall, but our current action is undoing the planet not just one civilisation.

We are seeing a vast increase in the amount of carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere. The annual increase is three billion tonnes: and half the carbon emitted since the Industrial Revolution still remains in the atmosphere.

At the same time as this is happening, we are seeing the destruction on a vast scale of tropical forests which are uniquely able to remove carbon dioxide from the air.

This clearance is massive; apparently an area the size of the UK was being lost every year. This clearly lowered the possibility of what we would nowadays call ‘carbon drawdown’; it forms a positive reinforcer of the problem. She recognises the problem is systemic, ‘things’ interact with each other.

She takes the science seriously and obviously talks to scientists:

Let me quote from a letter I received only two weeks ago, from a British scientist on board a ship in the Antarctic Ocean: he… also reports on a significant thinning of the sea ice, and he writes that, in the Antarctic, “Our data confirm that the first-year ice, which forms the bulk of sea ice cover, is remarkably thin and so is probably unable to sustain significant atmospheric warming without melting. Sea ice, separates the ocean from the atmosphere over an area of more than 30 million square kilometres. It reflects most of the solar radiation falling on it, helping to cool the earth’s surface. If this area were reduced, the warming of earth would be accelerated due to the extra absorption of radiation by the ocean.”

“The lesson of these Polar processes,” he goes on, “is that an environmental or climatic change produced by man may take on a self-sustaining or ‘runaway’ quality … and may be irreversible.”

She knows the situation is not linear. That talk asking how could a small increase in temperature, or CO2 concentrations, possibly have a large effect is rubbish talk.

She also knows that no one on the planet is safe from global warming

the problem of global climate change is one that affects us all and action will only be effective if it is taken at the international level.

As we might expect economic growth is important to her, but this growth has to be bounded and sensible. Not just random proliferation.

we must have continued economic growth in order to generate the wealth required to pay for the protection of the environment. But it must be growth which does not plunder the planet today and leave our children to deal with the consequences tomorrow.
Italics added

In case this is not clear, she continues

We should always remember that free markets are a means to an end. They would defeat their object if by their output they did more damage to the quality of life through pollution than the well-being they achieve by the production of goods and services.

This is not modern neoliberalism, as should be clear. It is also not her later version of neoliberalism

So what action does she recommend. Again it is not trivial

I believe we should aim to have a convention on global climate change ready by the time the World Conference on Environment and Development meets in 1992.

There are obvious difficulties:

no issue will be more contentious than the need to control emissions of carbon dioxide, the major contributor—apart from water vapour—to the greenhouse effect….

the measures we take must be based on sound scientific analysis of the effect of the different gases and the ways in which these can be reduced. In the past there has been a tendency to solve one problem at the expense of making others worse…

we prolong the role of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change after it submits its report next year, so that it can provide an authoritative scientific base for the negotiation of this and other protocols….

We can then agree to targets to reduce the greenhouse gases, and how much individual countries should contribute to their achievement. We think it important that this should be done in a way which enables all our economies to continue to grow and develop…..

we must not allow ourselves to be diverted into fruitless and divisive argument. Time is too short for that.

The point is clear. In Thatcher’s mind we must act urgently (early 1990s at the latest). If acting means that we ignore fruitless and politically divisive argument then that is what we must do

But it is not just international talk that she wants. The UK has to set an example on its own, not wait for others to do things first. The UK, being successful, has a responsibility. These are the outlines of some of her projected policies.

First, we shall be introducing over the coming months a comprehensive system of pollution control to deal with all kinds of industrial pollution whether to air, water or land…

We are encouraging British industry to develop new technologies to clean up the environment and minimise the amount of waste it produces—and we aim to recycle 50 per cent of our household waste by the end of the century [1999-2000].

Secondly, we will be drawing up over the coming year our own environmental agenda for the decade ahead. That will cover energy, transport, agriculture, industry—everything which affects the environment….

we already have a £2 billion programme of improvements to reduce acid rain emissions from our power stations. We shall be looking more closely at the role of non-fossil fuel sources, including nuclear, in generating energy. And our latest legislation requires companies which supply electricity positively to promote energy efficiency.

we shall look for ways to strengthen controls over vehicle emissions and to develop the lean-burn engine, which offers a far better long-term solution than the three-way catalyst, in terms of carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect….

With regard to agriculture, we recognise that farmers not only produce food—which they do with great efficiency—they need to conserve the beauty of the priceless heritage of our countryside. So we are therefore encouraging them to reduce the intensity of their methods and to conserve wild-life habitats…

We are planting new woods and forests—indeed there has been a 50 per cent increase in tree planting in Britain in the last ten years…

Third, we are increasing our investment in research into global environmental problems….

Fourth, we help poorer countries to cope with their environmental problems through our Aid Programme…

We shall give special help to manage and preserve the tropical forests.

I can announce today that we aim to commit a further £100 million bilaterally to tropical forestry activities over the next three years, mostly within the framework of the Tropical Forestry Action Plan.

