No Department for Energy and Climate Change for you
Unbelievable. Teresa May has killed the climate change department.
The decision to abolish the Department for Energy and Climate Change has been variously condemned as “plain stupid”, “deeply worrying” and “terrible” by politicians, campaigners and experts.
One of Theresa May’s first acts as Prime Minister was to move responsibility for climate change to a new Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.
Only on Monday, Government advisers had warned of the need to take urgent action to prepare the UK for floods, droughts, heatwaves and food shortages caused by climate change.
Climate change is largely a product of business and energy and industry, and action on climate change tends to be antagonistic to many branches of business and energy and industry, so folding it into a Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy is giving the hens a nice new dormitory inside a fox’s den.
To put it another way, Business shouldn’t be in charge of climate change.
Former Labour leader Ed Miliband tweeted: “DECC abolition just plain stupid. Climate not even mentioned in new department title. Matters because departments shape priorities, shape outcomes.”
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Craig Bennett, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, pointed out that a major report into the effects of climate change on Britain had made clear that it was already happening.
“This is shocking news. Less than a day into the job and it appears that the new Prime Minister has already downgraded action to tackle climate change, one of the biggest threats we face,” he said.
“This week the Government’s own advisors warned of ever growing risks to our businesses, homes and food if we don’t do more to cut fossil fuel pollution.”
But it’s only businesses, homes and food. No big deal.
As soon as May threw her hat in the leadership ring a British colleague told me she was terrible. Being strongly anti-climate action was one of the first things he listed, along with increasing the surveillance state and attacking individual rights and privacy. He was also of the view that her campaigning for Remain was simply a political move to demonstrate loyalty to the current party leader, as he regarded her as strongly euroskeptic. To be fair he wasn’t keen on any of the potential leaders of any party, just less keen on the right wing, nationalist and Brexit ones. He did muse about moving to Scotland if he ever went back home, but decided his accent was just a bit too English.
Business shouldn’t be in charge of anything, including business itself.
There are massive amounts of capital still invested in the fossil fuel industry, much of it British, so it’s really not surprising that conservative politicians would attempt to bury the issue of climate change. All those wind farms and wave power projects around the coast of the U.K. are misleading, the real money is invested overseas in extractive industries. The City plutocrats and their representatives in Parliament will fight a rear guard action as long as they can, it’s a strategy as old as the Industrial Revolution.
Older than the industrial revolution by far RJW. Those with access to monopoly or dominant trade goods have always sought to protect that. Alum, silk, gold, sugar, spices, tea, wool, ores… it really doesn’t matter what, it only matters that you milk it for everything you can.
It’s also telling that the major oil companies are steadily divesting themselves of retail and local distribution, refineries and even some extractive assets and are becoming more traders who also deal with some of those aspects. Cash from sales is distributed as dividends with precious little being poured back into the core business these days. the slack is being taken up by smaller companies and joint ventures.
In other words the smart money is already starting to mitigate their risk while milking the last decades the industry has for every single cent.
Rob,
Agreed, however my point was that modern corporations run PR campaigns and attempt to confuse the issue.
The British and Dutch East India corporations wouldn’t have bothered. It was only after the massive environmental damage of the Industrial Revolution and increasing public awareness and democratisation that propaganda and lobbying were necessary. So I’m not suggesting that the mercantilist impulses of corporate management has changed, but that there are more constraints these days.
Ah, I see.
In Australia, they’ve introduced a bill to give the environment minister sole authority to authorize industrialization in threatened habitats. There aren’t many protections written into this, so it could be a free-for-all for developing these habitats. They still can’t kill endangered species, but they might be allowed to destroy their home, which is, of course, to kill them even if not directly.
Is there any humanity left in humanity? Or are we a mass of ugly instincts that walks around on two legs and loudly proclaims its own merit?
And, in Rationalia, I imagine both the Australian bill and the destruction of the Department for Energy and Climate would seem perfectly acceptable (though I think you can make a rational argument against destroying the world you live in, the other possibility is also the case).
^ Tragedy of the commons, the environment will be destroyed by others anyway, future generations’ problems are their problems, we need prosperity now.