Skip to main content

Refusing to face reality on climate change

It is the Tory addiction to market economics which cripples a comprehensive approach to environmental problems

ED MILIBAND’S warning that Britain “is sleepwalking into a national security crisis” because of the government’s refusal to take climate change seriously is long overdue.

The devastating floods engulfing large parts of our island are not an accident. Climate-change deniers like to point out that we cannot predict specific extreme incidents and then insist that we cannot explain them either.

But as Met Office chief scientist Dame Julia Slingo said last week — provoking an undignified and evidence-free rant from Thatcherite stick-in-the-mud Nigel Lawson — the “clustering and persistence” of unusually violent storms in recent years is exceptional and points strongly to the disruption of weather cycles and ocean currents by rising temperatures.

Despite global consensus among scientists that human activity, most notably carbon emissions, is the most likely cause of this rise, environmental “policy” in this country since the coalition was formed in 2010 has been a joke.

From Natural England authorising the slaughter of buzzards to protect a game shoot last year to Environment Secretary Owen Paterson’s whine that “the badgers moved the goalposts” after the dismal failure of his controversial plan to cull the beasts, we have seen bizarre policies being dreamt up against expert recommendations again and again, as documented by this newspaper’s columnist Peter Frost.

Even worse, sweeping job cuts at the very Environment Agency whose hard-working staff have been bailing out Somerset residents over the last couple of weeks are likely to permanently cripple our ability to cope with environmental disasters at a time when they are getting more and more frequent.

A further 1,500 jobs destined for the axe were put on hold by a panicked government last week but union GMB has pointed out that once the immediate crisis is over what agency chief Paul Leinster ludicrously terms a “successful change programme” will roll into action once more.

As with London Mayor Boris Johnson’s planned decimation of ticket offices on the Tube, an essential part of our country’s infrastructure is being hollowed out to the point where it is unable to deal with crises, whether these take the form of an unexpected flood or a terror scare on the Underground.

Miliband points to David Cameron’s supposed about-face on climate change, from hugging huskies in opposition to promoting deniers like Paterson in office.

That the PM is a hypocrite will not surprise Star readers. But the reasons for Tory reluctance to face reality are deeper and will prove harder to shift.

Economist Sir Nicholas Stern calls climate change “the greatest market failure the world has seen.”

A system built on chasing short-term profit is simply not up to the job when it comes to investing in the long-term planning and new technologies which are needed if human civilisation is to survive and prosper.

And leaving the solutions to fossil-fuel addicted energy privateers and water companies which would rather lose billions of litres of water a day than use some of their colossal profits to repair their own pipes is a recipe for disaster.

It is no coincidence that of major countries only China, where energy production and distribution are publicly owned and directed, has invested on anything like the scale required in renewable technology.

If Miliband is serious about protecting our “homes, businesses and livelihoods” from the consequences of climate change he must do more than flag up the Prime Minister’s hypocrisy.

He must commit to reversing the cuts at the Environment Agency and nationalising our energy and water resources.

And he must recognise that a fundamental economic shift is required for society to be capable of dealing with the growing environmental threat.

It’s time he started talking about socialism.

OWNED BY OUR READERS

We're a reader-owned co-operative, which means you can become part of the paper too by buying shares in the People’s Press Printing Society.

 

 

Become a supporter

Fighting fund

You've Raised:£ 13,288
We need:£ 4,712
3 Days remaining
Donate today