“This civilization as we know it is finished”: Rupert Read interview

“This civilization as we know it is finished”: Rupert Read interview
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
8 November 2022

Professor Rupert Read has devoted a huge amount of his life to green politics – as a Green Party member, councillor, parliamentary candidate and spokesperson, as an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, and in 2019 as a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, appearing on BBC Question Time.

With his new book Why Climate Breakdown Matters just out, Ian Sinclair asked Read about why he thinks this civilization is finished, the importance of telling the truth about the climate crisis and where the green movement goes from here.

Ian Sinclair: One of your central messages in the book is “This civilization as we know it is finished”. What, exactly, do you mean by this? And does the climate science support this statement? 

Rupert Read: It’s not just about climate science. It’s about a whole systems-analysis and understanding. That is what, as a philosopher, I seek to offer. Though of course the task is actually way too big for any one person. But we have to try. We can’t take refuge behind academic specialism, if the cost of doing so is that no-one asks the really big questions, like I ask in this book, such as is this civilisation finished?

But yes, indirectly I think the climate science does support this claim. If we are to get through what is coming without collapse, then the curve for change is getting ever steeper. The time when a smooth transition might have been possible is past. The only transition possible now is transformational. Everything is going to change, either way. This civilisation will be transformed, by us or by Earth, by collapse. These are the two possible outcomes insofar as I can see; our civilisation either collapses due to ecological breakdown, or it consciously transforms to combat the climate crisis in such a fundamental way as to no longer be this society. Either way, this civilisation’s days are numbered.

IS: The 2015 Paris Agreement, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, agreed to “pursue efforts” to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C, and to keep them “well below” 2.0C above pre-industrial times. You describe the agreement as a failure. Why? 

RR: Look, the first thing to point out is that the Paris Agreement was of course an unprecedented diplomatic triumph. It rocketed the climate to the forefront of international relations, and the success of having all 196 countries agree to limit their emissions was unheard of. Nevertheless, Paris still did not establish an international regime of the kind created by the much more successful Montréal agreement (on stopping ozone-depletion) a generation before: this time, countries were left to create their own carbon budgets, and there was no enforcing power behind the accord, no requirement for trade sanctions against laggards. Moreover, the budgets that were created to limit carbon emissions were based on overly optimistic models of climate change, and this is insufficient when dealing with the inherent uncertainties of climate modelling; even if all countries were to abide by a climate budget that was agreed upon at Paris (which obviously they are not), there is no guarantee that this would be enough. Moreover, Paris in effect relied on totally uncertain gambles on carbon-reduction technology for its optimistic projections. All in all, Paris should have been at best the starting point, inspiring a wave of more intense and stringent climate policies. Instead, Paris remains the mediocre highpoint of climate conferences, seven years later. 

IS: Responding to Liz Truss labelling opponents of her government as “the anti-growth coalition”, Fatima Ibrahim from Green New Deal Rising said “this couldn’t be further from the truth. Activists such as myself are committed to clean, equitable growth for all.” What’s your take on ‘green growth’?  

RR: Firstly, my position on economic growth is that we really must abandon it as the be-all and end-all aim of economic policy. The obsession with economic growth, GDP, has gripped the world for far too long without considering vital questions like what is all this growth for, who is benefiting from economic growth, is endless economic growth possible, why are we growing the bad things that are wrapped up inside the definition of GDP, etc. My view is that we talk about economic growth to avoid having to talk about redistribution; there is enough to go around, and making sure everyone has what they need should be our focus and I’m entirely unconvinced economic growth is any kind of path to that. The economy should, for the sake of the environment and the people in it, be geared towards providing what we need, whereas it currently serves to sell us what we don’t for the sake of growth. I would be sceptical of Fatima Ibrahim’s idea of “clean, equitable growth.” Certainly, there are green sectors of the economy that do require substantial growth, such as the renewable energy sector, but being committed to societal-wide economic growth, green or otherwise, as an indispensable component of policy, means we are still prioritising a statistical figure over the needs of the people. Instead of pursuing growth, let’s pursue equality: that’s the way to be equitable! And let’s aim to grow the clean and to shrink/eliminate the rest.

IS: Reading your book about the radical transformations in society that need to be implemented as soon as possible, it strikes me that even the Green Party of England and Wales is not speaking honestly about the severity and enormity of the climate crisis. Do you agree? 

RR: Yes, on balance I would agree. Although, as should be expected, they are doing way better than any other major party on this issue (full disclosure: I’m a life member, and have previously been a national spokesperson, an elected local Councillor, etc.). Nevertheless, the Green Party are still not being honest about the fact that contemporary society as we know it will not survive the ecological breakdown we are already embroiled in, as set out in my answer above. To continue to tell the public “just vote for us, we’ll sort it out if only we are in power” is dishonest for two reasons; the first is that the current first-past-the-post political organisation of this country makes the Greens winning a General Election as close to impossible as you can get, and the second is that it’s too late for anyone to simply ‘sort it out’. There isn’t going to be a smooth green transition, not even if we had a benevolent environmentalist Government in this country fairly soon. Especially given that it is a pipe dream – and nothing more – to expect that to happen fairly soon worldwide. When we consider the impact of things like the ‘tipping points’ that appear to be being triggered – in our weather systems, in the Amazon, in the oceans, and so forth – and the obvious fact that this is a global issue that requires a global response, the ability of the UK Government to ‘sort this out’ should in any case not be over-claimed. What the UK government does matters – we are a wealthy country, even now; we need to show leadership, especially given our historical responsibility for huge climate-dangerous emissions and for imperial damage to others; and the City of London exercises an enormous, disproportionate, global influence on climate-related finance, an influence that remains mostly for ill, not good – but we are one part of a much larger picture. 

The way in which the Green Party could make the most difference is by telling these difficult truths, now. The Green Party’s USP is as the political party that is a trusted messenger on all things green. If we were to speak authentically about the direness of the crisis, about how hard we’ve tried to shift things, about how we have achieved small incremental improvements but the country and the world remain miles behind the clock and off the pace, about how it’s too late to ‘fix’ this and how we in the Greens certainly can’t significantly ameliorate it alone… if we were to be brave enough to do this, it would be game-changing. Ironically, such a confession of comparative impotence could propel many more voters to us; for voters are hungrier than ever for authenticity, for truth, for humility; for politicians who break the stereotype of their trade. That in any case is the essence of the strategy that I am pursuing for the Green Party, along with my colleagues in The Greens’ Climate Activists Network, GreensCAN: http://www.greens-can.Earth. I’d urge interested readers to weigh it up.

