Last week the House of Commons made history by becoming the first parliament in the world
to declare a climate emergency.
The vote, forced by Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, follows a huge wave of climate
action, including young people striking from school in their thousands, and civil disobedience
from Extinction Rebellion on a scale not seen since the peace movements of the 1980s.
With climate change already wreaking havoc across the world, this declaration is clearly
long overdue. India is currently experiencing the strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall
in decades, while Cyclone Idai destroyed around 90% of the city of Beira in Mozambique when
it hit south-eastern Africa in March.
Worse still, the IPCC predicts that if we continue down our current path, by the end
of this century we’ll be looking at 3 or even 4 degrees of average global warming.
At 4 degrees, rising sea levels will mean the Maldives, the Marshall Islands and much
of Bangladesh would be underwater. In the US, we could expect wildfires to cause 16
times as much devastation as they do today. Worldwide, we’re talking about hundreds
of millions of climate refugees.
But acknowledging that we’re in a state of climate emergency doesn't in and of itself
do anything to address the problem. Politicians have known about climate change for decades,
and yet continue to pour billions into fossil fuel industries with little more than thoughts
and prayers for those on the frontlines.
Current government targets for decarbonising the economy are abysmal, while Labour’s
target of net zero emissions by 2050 still sees the UK, in true colonial form, taking
far more than its share of the global carbon pie
The fact is that if we’re to have a hope in hell of limiting climate change, we need
targets based not on what we think is politically possible, but on what’s necessary. This
means keeping average global warming below 1.5 degrees by 2030.
But how? Let’s take a look across the pond. Since dancing her way onto the US political
stage in 2018, Democratic congresswoman cum skincare guru Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has
led the way in championing the so-called Green New Deal.
This is a plan for a huge, state-led programme of investment and regulation to transition
every part of the US economy from fossil fuels to renewables within a decade, in a mobilisation
unlike anything seen by our generation.
But climate change isn’t the only problem the Green New Deal sets out to address. Wealth
inequality in the US is currently at levels not seen since the 1920s, with almost 80%
of Americans living from paycheck to paycheck. US life expectancy has dropped for the third
year in a row, while adequate food, water, healthcare, housing, transportation and education
are inaccessible to a large proportion of the population.
In response, the Green New Deal would create millions of highly-paid, unionised green jobs,
see mass investment in public services, alongside action to empower communities and redress
systemic injustices.
With four million UK workers now living in poverty, food bank usage at the highest rate
on record, and more than 1 in 10 households unable to adequately heat their homes, it’s
clear that we too need a vision for decarbonising our economy that’s part of a radical transformation
of society as a whole.
And with a Green New Deal, a zero-carbon future isn’t one in which you have to eat your
dinner in the dark or share bath water with your smelly housemates. It’s a vision of
a world where we all have more of what we need: free healthcare and childcare, free
high-quality public transport, cheap and beautiful public housing, much more leisure time, and
justice for the Global South.
There have been some promising signs from Labour politicians that a Green New Deal for
the UK could be on the horizon. Over the last month the shadow front bench have outlined
plans for a Green Industrial Revolution to reimagine the economy so it meets the demands
of climate breakdown and works for everyone.
And crucially, Labour’s top dogs are talking about climate change as a problem which affects
the working class, people of colour and the Global South the most.
But what a full-scale Green New Deal in the UK really looks like - how radical it is,
and in whose interests it works - is yet to be seen. It could be a damp squib - a handful
of commitments to supporting renewables and creating green jobs, but a plan stripped of
most of its transformative potential.
But if we keep pushing for the structural change we need, it could be a Trojan horse
for full eco-socialism. Yes, we may only have 11 years left to limit climate catastrophe.
But that’s 11 years in which we could change everything.