We can save capitalism or the planet – not both
Readers respond to an article by George Monbiot on how complete societal transformations are possible when the political will is there
A mural in Glasgow, near the events centre where Cop26 will be hosted later this month. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty ImagesLetters
Sat 23 Oct 2021
I agree with George Monbiot that “catastrophe is not a matter of fate. It’s a matter of choice” (Think big on climate: the transformation of society in months has been done before, 20 October). I don’t think, though, that the analogy with the US in 1941 holds, for two reasons.
First, the US was responding to a national threat, post-Pearl Harbor. The climate emergency is a planet-wide threat, at a time when universalism and international solidarity are in retreat. Second, as Franklin D Roosevelt stated, the US achieved a “miracle of production” – the mobilisation of a capitalist economy on a war footing. But the process of production was inherent to the logic of capitalism.
What is required now is precisely a break with that logic. Looking to governments to deliver a plan which, to succeed, has to depart from the processes and ideological underpinnings of capitalism is a dead end, both as metaphor and as intent. What we actually require is an environmental movement akin to the Communist International, and an end goal which, like the Russian revolution, at least pre-Stalin, shows that a different form of life is possible. We need to be ambitious and imaginative, but we have to accept and embrace the fact that our goal is anti-systemic. The idea of green capitalism is a myth that will take us over the precipice.
Nick Moss
London
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George Monbiot rightly says that what stops a decisive response to the climate crisis isn’t money, capacity or technology, but political will. However, he leaves the key question unasked: how to build that political will? With the Green party’s autumn conference running this weekend, we only have to look to the other end of the political spectrum for an answer. Ten years ago, there was zero political will in the government for a referendum on Europe. Then the Conservatives started losing votes to Ukip, a tiny party which had only one MP for most of its life. Sounds familiar?
We live in a democracy and, despite what they try to tell us, votes do make a difference.
Charles Harris
London
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I agree with George Monbiot. We do indeed “need to build popular movements so big that governments have no choice but to respond to them”. But it is our institutions of learning that should promote them. It should be the basic task of public education to teach what our problems are, local and global, and what we need to do about them. Universities have scarcely done that at all. As I put it in a recently published article, “Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg have done more in one year to bring the climate crisis to public attention than all the universities of the world have done in 60 years”.
Nicholas Maxwell
University College London
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A key point missing from many of the reactions to the UK’s net zero strategy (UK’s net zero plan falls short on ambition and funding, say critics, 19 October) is its failure to sufficiently tackle the huge quantities of carbon emissions the UK currently offshores. These emissions – released overseas in the production of goods that we import – account for almost half of our total carbon footprint from goods and services. But there are no net-zero-style targets to address them.
The UK’s focus on domestic emissions may be consistent with international rules, but as a contribution to tackling climate change globally, it is incomplete, illogical and unfair. Our transition from a manufacturing economy to a service-based one has pushed the responsibility for the carbon emissions embedded in the goods that we use on to the countries that provide us with them. The need to cut these emissions has not gone away, we have just made it someone else’s problem. That is why, in addition to net zero, we need a complementary target (and strategy) to cut our offshored emissions, and to support the countries we import from to decarbonise the production processes we rely on.
Alexander Carnwath
Head of policy and advocacy, Traidcraft Exchange
Think big on climate: the transformation of society in months has been done before
George Monbiot
The astonishing story of how the US entered the second world war should be on everyone’s minds as Cop26 approaches
President Franklin D Roosevelt in Congress appealing for a declaration of war against Japan, 8 December 1941 Photograph: APWed 20 Oct 2021
Fatalism creeps across our movements like rust. In conversations with scientists and activists, I hear the same words, over and again: “We’re screwed.” Government plans are too little, too late. They are unlikely to prevent the Earth’s systems from flipping into new states hostile to humans and many other species.
What we need, to stand a high chance of stabilising our life support systems, is not slow and incremental change but sudden and drastic action. And this is widely considered impossible. There’s no money; governments are powerless; people won’t tolerate anything more ambitious than the tepid measures they have proposed. Or so we are told. It’s a stark illustration of a general rule: political failure is, at heart, a failure of imagination.
Let’s set aside the obvious lessons of the pandemic, when the magic money tree miraculously burst into leaf, governments discovered they could govern (albeit with varying degrees of competence) and people were prepared radically to change their behaviour. There’s a bigger and more powerful example. It’s what happened when the US joined the second world war.
There’s discomfort in environmental circles with military analogies. But the war is among the few precedents and metaphors that almost everyone can grasp. And we would be foolish not to learn from this remarkable lesson.
Before the US declared war, President Franklin Roosevelt had begun to draft troops and build his “arsenal of democracy”: the materiel with which he supplied the allied forces. To “outbuild Hitler”, he called for levels of production widely considered impossible. But after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, the impossible happened.