IS: In the book you argue for a new “moderate flank” to be built up within the green movement. What is this, and after playing a key role in Extinction Rebellion’s 2019 actions, why do you think this is the best way forward? 

RR: The emerging Moderate Flank is designed to mobilise everyone who is concerned about the environmental crisis; it is a movement that puts climate and life (aka biodiversity) first and foremost. Extinction Rebellion really did achieve remarkable things, and has put climate concern into the public consciousness in a way that was never been seen before. However, in recent years some of their actions have become more radical, such as the smashing of bank windows. And this process started with the own-goal, that in retrospect proved basically fatal to XR’s prospects of being the prime vehicle for change, of some rebels targeting tube trains, in October 2019. The desperation and frustration behind any of these actions is certainly something I completely relate to, but it’s also no secret that Extinction Rebellion has for years now lacked support from the general public. The climate crisis is the biggest issue our planet has ever faced, and we need a vehicle to mobilise people on it that, while deepening the truth-telling that XR helped initiated, will be unpolarising, welcoming, with low barriers to entry. That is why the new Moderate Flank is being created; to allow every single person who is concerned about climate breakdown, but who may not agree with the more radical tactics of Extinction Rebellion, or at least recognises that it is vital we provide ways (for many more to get involved) that are truth-based and yet don’t require sign-up as an ‘activist’, to participate in trying to prevent/mitigate it, and to seek to adapt transformatively to it. If you want to know more, and I hope you will, then go to @moderateflank on Twitter.

Why Climate Breakdown Matters is published by Bloomsbury, priced £17.99.

Economic Growth vs. A Liveable Planet: Which Side Are You On?

Economic Growth vs. A Liveable Planet: Which Side Are You On? 
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
29 October 2022

“There is no final victory, as there is no final defeat. There is just the same battle to be fought, over and over again. So toughen up, bloody toughen up.”  

My main takeaway from Tony Benn’s wise words is that each new generation of activists and progressives need to fight and win the important arguments again and again and again. 

Take, for example, former Prime Minister Liz Truss telling the recent Tory Party conference that those who oppose her government were the “anti-growth coalition.” 

Writing in the Financial Times weekend magazine under the heading ‘Intellect’, Tim Harford, the presenter on the fact-checking BBC radio programme More Or Less, told readers “The UK’s new prime minister is absolutely right to believe that economic growth should be her top priority.” 

Over at The Guardian there was a roundtable collecting responses to Truss’s speech. The contribution from Mick Lynch from the RMT union was titled ‘It’s pure nonsense that unions are “anti-growth”’. On the same page, Fatima Ibrahim, Co-Director of activist group Green New Deal Rising, noted “Green groups have been labelled as part of an ‘anti-growth coalition’, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Activists such as myself are committed to clean, equitable growth for all.” 

Responding to Truss resigning as Prime Minister, Keir Starmer’s Labour Party tweeted “For our economy. For growth. For working people. General Election, now.” Meanwhile the Labour Party’s popular 2017 manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership included fifteen mentions of “growth”, such as “Labour will invest in our future, to ensure faster growth” and “our industrial strategy is one for growth across all sectors.” 

Analysing 1,133 news items – from the Guardian, Telegraph, Sun, Mirror and BBC – about the Financial Crisis for her 2018 book Media Amnesia: Rewriting the Economic Crisis, Laura Basu found only one that challenged the growth paradigm. 

There is, then, with a few rare exceptions, a broad consensus across the political and media spectrum today that economic growth – as measured by a nation’s Gross Domestic Product or GDP per person – is good.  

However, we have not always been so sure about economic growth, or blind to the climate and ecological ramifications of making it a central aim of society and government. 

50 years ago this year a report was published by researchers at the Massachusetts of Technology, which had been commissioned by The Club of Rome, a group of business leaders and intellectuals. Titled The Limits To Growth, the study warned “If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime in the next one hundred years.” 

The report continued: “It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future.”  

“If the world’s people decide to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin working to attain it, the greater will be their chances of success.” 

The Limits To Growth’s legacy in terms of sales and generating debate has been huge, including influencing Tim Jackson’s report Prosperity Without Growth: Economics For A Finite Planet, published in 2009 by the Sustainable Development Commission. 

Noting “GDP growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world for most of the last century”, he argued the climate crisis now requires reconciling our aspirations for the good life with the constraints of a finite planet. This means “we have no alternative but to question growth” and transition to a sustainable economy. 

Also published in 2009, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better took time out from analysing inequality to highlight the problem. “We have to recognize the problems of global warming and the environmental limits to growth,” co-authors Professor Richard Wilkinson and Professor Kate Pickett noted.  

Australian public intellectual Clive Hamilton was more forthright in his 2010 book Requiem For Species: Why We Resist The Truth About Climate Change. Building on his 2003 treatise Growth Fetish, he explained “From the outset, the fetish with economic growth has provided the principal obstacle to coming to grips with the threat of global warming.”  

Naomi Klein took up the baton in This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. Published in 2014, she noted “the things we must do to avoid catastrophic warming…. are now in conflict with the fundamental imperative at the heart of our economic model: grow or die.” She quotes climate scientists Professors Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows from 2010: to meet our emissions targets “radical and immediate de-growth strategies in the US, EU and other wealthy nations are needed.” 

Our rulers cannot say they haven’t been warned. Since 1972 The Limits To Growth has sold over 10 million copies and been translated into over 30 languages. Prosperity Without Growth was endorsed by King Charles and the then Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, and appeared on then Labour leader Ed Miliband’s summer reading list. This Changes Everything was on the New York Times bestseller list, and reviewed across the mainstream media. Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, one of the most famous people on the planet, has repeatedly denounced the “fairy tale” of ceaseless economic growth. And speaking in 2013, national treasure Sir David Attenborough explained “We have a finite environment – the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist.” 

But what about the ‘green growth’ championed by Fatima Ibrahim from Green New Deal Rising? Reviewing the academic literature on the subject in a 2019 peer reviewed journal article, Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis conclude the “empirical evidence on resource use and carbon emissions does not support green growth theory” and therefore “green growth is likely to be a misguided objective, and that policymakers need to look toward alternative strategies.” Hickel explained why in a 2020 blog: “The question is not whether GDP can be decoupled from emissions (we know that it can be), the question is whether this can be done fast enough to stay within safe carbon budgets while growing GDP at the same time. And the answer to this is no.” Only a degrowth strategy will succeed in reducing emissions fast enough to keep the global temperature increase below 1.5oC or 2oC, he argues.  

