Power to the people
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Money tree
Neale sets out with clarity and precision what climate policy is necessary to prevent climate breakdown. This involves the creation of millions of jobs in every nation of the world: a sincere and radical version of what has become a tired political slogan: to “build back better” after the pandemic. This would involve trillions of dollars being diverted from extremely harmful activities such as fossil fuel subsidies and towards renewables and socially beneficial work. Fight the Fire sets the benchmark – and COP26 has proven beyond all doubt that our leaders cannot get anywhere near this level of ambition.
We need to accept that we simply cannot change the minds of leaders like Johnson, or the US president Joe Biden, never mind Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil or Xi Jinping in China. The current political leadership lacks either the will to implement actual climate policy or the means. And in most cases these leaders lack both.
This leaves us with two other options. To change the people in power or to change the nature of power itself. Ann Pettifor is an economist in making her case for the Green New Deal she advances a series of proposals beginning with a serious challenge to the current hegemony and power of finance capital. Her solution requires massive state intervention, ending the era of neoliberal ideology and ushering in a new Keynesian epoch.
Pettifor succeeds in presenting the economic levers that make this possible, speaking the language of economists and policy makers in a way that Neale does not. This is a highly compelling and thoroughly reasoned proposition that would see capital diverted away from fossil fuels and into the kinds of solutions Neale has proposed.
But the problem Pettifor faces, one she recognises herself, is there is simply no way that Johnson or any other Conservative would abandon neoliberalism in such a clear and thorough way. Indeed, Rishi Sunak has proven in his most recent budget that the Conservatives will spend, spend, spend – but spend on subsidies and tax cuts for oil, alcohol and bankers. There is no magic money tree for trees, and other methods of saving the planet.
Coups
This problem is only intensified by the fact that Keir Starmer has made a strategic decision to be more conservative than the Conservatives, and used the most recent Labour party conference to pick a fight with its few remaining (eco)socialists instead of platforming the Green New Deal as a way of creating jobs for “labour” and ensuring its members have a planet to inhabit a few generations from now. Pettifor could see a future of climate action in Jeremy Corbyn’s radicalised Labour party. But that window seems firmly closed.
And this is where Saltmarsh steps into the frey. Chris is a member of the Labour party and a founder and leading light of the Labour for a Green New Deal. The campaign ensured that the Corbyn leadership adopted the most radical climate policy of any political party in British history. It showed the power of an energised and organised party membership working with rather than against a leadership which held climate action as a matter of principle. Chris was also active in making Starmer retain the Green New Deal policy.
Saltmarsh’s Burnt is an absolute firecracker of a book: punchy, polemical and politically savvy. It also places front and centre the real barrier to climate action: capitalism. He also addresses directly the question of whether we can change the minds of the people in power, whether instead we can change the people in power or indeed whether power itself needs rewiring.
His answer is a mix of the former two strategies. In many ways, it does not matter if Keir Starmer favours climate action – and personally and privately he surely does. But by using the existing power levers within the Labour party it is possible to get policy agreed at conference that mandates the leaders to act. It is then necessary at election to change the people in power – a Labour leadership with its feet held to the fire by the membership in Number 10 could conceivably make the Green New Deal a reality.
And Saltmarsh recognises and admits that this would not be an easy process. A Labour government that takes on the global oil industry would be met with extreme resistance. The membership – and democrats outside the party – would have to defend any such government. There have been so many coups against socialist governments that have taken on the oil hegemony that this cannot be discounted.
Movements
The final option, of changing the fundamentals of power itself, is also duly considered by Saltmarsh. We are, after all, all pragmatists. We are on a course that will result in millions of people experiencing untold suffering – through extreme weather, sea level rises and perhaps most seriously the stress on global crop production.
But, Saltmarsh concludes, the revolutionary option is simply not credible or realistic. Does it involve workers taking over airports and communications infrastructure? Extinction Rebellion might well occupy an oil refinery for a few hours or blockade McDonald’s beef burger factory. And Insulate Britain might block the M25 or the occasional SUV.
But no-one has the will or the means to “seize control of the means of production” on a permanent basis, shuttering the oil industry for good and taking over the state in order to employ millions of people who can then build a renewable utopia. Or at least, the book roadmapping here, today, to Extinction Revolution is yet to be written.
The minds of the global leadership are certainly not going to change themselves. If we are going to change those minds, change those leaders or change leadership globally the only method available to us is the active engagement of millions of citizens within a global climate movement.
This burgeoning environment movement needs to have clear demands, if not clear means. And this involves in any democratic alliance individuals each reading in, and understanding the choices that need to be made. Blueprint in the 1970s showed that sound arguments can bring about social movements. Which is why the contributions of Neale, Pettifor and Saltmarsh are, during and especially after COP26, so vital.
This Author
Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist.
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