Britain’s model of monarchy can never be green

 

Written by Dee Searle 

People speculating about whether Charles III will continue his apparent soft spot for the environment into his reign as king are missing the point. The UK’s secretive, massively wealthy, constitutional monarchy, with its huge influence and leadership of an established church, is the opposite of the equality, equity, sharing and openness on which green politics is based. 

While it’s true that the monarchy was modernised during the 70-year reign of the late Queen Elizabeth II, most of its power is still beyond public scrutiny. The UK Parliament cannot hold the royal family to account and the Commons Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, has blocked discussions about them on more than one occasion. 

This means that we will never know why Queen Elizabeth II, our constitutional monarch, failed to uphold the constitution when she agreed to Boris Johnson unlawfully proroguing parliament in autumn 2019, when surely her advisers would have spotted the illegality. Similarly, on another major recent constitutional issue, there appears to have been no attempt by the Crown to point out that the Brexit referendum in 2016 was supposed to be advisory rather than a firm commitment. 

Meanwhile there is the routine monarch’s job of rubber-stamping even the most damaging of government policies during the state opening of parliament. Stand by for Charles III announcing that ‘his government’ under new Prime Minister Liz Truss will soon be opening up more North Sea oil and gas fields and encouraging fracking across the UK. 

Even if Charles’s environmental sentiments might lead him to question the wisdom of such policies, his position as head of the British Establishment means he will publicly support our top-down, hierarchical system however suicidal their actions might be. There is no scope in such a system for exploring the radical changes to our economy, politics and society that are needed if we are to effectively tackle the escalating climate and ecological emergency. 

Several media commentators are suggesting that Charles III aims to slim down the monarchy and make it more informal. He might well try, but that doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in openness or democracy, going by the way the Duchy of Cornwall is run. 

The Duchy, which is worth more than £1 billion and owns huge large chunks of Cornwall, Dartmoor, Herefordshire, Somerset and almost all of the Isles of Scilly, plus a portfolio of financial investments, has generated millions of pounds a year for Charles and will do so for William, the incoming Prince of Wales. It benefits from a wide range of rights, powers and privileges, including the right to veto legislation that affects it, public immunity (including from Freedom of Information requests), exemption from leasehold rights, exemption from prosecution under several laws and  “Bona Vacantia” (which means where property within Cornwall becomes ownerless, it belongs to the Duke of Cornwall instead of the government). 

Some of these rights, powers and privileges are historic but many have been introduced or updated in recent times. Several locals have tried to challenge the Duchy, such as the owner of a mine made famous in the Poldark television series. But they are almost always unsuccessful and hushed up. 

The Green Party has for many years called for the UK to introduce proportional representation to provide a fairer number of green MPs in parliament. However, this won’t lead to more open, accountable governance unless we also tackle the unelected, embedded power of Britain’s constitutional monarchy. 

The widespread public mourning of the death of Queen Elizabeth II and (mostly) warm welcome for the new King Charles III and William as Prince of Wales demonstrate that the UK is not about to become a republic any time soon. However, there could be an opportunity to build a case for adopting a more ceremonial, apolitical status for the royals along the lines of most other European monarchies. 

This could be a practical way to help Charles and William implement their public declarations of support for tackling climate change and protecting the environment. 

Dee Searle is an ecosocialist activist based in London

Life Expectancy: The US and Cuba in the Time of Covid

 

Written by Don Fitz

Recent data shows that between 2019 and 2021, life expectancy (LE) in the US plunged almost three years while for Cuba it edged up 0.2 years.  Yet, in 1960, the year after its revolution, Cuba had a LE of  64.2 years, lower by 5.6 years than that in the US (69.8 years).  As I document in Cuban Health Care, the island quickly caught up to the US and, from 1970 through 2016, the two countries were nip and tuck, with some years Cuba and other years the US, having a longer LE. But neither country was ever as much as one year of LE ahead of the other. 