Indeed Hickel sees a deliberate policy of degrowth as an opportunity to improve people’s lives. “We can ensure that people are able to access the things that they need to live a good life… without feeding the never-ending growth machine.” He calls this Radical Abundance, where private riches would likely shrink, but public wealth would significantly increase. 

All of which makes the current consensus incredibly depressing – and deeply worrying. If we are to have any chance, as a nation or humanity, in averting catastrophic climate change then the mainstream debate and government policies on economic growth need to be in a radically different place than it is today.  

As the academic and activist Rupert Read noted in his 2019 co-authored primer This Civilisation Is Finished, “unless you ‘angelise’ economic activity, eliminating its environmental impact altogether… then increasing economic activity is prima facie now a dangerous thing to encourage.” 

In short, growth fetishists who ignore the reality of the climate crisis need to be treated accordingly – as a danger to young people and future generations. 

Follow Ian on Twitter @IanJSinclair 

Book review: Why Climate Breakdown Matters by Rupert Read

Book review: Why Climate Breakdown Matters by Rupert Read
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
24 October 2022

“There are no non-radical futures,” top climate scientist Professor Kevin Anderson has repeatedly explained. “The future is radically different from the present either because we make huge, rapid shifts in reducing our emissions with profound shifts in our society, or we hang onto the status quo for a few more years whilst we lock in huge shifts from the impacts of climate change.”

After reading Why Climate Breakdown Matters, I’m confident Rupert Read, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and former Green Party councillor, wholeheartedly agrees with this.

A summation of his recent writings, talks and activism, it’s a deeply challenging and necessary book.

“The stakes could not be higher,” he argues. “Our economic, political and social systems are in the process of making our planet uninhabitable.” And with government action in the UK and elsewhere woefully inadequate, he contends “we are likely to face widespread social and ecological collapse within the next few decades.”

Echoing Anderson and the title of his 2019 primer co-authored with Samuel Alexander, he believes “This civilization as we know it is finished”. Those who downplay the seriousness of the climate emergency are participating in “soft denialism”, which he argues “is now the real enemy.”

A comforting bedtime read this is not.

The book’s second half is more hopeful, with Read leaning on the work of Rebecca Solnit and Charles Fritz to highlight how resilient communities often grow in response to terrible disasters. He urges readers to get active and “do what is necessary now, regardless of its legality or otherwise.” Having played a key role in Extinction Rebellion’s policy-shifting April 2019 uprising, he is now pushing for a “moderate flank” to be built within the climate movement, one that will have the numbers and broad appeal to force radical change.

For Read, if you care about the future of your children and the generations that will come after them, then logically you should also do everything you can to pass on a liveable and sustainable planet to them.

As part of Bloomsbury’s Why Philosophy Matters series, unsurprisingly there is certain amount of philosophy running through the book. However, Read keeps his language and arguments relatively straightforward, making the book accessible to the lay reader. Unlike a lot of academic writing, his references are genuinely an interesting read – I repeatedly found myself underling sentences and citations for later consideration and investigation.

With Read one of the most interesting thinkers currently engaging with the most pressing issue of our time, Why Climate Breakdown Matters is essential reading.

Why Climate Breakdown Matters is published by Bloomsbury, priced £17.99.

We Need To Talk About The Politics Of Climate Experts

We Need To Talk About The Politics Of Climate Experts
By Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
16 May 2022

It is widely understood the very powerful forces of climate change denial have delayed action to address the climate crisis, and thus are responsible for a huge amount of suffering and deaths attributable to climate breakdown.

Less appreciated is the unintended impact these dark corporate interests have had on the popular perception of climate experts. For example, having only recently started to move beyond framing the debate as being between denialists and those who accept the scientific consensus, the media largely present climate experts as one big monolithic block. Rarely do they explore the different politics that exist amongst the climate community.

This is deeply unhelpful because the politics of individual climate specialists and research institutions have huge ramifications in terms of discussing the climate crisis, about who or what is to blame, and therefore what action needs to be taken, and when.

To explore this, it is worth comparing opposing voices on key climate issues: Professor Kevin Anderson, Chair of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester, and two key figures at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment (GRI) at the London School of Economics – Co-Director Lord Nicholas Stern and Policy and Communications Director Bob Ward, both of whom regularly appear in the media.

First, how do they engage with Naomi Klein’s argument in her 2014 book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate that stopping the worst effects of climate change will involve “challenging the fundamental logic of deregulated capitalism”, and that systematic and radical change is required as soon as possible?

Stern, second permanent secretary at the Treasury under Prime Minister Gordon Brown and author of an influential 2006 report on the economics of climate change, does not generally frame the climate crisis like Klein. Instead, in 2015 he noted that “economic growth and climate responsibility can come together and, indeed” are “complementarity”. Indeed, in 2019 Julia Steinberger, Professor of Societal Challenges of Climate Change at the University of Lausanne, tweeted about “Lord Stern’s admonition to researchers in sustainable prosperity at the British Academy to maintain growth-at-all-costs back in 2014”. Six years later Stern was backing “green growth” as “essential for our future on this planet” (one of the five founding research programmes of the GRI, widely seen to be dominated by economists, was “green growth”).

In contrast, Anderson argued in 2013 “the remaining 2°C budget demands revolutionary change to the political and economic hegemony.” In addition, he noted “continuing with economic growth over the coming two decades is incompatible with meeting our international obligations on climate change”, and therefore wealthy nations needed “temporarily, to adopt a de-growth strategy.” Anderson is dismissive of the concept of “green growth”, tweeting in 2019 a link to an interview with Johan Rockström, in which the internationally recognized scientist says “Green growth is wishful thinking”.

To be clear, in recent years Stern seems to have become increasingly aware of the scale of the change required, noting in October 2021 that achieving Net Zero emissions “will require the biggest economic transformation ever seen in peacetime” (though he still seems wedded to the ideology of economic growth).

When it comes to fracking, in 2014 Anderson told the New Scientist “The advent of shale gas is definitely incompatible with the UK’s stated pledge to help restrict global warming to 2 °C”. However, the article noted “Others say it could help reduce emissions overall, provided the shale gas replaces coal currently used to generate energy”, quoting Ward as saying “In principle, if it helps with displacement of coal it could be helpful”.

In May 2019 Theresa May’s Tory government announced the UK would aim for Net Zero emissions by 2050. Stern stated at the time “This is a historic move by the UK Government and an act of true international leadership for which the Prime Minister deserves great credit.” Since then Stern has led on the LSE itself also adopting a Net Zero target of 2050.

