Workers' Liberty

I’m not a great one for polls, given the skewed questions and the dodgy sociological categories, but among the general gloom in recent polls on the environment, one finding stood out.

in the Guardian's ICM poll last week, the number of people who thought that environment should be the government's priority rather than the economy was substantially higher (56%) among the lower income, less well-educated DE demographic than among the better-off ABs (47%).

The poll also underlined the smaller ecological footprint of people on lower incomes. Only 42% of DEs took a foreign holiday over the last three years, whilst 77% of ABs did. Better-off people also own more cars, as you might expect – only 5% of DEs have three or more cars, whilst 15% of ABs do.

The argument has long been put that workers “can't afford to be concerned about the environment”. In reality the rich, with their corporations, their states and their consumption that causes the problem. And more importantly, there are signs that it is workers who most want to do something about it. That’s a sentiment socialists need to build on.