Life Expectancy (LE) in US and Cuba, 2017-2021

Year    LE US LE Cuba US - Cuba

2021    76.1     79.0     - 2.9

2020    78.8     78.9     -0.1

2019    79.0     78.8     +0.2

2018    78.7     78.7       0.0

2017    78.6     78.6       0.0

This continued through the beginning of Covid, which sharply changed the pattern.  LE in the US suddenly dropped behind that in Cuba.  Bernd Debusmann Jr.of BBC News wrote, LE in the US fell “to the lowest level seen since 1996.  Government data showed LE at birth now stands at 76.1 compared to 79 in 2019. That is the steepest two-year decline in a century.”  From 2019 to 2020, “LE declined in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

How could a country with all the problems of Cuba, actually have LE almost three years greater than the US?  There were enormous differences between the way the countries responded to Covid.  

The Covid Contrast 

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data confirmed that “Covid-19 was the main contributing factor [to changes in LE].  The statistics show that Covid-19 accounted for 50% of the decline between 2020 and 2021. Between 2019 and 2020, the pandemic contributed to 74% of the decline.” 

A critical divergence between the two countries is that Cuba guarantees health care to all as a human right while the US system is based on profit and political grandstanding.  When Covid hit, the US dawdled for months as Cuba mobilized for medical action.

The Ministry of Health developed a national strategy before the island’s first victim had succumbed to the disease.  Cuban TV carried daily press conferences with detailed info on the status of new patients, results of cabinet meetings on Covid, and announcing the best way for citizens to protect themselves and others.  Social distancing, masks and contact tracing were universally accepted. 

Each day Cuban medical students knocked on doors to ask citizens how they were.  Students’ tasks included obtaining survey data from residents and making extra visits to the elderly, infants and those with respiratory problems.  Clinic staff dealt with issues that doctors were unable to cope with and sent patients they could not care for to hospitals.  Medical data was used by those in the highest decision-making positions of the country.  In this way, every Cuban citizen and every health care worker, from those at neighborhood doctor offices through those at the most esteemed research institutes, had a part in determining health policy.

This inclusive approach resulted in Cuba’s having 87 Covid deaths by July 21, 2020, when the US had experienced 140,300.  While the US population is 30 times that of Cuba, it had 1613 times as many deaths.

Two aspects of Cuba’s response to Covid stand out.  First, Cuba does NOT have more money to spend on health care.  It actually spends less than a tenth as much per person per year than does the US, but it spends that wisely on a holistic system.  Second, Cuba’s health care is global – it continued its practice of sending thousands of medical staff to other countries during Covid.

Over the past six decades more than 400,000 Cuban medical professionals have worked in 164 countries and improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people.  In addition to providing Cuban doctors with experience coping with diseases and medical issues they do not see at home, this action is positive global diplomacy.  US diplomacy, on the other hand, seems to focus on threatening to harm people and/or actually harming them. 

In Addition to Covid 

News stories also mentioned other factors associated with the shorter LE in the US: drug overdoses, heart disease, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis and suicides.  The corporate press also acknowledged racial disparities.

There had been progress in reducing LE differences between Black and white Americans.  This was reversed during 2018 – 2020 when LE went down 1.36 years for whites, 3.25 years for Hispanics, and 3.88 years for Blacks. 

The fall in US life expectancy was even more pronounced among Native Americans and Alaska Natives.  Since 2019, it “dropped by 6.6 years, more than twice that of the wider US population.”

The US has multiple groups who reject government attempts to vaccinate or wear masks.  Most loud-mouthed, of course, are the right wingers who lividly despise the very idea of public health campaigns.  While their thought processes are hallucination-based, people of color have reality-based fears of being ignored, lied to, and used for government experimentation, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.  There is a strong connection between vaccination hesitation and racism. 

What They Did Not Look At 

Among factors with increasing US Covid rates ignored by corporate media in the US are poverty, an acute rise in misinformation, abortion, the embargo against Cuba and preparation for climate change. 

Poverty.  The first task of the Cuban revolution was to simultaneously address poverty, food, sanitation, literacy, education, racism and housing, which the rebels saw as parts of unitary whole.  During the Covid crisis, many US corporations were determined to force low wage workers to stay at their jobs, spreading the disease.  Cuba told those with Covid to stay home.

Misinformation.  Discussions of Covid deaths must not ignore the deadly role of science denial.  At the same time Trump was foolishly downplaying mounting dangers of Covid, Cuba was far along developing its “Novel Coronavirus Plan for Prevention and Control.”  Trump was not and is not an isolated individual – he manifests a life-threatening movement toward lunacy.  Cuba has no significant group which confronts Covid with a bottle of Clorox or expects a cure brought by Q Anon on a flying saucer.