Anderson was less enamoured by the 2050 target, noting on his blog that “to meet its Paris [Agreement] obligations the UK must achieve zero-carbon energy by around 2035; that’s ‘real-zero’ not ‘net-zero’. This requires an immediate programme of deep cuts in energy emissions rising rapidly to over 10% p.a. [per annum]”

In October 2021 the UK government published its strategy for reaching Net Zero emissions by 2050. Anderson’s response recorded by the Science Media Centre? “The UK’s Net Zero strategy falls far short of both its Paris [Agreement] and G7 temperature and equity commitments. Scour the associated spread sheets and the numbers reveal a story of subterfuge, delusion, offsetting and piecemeal policies.” In contrast both Stern and Ward were broadly supportive, with the former telling the Science Media Centre “I welcome the publication of the strategy, which identifies the major steps we have to take to reach net zero.”

Finally, there is a consensus amongst many prominent activists and experts that strong grassroots social movements will be required to force the radical changes needed to address the climate crisis. Anderson seems to understand this. I’m aware he lent his expertise to anti-airport expansion group Plane Stupid in the 2000s and, more recently, he has explained he advised youth strike figurehead Greta Thunberg. In 2020 he gave a talk to an Extinction Rebellion group in Waltham Forest.

In contrast, Stern and Ward’s leading role in setting a 2050 Net Zero emissions target at LSE was undertaken in the face of grassroots opposition from LSE students and staff, with a petition signed by hundreds of people calling for LSE to adopt an earlier Net Zero target of 2030. As far as I am aware Stern and Ward refused to seriously engage with this grassroots activism (in 2019 a small group of staff met with Ward and argued there need to be more radical action on reducing emissions at LSE, including the declaration of a Climate Emergency, receiving a very frosty reception, to put it mildly). It seems telling that Channel 4 News decided to put Ward up against Extinction Rebellion’s Farhana Yamin during a 2019 studio discussion about the UK’s 2050 Net Zero target, while The Mail quoted Ward in a 2021 article to criticise a statement Thunberg made about the UK government’s response to the climate crisis.

From this very brief summary, it seems clear Stern and Ward are, broadly, conservative actors amongst climate experts when it comes to the climate crisis.

“The voice of experts on climate science is an important one, because citizens trust it. And some climate scientists have been using their voice powerfully and well, especially in recent years”, academic and environmental campaigner Professor Rupert Read tells me. “But it’s important to remember the limits of the expertise of most climate scientists: to their own discipline or even sub-discipline. Few are experts in systems theory, in risk analysis, in philosophy, or in political economy. For expertise in those areas, funnily enough, you are best off going to experts… in those areas.”

Read notes “economists – whose opinions are often over-valued in an economistic society such as ours – who weigh into debates originating in climate tend to lean towards technocracy, and tend to be biased in favour of growthism, which is even now, incredibly, an endemic assumption in Economics.”

“Thus degrowth, post-growth, deep green ecological economics – let alone approaches based in civil disobedience or coming from (say) indigenous or eco-spiritual perspectives – tend to get short shrift from climate economists. That is a problem. A big problem.”

All this shouldn’t be surprising when you consider Stern’s and Ward’s successful professional careers are tied up with elite networks, establishment politics and billionaire investor Jeremy Grantham.

Of course, a variety of voices is welcome but, to echo Read, it’s surely a serious problem worthy of serious discussion when the climate crisis demands radical action, and Stern and Ward have so much power within the climate community and cachet with journalists, and therefore an oversized impact on the national debate and research agenda. Indeed, their commanding positions likely have a chilling effect on the kind of robust debate scientific and political progress thrives upon. If you were a young climate researcher, would you risk access to funding, contacts and therefore your future career by criticising two of the most powerful people in your field, or the leading institution they run?

For the wellbeing of everyone and everything that lives on the planet today and in the future, we need to start talking about the politics of climate experts and climate-focussed research institutions.

Follow Ian on Twitter @IanJSinclair.

The Third Wave: A Timeline Of How We Got Here

The Third Wave: A Timeline Of How We Got Here
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
8 July 2020

“We’re seeing cases rise fairly rapidly – and there could be 50,000 cases detected per day by the 19 [July] and again as we predicted, we’re seeing rising hospital admissions”, Boris Johnson explained at a Downing Street press conference on 5 July. “We must reconcile ourselves sadly to more deaths from Covid.”

Frustratingly, as epidemiologist Dr Deepti Gurdasani told the Morning Star last month, “what is happening now was entirely predictable and predicted”.  And incredibly, despite the rising number of hospital admissions endangering the NHS’s recovery, over one million people living with Long Covid and an increasing risk of a new variant resistant to vaccines, on 5 July the Prime Minister announced plans to fully open on 19 July. In short, UK government policy is let the virus “rip” in the UK.

How did we end up in this mess?

21 January: The minutes from the day’s SAGE meeting warns the “evidence from the continued spread of the South African and UK variants suggests that reactive, geographically targeted travel bans cannot be relied upon to stop importation of new variants once identified.” The minutes also note “No intervention, other than a complete, pre-emptive closure of borders, or the mandatory quarantine of all visitors upon arrival in designated facilities, irrespective of testing history, can get close to fully prevent the importation of cases or new variants.”

25 January: Speaking to a Confederation of British Industry webinar, Dido Harding, the Head of the Test and Trace, says fewer than 60 per cent of people asked to self-isolate actually do so.

24 March: India announces it has detected a new “double mutant variant” of coronavirus.

1 April: According to the Times, ministers are told about the arrival of a variant in the UK that has originated in India (AKA the Delta variant). Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty says the idea that Covid variants can be stopped from entering the country is “not realistic”, reports the Guardian.

12 April: The government proceeds with step 2 of lockdown easing, with non-essential shops, hair salons pubs and restaurants with outdoor seating all re-opened.

15 April: Public Health England announces the Indian variant has been found in the UK. Speaking to the Guardian, Professor Christina Pagel, director of UCL’s clinical operational research unit and member of Independent SAGE, says “It is ridiculous that India is not on the travel red list yet – or many other countries for that matter – when India is seeing 200,000 new cases every day at the moment.”

23 April: The government adds India to the red list, banning travel to the UK from India. The Sunday Times later reports “Analysis of Civil Aviation Authority figures suggest that 20,000 people arrived in the UK from India from April 2 to April 23.” A Whitehall source told the newspaper: “It’s very clear that we should have closed the border to India earlier and that Boris did not do so because he didn’t want to offend [Indian Prime Minister] Modi.”

