Cutting back on our Future
As the rain lashed down and Uttlesford braced itself for more floods and high winds, the Labour Party reversed its pledge to invest £28bn in our future. Ironically, they did this on the very day when the Copernicus Climate Change Service announced that the planet heated by 1.5 degrees last year.
Political short termism has triumphed yet again. Such decisions are always called pragmatic, but pragmatism depends on your sense of realism. Mine is based on the non-negotiable realities of planetary balance. You cannot negotiate with floodwater, with a heat dome or bush fire, a drought or a failed harvest. The sea temperatures I experienced while sailing across our oceans inevitably result in hurricanes and extreme weather events. They are unstoppable.
Our economy, however, is a man-made construct over which we have control. Sadly, the current designs of our economic and political systems are not geared to ensuring the survival of humanity.
It is 5 years since Uttlesford declared a climate emergency, but progress has been lamentably slow, no doubt due to underfunding which means that short term needs get prioritised. I suspect there has been no reduction at all in our district’s CO2 emissions.
But let’s be realistic about the £28 billion. Phase 1 of HS2 is expected to cost the taxpayer £66 billion, for the sake of reducing the journey to Birmingham by 20 minutes and doing nothing towards levelling up the North. The Afghan war cost us £37 billion* and offers us zero return on that investment. Why do governments invest so much in things that do us so little good?
Compared to the world’s wealthiest people, £28 bn is small change. The Arnaut family wealth is estimated at $220 bn, Elon Musk at $182 bn and Jeff Bezos at $177 bn. And therein lies the problem: we are failing to tax the world’s richest people and corporations. The money is there to save humanity, but while the Conservatives claim that Labour is threatening hard working families with tax increases, we merely confirm our route to self-destruction.
*Frank Ledwidge, Investment in Blood, Yale University Press