Abortion.  Cuba also does not have a “Women’s Lives Don’t Matter!” movement seeking to eliminate abortion rights.  Those who do not want an abortion do not get one and people do not seek to impose their religious and spiritual beliefs on others.  The Supreme Court’s allowing states to criminalize abortion will cause many women to die, due both from self-attempts at abortion and lack of its availability.  LE averages are impacted more by deaths of young than elderly; so, we can expect many abortion-induced deaths in US will be among teenagers and young women, which will affect LE. 

Embargo.  The “trade sanctions” or “blockade” or “embargo” have a special relationship with LE in Cuba: one might expect it to decrease LE; but it has not done so.  When Cuba was reeling from the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, the US passed laws intending to punish those who continued to trade with it.  This raised prices in the already impoverished country and has prevented or slowed the arrival of much life-saving medical equipment.  Yet, due to its prioritizing health care during the 1990s, Cuba’s infant mortality decreased while its LE showed a slight increase.

International solidarity movements have stepped in to help Cuba overcome many embargo effects. Lack of essential material prevented Cuba from performing liver transplants in children.  But, during May 2022, Puentes de Amor (Bridges of Love) delivered the vital chemical compound to the William Soler Pediatric Hospital. 

Resilience.  Avoiding the use of fossil fuels and enormous hydro-, solar- and wind-projects, as Cuba does, will cut down on global destructiveness but have very little effect on reducing climate change on the island.  However, preparing for resilience in the face of climate change can hugely affect its quality of life.

In March 2022 (p. 8) Scientific American editors wrote that most important in preparing for the next pandemic is “building new systems.” Unfortunately, this is what the US is avoiding as it becomes absorbed in making minor tweaks to outmoded, inadequate systems of environmental protection. 

Cuba has been holding Bastión (bulwark) events involving as many as four million citizens who carry out food production, disease control, sanitation and safeguarding medical supplies.  When a policy change is introduced, government representatives go to each community, including the most remote rural ones, to make sure that everyone knows the threats that climate change poses to their lives and how they can alter behaviors to minimize them.  They include such diverse actions as conservation with energy use, saving water, preventing fires and using medical products sparingly.

Another energy positive being expanded in Cuba is farms being run entirely on agroecology principles.  Such farms can produce 12 times the energy they consume.  Biodigesters break down manure and other biomass to create biogas (very different in Cuba than the US) which is used for tractors or transportation.  Vegetable and herb production in Cuba exploded from 4000 tons in 1994 to over four million tons by 2006.  This is why Jason Hickel’s “Sustainable Development Index” rated Cuba’s ecological efficiency as the best in the world in 2019. 

Where Are We Headed? 

The connection between LE and climate change is becoming increasingly evident.  US media stories typically focus on a given disaster such as a flood and mention how aging infrastructure is being neglected.  The implication is that if infrastructure were updated to its status of 50 or 100 years ago, that would be adequate.  It would not be adequate because climate change means that storms will be more frequent, more intense and more deadly in the future.

By 2017, Cuba had become the only country with a government-led plan (Project Life, or Tarea Vida) to combat climate change which includes a 100 year projection.  While Cuba is looking ahead and planning how to protect people from increasingly devastating storms, US politicians feverishly bury their heads in the sand in subservience to corporate interests, subjecting future generations to ever greater catastrophes. 

This causes LE in the US to plunge down while LE in Cuba climbs slowly upward.  Covid did not create the LE divide between the US and Cuba.  Covid exacerbated trends which have become increasingly intertwined for decades.  The best guess is that these trends will continue well into the future. 

Don Fitz (fitzdon@aol.com) is on the Editorial Board of Green Social Thought, where a version of this article originally appeared.  He was the 2016 candidate of the Missouri Green Party for Governor.  His book, Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution, has been available since June 2020.  

How Identity Politics is destroying the Green Party

Written by Nicole Haydock

As reflected in the 26^th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 26) held in Glasgow the Autumn of 2021, Green Parties internationally have seen a surge in their popularity over the past decade with record numbers of elected members at local, regional and national levels.

The latest and greatest evidence of such popularity and significance is Germany’s Greens co-leader Robert Habeck called upon to serve as Vice Chancellor and Federal minister for climate, energy and the economy since 2021 and now tipped to become Germany’s Finance Minister.