While energy is missing from this speech, she has discussed it in earlier speeches. Perhaps she thought there would be resistance at the UN to talk of cutting down fossil fuel use. Elsewhere she shows her keenness for nuclear energy as it does not emit CO2. However she did not succeed in getting a set of nuclear reactors going in the UK, possibly because they were so expensive to build, the cost of their electricity was much greater than that of fossil fuels, and the cost of proper decommissioning was so great no private company would take it on. She also did not have a feasible or working renewables industry to discuss, or draw to people’s attention. What she might have said if she had, is possible to imagine.

No contemporary neoliberal has this vision, program for action, or grasp of the problems. So neoliberalism has become a lot worse as it has gained in power and as it celebrates its triumphalism.

The point is that for Mrs. Thatcher, at this stage in her life, it is possible to support both capitalism and climate action, whatever modern neoliberals suppose.

Tags:climate change, free markets, neoliberalism
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Comment on Ted Nordhaus: ‘The Empty Radicalism of the Climate Apocalypse’

February 24, 2020

Mr Nordhaus’s article ‘The Empty Radicalism of the Climate Apocalypse‘ is challenging and interesting. Any summary of it will probably not do it justice, but hopefully I’m not distorting it too much.

Ted Nodhaus hails from the Breakthrough Institute (not to be confused with Breakthrough: National Centre for Climate Restoration), that is generally pro-corporate, anti-carbon price and pro-nuclear in its approach to climate change, so his argument that mainstream ‘left’ climate action proposals, are not really that left wing, or anti-capitalist, is interesting and worth engaging with. He is largely correct; environmental action has largely been adapted to not challenging capitalism. Neoliberalism is both all-pervasive, unable to take action itself, and inhibiting of any action by others.

Lets begin with his final point:

“we are all neoliberals now. Some of us just haven’t realized it.”

Neoliberalism is about protecting and promoting corporate dominance. A neoliberal is a person who talks about free-markets and small government, but is quite happy to have government intervene to crush workers’ rights or popular protest, to protect companies when they engage in pollution and harm, and to distort or regulate markets in favour of established corporate power.

In neoliberalism, anything established companies do is perceived as the ‘market in action’, and hence wonderful; anything which anyone does to curtail corporate dominance or to protect livelihood, or even existence, is acting against the market, and is evil and to be suppressed. Neoliberalism is both fundamentally anti-democratic and pro-corporate liberty. Corporations do not need democracy, or generate democracy. Profit and financial power are the only virtues neoliberalism recognises. If destroying ecologies makes profit, even if there are any laws left to protect ecologies (which neoliberals will attempt to remove), then ecologies will be destroyed.

Neoliberalism is inherently boring and real world problem avoiding. Neoliberals pretend that what they call free markets bring liberty rather than corporate dominance. Their only solution to every problem is even greater corporate dominance and less government acting on behalf of the people.

It is not surprising that after forty years of neoliberal ‘free market’ talk most people feel alienated from a politics which has become about corporate subsidy and corporate freedom, while considering most of the electorate expendable, or mindless, and to be manipulated rather than listened to.

Neoliberalism creates the conditions of its perpetuation by preventing any challenge emerging, by ensuring critical politicans generally get little funding, by funding fawning politicians, by owning the media and ensuring you get bombarded with neoliberal talking points, by enforcing the market, and dismissing whatever challenge becomes known as ‘anti-market’, and markets are inherently good. It also sabotages its conditions of existence by removing responsibility for the destruction of the ecologies it depends upon.

It is not a surprise that neoliberalism cannot deal with climate change, as recognising climate change demands changes in the behaviour of dominating corporations, a recognition of their responsibility for ecological destruction, and a reassertion of the rights of those ordinary people who are going to suffer severely from climate change. All of this, like any other democratic action is simply branded an interference in the market and unworkable as a result.

Most people (including neoliberals) deny they are neoliberals in this sense, but this is the way neoliberalism works. It forms the destructive background of our crisis

“Many conservatives have attacked the Green New Deal as socialism”

Neoliberals attack everything that does not give the corporate sector more power and wealth, as socialist or communist, suggesting it will lead to mass death. That is their main shtick. It also shows the poverty of their arguments – a slur is enough to satisfy them and prevent any further thinking.

But, as Mr Nordhaus says,:

“what is striking about the Green New Deal and similar proposals coming from climate hawks and left-leaning environmentalists is not their radicalism but their modesty.”

Yes. The left is now what would once have been called economically right wing. The solutions which are being proposed in our parliaments to the problem of climate change, are moderate capitalist, not socialist. They are not radical. The fact that they are attacked in this way, rather than discussed, shows the intensity of the neoliberal desire not to trouble the established and dominant corporate sector. The right is always attempting to push us further to the right.

“almost no one, in either electoral politics or nongovernmental organizations, seems willing to demand that governments take direct and obvious actions to slash emissions and replace fossil energy with clean.”

For the mainstream left, this is pretty accurate. From the 50s to early 70s direct government action would have seemed the sensible and obvious thing to do to almost everyone, as survival is more important than corporate power or markets. Markets have no necessarily beneficial teleology, other than seeking profit at this moment; their long term processes can easily lead to destruction, or the crash. Its not as if we don’t know that markets do crash, and bring many people down with them. Markets always require custom and regulation to work.

