Why we must oppose austerity,
and join the coming protests in Manchester - a Green perspective
We
all know that austerity is a ‘social justice’ disaster. This morally
reprehensible policy is forcing ordinary people – particularly the poorest and most
vulnerable – to pay for the economic crash caused by the reckless speculating
of unaccountable banks in deregulated financial markets. In its most extreme
the cuts to disability benefits, the NHS and a vindictive regime of benefit
sanctioning have led to thousands of deaths. Austerity kills.
On
top of this, the economic justification for inflicting all this misery has been
completely discredited with most economists agreeing that by shrinking the
economy austerity has harmed growth, prolonged the effects of the recession
(even the IMF is issuing proclamations against it) and utterly failed as an
apparent strategy to reduce national debt. Austerity is revealed to be not an
economic necessity but a repackaged conservative ideology to undermine the
welfare state. The financial crash is being used as a smokescreen to implement
the same brand of neo=liberal policies (cuts to public spending, privatisation
and de-regulation) that led to it in the first place.
All
this is grounds enough for why austerity is wrong and why we must fight against
it, and large protests like the 250,000-strong June
20th Demo in London and the ones in Manchester
in October this year (co-organised by the TUC and The People’s Assembly Against
Austerity, to coincide with the Tory Party Conference) are crucial in building this
struggle against a great social injustice. Nonetheless, within these debates
and protest movements we must be sure to argue that austerity is also a huge
obstruction to the aims of environmental justice and directly threatens
attempts to mitigate climate change.
For
one, if Britain is to transition to a sustainable carbon neutral economy it is
going to need massive investment in infrastructure, housing and renewable
energy. As well as stopping us from destroying the environment and the habitability
of our planet, this could both provide jobs for millions of people and the
fiscal stimulus needed to get the economy going again. But austerity takes us
in completely the opposite direction. As long as we have a Conservative
government pursing ideological austerity, determined to reduce state spending
at any cost (whilst shamelessly cutting taxes for the rich and large
corporations), arguments for investment will always fall on deaf ears.
Cutting ‘Green’
Each
year in the UK 25,000 people die from the cold, and at least a third of these
deaths are due to living in cold homes. This is because the UK has some of the
worst insulated homes in Europe, with expensive energy bills putting millions
in fuel poverty. Under the coalition, home insulation was a disaster, with
loans for insulation (the so called Green Deal) taken up by so few that new
cavity wall insulations fell in 2013 to a quarter of previous levels. Under our
new majority Conservative government the home insulation budget has been cut by
another £40 million in the first round of departmental cost-cutting and the
Green Deal loans completely scrapped (along with a decade-in-the-making plan to
make all new homes carbon neutral by 2016). And it’s the same across the board.
Under
Austerity the government is not only completely unwilling to embark on the
investments our communities and our planet so badly needs, but is actually
cutting what few vital green initiatives we already have. As well as backtracking
on its home energy-efficiency and insulation programme, it is slashing the subsidies
for biomass, aerobic digestion and biogas, as well as solar, onshore wind and
even tidal power. So far the only renewable energy source that isn’t being cut
is offshore wind (much more expensive than its onshore counterpart), and even
its future seems uncertain.
The
Green investment bank, which has increasingly played a pivotal role in
providing start-up capital to the environmental industry (and one of the Coalition’s
few positive achievements) is being privatised in the largest ever sale of state assets. Green taxes like fuel duty are
being cut. Even the incentives to buy less polluting cars (through differential
rates of Vehicle Excise Duty) are being scrapped from 2017. However, the cuts to the Environment Agency
and flood defence programs have caused the most headlines after they
spectacularly highlighted the – contradictory – long
term costs of austerity, by contributing to the massive
flooding that hit southern England (especially the Somerset levels) over the
winter of 2013-14.
The ‘dirty’ economy
rolls on…
What’s
more, whilst environmental programs and renewable energy are being cut left
right and centre, subsidies for the fossil fuel industry continue unabated
(this is primarily in the form of tax breaks for oil companies and government
funding for exploratory oil drilling), amounting to several billion pounds a
year. As fossil fuel reserves decline (unfortunately not fast enough to stop us
destroying the planet as more than two-thirds of current reserves need to be
left in the ground to avoid catastrophic warming), the government experiments
with riskier unconventional extraction methods, from offshore deep water
resources, to the now infamous ‘fracking’. Everywhere we look the short-termism
inherent in austerity is taking us the wrong way in the fight against climate
change.
Outside
of the arena of state action, by reducing people’s incomes as the cost of
living increases, austerity is further encouraging environmentally harmful
consumption. Austerity has seen the longest and sharpest decline in living
standards in the UK since Victorian times, driving the demand for (among other
things) cheaper food – which can currently only be provided through
ecologically harmful processes. Food production is a major source of carbon
emissions and ecological damage, but as our current economic system privileges
ecologically damaging production norms – making the green choice the more expensive
choice – people have no option but to take what they can get in the age of
austerity. When people are struggling to put food on the table, they’re less
inclined to worry about the environmental impact of that food or of green
issues in general.
Join the movement!
For
all these reasons and more austerity is an environmental disaster. If we want
to make sure the UK does its part in ensuring we don’t warm the planet by more
than 2 degrees by the end of the century (the internationally-agreed target
we’re all very close to making impossible), then austerity has to end. We
already know we owe it to the most vulnerable in our society and our wider
communities in general, but now we also owe it to our planet to end austerity
now. Anyone who cares about climate change has a duty to join the movement
against austerity (The Green Party is an official affiliate and supporter of The
People’s Assembly Against Austerity) and take
to the streets to protest these policies that are having such a disastrous
effect on both our society and our environment.
That’s
why I hope you’ll join us on the streets of Manchester for the huge march
on Sunday 4th October, and in the public spaces, faith centres and
community halls for the ‘festival
of resistance’ Mon 5th – Wed 7th
(encompassing everything from workers’ rights, to welfare, to TTIP, to climate),
where we can create the broadest possible demonstration of defiance to this
government and a huge public debate about austerity that the Tories don’t want
to have!
Transport
details for #TakeBackManchester:
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