When 7% of UK voters in the United Kingdom translates into just a single Elected Member in the House of Commons because of the unfair first-past-the-post voting system, one would have thought that campaigning for a system where every vote counts would have always been a top priority for the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW). Instead, it somewhat oddly, opted to entrust or “discharge”  the implementation of its own policy for Proportional Representation to ‘Make Vote Matters’, a neutral or non-party political quango.

The GPEW has manifestly also failed to position itself as a leader in the much wider climate change and environmental protest movement in the UK, whilst a substantial number of its more active members joined the ranks of anti-fracking local groups and/or the high-profile Extinction Rebellion.

Doubts have therefore been raised more recently both within the party and from sympathetic voters or organisations as to the GPEW’s capacity to offer a credible alternative to existing parties and the status quo.

Looking beyond personalities, the calibre of its “leadership team” and elected MP, surely the cause of such lack of credibility can be traced to the fundamental democratic deficit at the core of a constitution adopted half a century ago when its membership was less than one tenth of its present 50,000.

But as incapable of addressing its democratic deficit with a mere 12% turn-out for the leadership election, the fact is that the GPEW is more akin to a bicycle club than a regular political party. Like the branches of a club, local parties are autonomous. Participants to its Conference, ( AGM more like ) remain firmly self-appointed and therefore unaccountable to anyone else but themselves.

By being neither an incorporated entity nor a co-operative,  and stuck with a constitution that is unfit-for-purpose where the vested interests of seven single issue Identity Politics inspired Designated groups - or factions - have systematically blocked all attempts to instigate democratic reforms, the GPEW is a seriously dysfunctional organisation.

To all intent and purposes, and with Caroline Lucas, its charismatic MP whose re-election in Parliament depends entirely on the continued support from Brighton’s LTGBIQA+  community and its “transgender women are women” activists, the GPEW is nothing more than a large, multi-facetted,  “intersectional “ sect with local electoral ambitions.

It is certainly not in any sense a fully functional and modern political party.

Whether, in the state it finds itself in at present, after 6 years of internal disruption and diversion from its vision, values and purpose, the Green Party of England and Wales will ever be able to benefit from the proportional voting system trade unions have now delivered and when legislated for by a Labour government is in doubt.

Whether it can somehow extricate itself in the foreseeable future from the deadly grip of its self-inflected and alien “cancel culture”  ideology and thus free its potential to achieve political power in the UK on a par with its sister  European parties is, sadly, unlikely.  

If the GPEW is to have a future, any future, its members must ditch its dogmatic and authoritarian Identity Politics leadership, clean up their act and finally adopt a fit-for-purpose constitution where power and decision making is firmly anchored in its hundreds of thriving local parties. 

Nicole Haydock is a member of North East Wales Green Party and the Green Party Women’s Committee, in a personal capacity.

Maintain Green Party policy on withdrawal from NATO. It cannot be ‘reformed’ into a peace-building organization.

NATO’s official remit has been a defensive alliance for European peace & security, yet it has been a military aggressor for rich Northern nations against weaker nations, increasingly on a global scale.  For those aims, NATO uses the ‘special relationship’ with UK - a euphemism for its complicity with US military aggression.  NATO has become an ever-greater threat to world peace, especially given its policy on first use of nuclear weapons.   Let’s maintain the Green Party’s policy for withdrawal from NATO.

NATO exploiting the Russia-Ukraine conflict 

For all those reasons, many Green and Left-wing parties around Europe have opposed their own countries’ membership in NATO.  The pro-NATO lobby has recently softened such opposition by exploiting Russia’s unjust invasion of Ukraine and the necessary armaments for its self-defence.  This has become a pretext for a Europe-wide military expansion greatly increasing investment, production and trade in weapons.  This is driven by NATO’s increasingly global aggression, which also conveniently finances the arms industry. 

Moreover, NATO has played a part in worsening the Russia-Ukraine conflict. At the June 2021 Brussels summit, NATO leaders reiterated their earlier decision (at the 2008 Bucharest Summit) that Ukraine would eventually become a member.  In March 2022 President Zelensky indicated his willingness for Ukraine to be a militarily neutral country.  But the US government has preferred to antagonise Russia by continuing the prospect that Ukraine might join NATO and by expanding military installations near its borders. 