4 May: Teaching unions the NEU and NASUWT, along with support staff unions Unite, Unison and the GMB, have sent an open letter to education secretary Gavin Williamson, co-signed by around 20 scientists and public health professionals, urging the government to keep face covering in secondary schools until at least 21 June.

7 May: Public Health England identifies the Delta variant as a “variant of concern”.

12 May: The Prime Minister announces the public inquiry into the government’s response to the pandemic will start in spring 2022. Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat MP who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus, says delaying the inquiry “means vital lessons will go unlearned,” the Guardian reports.

13 May: The minutes of the day’s SAGE meeting warns “If this [Delta AKA Indian] variant were to have a 40-50% transmission advantage nationally compared to” the so-called Kent variant the modelling “indicate that it is likely that progressing with step 3 alone… would lead to a substantial resurgence of hospitalisations (similar to, or larger than, previous peaks)”.

17 May: The government proceeds with step 3 of the lockdown easing. People are now allowed to socialise indoors in limited numbers and visit pubs and restaurants inside.The government announces pupils are no longer required to wear face coverings in schools and colleges. International travel is allowed again, governed by a new traffic light system.

3 June: Professor Pagel tells the Guardian: “it is clear that schools are a major source of transmission and that outbreaks in primary and secondary schools have been growing a lot week on week.”

8 June: Keep Out NHS Public co-chair Dr John Puntis tells the Morning Star: “To reduce the spread of the virus, we need proper support for those asked to isolate, improved ventilation in indoor environments, face mask for secondary school children, stricter controls on borders and international travel, speedier vaccine rollout and a serious global vaccine initiative.”

11 June: Public Health England reports the Delta variant is 64 percent more transmissible than the Alpha (Kent) variant.

15 June: The Prime Minister delays plans to lift most remaining restrictions (step 4 of the lockdown easing), planned for 21 June, by a month, warning that thousands more people could die if the government opened up as planned, because of the rapid spread of the Delta variant.

16 June: During Prime Ministers Questions, Boris Johnson states the UK “has the toughest border measures anywhere in the world.” The Guardian notes this is “hard to square with the fact that some countries, including Australia and New Zealand, bar almost all overseas arrivals.”

17 June: Speaking to the Morning Star, Dr Deepti Gurdasani, a Senior Lecturer in Machine Learning and epidemiologist at Queen Mary University of London, says “I do think the 17 May re-opening was a mistake but I think we would have likely seen a rise in cases even then because we know that cases of the Delta variant were actually doubling even prior to 17 May”.

18 June: Nearly two-thirds of workers in England seeking grants to help them self-isolate are refused help, according to research from the Trades Union Congress.

20 June: Hosting The Andrew Marr Show, the BBC’s Nick Robinson quotes Jeffrey Barrett, Director of the COVID-19 Genomics Initiative, Wellcome Sanger Institute: “Looking back it’s clear that a major part of why we are now faced with a growing wave of cases of the Delta variant is because there were hundreds of introductions from abroad during April.”

23 June: The deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery, tells BBC Breakfast: “Trusts on the frontline are really coming under huge pressure … they have plans in place to tackle the backlog, but with more Covid cases and demand for emergency care going up, that’s really challenging.”

28 June: Newly appointed Health Secretary Sajid Javid says the country must “learn to live” with Covid-19.

1 July: The European Parliament’s committee on public health describes allowing 60,000 fans into Wembley for the European Championship semi-finals and final as “a recipe for disaster,” the Irish Times reports.

3 July: The British Medical Association urges the government to keep some targeted measures to control the spread of Covid-19 in place after 19 July in England, including face masks in enclosed public spaces and improved ventilation.

5 July: Emphasising “personal responsibility”, the Prime Minister announces the loosening of all restrictions on 19 July. The one-metre social distance rule will and the work from home guidance will end, and mask-wearing will be voluntary. This opening up will make England “the most unrestricted society in Europe,” the Guardian reports. Anthony Costello, Professor of Global Health and Sustainable Development at University College London, describes it is “Libertarian public health”.

6 July: The health secretary says the number of infections could rise above 100,000 a day over the summer.

7 July: Over 100 global experts publish an open letter in the Lancet medical journal arguing the government’s plan to lift nearly all restrictions on 19 July is “dangerous and premature.”

In April, Ian Sinclair and Rupert Read published A Timeline Of The Plague Year: A Comprehensive Record of the UK Government’s Response to the Coronavirus Crisis, available as a free PDF and EBook, and as a pay-to-print book at https://covidtheplagueyear.wordpress.com/.

Book review. Parents For A Future: How Loving Our Children Can Prevent Climate Collapse by Rupert Read

Book review. Parents For A Future: How Loving Our Children Can Prevent Climate Collapse by Rupert Read
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
3 May 2021

RUPERT Read’s latest book on the climate crisis is underpinned by the realisation pretty much all of us are “in some form or another of climate denial” – about honestly facing up to the level of threat, and the speed and depth of change required to successfully deal with it.

On the former, Carbon Action Tracker estimates the current policies in place around the world will lead to 2.9oC of warming by 2100. Read believes it is “very likely” climate and ecological chaos will lead to civilisation disintegrating “within the lifetimes of some readers”.

For the latter, he argues the desperate situation we now find ourselves in cannot “be adequately addressed from within our current paradigm of politics and economics.” As the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s warned in 2018, limiting warming to 1.5oC will “require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”.

A call to arms for everyone to step up to the challenge, Read’s thesis is, in many ways, very simple: if you care about your children (or other people’s children), then you should also care about their children, and their children’s children – “the whole human future.” And this means you should also care about the future of the planet all these future generations will live on.

He presents three core proposals for embedding this transformational thinking. First, the setting up of citizen’s assemblies that would be empowered to make the long-term proposals and decisions our fatally compromised and short-termist political system is unable to do. Second, the introduction of what he calls Guardians For Future Generations – a permanent “super-jury” that would sit above parliament and consider the interests of future generations in policymaking. And, finally, adherence to the Precautionary Principle – “when you lack full evidence and potential consequences [of a path of action or inaction] are grave, you need to err on the side of taking care.”

The book’s logical, essay-length polemic points to Read’s academic position as an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia. Likewise, the clarity and urgency of his message also highlights the influence of his time as spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion in 2019.

Compelling and deeply challenging, it is often an uncomfortable argument (Read tells readers: “you… need, at a minimum, to devote either your time or the bulk of your financial resources to this cause”). Which, of course, is why it is such an essential read. Time to get busy.

Parents For A Future: How Loving Our Children Can Prevent Climate Collapse is published by UEA Publishing Project, priced £10.99

A Timeline Of The Plague Year

A Timeline Of The Plague Year
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
22 April 2021

To mark the one year anniversary of the first national lockdown, last month the Guardian published profiles of Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance and Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty.

