A Hot Mess: The Triumph of Physics Over Politics
Tom Burke explains why politicians are the biggest obstacle to action over climate change
To mark another year of record-breaking climatic events, Byline Supplement is republishing its exclusive series of articles from the August 2022 edition of Byline Times. He will soon be writing a regular column for the print edition. For the latest, subscribe here
Tuesday 19 July 2022 was Britain’s hottest ever day. The temperature at Coningsby in Lincolnshire reached 40.3C. We were given a brief taste of the future that awaits us if climate policy fails.
Wildfires produced scenes on the outskirts of London reminiscent of the war in Ukraine, with some 40 buildings destroyed in a day the London Fire Brigade described as the worst since World War Two.
As subsequent analysis showed, this heatwave was made 10 times more likely because of climate change. We will learn in due course how many Britons died as a result. The European heatwave of 2003 led to 30,000 additional deaths. The Russian heatwave in 2010 killed nearly 60,000 people. It also triggered the global spike in food prices that led to the revolutions of the Arab Spring.
As long as we go on burning fossil fuels, these events will become more frequent and intense. Facts do not always persuade people, but few people doubt their own experience. The experience of this heatwave has powerfully confirmed the science of climate change in the public mind.
Whoever the Conservative Party chooses as Boris Johnson’s successor will inherit his enthusiasm for green headlines if not so much for green outcomes. They will also inherit the legal responsibility under the Climate Change Act, of which a succession of British Governments have been inordinately proud, to deliver the goal of achieving a net zero economy by 2050.
Both have been keen that the Tory membership knows they are not enthusiasts for net zero, even as they go through the motions of sticking to the commitment. They may be making a mistake.
It has long been clear that the British public wants more done about climate change, with a recent Savanta poll finding 69% of all voters specifically wanting more action from government. A recent poll by the centre-right think-tank Onward found that Conservative voters had very similar views. A gulf seems to be emerging between what Conservative MPs think about climate change and what the public thinks.
In the recent Australian elections, the right-wing Morrison government fell into that gulf. That election saw the emergence of so-called Teal candidates – independents who combined blue economic policies with green climate policies. These candidates specifically targeted seats held by Morrison’s Liberal Party and the nine they won, alongside a reduction in the Liberal vote elsewhere, was enough to return Labour to power in Australia.
Last month, Ed Gemmell, a Buckinghamshire councillor who beat Conservative rivals to win his seat in 2019, founded the Climate Party. Its intention is to provide business-friendly, climate-serious voters an alternative to the Tories and it is planning to challenge the Conservatives in 110 marginal seats. It may or may not make the kind of impact made in Australia but its emergence has brightly illuminated the risks for the new Prime Minister in getting the politics of climate change wrong.
A stubborn public has resisted the right-wing media’s mighty effort to persuade us to care less about climate change. A storm of occasionally hysterical opinion pieces from columnists such as Rod Liddle, Ross Clark or Dominic Lawson has singularly failed to move the dial. Nor has the permanent echo chamber it provides to Tory groupuscules led by Craig Mackinlay or Steve Baker. Our current political leaders and journalists of the right-wing press seem entombed in a hermetic conversation with each other that has little to do with the concerns of voters. As little of such immediate concerns as the cost of living crisis or the state of the NHS seems to penetrate these walls of wilful ignorance, their response to the climate crisis should come as no surprise.
But what they share is a commitment to a political project – to build a nation with the smallest possible government, the lowest possible taxes, and the least possible regulations. Climate change is an existential threat to that project.
There is no way to have a safe climate that does not involve a substantial increase in government action, the right regulations to make markets work for the climate and the taxes to finance the public investment that is needed to leverage the even larger private flows of capital needed to deliver a net zero economy.
In a conflict between physics and politics, physics always wins. If we do not want to be the victims of this battle, we must choose politicians with a different project.
Tom Burke, an environmentalist for 50 years, is the chairman and co-founder of E3G and previously led Friends of the Earth and the Green Alliance