Dial 101 For Climate Emergency
-Hey Mr Politician, you going to Glastonbury this year?
-Yes, Chris, judging the cucumbers at the Phoneyshire County Show is truly going to be the highlight of my year.
If somebody can’t win in politics, it’s quite common for them to move the goalposts a bit.
Sometimes it’s harmless, like a small party being as chuffed at saving a deposit as a winning party is at winning. Other times, it’s destructive.
Next year, workers in the UK will all be paid a living wage. A few years ago, that statement would have been really exciting. Now it’s infuriating.
In 2001, London Citizens (now Citizens UK) started to campaign for everyone to be paid an amount that they can live off, and in doing so, eradicate in-work poverty. Within a few years, their campaign had grown into a huge success story. The Living Wage Foundation clearly define, and promote, what it means to pay a living wage. Employer by employer, city by city, workplaces declared themselves living wage employers and hang their certificates with pride.
On 8 July 2015, Chancellor George Osborne announced to the country that over 25s would be paid £7.20 an hour in April 2016, rising to £9 per hour in 2020. A step forward, maybe, but also a kick in the teeth for 14 years of hard work in reducing poverty. Why? Because the name: the National Living Wage. It wasn’t a national Living Wage because so many people being paid it can’t live on it. From this point onwards, the Living Wage would so often have to be called the “real” Living Wage or the “actual” Living Wage.
What Osborne was doing here was responding to demands he didn’t want to meet by moving the goalposts. He knew that the real experts wouldn’t recognise his new “Living Wage” as a Living Wage, but he’s a more powerful voice. A rich man with a platform can do that. I’m not going to judge whether he’s been successful, there’s a good case that it hasn’t: the real Living Wage is still remarkably well promoted by its supporters and custodians.
So what about Climate Change? 350 words in and I’ve not mentioned it yet. I’ve even made you scroll through a massive picture of that scary guy. Always an afterthought…..
Last year some people formed an Extinction Rebellion. Alongside incredibly successful occupations, gluings and naked House of Commons protests, one of XR’s big successes has been promotion of the idea and declaration of Climate Emergency. It says that we need to recognise that proceeding as usual is not an option. We need change and leadership that will drop what we’re doing and deal with it. And a lot of people have put a lot of effort into getting their councils and Governments to declare a climate emergency and get to work in addressing it. It’s exactly the sort of move thousands of school strikers have been screaming out for in recent months.
What does it mean for a government to declare a climate emergency without actually taking emergency action? It’s a bit like declaring a National Living Wage that’s not actually a Living Wage. If there are demands you don’t want to meet, you’re powerful and loud enough to accept the label and redefine the demands. So we have the situation in Scotland where the First Minister stands up at Party Conference to declare a Climate Emergency, but won’t leave the oil in the ground.
Westminster is even more bizarre. Jeremy Corbyn, whose colleagues are still pretty keen on oil and gas, road building, tree cutting and of course new coal mining, made the proposal, and the Tory Government whose record is at least as bad, stayed away in order not to be seen to oppose it. Another case of an emergency in name only.
And with that, there’s an attempt to redefine emergency. It’s not a 999 call, it’s a 101 call at best. And we get this strategy cropping up all over the place- like the MPs who claim to oppose Brexit but still want to drop freedom of movement, or those who claim to support peace and human rights but are happy to sell arms to Saudi Arabia.
The challenge for us who want action? To stand up to the bullshit and make sure they don’t get away with it. Or the planet will pay.