The day after the attack, Roosevelt requested and achieved a declaration of war from Congress. He immediately began to reorganise not only the government but the entire nation. He set up a series of agencies that were lightly overseen but coordinated through simple but effective measures such as the “controlled materials plan”.
He introduced, for the first time in US history, general federal income taxes. The government rapidly raised the top rate until, in 1944, it reached 94%. It issued war bonds and borrowed massively. Between 1940 and 1945, total government spending rose roughly tenfold. Astonishingly the US government spent more money (in current dollar terms) between 1942 and 1945 than it had between 1789 and 1941. From 1940 to 1944, its military budget rose by a factor of 42, outstripping Germany’s, Japan’s and the United Kingdom’s put together.
Civilian industries were entirely retooled for war. When the car industry was instructed to switch to military production, its massive equipment was immediately jack-hammered out of the floor and replaced, often in a matter of weeks, with new machines. General Motors began turning out tanks, aircraft engines, fighter planes, cannons and machine guns. Oldsmobile started making artillery shells; Pontiac produced anti-aircraft guns. By 1944, Ford was completing a long-range bomber plane almost every hour. During its three years of war, the US manufactured 87,000 naval vessels, including 27 aircraft carriers, 300,000 planes, 100,000 tanks and armoured cars and 44bn rounds of ammunition. Roosevelt described it as a “miracle of production”. But it wasn’t a miracle. It was the realisation of a well-laid plan.
The US war effort mobilised tens of millions of people. Between 1940 and the end of the war, the number of American troops rose 26-fold, while the civilian labour force increased by 10 million. Many of the new workers were women.
From 1942 until 1945, the manufacture of cars was banned. So were new household appliances and even the construction of new homes. Tyres and gasoline were strictly rationed; meat, butter, sugar, clothes and shoes were also limited. Rationing was considered fairer than taxing scarce goods: it ensured everyone received an equal share. A national speed limit of 35mph was imposed, to save fuel.
Posters warned people “When you ride ALONE, you ride with Hitler! Join a car-sharing club TODAY”, and asked “Is this trip really necessary?”. They cautioned: “Waste helps the enemy: conserve material”. Americans were urged to sign the Consumer’s Victory Pledge: “I will buy carefully; I will take good care of the things I have; I will waste nothing.” Every imaginable material – chewing gum wrappers, rubber bands, used cooking fat – was recycled.
So what stops the world from responding with the same decisive force to the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced? It’s not a lack of money or capacity or technology. If anything, digitisation would make such a transformation quicker and easier. It’s a problem that Roosevelt faced until Pearl Harbor: a lack of political will. Now, just as then, public hostility and indifference, encouraged by legacy industries (today, above all, fossil fuel, transport, infrastructure, meat and media), outweighs the demand for intervention.
The difference between 1941 and 2021 is that now the mobilisation needs to come first. We need to build popular movements so big that governments have no choice but to respond to them, if they wish to remain in office. We need to make politicians understand that the survival of life on Earth is more important than their ideological commitment to limited government. Preventing Earth’s systems from flipping means flipping our political systems.
So what is our Pearl Harbor moment? Well, how about now? After all, to extend the analogy, the Pacific seaboard of the US has recently come under unprecedented climatic attack. The heat domes, the droughts and fires there this year should have been enough to shock everyone out of their isolationism. But the gap between these events and people’s understanding of the forces that caused them is, arguably, the greatest public information failure in human history. We need bodies equivalent to Roosevelt’s Office of War Information, constantly reminding people of what is at stake.
As the US mobilisation showed, when governments and societies decide to be competent, they can achieve things that at other times are considered impossible. Catastrophe is not a matter of fate. It’s a matter of choice.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
Join George Monbiot and guests for a Guardian Live online event on how climate justice can tackle the jobs crisis. Thursday 4th November, 8pm GMT | 9pm CET | 1pm PDT | 4pm EDT. Book tickets here.
UK’s net zero plan falls short on ambition and funding, say critics
Government says strategy would create 440,000 jobs, but Treasury warns taxes may need to rise to fund changes
The UK government’s long-awaited strategy for reaching net zero emissions falls short on ambition and is not backed up with adequate funding, experts and campaigners have warned.
Ministers on Tuesday revealed a plan that they said would create up to 440,000 jobs and “unlock” £90bn in investment in the next decade, most of it from private sector companies.
Q&AWhat is Cop26?
The Treasury also warned, separately, that taxes might need to rise to support the move, as the £30bn a year in tax revenues from fossil fuel duty would decline rapidly. Road pricing has been mooted as one way of making up for the shortfall, but ministers did not set out plans for that.
The plan involves an expansion of electric vehicles, including increasing the network of charging points, and further growth of offshore wind, as well as investments in new technologies such as hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel and £120m towards at least one new nuclear power station.
