LDN COP is exactly what we need pre-election
Thursday, 7th December 2023
Packed panel debates at last year’s LDN COP
• I AM very much looking forward to Saturday’s LDN COP at the London Irish Centre.
This kind of initiative, purposefully engaging a broad range of contributors, helps engender the cultural change necessary to underpin and prefigure consequential government policy action: an expectant electorate more acutely aware of climate crisis, and also solutions and choices, will embolden our political representatives to act beyond short-term expediency and party
self-interest.
The more informed we are the less susceptible we become to being misled. Top-down/bottom-up, has to be a two-way street.
Entering general election year, it becomes clearer what the dividing lines will be as Rishi Sunak and his backers try to convince us of unaffordable, unnecessary and unfair burdens being put upon those least able bear them. Why worry about the end of the world when you are struggling to get to the end of month?
Intended to protect the interests their wealthy and powerful carbon-asset-holding backers, so much Tory rhetoric is a dangerous mix of complacency and bad faith, descending into Orwellian doublespeak: short-termist distractions being presented as “long-term decisions”, free-market fundamentalism purported as “business friendly” policy, ideology masquerading as “pragmatism”.
Calling Labour’s modest proposals for additional green investment (NB: bringing total public sector net investment to just under 2.5 per cent of GDP would still be lower than the G7 average) “unaffordable” wilfully misrepresents the key role of the state in wealth creation.
When taking their cues from the far-right Reform Party, these claims are combined with culture-war issues, the irresponsibility of the message becomes ever more skewed and toxic.
The effective counter of a progressive alliance will come through demonstrating the means of achieving social, economic and climate justice are aligned and intersecting.
Yes, there will be trade-offs, but the route to net-zero can be alongside a net gain in terms of more meaningful and better-paid jobs, greater equity and wellbeing.
Labour is acutely aware of the need for a just transition, demonstrated, for example, by the attention given to areas of carbon-based industry being identified as centres for design and manufacture of replacement green tech. The community devastation of Thatcher-era deindustrialisation will not be repeated.
Change is coming, the stakes are high for everyone. The scale of our present and future challenge is great. But, if suitably informed and actively engaged, we will have the collective means to meet it.
JEF SMITH, NW5