“the apocalyptic rhetoric, endless demands for binding global temperature targets, and radical-sounding condemnations of neoliberalism, consumption, and corporations only conceal how feeble the environmental climate agenda actually is”

He is right again. Neoliberal dominance or free market fundmentalism, crushes all innovation and potential innovation (unless it renders profit). Mainstream environmentalism yields, possibly to keep funding and avoid full-on media attacks.

The left’s agitation boils:

“down to some variant of either regulating corporations to stop them from doing things that produce carbon emissions or subsidizing them to use energy and other technologies that reduce carbon emissions”

As he is arguing, this is pretty minor stuff considering the potential scale of the disaster, yet it is vehemently opposed.

It is also true that as well as regulation and subsidy, some people suggest a carbon price as a solution. Not carbon trading, but a governmentally determined price with predictable increases, which gives the business world certainty (to the degree certainty is possible), and is given back to ordinary people to compensate for price increases. Again this is a mild impingement on markets, less of an impingement than sea level rises and so on. Its not hard to find this suggestion, as he recognises in his next paragraph. He continues:

“the primary frame through which climate change has been viewed over the past three decades is as a market failure.”

Yes. With the reservation that this is not really what is usually meant by ‘market failure.’ The term ‘market failure’ implies the possibility of ‘market success,’ yet the complete inability of neoliberal markets to deal with climate change is now reasonably obvious. It is not market failure. It is the nature of the neoliberal market itself that is the problem.

“Missing from this frame is the notion that abundant, cheap, clean energy and the low carbon infrastructure and technology necessary to provide it is a public good.”

Indeed because neoliberalism and its free market theory will not allow, or recognise, this. There is no such thing as ‘public good’ in neoliberalism, and talk of ‘public good’ is seen as a screen for ‘socialist dictatorship’ (lessening of corporate dominance). This again shows the poverty of neoliberal thought. Economics and exchange is a social activity, which depends on social order and a sense of public good. If it does not serve the good of the general public, what is the point? But, in neoliberalism, there is only the private good of the corporate class. No one else counts.

“Treating climate change as a public infrastructure challenge, not a private market failure, brings a range of advantages that pricing and regulation cannot provide.”

Yes again. This kind of action should recognise the inability of the market to work to save us, by itself. Dominant players in the market are currently profitting from the actions which lead to climate change, and they are not about to give those benefits up, without struggle.

“[Public action] enables long time horizons that private investors are unlikely to tolerate; planning and coordination across sectors of the economy to integrate technology, infrastructure, and institutions necessary to achieve deep decarbonization; and low-cost public finance that could make the price of the energy and climate transition far more manageable. And assuming a reasonably progressive tax system, it would arguably do so in a manner at least as straightforward and equitable as cap-and-trade or carbon taxes that aim at “correcting” market failures.”

Yes, but a carbon price may also be useful, as not everything would have to be done by government fiat alone. Perhaps a non-neoliberal market, in competition with central planning, might be useful. We have had mixed economies previously, and they worked quite well; certainly better than neoliberal markets.

“Green opposition to nuclear energy and hydroelectric dams has evolved into skepticism of centralized grids and infrastructure planning.”

I have not noticed this at all. This seems to be lazy thinking. It’s easy for the right to assume Greens are stupid (as they are not neoliberals) therefore they wouldn’t approve of grid planning.

However, as an example of reality, the Australian Greens argue they wish to:

“Establish PowerNSW. A new, publicly owned electricity company to generate, distribute and retail renewable energy for the people of NSW fairly and affordably.”

and:

“Upgrade the power grid. Build much-needed new public network infrastructure, connecting our abundant renewable energy resources to the National Electricity Market.”

So there is no skepticism about improving the grid. It should be fairly obvious that nuclear energy and Hydroelectricity present fundamental ecological challenges, and dangers, in ways that grids do not. Greens might prefer local people not to be restricted by neoliberal regulations designed to protect commercial grid operators at the expense of those local people, but if the grid became a national project, aimed at more than just private profit, then this might be much less of a problem.

“It was only the distortion of energy markets by policy-makers, at the behest of fossil and nuclear incumbents, [Amory] Lovins [chair of the Rocky Mountain Institute] has long insisted, that has stood in the way of the rapid adoption of renewable energy.”

Sadly this ‘distortion’ (which is not a distortion but part of the way the neoliberal market works) is inevitable in a society in which the official ideology only values profit. Massive inequalities in wealth allow massive inequalities in social power and in access to that power. The super-wealthy can, and will, buy and reward politicians for supporting them, and pay for think tanks to persuade those politicians that, in being bought, they are acting virtuously.

“the realities of renewable energy at scale look nothing like the distributed and decentralized utopia that Lovins and his environmental followers promised.”

Yes, again neoliberal ideology and action ‘distorts’ everything to perserve the powers of the corporate elite. Their aim is to prevent this elite having to change or respond to peoples’ needs or requests, and claim this is reputable because “the market knows best”. The environmental movement should not go along with any of these propositions, however dangerous this might appear.

“Most renewable energy today comes not from homes clad in solar panels but from enormous, industrial-scale wind, solar, and biomass facilities.”

This depends a little on where you live, but yes captured governments and renewable energy corporations, have tended to favour the enormous, and the centralised. They have favoured the structures which were good for coal energy companies and which removed local people from consideration or participation.

“The only remotely plausible path to the sorts of changes that many environmentalists now demand,… would require top-down, centralized, technocratic measures that most environmentalists are unwilling to seriously embrace.”

