How green was my Tory?

In 2006, Cameron’s Conservative party changed its logo. Out went the flaming torch, with its overtones of fascism, and in came an oak tree, solid, dependable and British, with its tinge of environmentalism. It was even green in colour, though a Tory blue version also appeared and then, in the heat of a Brexit debate, a Union Jack version, looking less like a tree than a torn-up flag. Perhaps this reflects the Tories’ rather disdainful view of the environment.

On 16th July 2022, Boris Johnson missed his third COBR meeting in a row. It was arranged to discuss the current climate emergency. His absence was explained variously as holding a party at Chequers or attending the biennial Farnborough arms fair. Either way, it seems to demonstrate a set of priorities in which the climate, the environment and the well-being of the population come a bad second to selling arms to dictators, or having a good time with your friends.

If we were naive enough to imagine that the priorities would change with a new Tory leader, we were badly disappointed. The two candidates for that post, Sunak and Truss, wereboth dismissive of the climate emergency and strongly approving of British military action.

Both have tended to vote in favour, for example, of upgrading the Trident nuclear weapons system, and against any investigation into the facts of the Iraq War, and have consistently supported the use of UK military forces in actions overseas. In themselves, these are anti-environmental measures, which not only destroy the world but also divert the funds which could be used to greater environmental benefit.

At the same time, both have a very poor track record on protecting the environment itself. Sunak has publicly expressed his support for the promotion of the coal, oil and gas industries, while Truss has demonstrable links to groups of climate-change sceptics and has voted in favour of fracking. Both seem to be opposed to on-shore green energy initiatives, such as wind or solar farms. This is not to be wondered at. A recent survey showed that only 4% of Tory voters considered the environment to be an important electoral issue.

At the same time, however, both candidates claimed to endorse the aim of COP-26, to achieve ‘net zero’ by 2050. Inevitably, one has to question how these two positions can possibly be compatible.

The problem of net zero

But that is not the end of the problem. Rather like the conventional wisdom of the ‘two-state solution’ for Israel and Palestine, which seems designed merely to put off a resolution for ever and to maintain the status quo, the so-called net zero solution to climate change merely defers the problems.

Net zero is based on the idea that the fossil industries can go on expanding, producing and polluting, on the assumption that at some time, somewhere, their carbon emissions can be offset. Offsetting is not just a question of using ‘clean’ technology as an alternative, but of taking measures which actually extract all those carbon emissions from the atmosphere. There is talk of all sorts of cumbersome technical measures such as carbon capture and storage, but the most obvious measure is nature conservation, re-wilding, the preservation and planting of forests, which can act as carbon sinks. But this also raises several interlinked problems.

Firstly, there is the sheer scale of the measures that would be necessary. Royal Dutch Shell, for instance, has an ambitious plane for expansion. It has been calculated that this could be offset by a forest, but one that is three times the size of Holland itself. The burden of providing it would inevitably fall, as it always seems to, on less-developed parts of the world, such as Africa. This implies a neo-colonial initiative in which the ecology and life-styles of local communities are forcibly to be changed to allow the global North to continue polluting.

However inequitable this might be, it is not inconceivable as a liberal capitalist ‘solution’, but it does raise more questions: whether the world actually contains enough potential land to offset an exponentially growing capitalist economy. Given too that capitalism is already using vast tracts of land for food production or bio-mass or mining, and that it is already rapidly depleting the forests on which it says it relies for salvation, then this vicious circle seems never to be squared. And above all, in true capitalist fashion, carbon offsetting has become a lucrative world industry, with nature conservation projects now being financed, ironically, through the continued growth and expansion of the polluting industries. As always, capitalism turns nature into a profitable commodity.

Though it is the only goal the liberal capitalist system is prepared to accept, net zero is illusory. It needs to be replaced in our thinking with the concept of ‘real zero’. Carbon should not be allowed into the atmosphere in the first place. An immediate stop to the winning of fossil fuels - letting all that coal, gas, oil and shale remain in the ground - is anathema to the polluters, but is essential for the rest of us.