“The wealthy civil servant’s year of speaking truth to power”, was the title of the fawning article on Vallance. Discussing the early days of the pandemic, the Guardian’s Rupert Neate asserted “Vallance may have been one of the few people in Whitehall who understood what was coming”. Echoing the title, he noted “Vallance’s friends and colleagues say that he is not afraid to speak scientific truth to power.”

The profile on Whitty was similarly obsequious, titled: “The calm voice who steered a nation in crisis”. The co-authors Ian Sample and Heather Stewart wrote “The crisis has demanded dedication and stamina, but Whitty has also needed the trust of those around him”. There is a brief reference to mistakes made in the early days of the crisis, such as Whitty responding to covid as if it was a flu pandemic, but overall the tone is deeply flattering. “Whitty’s calm authority appealed far beyond Westminster”, they note.

All of which makes the 2019 claim made by Guardian Editor Katharine Viner that Guardian journalists “believe in holding the powerful to account” sounds rather hollow. More accurate is journalist Peter Oborne’s recent analysis in the Morning Star: “We have to understand that the British media class is an instrument of power and should be treated as such rather than a fourth estate holding power to account.”

Partly in response to the media’s poor performance at the beginning of the pandemic, since April 2020 Rupert Read and I have been compiling a detailed timeline of the government’s response to coronavirus. Updated and published every week since then and now totalling over 69,000 words, the timeline is made up of thousands of sources, including press reports, television and radio news, medical journals, health experts and organisations, trade unions and polling results.

Working with editor Joanna Booth, we have just published the timeline as a free eBook and pay-to-print book too – titled A Timeline Of The Plague Year: A Comprehensive Record of the UK Government’s Response to the Coronavirus Crisis

So how does the Guardian’s stenography on Vallance and Whitty compare to the information found in our timeline?

For starters, the deadly concept of “herd immunity” is not mentioned in either of the two profiles. Herd immunity is when a large majority of the population are infected or vaccinated, and therefore gain immunity and stop the spread of the virus.

In contrast, our timeline records that a senior politician told the Sunday Times he “had conversations with Chris Whitty at the end of January [2020] and they were absolutely focused on herd immunity.”

Vallance was even clearer about the government’s strategy on BBC’s Today programme on 13 March 2020. One of “the key things we need to do” is to “build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission”, he noted.

There are two huge problems with herd immunity – both widely understood in March 2020. First, the estimated mortality rates of the virus at the time – around 1%, according to a Guardian report on 7 March 2020 – would have meant around half a million deaths in the UK to achieve herd immunity. Second, there was ‘no clear evidence people who had suffered the virus would have lasting antibody protection’, as the Sunday Times explained on 24 May 2020.

Vallance and Whitty also made a series of catastrophic calls in the run up to the first lockdown on 23 March 2020. On 9 March 2020 Vallance said holding “mass gatherings and so on — actually don’t make much difference”. Three days later he asserted “the peak may be something like 10 to 14 weeks away – it could be a bit longer”. The peak was actually under four weeks away, with 1,461 deaths recorded on 8 April 2020.

Discussing restrictive measures, such as lockdown, to fight the virus at a Downing Street press conference, on 9 March 2020 Whitty stated “There is a risk if we go too early people will understandably get fatigued and it will be difficult to sustain this over time.”

Stephen Reicher, Professor of Social Psychology at the University of St Andrews and member of SPI-B (the group that provided behavioral science advice to government), later described Whitty’s analysis as “just plain wrong”. Similarly, A BBC Newsnight investigation broadcast in July 2020 concluded there “doesn’t appear to have been much evidence… at the time” for Whitty’s claim that if lockdown is implemented too early people would get “fatigued”. Robert West, Professor of Health Psychology at University College London and member of SPI-B, commented: “this term ‘behavioural fatigue’… certainly didn’t come from SPI-B, and it is not a behavioural science term. If you look in the literature you won’t find it because it doesn’t exist”.

The delay to lockdown was extremely costly. Back-dated modelling by Oxford University estimates there were just 14,000 infected people in the UK on 3 March 2020. By 23 March 2020 the number was likely to have been 1.5 million. “Those 20 days of government delay are the single most important reason why the UK has the second highest number of deaths from the coronavirus in the world”, the Sunday Times noted in May 2020. A December 2020 report by Imperial College estimated that imposing a national lockdown in just one week earlier in March 2020 would have saved 21,000 lives.

Moreover, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact Vallance and Whitty have been at the centre of the government’s response to the crisis, which means they oversaw the decision to stop mass testing on 12 March 2020, the ending of the quarantining of people arriving at UK airports from coronavirus hotspots a day later, the thousands of deaths in care homes and the shambolic test and trace programme.

With over 150,000 people having died from covid in the UK, according to Office for National Statistics figures, the government’s response has been, as Lancet editor-in-chief Richard Horton noted, “a national scandal”.

None of this highly pertinent and damning information appeared in the two Guardian profiles.

In contrast, all of the information above can be found in our timeline, along with other key aspects of the crisis, including the mounting death toll, lockdowns, the Personal Protective Equipment shortage, the (lack of) border closures, the disastrous Eat Out To Help Out scheme, the dangers of Long Covid, and support for a Zero Covid strategy.  

We hope our comprehensive account of the plague year will be useful to anyone interested in understanding the UK government’s response to the crisis, historians studying the pandemic in the future and to the public inquiry that must be established.

“They really are scared that the verdict of history is going to condemn them for contributing to the deaths of tens of thousands of British citizens”, Horton commented about the UK government in April 2020. “They are desperately trying to rewrite the timeline of what happened. And we must not let them do that.”

A Timeline Of The Plague Year: A Comprehensive Record of the UK Government’s Response to the Coronavirus Crisis by Ian Sinclair and Rupert Read is available as a free PDF download, free ebook and pay-to-print book from https://covidtheplagueyear.wordpress.com/ . Follow Ian on Twitter @IanJSinclair.

New book published – ‘A Timeline Of The Plague Year: A Comprehensive Record of the UK Government’s Response to the Coronavirus Crisis’

I have a new book out. Co-authored with Rupert Read (and edited by Joanna Booth) ‘A Timeline Of The Plague Year: A Comprehensive Record of the UK Government’s Response to the Coronavirus Crisis’ is, we think, the most comprehensive record of the UK government’s response to covid.