This is the fundamental paradox, but a centralised system which responded to, and involved, local communities could well have a different dynamic, if that was built into the planning. Again the problem is trying to adapt to neoliberalism.

“That is why the rhetoric of climate emergency in recent years has not been matched by explicit and specific proposals to do the sorts of things that a climate emergency would seem to demand.”

He should perhaps listen to some of the climate emergency declarations, and then realise the practical difficulty of acting against the endlessly wealthy elites…

This radicalism is

“fundamentally lacking any well-formed idea of what such a world would look like, in either its institutions, its actual social and economic organization, or most of its specifics—rationing, nationalization, or even just preempting local resistance to action… what most environmentalists, including radical greens, are basically demanding is capitalism with carbon regulations and lots of windmills.”

Yes true, and yet what visions there are, are still rabidly opposed by neoliberals, because it might set a precedent to challenge unfettered corporate power. There is no agreed on vision, because neoliberals refuse any negotiation, at all, even with this dilute environmentalism.

“there is little reason to believe at this point that we are capable of arriving at or sustaining the sort of political consensus that such an undertaking would require.”

This all suggests that the time for compromise with neoliberalism has passed. Neoliberals, as Nordhaus almost recognises, have obstructed climate action at every turn; no matter how mild the suggested action, they still claim it is too ‘socialist’. Over 40 years of neoliberal dominance there have been pretty much no neoliberal ‘free market’ suggestions for a solution to climate change that neoliberals have been willing to actually act upon. Perhaps because there cannot be.

Climate survival clashes with fundamental neoliberal principles.

The left may have to gain the kind of intolerance displayed by the neoliberals and not bother about further attempts at dialogue. Neoliberal markets do not work. Challenging neoliberals will be painful. Not challenging neoliberals will be death. Possibly this needs to be the fallback realisation of the environmental movement, left and right. Neoliberalism is not conservative at all.

Nordhaus ends with a kind of solution, which is probably yet another avoidance of the problem of neoliberal love of destruction.

“technological change will likely continue to prove more easily seeded and sustained than political change.”

Possibly, but again technological change and the way it is used, needs to be removed from neoliberal hands, or we will have more of the fracking disasters, and the leaking of methane in to the air. Fracking might “have significantly reduced the role of coal in the US electricity market” but it is doubtful it has reduced emissions, or preserved ecologies. It just reinforces the destructive system.

Technology has unintended consequences, but neoliberal technology will be designed and organised to benefit neoliberal power and wealth structures, before it will be designed and organised to improve quality of life or ecological stability.

Attempts to accommodate neoliberalsim and keep corporate support, may explain the incoherencies I have discussed in Australian climate policy, as neoliberalism is essentially hostile to ecological preservation and loss of any established corporate power. There is, and can be, no neoliberal effective climate policy. Consequently, neoliberalism must be defeated. We can begin by recognising that Neoliberalism in all its forms, is:

essentially anti-democratic
inherently destructive
unable to deal with ecological problems or climate change
reduces everything to maintaining profit
uninterested in most peoples’ survival, if that might lessen corporate wealth
controls the media, and hence what most people know
attempts to destroy information which is true, but might affect it
formidable as it is a form of plutocracy or rule by wealth
attempts to take over the state, through buying politicians, lobbying, privatisation, and positioning corporate people in government departments responsible for regulating their corporate activities.

Challenging neoliberalism will be difficult. Perhaps the only alternatives are revolution or death. I’d much rather they weren’t, but when established power seems bent on destruction and ignoring the problems, then perhaps that is the only option.

Fighting neoliberalism will be painful, but it is the only course of action that will get us anywhere.

Tags:Anthropocene, neoliberalism, technology
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Communism, Dictatorship and Climate Change?

February 18, 2020

Some parts of the political Right argue that climate change is far less of a problem than Communism and consequent left-wing dictatorship. This might strike, non-righteous thinkers as a bit odd given that communism has passed into history. Cuba is tiny, and voted for a new constitution in February 2019. It has almost no influence. North Korea does not seem communist, in any form, other than name, and also has no influence – certainly I have never read a recent Western communist using North Korea as a positive blueprint for anything. China, which is the only possibly ‘communist’ country of influence, seems nowadays to manifest a form of authoritarian State based capitalism. When people want to praise Chinese progress they frequently say it is because of capitalism, when they want to condemn Chinese politics, they frequently blame communism.

So far, communists or left-dictatorships alone have made no real impact on global natural systems, so their legacy, however painful, has been short term.

However, climate change, assuming the predictions are correct (and the IPCC predictions have so far underestimated the rates of change), will be disastrous for the long term. You can see world wide firestorms already, record temperatures in the arctic and antarctic already, melting of land ice already (this will accelerate as the ice melts and with 68 degree Fahrenheit temperatures in the Antarctic ice will not stay frozen), and melting of the permafrost and the release of stored Greenhouse gases (which will make the situation even worse) already. We see no tendency for temperatures to return to ‘normal’, or for the system to be returning to any kind of stability. Indeed this January set quite startling temperature records. Global climate change is here already

We know the major causes of this problem, and that includes human burning of fossil fuels, and some human agricultural and building practices – and these practices happen in all kinds of political systems.