NATO aggression masquerading as defence 

Contrary to its official rationale as a ‘defence’ alliance, NATO has regularly used violence for political-economic objectives, especially against regimes resisting subordination to the US.  Since 1989, NATO supporters have sought its permanence by exaggerating ‘security threats’, while NATO has expanded its remit far beyond Europe.  It has used or threatened military attack for the USA’s political objectives.  (See Annex below for details.) 

Such intimidation includes nuclear weapons:  In NATO’s Charter, Article 5 maintains the option for the first use of nuclear weapons.  It has ‘nuclear-weapons sharing’ arrangements on the territory of five member states.  NATO poses a major threat to a peaceful world and global nuclear disarmament. 

Maintain the Green Party’s policy for withdrawal 

According to the Green Party’s Peace & Defence policy: ‘Much international conflict today arises directly or indirectly from the abuse of power by rich Northern nations.’  Indeed.  It advocates UK withdrawal from NATO: 

According to the Green Party’s Peace & Defence policy: ‘Much international conflict today arises directly or indirectly from the abuse of power by rich Northern nations.’  Indeed.  It advocates UK withdrawal from NATO: 

‘The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is a military-oriented body, which imposes conflict cessation rather than encouraging peace building. As such, it is not a sustainable mechanism for maintaining peace in the world. In the long term, we would take the UK out of NATO. We would also end the so-called "special relationship" between the UK and the US.’

Green Party, Peace & Defence policies, PD513, https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/pd.html 

This stance is contradicted by the spring 2022 conference Motion F02, sections PSD 317-319. They sanitise NATO's role as supposedly peace-building and security for weaker nations – the opposite of its real role. The Motion implies Green Party support for the UK staying in NATO, pending imaginary efforts at 'reforms'. 

Question for Green Party members: 

Do you want to sanitise NATO’s military aggression, weapons expansion and further militarisation of society?  If you do not, then maintain the current policy for withdrawal from NATO.

Oppose the NATO sections of Motion F02, as in the amendment being proposed. 

Article written by some members of the Green Party of England and Wales and Green Left: Martin Francis, Jay Ginn, Les Levidow. 

Annex:  NATO’s military aggression for US global political domination 

Since its inception in 1949, NATO’s claim for a defence role has been repeatedly contradicted by its military aggression and political domination.  Its official pretence  has facilitated the abuse of military power for rich Northern nations.   Consider these examples: 

Secret militias: After World War II, Operation Gladio was supposedly a defensive measure against a Soviet invasion of Western European countries.  Gladio established secret militias there, using far Right and neo-Nazi individuals.  Some carried out terrorist attacks.  The original set-up involved NATO, MI5 and the CIA. 

1961 Turkey: US nuclear-armed missiles, capable of reaching Moscow, were placed in Turkey. They were removed in 1963 as part of the deal for US to renounce any invasion of Cuba and for the USSR to remove its missiles there. 

Post-1989:   The Warsaw Pact was a key rationale for establishing NATO.  Although the Pact was disbanded in 1989, NATO continued.   It used the opportunity to expand the membership and militarise countries bordering Russia. 

1999 Strategic Concept:  NATO expanded its remit to justify military operations anywhere in the Eurasian land mass. 

2001 Afghanistan:  Led by NATO-member forces, the 2001 Western invasion devastated Afghanistan on the pretext of fighting back against the 9-11 culprits. Of course, they had come from Saudi Arabia, which conveniently wasn’t mentioned.  NATO took control of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan in 2003, as a means to increase US government control. 

2003-11 Iraq:  Invasion and occupation by US-UK coalition, extending the Bush ‘War on Terror’ following the 9-11 attack.  Led to protracted internal conflict that continues today. 

2010 ‘Active Engagement, Modern Defence’ policy: NATO expanded its remit to encompass ‘counterterrorism, cyber-security, and the proliferation of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons’. 

2011 Libya:  NATO members (US, UK, France and Canada) intervened in a civil war through naval and air bombing. This left the country in turmoil and division, which continues today. 

2014:  NATO agreed that a cyber-attack on any member state could warrant a collective response, including military action.  It can be difficult to identify the source of cyber-attacks.  So this NATO agreement provides a flexible pretext to attack any insubordinate country. 

