The end of February saw the warmest winter day in Britain on record, just weeks after global walk-outs by school children demanding greater government action on climate change. The pupils were ironically labelled “truants” by the UK government; yet there were only ten Conservative MPs in attendance at one point during the first debate on climate change in the House of Commons in two years.
Political apathy for the situation has been engineered by the economic environment. For years, politics in Britain has been guided by the principles of neoliberalism – deregulation, privatisation, individualism – which are enemies of environmental wellbeing. While cutting public spending on welfare and public services under austerity, the government has committed £4.8 billion in subsidies to oil, coal, and gas companies since 2010, in comparison with £39 million to renewable sources, according to Greenpeace. Meanwhile, privatisation has led to a small number of big energy providers dominating the market. But who benefits from this? Britain suffers the worst levels of fuel poverty in Western Europe, affecting nearly twenty percent of all households, while energy companies see their profits soar.
Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that we have twelve years in which to stop global temperatures rising by 1.5°C. President Trump’s withdrawal of the world’s second highest carbon emitter from the Paris Agreement is not the only obstacle to achieving this goal. The G20 nations have been accused by Oil Change International of “talking out of both sides of their mouths” after a report by a coalition of NGOs found that G20 provides four times more public funding to fossil fuels than to renewable energy.
Furthermore, UK-based NGO Influence Map found that oil and gas provider BP, alongside other global companies, was directly responsible for blocking EU targets to increase financing for renewable energy. BP’s push for gas as an alternative led to the EU commission outlawing most clean energy subsidies. A leaked document to the Guardian in 2015 highlighted the company’s tight grip on British politicians, as senior BP officials urged ex-business minister Vince Cable “to reinforce your supply chain” in “Iraq’s oil and gas sector as [it is] a significant opportunity for UK companies.”
“The individualistic ethos of neoliberalism is a weapon used to deflect blame from big businesses and put the onus on us ‘greedy consumerists’ to foot the bill”
With a political system concerned with corporate interests, and an economic model obsessed with boundless growth, the buck is passed to individual citizens to make a difference. We are made to feel guilty if we do not reduce our carbon footprint by taking public transport, while rail fares have increased by thirty-seven percent in the last ten years. We are demonised for buying clothes that are designed to fall apart, despite most sustainable fashion being unaffordable. We are told to cut our meat and dairy consumption to reduce the associated CO2 emissions, but we are charged 20p more per litre for milk substitutes.
What we need is a political system that recognises and builds on the link between environmental and economic health. Perhaps G20 governments choose not to care because if or when environmental disaster strikes, it will be developing countries which are hit first and hit worst. Neoliberal extractivism, which exploits developing countries’ natural resources in order to top up diminishing levels of oil in the West, damages these countries first, and the rest of the world later, once the reserves have dried up.
Advocates of the energy democracy movement highlight that any transition to renewable energy is a political struggle with the oil companies. The former promotes grassroots, community-based action to create and sustain publicly owned renewable energy systems. This could particularly empower the countries already exploited by the G20 nations, bringing jobs and energy equality as well as the obvious environmental benefits.
The individualistic ethos of neoliberalism is a weapon used to deflect blame from big businesses and put the onus on us “greedy consumerists” to foot the bill. For any chance of discernible change, people need to join together to reconfigure politics. Voting for parties that put the environment at the centre of their policies is essential, because ultimately the longevity of any other policies rest on the wellbeing of the planet as a whole.