There is no sign these polluting practices are diminishing at the rates we need to diminish the threat of climate change.

Consequently it is pretty likely that we are going to see sea level rises of a couple of metres in a relatively short period of time in geological and historical terms (it is hard to predict when, but within a hundred years is certain, within 10–15 years is possible). These rises may end up being between 25–50 metre rises. It is extremely unlikely that governments will be able to deal with the flooding of coastal cities and the large-scale displacement of people that will result. The economy is likely to tank due to the losses, people are likely to starve while the financial elites try and save themselves.

We already know that the market (by itself) is unlikely to save us in time, as we have been pretty much leaving it to the market for the last 30 to 40 years. The market could quite possibly be more useful if it was not politically dominated and structured by fossil fuel companies and mining companies who are trying to prevent financial losses for themselves, through using disinformation and purchase of politicians and regulations. Crony capitalism is the natural form of capitalism, and it always values short term profit for the established elite over long term survival for everyone.

Normally we try to avoid possible disasters, even if we are not sure how and when they will arrive. The unusual thing (which shows the effect of corporate power) is that, with this probable disaster, we are trying to avoid dealing with it. We have politicised it to such an extent, that many people on one side of politics (not by any means all) refuse to acknowledge it and obstruct discussion and thinking about the problem – often by throwing around terms like ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’.

As I have argued previously, neoliberalism tends towards authoritarian plutocracy. Capitalism can operate easily within a dictatorship which protects elite wealth from democratic processes such as climate action. So if we have to fear long-term destructive dictatorship it may well come from elite business operatives rather than from left-wing ‘communism.’

But even if these propositions are wrong, if we don’t act soon, then people will have a lot more to fear from climate change, while there is little to fear from communism.

Tags:climate change, Disinformation, politics
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Climate Emergency Summit 04: Psychology and Feeling

February 18, 2020

Having briefly discussed the lack of political interest in the emergency, we can now look at general psychological issues, which hinder our response.

There are two strong features in the psychology of our responses to the climate emergency, which came out at the Summit.

Firstly recognition of the emergency presents us with an existential crisis. Acts that were praiseworthy and brought success, can now be perceived as harmful. Going along as we have been going along does not make sense. Indeed, most of what we do in our lives does not make sense. Consumerism is destructive, travel can be destructive, expanding growth can be destructive, seeking profit can be destructive, and so on. The expansion of self into the globe is potentially destructive, yet the alternative of narrow racist nationalism, lack of world wide commerce and interaction seems equally destructive. The forms of meaning within which our lives are embedded, seem fragile, and provide no guidance for life. This is psychologically disruptive and disorienting.

Secondly, our political rule of action is neoliberalism and ‘free market’ theory. Neoliberalism does not work in the way it is supposed to, as markets become subject to power-in-the-market through oligopoly (when a few corporations control a particular market) and plutocracy (rule by wealth in general). Markets are never free. Changing from this set of presecriptions for the world, is difficult because it is so entangled with our systems of power, order and suppression. It is inherently used to rejecting, or co-opting, challenges to its rule, rather than listening to information it regards as hostile.

One of the many problems of neoliberalism is that it reduces almost everything to numbers that refer to money and profit. This means that, as a directive, if an action brings established companies profit (especially if of low personal risk to highlevel managers), then it must be done, and also that whole realms of human experience become demoted and ignored, unless they can be manipulated to get people to attack those people who are suspicious of neoliberalism. This includes any recognition of a complex psychology, or even of feeling itself. Let alone our dependence on ecology.

These two factors means that our main social habits, patterns of life, patterns of power, ease of getting on with others, sense of meaning, ways of interpreting reality, and so on, lead us to deny the seriousness of the climatic situation and suppress awareness of our pain in relationship to the changes going on around us; the mass death, the burning, the strange weather, the threat of what is to come. Awareness brings pain and dislocation. We cannot be completely unaware of the crisis, nowadays, without a degree of effort, or without attempts to blame others for our pain. Humans are good at denial, and it can be useful up to a point. But in this case it is helping to perpetuate our own destruction, and suppress our selves as manifested in our feelings and understandings.

There is a possibility that we are encouraged in this response, precisely because the neoliberal life is so psychologically unsatisfying that we do not value ourselves, or that we actually might enjoy the release of the destruction of this narrow life. Destruction might satisfy our hatred of ourselves, the way we live, and our sense of confinement.

The crisis is frightening in itself, but when tied to these other factors can be overwhelming, so the desire to live peacefully, with equinamity, perhaps in the ‘spirit’ can also lead to suppression of information about the crisis, the feelings associated with it, and constructive discussion about it.

Indeed the media and the political Right have generally tried to stop recognition of climate crisis, and to turn climate change into a subject people are too frightened to talk about. People feel they will be attacked, humiliated, or inadequate. They may think the science is too complicated and they may get it wrong, or they would not know what is inncorrect in someone else’s assertion. Even the most open news sources may undermine their own articles on climate change by finishing with doubt. Or media may portray a heatwave with pictures of people at the beach, rather than people in ambulances. This lack of public conversation, and recognition of helps make climate emergency seem an intractable problem, and reinforces the idea that there is a real debate about whether climate change is happening, or whether it is humanly caused.

