Moore is a notorious climate change denier and a close friend of Owen Patterson. Conservative MPs and former government minister Patterson was involved in a long-standing corruption scandal and now dominates the headlines.
On the same day, under Johnson’s instructions, Conservative Party members voted to overthrow the results of the Parliamentary Standards Committee’s investigation into Patterson’s conduct—and tore up the parliament’s entire system of combating defamation.
This is an extraordinary move.Corruption has been proven: Patterson Have done Receive six-figure payments each year and lobby for private companies in parliament. He Have done Failed to declare this, it Yes Violation of parliamentary rules.
Patterson’s story that day is related to his corrupt activities, but we should realize that among his other career highlights, hostility to environmentalism is the most important. For a long time, he has been the center of Britain’s climate-denying fraternities-including his own brother-in-law, Matt “King Coal” Ridley.
Deformed
Patterson claims global warming is possible a good thing For the United Kingdom; he is for those “Emotional“On such issues.
This is not just a rant from the edge.In the mid-2010s, Patterson used his position as Minister of the Environment to promote expansion fracture, And other environmental violations.
This makes us wonder: Why would Johnson use his political capital to support this tool of the fossil fuel industry-not only at the risk of making the Conservative Party a dirty party again, but also tarnishing his own green Certificate?
The answer has a lot to do with climate denials that have turned into climate delays and climate negligence.
Johnson is the prototype. Before serving as prime minister, he was a proud climate skeptic with a Malthusian stripe.He fed him telegraph Readers with fragments of climate mysticism suggest that a mini ice age may be upon us”By 2035“And made a cynicism in the field of renewable energy-wind turbines can”Barely peel off the rice pudding“.
Fertility
The most memorable is his telegraph Titled “Forget about global warming: global overpopulation is the problem. “
“The biggest challenge facing the planet,” Johnson believes, is not climate change, but the unrestricted fertility of women. He paid tribute to his father Stanley, a World Bank and EU technical expert, and a Malthusian fanatic.
Although both were voice advocates for the control of female fertility, the old Johnson gave birth to six children, and the young Johnson added at least six to the global population.
This is no ordinary hypocrisy.For Malthusians, different moral rules Do And should Suitable for rich and poor. This is Malthus its about; This is why he won a conservative seat in the Pantheon of Classical Political Economy.
After entering No. 10 Downing Street, Johnson experienced the transformation of Damascus, or this is the story. “How Boris Johnson went from a climate skeptic to an ecological warrior“Run the typical headline.
opponent
Any ecological warrior knows that the urgent task facing global capitalism is to get rid of dependence on fossil fuels. From this point of view, what will happen to the new ecological movement government?
For the benefit of a habitable planet, will it wage war on the burning of oil and natural gas as fiercely as its predecessors in the Thatcher era waged a war on striking coal miners for the benefit of capitalism?
Not at all. Johnson stuffed his cabinet with climate deniers, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, opponents of renewable energy, such as Andrea Lidsom, and supporters of climate change. Coal industry Such as Pritty Patel.
His Education Minister Nadhim Zahawi, pants Nearly 400,000 GBP -Approximately $540,000-from an oil company every year. His Minister of Health, Sajid Javid, is a radical supporter of the hydraulic fracturing industry-and “A big fan” An Rand’s super capitalism.
Even Alok Sharma, who was appointed by Johnson as chairman of the COP26 summit, is on the fossil fuel payroll.His pocket Sum of five digits From at least two oil companies, and has voted for fossil fuel expansion in Parliament many times.
Johnson 2.0
Johnson’s transformation, then, is not an ecological warrior. However, it does mark a shift. According to one of his assistants, he was responding in part “Elite fashion“And the changing atmosphere of the election.
“Forget about global warming!” Poor relations with voters. “We are making things happen!” Of course.
But the Key transit point During Johnson’s journey from climate denial to climate delay, he realized Green growth.
For his early self, climate change posed a threat to neoliberal “business as usual”. This approach was very useful to his class and therefore had to be suspected or denied. Johnson 2.0 realized that basically the same The economic agenda can be appropriately adjusted and marketed as a response to the climate crisis.
The core message of green growth is that even if new materials and new technologies are required under certain circumstances, all systems-energy, travel, housing, etc.-can continue to operate normally and indefinitely. The subtext is that there is no need to directly solve the problem of fossil fuel consumption; technology will provide a short circuit, a kind of “technical repair.”
Win-win
The most reliable test of whether a strategy can be classified as an “ecological warrior” or “climate delay” is to ask whether it obviously emission reduction In the next few years, Or depending on future speculative promises.
Three events that happened last month revealed the qualifications of the British government in this regard.
