“Climate breakdown cannot be kicked down the road, or bargained with. It’s a reality that has to be grappled with; and dealt with now. Current political leaderships will be judged on the extent to which they rise to the challenge of doing that, or fail to.”
By Paul Atkin, Greener Jobs Alliance
With February being the ninth consecutive month that set an all time high temperature record, reports that Ministers are seeking to exploit a “loophole” in the Climate Change Act to “carry over” reductions in carbon emissions resulting from covid lockdowns to relax targets for the next carbon budget, exposes their detachment from reality.
They miss the fundamental point that the 7% emissions decline during the pandemic is what is needed every year to be on track for the level of carbon reductions we need to stave off catastrophe. As we need to do that without closing down society, we need a faster, deeper pace of transition, with greater investment and far more public education and mobilisation; so we can participate together in making it happen.
Climate breakdown cannot be kicked down the road, or bargained with. It’s a reality that has to be grappled with; and dealt with now. Current political leaderships will be judged on the extent to which they rise to the challenge of doing that, or fail to. Carbon Brief has noted that the potential Trump Presidency from 2025-29 would drown any chance of the world keeping within safe limits with a flood of deregulation, drilling and active sabotage of international agreements.
They also note that the current trajectory of the Biden administration, although more positive and providing better progress, falls well short of hitting even its own targets, let alone its reasonable fair share. It’s possible that current mainstream retreats on climate commitments in the UK are preparatory to maintaining Atlanticism in the context of a denialist US Presidency.
That is the risk of UK political leaderships keeping on trying to take their lead from the US, whatever it does. We need to break from that. Even more fundamentally, if our political institutions also prove to be inadequate to saving ourselves from climate breakdown, they will have to be transformed so that they are. At the very least by setting up a National Climate Service and Just Transition Commissions in every Region, community, economic sector and workplace.
With even former Tory Home Secretaries warning of the dangers of attempting to define anyone asking these awkward questions as “extremists” or “terrorists”, this is seen as trying to shoot the messenger instead of dealing with the problem.
- This article was originally published by the Greener Jobs Alliance March 2024 newsletter.
- Paul Atkin is the editor of the GJA, you can follow them on Facebook and Twitter/X.
