Our Climate Conversation

It’s all Connected.

The public are struggling with the Cost of Living Crisis and this will only get worse into the autumn. Many are facing the impossible choice between keeping warm or having enough to eat. The price of energy and petrol and raw materials has suddenly increased steeply, yet the value of our labour has been steadily diminishing. The situation is much worse even than this as we are still on the escalator driving us to produce more and consume more, called Business As Usual, and this continues to increase our emissions of polluting gases and accelerates Climate Breakdown. We know it is not sustainable. We are sacrificing the futures of all our young people to make short-term profit. But for whose benefit? What is going on?

When politicians and business leaders talk about GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and Growth they are quoting an ideology that has dominated our economics, but ignores human well-being and the ecology of our planet. It depends upon creating new demands for products that we often do not need, puts us into a competitive dog-eat-dog situation in the labour ‘market’ and continually ramps up demands for resources and energy whilst degrading the ability of the planet to provide by undermining its life support systems. A quarter of all income generated this way goes into the pockets of the richest 1% of the population (the millionaires and billionaires) making them even richer. Growth has not been steady, but is exponential and so after a few decades things have become critical. That’s where we are now.

We do know exactly what we need to do immediately to avert Climate Breakdown: actively scale down fossil fuel reliance and do a rapid rollout of renewable energy, and in UK we need to invest big-time in home insulation to reduce energy demand and make things manageable for people. And these are exactly the same policies that will help us to overcome the Cost of Living Crisis. The horrible war in Ukraine throws into sharp focus our dependency on oil and gas supplied by other states, and underlines our mutual reliance for food supplies.

Beyond a certain level that we in UK surpassed a long time ago, there is no relationship between GDP growth and well-being. We need to reduce our excess energy and resource use, to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a safe, just and equitable way. We know we can do this whilst ending poverty, improving human well-being and ensuring flourishing lives for all.

I know from door-knocking this week in Bromsgrove that a high percentage of those who came to the door share concerns about reliance on fossil fuels (nationally it is 80%), and our Government’s inability to do anything about it (nationally 51%).

This article was written for Bromsgrove Extinction Rebellion