2021 Outer space:  At its 2001 summit, NATO extended the Article 5 collective defence clause to include military attacks in or from outer space. 

2021 Iraq again:  NATO decided to expand its anti-ISIS training mission in Iraq.  This defied the country’s Parliament, which in 2020 had demanded that foreign troops leave the country. 

2022 Kurdistan:  For several decades, NATO member Turkey has sought to delegitimise and destroy the Kurdish freedom movement as a ‘terrorist’ force.  This year the Turkish military has intensified its illegal attacks in predominantly Kurdish areas across the Iraqi border, with tacit support from NATO.  It sees the movement as a threat to Western domination of the region. 

TUC Cost of Living Demo - Photos and Report

Thousands of people turned out for the Trade Union Congress (TUC) demonstration today in central London. The protesters assembled at Portland Place and marched to Parliament Square, where many trade union leaders spoke to the rally. I estimate about 25,000 to 30,000 attended.

 

All of the unions were well represented, with each union forming colourful blocs of inflatables, flags and banners.  Music featured too, with sound systems, brass bands and drummers.

Union leaders gave speeches in Parliament Square to a crowd of thousands, calling for higher wages, increased taxes for the rich, better working conditions and in support of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union strikes next week.

Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC was met with applause and cheers as she gave a speech criticising the Transport Secretary and the Prime Minister. 

She said: “I have seen the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has threatened rail workers that they will strike themselves out of a job. 

“Well you are wrong Mr Shapps: if you keep stirring, come the next election, you will be out of a job.” 

Ms O’Grady added: “Let me say this to Boris Johnson, don’t you dare shift the blame for inflation onto working people. Ms O’Grady added: 

“Don’t you dare, not after a decade of austerity, privatisation and pay cuts. Don’t you dare tell working families we have to put up with more pain.

“What about bankers’ bonuses? What about the boardroom raking it in? What about corporate profits? 

“It is time to raise taxes on wealth not workers.”

Unfortunately, we didn’t have the numbers to leaflet and carry the Ecosocialist Alliance banner on the march. The text of the leaflet is here. But here is a photo of our Ecosocialist Alliance comrades, Anti-Capitalist Resistance’s banner.   

TUC Cost of Living Demo - Nationalise to De-Carbonise Energy & Transport

 

This is the text of Ecosocialist Alliance leaflet which will be circulated on the TUC demo on Saturday18 June, 11am start, Portland Place, London, W1. Come along and support us if you can, look out for the banner pictured above. Ecosocialism not Extinction!

The media is full of headlines about crises: cost of living, energy prices, health and social care, pandemics - and, less frequently, climate collapse. Mainstream politicians see these as separate crises, while ecosocialists recognise these are interrelated crises of the capitalist system itself.

Insulate Britain activists have been jailed for trying to get the Westminster government to begin a massive programme to insulate homes and Just Stop Oil activists also face jail for their protests outside the Kingsbury oil depot.

Simple measures like insulation and renewable energy would take millions of people out of fuel poverty and would greatly reduce the numbers dying each year because they cannot afford to heat their homes. Britain has the worst record in Europe for this: in 2020, fuel poverty charities estimated such deaths as around 10,000 a year.

Government funded insulation programmes, combined with putting taxpayers' money into renewable energy, would greatly reduce our carbon emissions as well as create thousands of good green jobs.. In addition, our reliance on the profiteering and polluting fossilfuel giants – posting record profits, while continuing to drive the climate and ecological crises – would be massively reduced.

The Tories' record is appalling with millions of working families living below the poverty line. The hike in energy prices will see well over 25% of UK households – 15m people – in fuel poverty. Johnson and Sunak’s subsidies and rebates barely touch the sides.

The British government gives the fossil fuel industry £10 billion a year in tax breaks and subsidies.

The Tories finally bowed to pressure for a windfall tax on dirty fuel producers but we would go much further. All subsidies to oil and gas companies must end now and be switched to renewables. We must take energy companies and road and rail infrastructure into public ownership and rapidly de-carbonise the whole economy. We stand for a rapid ecosocialist transition led by, and in the interests of, working people.