Even the climate movement seems generally ‘afraid’ of feelings, apparently thinking that fear or grief, for example, will lead people astray; but these feelings are a non-detachable part of human response to the crisis, and if ignored will undermine the work we do.

As Margaret Klein Salomon argued at the Summit, fear tells us to protect ourselves and those we value; it can move us into action. Fear is a warning and fear can be a fuel. If you are not frightened of climate change then you are not really alive – at the best you are probably suppressing your awareness of the situation we are in, and thus not reacting to it appropriately.

She went on to argue that grief also tends to be locked out, yet many of us grieve for the world we have lost, the animals, ecosystems and people who have been destroyed or severely injured. Grief is an expression of love and fellow feeling. We grieve because the loss matters, and because we feel the connection that has gone. By feeling the grief we feel, we are taking in the truth of the situation, and opening our way to something new. This world is dying, but with recogition of grief, we can start to build a new one.

Sally Gillespie suggests that discussing our feelings and understandings with like minded people, in places which are safe, furthers our ability to act, and overcomes the sense of isolation which is encouraged by the media and the Right. Simply listening to others and recognising these feelings can give people a sense of their own solidity and reality, and of the possibility of action. It makes the crisis real, and the possibility of response real.

The facts of climate change can be overwhelming, we can zone out when hearing them, and we need to acknowledge the feelings that arise so that we can process the information and its connection to our daily lives. Without these forms working together and acknowledging feelings and problems, we can enter a cycle of individual disconnection which reinforces established powers and destructive patterns. We are ecologies as much as we live in an ecology, and we need to acknowledge this reality.

Listening to reality and to others, implies the importance of listening to those things we are unconscious of, which we may find in fantasies and more particularly in dreams. Dreams themselves are modes of perception. Learning to live with these modes of awareness is vital to our response and to our psychological health, as we deal with the crisis which our society would rather did not exist.

Denying and suppressing feelings and distress takes energy, quite a lot of energy in muscle tension amongst other things. When we are able to acknowledge the feelings and share them with others so they seem normal and we can come to accept them and let them flow (rather than try to hold them in place), then we have a lot more energy with which to do things with, including protest and political (and other) action against climate change. We become alive again, and can honour life.

Tags:climate change, depth psychology, politics
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Climate Emergency Summit 03: Political disinterest

February 16, 2020

Previously I discussed what needs to be done in the Emergency, now we discuss the lack of political interest.

We have to understand how little interest there is amongst the political class at Federal or State level, in solving, or even recognising the emergency – which is one reason why we might have to work outside of Parliament, maybe at the local council level. As far as I can see there were only two current Australian Federal politicians present, and few State politicians. Although there were numbers of people from local councils, and from the ACT.

Perhaps politicians think that acknowledging the presence of an ’emergency’ would make them look weak or panic driven? Certainly they know it would leave them open to attack from the Murdoch Empire and the Minerals Council and probably the Business Council, and that this three pronged attack would not be comfortable. In some cases it may not be survivable….

Adam Bandt, the new leader of the Greens, remarked that when people brought the remains of their homes in protest to Canberra, they were largely ignored. The government continued to pretend it was acting to make things better while actively trying to make things worse.

When Greg Mullins, a former fire chief, was talking to people in his field, before the current fires, he found they all said the changes were worse than the predictions. There has been close to a 20% reduction in rain; the winter rains do not come; the season for hazard reduction burning is shortening; the gaps between major fires is shortening; and the fire season is lengthening at both ends. Fire fighters in different states could previously share resources, because the fires in one state would happen when it was not burning in another state, now the fires are pretty much continuous leaving no respite. In the current fires, areas can burn several times, which is almost unheard of previously, hindering the process of regeneration; usual fires leave islands of bush in which plants and animals shelter, these fires did not. They tried several times to get discussions with the PM, but he refused and, as we all know, went on holiday in the middle of the fires. When they did finally get a meeting with a minister, the minister rushed to a press conference to say the government was already acting and had done enough already… Mullins said that as soon as they mentioned climate change these older ‘chiefs’ were branded as activists, and as of no worth. The Murdoch Empire news sheet The Australian tried to emphasise that the group was funded by the Evil alarmist Tim Flannery and the Climate Council. A volunteer fire fighter who complained about the Prime Minster on Television, because he had seen so much loss, was dismissed from the Rural Fire Service. That is how politicised the Coalition has made the issue, and how dismissive they are.

SM’s only solution to the crisis is for us all to adapt, or get used to it, as the satiric Australien Government ads suggest. It is not possible to get used to, or adapt to, 25m sea level rises and dying land; anyone who thinks we can do this without massive planning is either lying or without imagination, so its not surprising they can’t think of solutions…

Even more to the point is that PM Morrison’s staff members are often heavily associated with the fossil fuel industry, business-favouring denial is right in his office, and we know the Coalition will not support a Federal ICAC, and Labor are reluctant.

Labor is little better. Some people describe the last election as the climate election, but Labor hardly explained its climate policy let alone emphasised it, was ambiguous about the Adani mine, promoted fracking in the NT, and allowed Morrison to get away with claiming his government was acting. After the election, Labor seemed to spend most of its time defending coal mining and the new leader dropped Labor’s 2030 targets, but that is not enough for some of his party who seem convinced that they lost because they were perceived as being anti-fossil fuels.