Against a background of high energy prices and rising consumer bills, the government said the investment would provide the UK with energy security and stable prices in years to come.
Households will benefit from grants to install low-carbon heat pumps as part of a £3.9bn plan for decarbonising heat and buildings, including a £450m three-year boiler upgrade scheme.
Ministers were under pressure to publish the strategy ahead of the Cop26 climate summit, which begins in Glasgow in less than two weeks.
Boris Johnson said: “The UK’s path to ending our contribution to climate change will be paved with well-paid jobs, billions in investment and thriving green industries – powering our green industrial revolution across the country. By moving first and taking bold action, we will build a defining competitive edge in electric vehicles, offshore wind, carbon capture technology and more, whilst supporting people and businesses along the way.”
The prime minister added: “With the major climate summit Cop26 just around the corner, our strategy sets the example for other countries to build back greener too as we lead the charge towards global net zero.”
Officials said about £26bn of funding towards the green plans would come from the public sector over the next spending review period, from 2021 to 2025, with more than £60bn expected from the private sector. They pointed to nearly £6bn in overseas investment in green projects in the UK since Johnson set out his 10-point green plan last year, and said the investment was essential for the UK to remain competitive in the global race to a green economy.
Q&AWhat is net zero?
However, a parallel document – the Net Zero Review – published by the Treasury on Tuesday showed that the government was likely to lose tens of billions in revenues from fossil fuel taxes, and highlighted other risks from green policies such as business moving abroad and the potential need for new taxes.
Rishi Sunak, chancellor of the exchequer, made no comment on the Treasury review, amid concerns of a rift within the government over green spending.
There were also proposals to boost nature, including a £124m plan to restore 280,000 hectares of peatland and treble woodland creation in England. But there were no initiatives to nudge people away from the UK’s meat-heavy diet, as officials said there would be no restrictions on consumer choice.
Ed Miliband, the shadow business secretary, said the plans fell far short of what was required. “The failure to invest does not just affect whether this transition is fair for consumers but also workers in existing industries. Take steel. It will cost £6bn for the steel industry to get to net zero in the next 15 years … but there is nothing for steel in this document.”
The announcement of 440,000 new jobs also came under scrutiny after Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) sources claimed the figure was not intended to mean all newly created jobs, but also those that would undergo a natural transition such as employees in car plants shifting to electric vehicles. The government has been unwilling to clarify how many new jobs it expects to create with the strategy, rather than jobs that transition.
The blueprint includes an emphasis on carbon capture and storage – which will benefit from an already announced £1bn for two industrial clusters focused on commercialising the early-stage technology – and on hydrogen, which is controversial as some forms of the gas come from fossil fuels, though the government said it would focus on low-carbon forms generated with renewable energy.
The lack of a plan for net zero has brought ministers under heavy fire this year, with the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the independent statutory body that advises ministers on how to reach net zero, warning this summer that measures were urgently needed as delay would raise their cost.
However, critics included scientists, green campaigners, and even the government’s own supporters. The Conservative thinktank Bright Blue found the plan for heat pumps inadequate. Patrick Hall, senior research fellow, said: “In the tug of war between No 10 and BEIS and the Treasury over funding, it appears as if the latter has won out, and we have been left with a plan which is a welcome start, but doesn’t yet meet the scale of the challenge.
“The government’s stated aim is to install 600,000 heat pumps per year by 2028, so the maximum of only 90,000 pumps to be covered over the next three years falls far too short. The funding simply isn’t sufficient.”
There are also questions over how the move to insulate the UK’s draughty homes will be managed, after the failure of the green homes grant programme earlier this year.
Kevin Anderson, a professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester, said: “The UK’s net zero strategy falls far short of both its Paris and G7 temperature and equity commitments. Scour the associated spreadsheets and the numbers reveal a story of subterfuge, delusion, offsetting and piecemeal policies – all dressed up as a shiny new strategy for Cop26.
“Remove the reliance on other nations offsetting our emissions and today’s children deploying ‘negative emission technologies’ to suck our CO2 out of the atmosphere, and the UK’s total carbon budget is more in line with 2.5-3C of warming than 1.5-2C.”
Green campaigners cast doubt on the speed, extent and funding of the plans, and pointed to the government’s continued efforts to expand fossil fuel industries, including through new oil and gas licences, which they said ran counter to Johnson’s green promises.
Rebecca Newsom, the head of politics at Greenpeace UK, said: “This document is more like a pick and mix than the substantial meal that we need to reach net zero. Extra cash for tree planting and progress on electric vehicles doesn’t make up for the lack of concrete plans to deliver renewables at scale, extra investment in public transport, or a firm commitment to end new oil and gas licences.
“There are only half-hearted policies and funding commitments to decarbonise our draughty homes at the speed necessary, and it fundamentally fails to grapple with the need to reduce our meat and dairy consumption to stop global deforestation.”
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