Seeing the active group for the first time Insulate Britain Ports and highways are blocked to express the government’s requirement to provide funding for the insulation of all social housing by 2025, and then implement low-carbon renovations to all housing by 2030.
The plan provides an obvious “win-win”: an employment plan that can upgrade skills; insulate the ventilated houses of poor citizens, end fuel poverty and save money thousand Life; and the transformation of all houses to achieve a successful transition from gas heating to electric heat pumps, thereby shutting down one of the largest fossil fuel faucets in the UK.
Any government with a tendency to “eco-warriors”, or a government that supports the following social agenda upgrade, Will embrace it.Johnson tried to get the protesters In jail.
central
Secondly, just as the COP26 representatives gathered in Glasgow and finished their NDC, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak announced his budget.
It has almost no funds for building insulation, no major green measures, and some positive brown measures, especially the reduction of domestic aviation taxes-in a small country with a network of railways and long-distance buses.
The third is the government’s net zero strategy.In addition to electric vehicles, nuclear energy and offshore wind energy, it also emphasizes three technologies: carbon capture and storage (CCS), synthetic aviation fuel (SAF) and hydrogen (receiving 368 pages with 501 mentions).
According to the document, these are essential for the UK to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
There is no doubt that the net-zero strategy marks a shift in energy policy, which is likely to lead to significant emissions reductions.
Speculative
However, it is equally striking that the key technology is speculative.Hydrogen, SAF and CCS have been verified, but currently Tiny In scale, and Many people fail. Currently, the United Kingdom has Do not CCS projects in operation, Do not “Green Hydrogen” factories, and Do not SAF factory.
Their success as the backbone of the net-zero plan requires large-scale startup and subsequent promotion, including not only the construction of the factory itself, but also the construction of storage facilities and distribution networks, as well as the transformation of the entire heating and distribution network. Transportation system (in the case of hydrogen) and exploration of suitable aquifers (in the case of CCS). Usually, this kind of scale-up takes decades.
In addition, green hydrogen and SAF require a huge energy input provided in some way.The UK’s hydrogen energy strategy released in August of this year will be heavily bet on blue hydrogen energy. Only small case Because of its green cousin.
Blue Hydrogen should be renamed to Brown Blue: it is suspicious with water leakage, It is betting whether CCS can achieve large-scale success.The ulterior goal is to give new life Fossil Fuel Giant.
The complexity and scope of even one of the programs is huge.
push
It can be said that one can regard Roosevelt’s Tennessee Valley Authority as an analogy, although this would ignore the fact that its core technology dam was built on thousands of years of engineering trial and error: it did not face new problems of scaling up.
We should of course avoid comparing them to “targeted specific” tasks, such as the Manhattan Project or Moon landing.
However, this is exactly the comparison Painted by John Kerry Earlier this year. He proposed: “By 2050, the 50% we have to reduce will come from technologies that we don’t have yet. … But look at what we do to promote the creation of vaccines, and look at what we do for the moon landing And see what we did to invent the Internet.”
If nothing happens, you must admire boldness. The world is burning, but the fire brigade will arrive. Half of the equipment they need doesn’t exist, and they don’t know how to make it, but hey, they will find a way. If you are troubled and need inspiration, stare at the moon.
This mentality is very common, and it is the dominant force in the elites of the United Kingdom, the United States and other regions in response to climate emergencies.
myth
The consequences are disturbing. It continues the technocratic myth that decarbonization must center on the deployment of new technologies, while downplaying the potential effects of well-known technologies (such as building insulation) and social system changes.
It breeds complacency: we don’t have to worry about burning oil and coal, because technicians will capture and store carbon; transportation fuel can simply be converted from hydrocarbons to hydrogen; Airplanes can use biofuels and batteries to fly, and many more.
The leaders gathered at COP26, headed by the British government, are still subject to Technical fetishism.
In recent memory, this is a syndrome that proves the failure of the COP meeting that should have been successful. I am referring to COP21 held in Paris, which produced the famous “Paris Agreement.”
The 2015 agreement is largely based on the COP representing the magical belief in a specific technology: Bioenergy and Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS).
since
since then, BECCS has been discredited The Paris Agreement that established it has collapsed.
The organizers of COP26 seem determined to learn from this failure.
The real beacon of COP26 is a civil society movement that revolves around negotiation, putting pressure on the inside, and raising external awareness.
With the dispersal of the top makers, the task turned to build this experience and add fuel to the legislator’s feet.
This author
Gareth Dell Teaching politics at Brunel University.He co-edited Green growth: ideology, political economy and alternatives. He is on Twitter @Gareth_Dale. Copyright: Truth network. Reprinted with authorization.