Covering key aspects of the crisis, including the huge death toll, lockdowns, herd immunity policy, the Personal Protective Equipment, care homes, long covid, the test and trace system, border closures, Eat Out To Help Out and statements made by official government advisors and independent experts, we believe the timeline is a must read for anyone interested in understanding what happened and stopping it happening again

Free ebook and pay-to-print book available here: https://covidtheplagueyear.wordpress.com/

Why the government’s 2050 net zero carbon target is not fit for purpose

Why the government’s 2050 net zero carbon target is not fit for purpose
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
24 September 2020

2019 was an extraordinary year for UK activism on the climate crisis. Extinction Rebellion’s April 2019 rebellion, the school strikes and David Attenborough’s BBC documentary Climate Change: The Facts all helped to radically shift public opinion. June 2019 polling from YouGov found “the public is more concerned about the environment than ever before.”

“The sudden surge in concern is undoubtedly boosted by the publicity raised for the environmental cause by Extinction Rebellion… and activism from Greta Thunberg during the same period”, Matthew Smith, YouGov’s lead data journalist, explained.

More concretely, the House of Commons declared a climate emergency in May 2019. Introducing the motion, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said the recent climate activism had been “a massive and necessary wake-up call. Today we have the opportunity to say ‘We hear you’”.

The motion – one of the first in the world – showed the will of parliament but didn’t legally compel the government to act.

Then, in June 2019, following a recommendation from the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the Tory government committed the country to reducing all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. This move made the UK the first major economy in the world to pass a law to end its contribution to global warming by 2050.

Be in no doubt: parliament declaring a climate emergency and the government implementing a 2050 net zero target are huge wins for the UK environmental movement. However, speaking to the Morning Star in June 2019, Extinction Rebellion spokesperson Rupert Read called the CCC report which recommended the 2050 net zero target, “essentially dead on arrival”. And in September 2019 Ed Miliband said “2050 isn’t the radical position and now it’s seen as a conservative ‘small c’ position.”

So what are the problems with the 2050 net zero target?

First, the CCC’s 2050 target is derived from the October 2018 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on 1.5C – the maximum increase in temperature the 189 signatories of the 2016 UN Paris climate agreement pledged to limit global warming to.

However, as many climate experts have noted, the IPCC tends to be conservative in its predictions. “This is simply due to its structure”, Dr Stefan Rahmstorf from the Potsdam University noted in 2014. “The IPCC report will contain only things that a whole group of scientists have agreed upon on a kind of consensus process. This kind of agreement tends to be the lowest common denominator.” He noted that sea level rise in the last two decades “has overtaken the speed of the upper range of previous projections of sea level of the IPCC”. Writing in Business Green in May 2019, Will Dawson from Forum For The Future, explained the ramifications of this: “The CCC is therefore using scenarios that are likely far too optimistic. Emissions have to be cut much faster than they assumed to keep to 1.5C.”

Second, the CCC admits the 2050 target, “if replicated across the world”, would deliver only a greater than 50% chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C – reckless odds when you are talking about the fate of hundreds of millions of people.

Indeed, Kevin Anderson, Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, recently stated “The problem is the framing the CCC has for net zero is already far removed from what is needed to meet our Paris commitments.” Anderson has co-authored new research, published in the peer-reviewed Climate Policy journal, highlighting this disconnect. The Guardian summarised the article’s key finding: “The UK’s planned reductions in emissions, even if it hits net zero by 2050, would be two or three times greater than its fair share of emissions under the landmark 2015 Paris agreement.”

Finally, the CCC report on 2050 is based on various questionable political assumptions. For example, the CCC admits the target date is partly informed by what is “feasible” and “politically acceptable” – and what is “credibly deliverable alongside other government objectives”.

The CCC also has a very conservative view about the possibility of large-scale behavioural change, with Chris Stark, the CCC’s Chief Executive, stating the 2050 target “is technically possible with known technologies and without major changes to consumer behaviours.” The report recommends a hardly radical “20% reduction in consumption of beef, lamb, and dairy” (to be “replaced by an increase in consumption of pork, poultry, and plant-based products”), and predicts a 60% growth in demand for air travel by 2050. They advise the government to curtail this surge rather than cut demand overall.

In short, the 2050 target date is not simply following the science but is underpinned by conservative assumptions about the likelihood of change, and intangible and changeable factors like public opinion and government priorities.

Worryingly, like a Russian doll the serious problems with the 2050 target sit within an even more concerning national and international policy context.

In its June 2020 progress report the CCC confirmed the steps the UK government has taken “do not yet measure up to meet the size of the Net Zero challenge and we are not making adequate progress in preparing for climate change.” A new report from the Institute for Government is similarly critical of the government’s lack of action. “There is… little evidence that the government, and the politicians who waved the new target through with little debate, have confronted the enormous scale of the task ahead”, it notes.

Internationally, one of the most frightening facts I have ever read was effectively hidden in paragraph 13 of 19 of a page 27 report in the Guardian in July. “According to the Climate Action Tracker, only Morocco [out of 189 signatories] is acting consistently with the [2016] Paris agreement’s goals, with the global temperature rise on course to exceed 3C by the end of the century even if the current pledges are met.”

Meanwhile the mercury keeps rising. Earlier this month the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation warned the world could exceed the key threshold of 1.5C by 2024, climate experts Pep Canadell and Rob Jackson noted on The Conversation website.

According to a leaked January 2020 report from US multinational investment bank JP Morgan, the earth is on track for a temperature increase of 3.5C by 2100. “Although precise predictions are not possible, it is clear that the Earth is on an unsustainable trajectory”, the paper notes. “Something will have to change at some point if the human race is going to survive”.

We need, then, to massively increase the level of ambition and action of the UK’s response to the climate crisis. Professor Anderson argues the scale and timeframe of the transformation required needs to be larger and faster than Roosevelt’s New Deal or the Marshall Plan to reconstruct Europe after World War Two.

A positive step would be the adoption of an earlier net zero target date. Both Mark Maslin, Professor of Climatology at University College London, and Tim Jackson, Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey, back a net zero target of 2030. Under Corbyn’s leadership a Green New Deal with a target date of 2030 was approved at the 2019 annual Labour Party conference (though didn’t fully make it into the party’s December 2019 general election manifesto). Impressively, in July Ed Miliband, now the Shadow Business and Energy Secretary, confirmed he backs the 2030 target date.

The Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill recently tabled by Green MP Caroline Lucas and co-sponsored by a group of 11 cross-party MPs is another ray of light, encapsulating many of the concerns about the UK’s lack of ambition set out above. Co-drafted by Professor Anderson and Professor Jackson – and already backed by 52 other MPs – the Bill pushes for a strengthening of the UK’s response the climate crisis, ensuring UK emissions are consistent with limiting average global temperatures to 1.5C.

