Sunak: profit before environment

Apart from the personal interest he and other leading Tories have in fossil capital, Rishi Sunak calculates that there are votes to be won by championing reckless individual advantage in the face of climate breakdown. That explains his announcements on net-zero policies and the Rosebank oil field.

The Tories’ original net-zero plans were not ever sufficient for meeting Paris climate targets. Further, the Paris climate targets in themselves are not sufficient to avoid 2°C+ global heating: that requires creating a global carbon drawdown industry in addition to halting emissions. The government’s own Climate Change Commission said in June that the government had credible plans to meet only 20% of its net-zero targets; the Good Law Project was already preparing a legal challenge.

Now Sunak has said he wants to delay the ban on sales of new internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles to 2035 instead of 2030. He also wants to push back the ban on new coal, oil and LPG boilers to 2035 from 2026. He further wants to lift the requirements on landlords to insulate their properties.

He also claimed to be stopping a number of policies that do not exist: taxes on meat, taxes on flying, forcing households to use seven different bins, and compulsory car sharing. Sunak claims that net zero policies will be a “burden” costing “families” “£15,000 a year”. Most mainstream analysis suggests the opposite, given the rising cost of fossil fuels.

The main opposition to Sunak’s announcements has come from a parliamentary consensus that represents the more rational section of the capitalist class. Keir Starmer, as mouthpiece for this consensus, has been at pains to stress that the announcement creates an unstable business environment that is inimical to economic growth, rather than to defend the net-zero policies on their own terms as measures to protect our future selves and future generations.

Just as Boris Johnsons original ban on ICE cars was designed to attract post-Brexit investment, Starmer’s net-zero policies are all draped in nationalist rhetoric of creating a “clean energy superpower”.

In the name of a “stable business environment”, Starmer has claimed it as “a matter of priniciple” to honour the Tory decision to drill the Rosebank oil field in the North Sea. Starmer gave fossil capital a free pass to exploit these reserves for profit, when he could easily have stopped that.

All these political forces will drive us deeper into the climate crisis, at slightly different rates of acceleration. The climate crisis requires not just light-touch policy to influence investment decisions, or to nudge the market towards electrification and solar energy, but a wholesale reorganisation of economic life.

The working class needs control of the means of production so we can direct our work towards satisfying human needs whilst restabilising the climate.

Ecuadorians vs oil

On 20 August 2023, after years of campaigning, the people of Ecuador voted in a referendum to stop oil extraction in the Yasuni National Park, an Amazonian region. Ecuador is far poorer and far more dependent on oil exports (36% by value of its total) than the UK. Even though the Ecuadorian government is seeking to circumvent it, the vote shows campaigning can win.