The climate double standard

Rory Hamilton

Is it just me or does it feel that climate change has fallen off the mainstream media’s agenda? It seems an age since Greta Thunberg was making headlines as part of a global movement that was rearing its heading making demands to cut investment in fossil fuels and protect the planet.

The height was perhaps 2019, when Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion and the likes of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party and Bernie Sanders in the US democratic primaries were making sure the climate was front and centre on the international and domestic agendas. And while talk of a ‘just transition’ and ‘net zero’ has undoubtedly been mainstreamed into today’s lexicon, these buzz phrases appear to offer little hope for democratic control over environment choices today.

Fast forward to today and while Russell Group graduates (among others) flood onto the ski slopes of Val D’Isere, La Plagne and Courchevel, an area of 17,234 acres near Los Angeles known as the Pacific Palisades has been engulfed in fast-spreading wildfires, and much closer to home, Scotland’s own energy minister continues to avoid taking bold action on climate change.

Twenty-Nineteen was also the year Common Weal published Our Common Home, our fully costed Green New Deal for Scotland. The plan was supposed to take 25 years, and be achievable within the limits of devolution (whilst also pointing out that independence would make doing it a hell of a lot easier), and therefore allow the Scottish government to hit its goal of reaching Net Zero by 2045, a goal which in itself is five years earlier than the international goal set by the 2015 Paris Agreement at COP21.

So, five years on and we appear to have gone backwards, as last year the Scottish government dropped its climate targets (resulting in the ending of the Bute House Agreement and the end of Humza Yousaf’s premiership, I might add), as they admitted they would miss them. And yet, they still carry on in the illusion that reaching Net Zero by 2045 is achievable, without having outlined any major changes to their plans for reducing emissions. It would be quite laughable if it wasn’t so sad. Furthermore, if this is the sorry state of affairs in Scotland, where the SNP at least have attempted to present themselves as bold and ambitious on climate change, you might shiver at the thought of how countries which are far less willing to champion progressive rhetoric on climate change are getting on.

In my view, the boldest and most important thing in Our Common Home was the proposal for a National Energy Company which would prioritise both renewable energy and Scottish consumers over fossil fuels and shareholders profits. Once again, though we are found banging our heads on the desk as the Scottish Government continues to claim it cannot do it within the devolution settlement. As usual, we hit back with not one, not two, not three, but six proposals for how energy could be taken into public ownership.

The shamefulness of this statement from Gillian Martin is only made more stark by the fact that the SNP membership has voted in favour of this twice. You might even argue that the SNP should have used this clear limitation of devolution to argue in favour of independence. As I have argued previously, the SNP has struggled to make independence salient for the general public during a period where the cost of living has hit astronomical heights (note that the energy price cap has gone up again, despite promises by Keir Starmer that under Labour it wouldn’t).

You would think therefore, it would be a logical strategic choice to make a public energy company that would lower bills for consumers, provide jobs for many of Scotland’s large workforce employed in the fossil fuel industry, as well as training opportunities for young people in colleges and universities to develop skills in a rapidly advancing industry - you would think it would be a killer move to make this front and centre of any independence messaging and/or campaign. And yet, as far as my observational skills have shown me, the same old tired arguments are being made about tuition fees and prescriptions, and Westminster is being either blamed for our problems or highlighted as a comparison, ‘look how much worse you could have it’. 

So with 25 years to go until the global target for Net Zero, what will it take to get actual progress on climate change? I should caveat that we are already acting too slowly, and that those with the real power to make change happen at multilateral and global scales are largely in the West and are what the IMF might call ‘advanced economies’. They are also mostly the largest fossil fuel investor-producers in the world.

The racialised implications of this are not lost on me either. Not only are ‘developing countries’ (a term usually used to imply non-white populated countries in Africa and Asia), more likely to suffer the worst effects of climate change (hence the need for reparations through loss and damage funds - one of the genuinely positive contributions Scotland has made on this front was leading the charge to support this financially), but when environmental disasters do happen in places like Pakistan, Western media barely flinches, and consequently minimal action is taken.

The images that eventually made their way around social media of the 2022 floods in Pakistan still stick in my mind when I think about how immediate the effects of rising greenhouse gas emissions are today. The floods killed 1,739 people and caused over $40bn (USD) damage - death toll aside, the cost of climate change in an era of renewed austerity is not to be underestimated. 

And now with the wildfires still spreading across Los Angeles, I wonder whether the US or any other Western nations will accelerate their efforts to tackle climate change. The irony is not lost on me, despite circumstances, that I’ve seen flames licking the Getty Villa art museum and education centre, and not so long ago Just Stop Oil activists were scorned by many for throwing soup at Van Gogh’s sunflowers to highlight this very fact - no art on a dead planet.

To me, I see two key strategic action points for those of us who want to make a Green New Deal happen. The first, we need to be able to make the case for things like a public energy company, and highlight the real terms benefits for ordinary people. The 2024 General Election was won on the economy, and people are tired of having to bear the brunt of austerity and cuts. They are crying out for change, and without providing a convincing one from the left, the disillusioned either stay at home or turn to pro-fossil fuel Reform UK. Making not just the effects of climate change real for ordinary people but also the benefits has to be a key pillar for 2025.

Secondly, and much less importantly, we do actually also need to make the case to people who financially are in positions to do something about this. Consider, the average cost of a ski holiday (those Russell Group graduates springing to mind again), at around €900-1,000 per person per week, it's not a cheap excursion - and given this is just an average, there will be many spending much more. What this says to me is that this group is made up of people in highly taxable brackets, and very possibly advancing up those brackets.

On one level, they need to understand that without increasing taxes on their wealthiest peers, Courchevel might not be skiable in the not so distant future. The acreage on Courchevel and Val D’Isere is around 25,000a each, a little more than the area covered by the wildfires in Los Angeles - perspective is useful. On another level, the types of jobs that pay well enough for this lifestyle are largely white collar and corporate, therefore these earners are potential foot soldiers in changing the behaviours and decisions of corporate entities, from investments, to partnerships, to social responsibility practices and much more.

It feels like a stretch, I know, to argue that the ski slopes are where the battle for the future of the planet might be made, but communication is important, and messages cut through to people in different ways. That is why to some extent we need to make the pitch on their terms, just as we need to do for those working-class groups who we might lose to Reform, and who have the most to gain from the opportunities presented by a green economy.