Let's kick oil - while the price is down.
We know that big shocks lead to major political and economic shifts.
And usually it’s for the worse.
Wall Street collapses and that triggers 7 years of austerity in Europe.
The twin towers collapse, and you’re never quite sure who’s reading your emails again.
But shocks have also triggered eras of positive, progressive change.
Like victories for low cost housing and free public healthcare after the Second World War
I think climate change can be such a catalyst, and that’s why I wrote THIS.
Governments are wasting precious time squabbling
over emission cuts that are nowhere near what science demands.
The fossil fuel companies, meanwhile, keep on drilling.
But think of what we could do.
In rolling out renewable energy, for instance, we could take power and wealth-generation
away from multinationals and into the hands of communities,
And we could ensure that the jobs paid a living wage and went to the people who need it most.
Same goes for reimagining our food and transit systems.
So what is it about climate change that makes
it so hard to treat as a real emergency?
One answer, as suggested by climate justice group Movement Generation, is thinking in
terms of Shocks, Slides and Shifts.
Shocks: those dramatic moments of radical change that seem to come out of nowhere and
scream for big shifts.
Take the Fukushima disaster: the green movement in Germany harnessed that horror to demand
a dramatic acceleration of the country’s energy transition.
Now nearly 30 per cent of Germany’s electricity comes from renewables. Hundreds of towns and
cities have voted to reclaim control over their energy grids.
The tricky thing is that climate change isn’t really a shock. Most of the time it plays
out in slow motion, a slide: relentless drought, weird weather, news reports about record-breaking
heat and melting glaciers.
There are occasional shocks, of course – superstorms that devastate whole regions. But these are
confined to a specific location, and we’re never sure how much global warming is to blame.
Sometimes, however, our energy system does deliver jarring global shocks – and pay
attention, because we happen to be in the middle of one right now.
Not that long ago, oil was $100-a-barrel. Now it’s hovering around $50.
Make no mistake, when it comes to the most critical commodity in
our economy, $100-$50 in six months... that's a big shock.
Could this be the shock that we harness for our big shift?
I think it can be.
Low oil prices, for instance, mean we can introduce a fair and meaningful carbon tax
– something that’s much harder to do when petrol is expensive.
And what if we don’t do it? Well, low prices will just encourage more dirty consumption.
The money raised from that tax should go towards green infrastructure.
Which in turn would create a whole lot of jobs –the "one million climate jobs" that
some labour groups have been calling for.
And that kind of job creation makes a hell of a lot more sense than what the fossil fuel
companies are demanding — a new wave of tax cuts and other bail outs, apparently so that they won’t lay off
more workers.
That’s insane: if public money is going to be spent on energy jobs, it has to be for
jobs that will help save us, not cook us.
In truth, we have wind down the parts of economy that are fueling climate change.
And the price shock helps with that too. From the Alberta tar sands to the North Sea,
fossil fuel companies are already canceling or scaling back high cost drilling and mining
projects. The profits suddenly aren’t there.
Which means that now is the perfect time to unite behind bold demands to “keep it in
the ground."
No drilling in the Arctic. A freeze on expansion in the tar sands. And more fracking bans like
the ones in New York State and Scotland.
There’s also never been a better time for institutions to divest from fossil fuels,
since many of these stocks have been underperforming anyway.
Look, I wrote a book arguing that capitalism is at war with the climate – and I still
believe that.
But sometimes capitalism gives us a gift, and the sudden drop in oil prices is one.
But it’s fleeting: what goes down will go back up.
So let’s not blow what may be our last, best chance to prevent catastrophic warming.
Let’s turn this shock into the shift we need.