Ecosocialist Alliance is a network of organisations and individuals. We campaign for ecosocialist and ecofeminist solutions to the multiple crises of the system. We are internationalist: the climate crisis will not be solved by any one country, but by collective global action.

We stand firmly with the global south in seeking ecological and social justice.

We reject green capitalist “solutions”, which are unworkable under a capitalist system of infinite growth and accumulation. The planet will only be saved by disposing of this system and replacing it with ecosocialism.

This leaflet is sponsored by:

Left Unity:

leftunity.org

Green Left:

greenleftblog.blogspot.com

Anti-Capitalist Resistance:

anticapitalistresistance.org

Red-Green Labour:

redgreenlabour.org

Breakthrough Party:

breakthroughparty.org.uk

RS21: rs21.org.uk

EcosocialistAllianceUK

Facebook: ecosocalgroup

Contact Ecosocialist Alliance: eco-socialist-action@protonmail.com

Green New Deal agendas in tension: what decarbonisation, for what societal future?

 

Written by Les Levidow

Green New Deal (GND) agendas have gained significant support as means to reconcile environmental sustainability and a net-zero economy with socio-economic equity. Their transformative vision has attracted proposals such as more public goods, workers’ cooperatives and caring activities.   Such proposals stimulate people’s imaginations around pilot schemes prefiguring alternatives to a profit-driven, inequitable high-carbon economy.

Green Parties have elaborated a Green New Deal as an ideal wish-list of such measures, variously called truly green, greener or green-socialist.  Green Parties initially have done so with little regard to significant allies, which hopefully would be attracted. 

By contrast, multi-stakeholder alliances became a difficult matter in 2019, when GND agendas were promoted within major political parties such as the US Democratic Party and UK Labour Party. They have undergone internal conflicts over decarbonisation pathways, partly expressing conflicts within the labour movement.

Fossil fuel industries have sought system continuity through decarbonisation technofixes, with political support from their sector’s trade unions, thus associating workers’ secure livelihoods with fossil energy.  This agenda complements capitalist frameworks of Green Keynesianism and Green Growth, seeking to reconcile perpetual economic growth with environmental sustainability.  This false promise helps to soften or defer societal conflicts over an economically disruptive transition. 

By contrast,  some public-sector trade unions and environmentalist allies have sought a socio-economic transformation.  This would go beyond the fossil fuel industry and GDP-driven growth, towards an economy of sufficiency.  Such alliances have been coordinated internationally by Trade Unions for Energy Democracy.

Those divergent agendas have conflicted over decarbonisation technofixes. Their false promises have provided an investment imperative for dubious low-carbon remedies, or an alibi to await their feasibility before abandoning fossil fuels, or both at once.  This dominant agenda imagines the nation as a unitary economic space needing technoscientific advance for a global competitive advantage.

Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS), Credit: Cathy Wilcox,
https://twitter.com/cathywilcox1/status/1263601201179836416

Disputes over such technofixes express rival societal visions of a low-carbon future. This conflictual process has shaped what counts as Green and Deal, with somewhat different outcomes for a GND in the US and UK.  In its 2019 election manifesto, the UK Labour Party’s GND accommodated the technofix agenda of the natural gas industry.

Similar tensions will arise around any decarbonisation process, regardless of whether it is called a Just Transition or Green New Deal.  To go beyond false promises will depend on political struggles to disrupt the hegemonic cross-class alliance, to create different alliances and to gain state support for their agendas. 

Labour movement groups have been leading GND local alliances along those lines, sometimes for decarbonisation retrofits of houses (as in Leeds and Glasgow).  Such alliances test strategies to confront dominant neoliberal agendas, while also developing eco-localisation alternatives.  These seek means to localise production-consumption circuits, increase public goods, enhance socio-economic equity, and minimise resource burdens.

What  practical implications for Green Parties?  To be politically effective, their GND agendas need an early engagement with activists seeking to undermine false techno-solutions for high-carbon sectors.  At the same time, this effort needs to develop and test alternatives bases for livelihoods.

Read the full article: “Green New Deals: what shapes Green and Deal?,  Capitalism NatureSocialism (CNS), https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2022.2062675  

Les Levidow is a Senior Research Fellow at the Open University.  He is a supporter of the Green Left.  Contentious fixes and practical alternatives will be analysed in his forthcoming book, Beyond Climate Fixes: From Public Controversy to System Change.