It also shows willful refusal to face the problems. A refusal which is contemptible and cowardly.

****

In explaining the term ’emergency’ in ‘climate emergency’ Adam Bandt argued that we declare an emergency to safe lives. Ambulance workers and fire fighters are emergency workers. We could not live without them. An emergency does not always require a war.

As well as looking at the obvious fact that politicians seem controlled by factions of the corporate elite, who reward their lack of interest, there are also psychological factors which could be involved.

Tags:climate change, politics
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Climate Emergency Summit 02: Action?

February 16, 2020

Part 1 of this discussion deals with the current state of the world and what the emergency looks like. We can now move on to what constitutes an adequate response.

The minimum actions seem to be something like the following. How they are organised is a political question which is vital, but open for discussion.

Firstly we need to stop all new fossil fuel mines and exploration. We almost certainly won’t do this, because of the power of fossil fuel companies and the (dis)information they disperse, and because some people cannot imagine life without fossil fuels, but it’s absolutely necessary. More fossil fuels will only make the situation worse.

This means no Adani mine, and no Clive Palmer mine. We apparently have plans for another 50-80 coal mines in Australia and even more new gas wells. This stops, Now. Personally I don’t think there should be any compensation for this. These companies were trying to profit from our destruction, so I have little pity for their loss, and we need all our resources to help the transition, but that is not my decision – that is part of the political process.

All existing fossil fuel mines need to be phased out over the next ten years. For the purposes of climate change, it is irrelevant whether these materials are burnt overseas or here. They have to be stopped.

We immediately start building, as public works, a grid that is capable of handling renewable energy and connecting new sources of energy to its markets. We also make it possible to directly transmit generated energy from a rooftop to another building without having to use the grid; this will make community energy developments much easier. The actual building of solar and wind farms can be left to companies or preferably communities, as there seems considerable will to build these.

We begin to reduce emissions in all fields (energy, transport, industry, building, agriculture etc) to zero by 2030. We start by phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, and by having a carbon price that rises every year in a predictable manner. We phase out ‘natural gas’ through renewably generated hydrogen and ammonia for transportation of the hydrogen. The hydrogen or ammonia can act as storage, along with weights, batteries etc. We mandate that all new buildings should have 7* energy efficiency by the end of this decade, exploring energy efficiency as best we can, and make sure regenerative agriculture becomes the norm. We may need to increase all taxes to raise money for action and research. At the minimum, no company should trade here and not pay tax on their local income.

People may say that being planned this is not going to deliver things as well as the market, but the market alone shows no signs of delivering what we need within the time frame in which we need it. The market is one of the factors which has generated the problem and it has failed to generate a solution. This does not mean we destroy the market, we just provide better parameters for it to function in. Parameters which are not determined by fossil fuel companies.

All the workers in these fields need to feel and perceive there is a progression to a new stable financially comparable and interesting employment. This will require more planning.

We need to engage in drawdown, not to offset burning fossil fuels, but to remove existing emissions from the air. Regenerative agriculture, biochar and massive tree replanting (that is not just planting the same tree over and over, but planting ecologically appropriate distributions of trees and bushes) might be useful here, as will be bans on land clearing and clear felling. We also need massive investment in research into carbon removal and reuse, as current tech is nowhere near adequate.

Drawdown, even to preindustrial levels, may not be sufficient. If the ice caps have melted enough then the world will be warmer and may not shift back into cooling fast enough. In which case we may need to do solar radiation management; that is cooling the earth by reflecting light back into space. This is dangerous with unintended consequences almost certain to arise. It requires worldwide co-ordination, and some plan to compensate those who end up worse off than previously. It is not to be contemplated before all other methods are found to fail and a time limit should be set for its use and slow withdrawal.

We almost certainly need to plan for migration inland resulting from sea level rises, and to protect coastal cities, towns and infrastructure where possible (nothing much is possible if we don’t prevent the 25 m rise). We almost certainly will need to have huge flexible and well equipped emergency services. And we will need to organise people to protect and tend changing eco-systems.

These requirements are truly massive in terms of preparation and expense (probably overwhelming) and we will not be able to protect everything. However the problem needs to be acknowledged, so we can do our best in advance, and it should create plenty of jobs.

The difficulties of such a project are enormous and possibly insurmountable. But the neoliberal elites from Keating onwards have derailed any attempts to solve these problems previously, and have politicised these problems in order to carry out their prime directive of making corporate power and hierarchy safe by destroying the power of ordinary people to affect their corporate overlords. In the long term, they have failed. In twenty to thirty years, without action of the kind discussed here, the whole economy will be falling apart and that includes the corporate sector, not to mention the billions who will suffer and die as a result of that refusal to act. If we had been able to start 30 years ago, we might not be needing this kind of ‘excessive’ action now.

This is not an exaggerated bid to gain action, it is a minimum bid for what is needed. Going still further would be better.

It is unlikely the State will go with these proposals, so we will have to work outside the State and build a new participatory democracy from the grass roots up. Some people will argue that the project violates their rights. But if we don’t have a working ecology, and a functional society, then no one will have rights. If we do nothing, we face dictatorship as the Corporate State tries to enforce its rule in a crumbling war torn world.