Asked at Davos in January what she would like to see happen in the next year and a half, climate activist Greta Thunberg gave a typically wise answer: “That we start listening to the science and that we actually start treating the crisis as the crisis it is” because “without treating this as a real crisis we cannot solve it.”

Ian Sinclair tweets @IanSinclair.

First we stop London City Airport, then Heathrow

First we stop London city Airport, then Heathrow
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
21 August 2019

On a muggy evening last month over 100 people attended a public meeting in a school hall in Wanstead, east London to hear about the proposed expansion of London City Airport (LCY).

Opened in 1987, the airport primarily services business travellers and the City, handling approximately 80,000 flights and 4.8 million passengers in 2018 (there is an annual cap of 111,000 flights).

The airport’s new masterplan proposes a maximum of 151,000 flights and 11 million passengers a year by 2035, and more flights early in the morning and late at night (night flights are not allowed). In addition the airport proposes dropping the weekend break that is currently in place for residents living under the airport’s flight paths – there are no flights from 12:30 on Saturdays to 12:30 on Sundays.

These would be “modest changes”, said Sean Bashforth, Director of Quod, LCY’s planning advisors since 2006. “We are committing to no noisier aircraft than fly at the moment.”

This attempt to placate opposition mirrors the airport’s slick public relations campaign, which is full of assurances about the expansion. “This is not going to be significant or uncontrolled growth”, Robert Sinclair, Chief Executive of LCY, told the BBC recently. “It will be done in a way that is very, very sustainable and responsible, and incremental.”

In contrast, John Stewart, Chair of HACAN East, a campaign group giving a voice to residents impacted by the airport, told the meeting “City Airport’s assurances in the past have not been good”.

“We were told it would be a small airport” when it was first built, he explained. “Then a series of planning applications went through and it got bigger and bigger, so the size of the airport now is a totally different beast to the one that was promised… I think that’s why there is mistrust and there is anxiety about the future”.

The proposed expansion would likely lead to nearly double the number of flights at the airport. “The density of the population around London City exceeds that of any other airport in the UK”, noted a briefing paper from HACAN East. Therefore, LCY “impacts more people than any UK airport bar Heathrow and Manchester”, with 74,000 people living within its “noise zone”, as defined by the EU.

“Major studies and reviews have concluded that aircraft noise is negatively affecting health and quality of life”, a 2016 report from the NGO Aviation Environment Federation (AEF) observed. “Exposure to aircraft noise can lead to short-term responses such as sleep disturbance, annoyance, and impairment of learning in children, and long-term exposure is associated with increased risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, heart attack, stroke and dementia.”

“There is evidence to suggest that aircraft noise may also lead to long-term mental health issues”, the AEF added.

Speaking at the meeting John Cryer, Labour MP for Leyton and Wanstead, said he has written to the government asking for an inquiry into the effects of air and noise pollution on communities living close to airports: “There has never been a government inquiry into this and I think it’s about time that we had that.”

In addition to noise levels, climate change is increasingly a concern for many people. In April the Guardian noted “Worldwide, aviation is one of the fastest growing sectors for greenhouse gas emissions, which increased by 76.1% between 1990 and 2012, according to the UN’s climate body.” Paying lip-service to the ongoing shift in public opinion on climate change engendered by Extinction Rebellion (XR) and the student climate strikes, Liam McKay, the Director of Corporate Affairs at LCY, told the meeting “Carbon is very important… The airport is committed to being net-zero by 2050”.

A young woman in the audience wasn’t impressed. “I am a Mum. I’m going to have two little girls who are going to be living in this country and this world in 70, 80, 100 years’ time. And you are talking about continuing to expand the ruination of our environment.” To applause she directly asked the representatives from LCA “Do you have children? Do you care about what happens to their future?”

And LCY’s impressive-sounding commitment to be “net-zero by 2050”? Turns out this refers to the airport estate itself – not the hundreds of thousands of flights in and out of the airport, of course.

There are indications the government is waking up to aviation’s key role in exacerbating the climate crisis. In its report recommending the adoption of a net-zero carbon target by 2050, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) raises the possibility of constraining aviation demand, noting they plan to write to the government about “its approach to aviation” later this year.

Similarly in May 2019 the BBC News website reported that a senior civil servant from the Department of Transport had said it may be necessary to review the UK’s expected aviation growth in light of the CCC’s report.

Interviewed by the Morning Star earlier this month, Dr Declan Finney, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Leeds, and Dr Giulio Mattioli, a research associate at TU-Dortmund in Germany, were blunter in their analysis: “expanding airports is not a neutral technical measure, it’s a political choice with important consequences. And it flies in the face of the Climate Emergency declaration passed by the House of Commons.”

Stewart, as readers may be aware, has form when it comes to opposing airport expansion, having led the campaign which stopped the proposed Third Runway at Heathrow in 2010 – one of the biggest and most important wins for grassroots activism in post-war UK history.

In his inspiring pamphlet Victory Against All The Odds: The Story Of How The Campaign To Stop A Third Runway At Heathrow Was Won, Stewart highlights the central role played by direct action activists – Plane Stupid – in this victory. “As well as dramatizing the issue, it put real pressure on the Government and frightened the construction industry in a way that conventional campaigning on its [own] could not have done”, Stewart explains about the direct action undertaken in the 1990s opposing road building, and why he was so happy when Plane Stupid started campaigning on Heathrow.

On LCY’s proposed expansion, it is possible Stewart will, once again, be joined in his campaign by direct action activists. In a newly published memo discussing XR’s strategy and tactics moving forward, Rupert Read, a member of the group’s political strategy team, discusses focussing on aviation. “Target London City Airport, rather than Heathrow”, he suggests, arguing the fight to stop LCY expansion is “more easily winnable” than stopping Heathrow expansion.

“Because London City is overwhelmingly used by business people and the rich, and offers little benefit to the local community” Read believes “it would be a perfect opportunity to land the message that, while we all have a responsibility to prevent ecocide together, it is big business, the super-rich and the City that bears the heaviest responsibility.”

“If we stopped London City Airport expansion, we could then move onto Heathrow afterwards”, he concludes.

Let’s hope, for the sake of the young woman with two children, local residents and, indeed, the entire planet, that Extinction Rebellion turns its attention to aviation, including the expansion of London City Airport, very soon.

Visit http://www.hacaneast.org.uk for more information about the campaign. Follow Ian on Twitter @IanJSinclair