My weekly Comment in the daily Plymouth Herald, published on 2nd January 2024, making very basic and obvious points about the refreshed politic of climate denial being ramped-up by the mainstream parties. As the General Election looms closer, the backtracking and pooh-poohing of demands for action to save people and planet are going to overwhelm the mainstream media, despite all evidence to the contrary. We have to speak out and Act Now!

Last weekend’s welcomed rest and relaxation was certainly disrupted. Fierce downpours onto already sodden land ensured more local flooding. The transport disruption and electricity outages had one common cause – our increasingly extreme weather conditions.

There’s more to come. According to the World Metereological Association, 2023 saw a “deafening cacophony of broken records” across all climate measurements, the record heat set to escalate due to the “super El Niño” this year. Entire regions are already experiencing environmental and social catastrophe.

Last  year was the hottest year on record, and 2024 will be hotter still. Extreme heat, driven not only by the unprecedented levels of greenhouse gas emissions but also the development of the peak in the eleven year cycle of ocean warming, will ensure more intense heatwaves, wildfires and heavy rains which will threaten food production and transport dislocation.

The response to this, locally and globally, is abysmal. Here, and across much of the world, governments and politicians are pulling back from previous commitments and any future promises towards climate action.

In general they consider that any State spending on emissions reduction is a vote loser, the majority of the electorate (not the same grouping as the majority of the population) do not want to see tax money spent on social infrastructure such as home insulation, subsidies for renewable energy production and carbon-zero heating. 

This is untrue, of course. Most of us are worried about climate change, made anxious not so much the big threats of species extinction and global climate collapse which we feel powerless to affect, but the local day-to-day and observable impacts that cause us higher costs and growing discomfort. 

We also share a common nagging tension at the back of our heads about the potential major challenges facing our children. 

But the reaction against climate action is gaining hold. 2024 is election year, not just here in the UK but in the huge economies of the United States and India as well as countries across Europe. 

In every country where political tension is increasing due to the continuing cost-of-living crisis, investment in social infrastructure is being disparaged and condemned in favour of tax cuts – mainly for the wealthy. 

A narrative is being stoked – squeeze the power and costs of the State and free us all to live by our own wits and resources. It is an extreme individualist argument, borne of the far-Right of the political spectrum which always espouses survival of the fittest – despising and damning the poor and those in need of levels of help they cannot manage alone. 

The organised far-Right in every land is growing in capacity and influence. And the traditionally mainstream parties are kowtowing to this contrived “populist” vote, scapegoating minorities and ridiculing warnings of potential catastrophe. 

The “culture wars” are being ramped-up to publicly condemn any show of concern for others, for social welfare, or for the climate, as “woke”, spineless and unrealistic. 

There appears to be no mainstream party now demanding the scale of action required to reorder society to ensure resilience to the deepening climate crisis. The challenge to the Climate Movement, failing to be heard let alone to win timely government acton at the scale required, is immense. 

Nevertheless, our strategy has to be broadcast. Nothing less than a National Climate Service, overseeing all government agencies and ensuring the focus of all policy and spending towards climate action, will ensure protection of the tens of millions of working class people here. We require help to mitigate environmentally destructive routines and adapt to life inside unpredictable environmental conditions. 

This cannot be achieved by a local and piecemeal approach alone. We have to campaign for societal reorganisation and investment. And this year, that campaign is distinctly ideological, openly challenging the forces of corporate power and far-Right class privilege.