However if the best we are offered is 2050 targets (as, in Australia, with Zali Steggall’s Bill) then we should go with them, and press further. Anything serious is better than nothing. Even if it won’t work, it will get people thinking about what we need to do, and that might make the dangers clearer than if people keep running away from them in the hope that they personally will be special enough to escape the consequences.

This is a hard set of demands, which will not encourage unity. But it is extremely difficult to have unity with climate change deniers, after all they are seeking a unity in denial of the challenges and in flight from the challenges. However, as Zali Steggall said at the summit, as an athlete you live with failure: you have to be prepared to put it all on the line, and sometimes you will fail and sometimes it will be wonderful.

Part 3: The lack of political interest in the Emergency

Tags:Anthropocene, climate change, Disinformation, Energy, politics
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Climate Emergency Summit 01: Position

February 16, 2020

The Summit in Melbourne demonstrated the way that mainstream politics on climate action is nearly delusional. Mainstream politics basically denies the seriousness of the situation.

Firstly, and this is my opinion obviously, the fires all over the world in the last two years have not only released heaps of excess Greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere, making our situation leap into the next bracket of bad, but we already have record temperatures all over the world, and more importantly, the melting of the permafrost. This melting will release stored methane, another GHG, and this release will further increase the warming and rate of warming. We are now going into a phase in which natural processes are accelerating human induced warming. The Amazon has apparently become so messed up it is turning from a carbon sink into a carbon source, and this transformation in damaged forest is not rare. Melting of the Antarctic and Greenland land ice, has already begun, and the melting once started, and accelerated by the extra GHG release, will be hard to stop and will increase ‘exponentially’; that is it will start off slow and rapidly accelerate. We can expect a sea level rise of 25 to 50 metres in a fairly small timeframe – probably within a human life time. For reference, 25 m is about a seven story building. Speeds of melting seem massively underestimated in the older literature – it was not supposed to have started yet.

I could expect, with the situation continuing to worsen, that we might even get a couple of metres of rise in the next 10 to 15 years. Most big cities are on the coast, and large populations are also coastal. Billions of people will be dispossessed all around the world. Few countries will be safe as the waters continue to rise. The stress of flooded cities and loss of fertile land, with the sea gradually getting higher, will destroy economies, destroy supply chains and destroy residencies. Even if the displaced people can get to refugee camps, then there will be no organisation, as countries and corporations will be using their resources elsewhere to hold themselves together. Even those people who live above 50 m above sea level will feel the cascading destructions.

Many places in the world will become uninhabitable with a three degree rise. Parts of Australia are already approaching uninhabitable, after a mere one degree, because of the tendency to have strings of really high temperature days with no breaks and no rain – this can kill even the most resilient plant life.

On top of this, we can expect the recurrence of hugely destructive storms and floods, as well as droughts, as the climate system struggles to find equilibrium. It cannot find equilibrium while we keep increasing the stress in the climate systems. This weather will clearly add to the stress on our social systems and our abiilty to be resilient, or make useful change. Insurance bills seem to be mounting, which marks increased destruction.

The current mass extinction is another problem. Collapsing biodiversity will affect all surviving living systems including those of agriculture. Given the change in climate as well, we can expect very different biosystems to begin to start existing around us. This will mean new diseases and new spreads of old diseases.

Tropical disease will move into the first world. Heat stroke is a major cause of death indirectly through heart attacks and so on. At the summit, representatives of the AMA announced they believe that global warming will be catastrophic for human health. On top of this the disorder will promote the collapse of the medical system; hospitals may be underwater, or without power and supplies. You, your children, your siblings, spouse and your parents are more likely to die of avoidable disease if climate change runs away.

The threat is huge. Climate change is no longer in the future but here now and going to get worse.

Given the situation we have described, targets which are to be achieved by 2050 are almost a waste of time. Indeed 2050 targets can be primarily seen as a way of doing nothing now. By 2050 we will be deep into a deadly disorganisation of enforced change. While the disruption will not be reaching its peak by then, it is still extremely likely to be society destroying.

The targets need to start being visibly implemented now, and we need to start carbon dioxide drawdown now. The GHGs we already have in the air are going to increase warming. There is a delay in the effects; how much is hard to predict, but even if we stopped all emissions tomorrow we are still not past the worst consequences of what we have already set in motion – Michael Mann thought it was likely that we are already locked into a 10 m sea level rise. If you try to stop a passenger liner just by turning the engines off, it will still keep going forward.

The next post describes how we probably need to act….

Tags:'nature', Anthropocene, climate change, politics
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Climate, technology and chaos Blog

Archive for February, 2020

Baroness Thatcher and the Moment of Climate Retreat

Baroness Thatcher and Climate Change: The Beginning of Problems

Margaret Thatcher’s Environmental Themes as PM

Margaret Thatcher on Climate Action

Comment on Ted Nordhaus: ‘The Empty Radicalism of the Climate Apocalypse’

Communism, Dictatorship and Climate Change?

Climate Emergency Summit 04: Psychology and Feeling

Climate Emergency Summit 03: Political disinterest

Climate Emergency Summit 02: Action?

Climate Emergency Summit 01: Position

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