LABOURS GREEN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
When Rebecca
Long-Bailey introduced Labour’s 30 point plan green pledge it rather caught got
up in a lot of other radical ideas in Labour’s 2019 manifesto. Fortunately
Rebecca has an opportunity during the Leadership campaign to devote more time
to perhaps the single most important issue facing all of us.
The climate crisis
messages have been with us for some time and are still occurring “Record heat
in world’s oceans is ‘dire’ warning on climate crisis” Guardian 14th
January 2020. The causes of oceans warming is obviously not the responsibility
of just one country but each country must clearly show it is taking climate
change very seriously and that is why we mustn’t lose sight of Labour’s radical
policy when the leadership changes.
Rebecca Long-Bailey
when shadow Business Secretary said that a future Labour Government would
oversee an economic revolution, using the full power of the state to
decarbonize the economy and create hundreds of thousands of green jobs in towns
and cities across the UK. We can be pretty sure that the new Tory Government is
unlikely to use the full power of the state in anything bar supporting the
United States in any wars it might start or clamping down on terrorist
organisations such as Extinction Rebellion!
As Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell promised legislation to force UK
listed firms to take adequate steps to fight the climate emergency, this is not
going to happen now.
A lot of analysis has
gone into why traditional Labour voters in areas in the north and midlands have
switched their allegiance to the Conservatives who are unlikely to act in their
best interests on wages, benefits or local services. I have a fairly simplistic
view that in the Thatcher years Conservative Governments closed down swathes of
traditional industries employing thousands of people and did nothing to replace
those jobs. The Labour Governments that followed did nothing to support those
communities and in some ways encouraged the low skill, low wage, insecure job
market that now exists across the country.
Labours Green pledge
had at its heart the creation of 850,000 skilled jobs in the green industry.
The figures were not just plucked out of thin air but were prepared by a team
of economists at the Sustainability Research Institute backed by the University
of Leeds. These jobs would arise out of:
- Insulation
upgrades for every home in the country such as double glazing focusing first on
damp homes and areas with fuel poverty.
- Installing
8m electric heat pumps to start getting away from gas heating.
- Building
another 7000 offshore wind turbines and 2000 onshore wind turbines
- A
national network of electric vehicle charging points
- Enough
new solar panels to cover 22,000 football pitches
The Green pledge would necessitate
nationalization of the energy network as Rebecca Long-Bailey has said “energy
customers have been ripped off by the privatisation of the UK’s energy grid,
with shareholders paid £13 billion pounds in dividends over the past 5 years”.
She went on to say “only by taking the grid into public ownership can we
decarbonize the economy at the pace needed to secure the planet for our
children and grandchildren while ending the rip-off, creating good jobs in
local communities and making heating and electricity a human right”.
Allied to the policies
for climate change is the tricky subject of meat and dairy production
particularly in a county like Devon. For me as a vegetarian and subscriber to
Veganuary giving up meat and dairy is not a hardship. The magazine Science
published a paper showing that a plant-based diet would release 76% of the land
currently used for farming. This land could then be used for the mass
restoration of ecosystems and wildlife. If our grazing land was allowed to
revert to natural ecosystems, and the land currently used to grow feed for
livestock was used for grains, beans, fruits, nuts and vegetables for humans,
this switch would allow the UK to absorb an astonishing quantity of Carbon. Now
would a Conservative Government encourage farmers to make the change and
without EC subsidies to offset the cost, answers on a postcard!
For Labour voters and
supporters it was tragedy that we didn’t win the election, however, it is
important not to dilute the green pledge that appeared in the manifesto as I
think increasingly this will be the issue that will attract voters and I would
encourage members to use their vote in the leadership election to support the
candidate you think is most likely to honour that commitment.