At the beginning of the General Election campaign, I wondered whether the protagonists would engage with the big global issues that face us. I’ve been reminded of this by Anatol Lieven’s recent article in the Guardian, “I’ve studied geopolitics all my life: climate breakdown is a bigger threat than China and Russia”.
He opens with a good account of the scale of the problem of global warming. The crux of his argument is near the end:
At present, the mainstream left in Europe and North America appears to believe that it is possible to reshape economies to limit carbon emissions and to increase spending on health and social welfare and to radically increase military spending to confront Russia in Ukraine and elsewhere.
It isn’t possible. The money simply isn’t there. The result of pursuing all three goals simultaneously would be to fail at all of them; as demonstrated by the latest political developments in France and Germany, where a populist backlash is undermining support for Ukraine and climate action.
A critical step in the struggle to limit the climate crisis therefore has to be the pursuit of detente with Russia and China…
What he says raises important questions.
Firstly, in a modern economy, is money ever simply “not there”? To my mind, money is a medium through which real resources are allocated. The way money is created and by whom is itself a big issue – bigger than I can usefully discuss here.
Secondly, one of the takeaways from my limited reading of 20th Century history is that the Second World War might have been avoided if we had stood up to Hitler earlier. The received wisdom seems to be that Putin isn’t someone we could do business with because he doesn’t stick to agreements, so echoing Hitler’s behaviour. Can the detente with Russia that Lieven advocates be radically different from the appeasement of the 1930s?
What would be the consequences for the climate if a show of Western weakness over Ukraine led eventually to a full-scale war engulfing most of Europe?
Lastly, “The result of pursuing all three goals simultaneously would be to fail at all of them…” Conversely, it may be that the three goals can’t be separated. Can a regime that fails to look after its own people provide the leadership needed to tackle climate change effectively? Can adequate progress be made on climate change while Putin continues on the rampage?
Liberal Democrats now aspire to be the conscience of the Labour Party. We’re probably better than most parties at responding to the local and special needs that are big issues for many individuals and households. I hope our 72 MPs can help keep Parliament and the government also focused on the big global and national issues that we avoid at our peril.
* John Medway has been a Liberal Democrat member since the merger in 1988 and was an SDP councillor before that. He has an active interest in the economics of sustainability and is on the Executive of the Liberal Democrat Social Democrat Group.
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7 Comments
“Liberal Democrats now aspire to be the conscience of the Labour Party.””
Personally I aspire to the Liberal Democrats replacing the Conservative Party as the official opposition and then getting back into government so we can effect Liberal Democratic policies.
Saying that the Lib Dems are essentially the conscience of the Labour Party – bluntly – accepts the two parties are essentially the same; and that one of the two parties accepts that power requires compromises, while the other does not and is content to remain a pressure group.
Anyone who merely aspires to be the conscience of the Labour Party should join that party since they will have a much better chance of getting the Labour party to do what they want it to do.
The link to Lieven’s article got missed out – sorry about that. Here’s the link: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/19/russia-china-global-security-climate-breakdown
@Tristan Ward – fair comment – on reflection I should have missed out that sentence. It distracts from the main thrust of what I wrote.
Thanks John. I totally agree that the challenges you have identified are huge, and I also agree that there is a real risk that by trying to do too much there may well be failure at all of them.
In order of priority I would put them:
1 getting to net zero
2 facing down Putin an as you say, related to 1)
3 maintaining/increasing spending on social welfare/health
All I will say about money “not being there” is that pretty well every time governments have attempted to create money it has ended in tears. The most dangerous words in finance, so they say, are “it will be different this time”.
Of course a state can create more money to do necessary things, such a fighting a war. But it alarms our oligarchic masters and they act out and ask their political operators to do even more.
As regards stability around Crimea, this would lead to gas extraction and pushing that gas into the European gas grid, thus putting net zero at risk. If Ukraine extract it they will argue they need it for reconstruction, if Putin gets it he will sell it, although he has all the Rupees he needs at present. So bringing the Russo-Ukranian war to a close has to be both a peace project and a green project.
A good article. One thing that I think is missing from it is an acknowledgement that climate change and dealing with Russia/China are worldwide issues that are too big for the UK to tackle alone. If we completely hit net zero tomorrow, it would make almost no difference to climate change unless we can persuade other countries to reduce their emissions too. And similarly we don’t have the military capability to stand up to either Russia or China – or even to do much to help Ukraine – if we are acting alone. So these problems require us not only to everything we can but also to exert maximum diplomacy to work with other like-minded countries.
I do think that climate change and the threat to democracy from authoritarian countries are the two most pressing issues facing us on a Worldwide scale, and we do need to prioritise both of them. That does though raise tricky questions about what resources we have at our disposal (or if you prefer to think in monetary terms, how much money there is).
Oh and we probably can’t sensibly make deals with Putin simply because his regime is has proven on numerous occasions that it will do whatever it can to undermine democratic nations, does not care for any ethical standards, and is very unlikely to stick to either the letter or the spirit of any deal it signs.
”@Simon R
“ If we completely hit net zero tomorrow, it would make almost no difference to climate change unless we can persuade other countries to reduce their emissions too”
That may be true and hence we have to ask ourselves: do we want to survive climate change as a civil society?
That is probably more important than worrying about whether or not the rest of the world gets on board in time to prevent the worst excesses of the coming storm…
@Tristan Ward and @Peter Chambers – I think you’re saying that money creation is a subject on which we should tread very carefully and I agree with you. I thought that even before Liz Truss became Prime Minister.
@Peter Chambers – I’ve never looked at the climate impact of the Ukraine war and its likely aftermath. That’s an interesting and worrying point you’ve made.
@Simon R and @Roland – I didn’t go into the issue of other countries’ emissions, or endeavours shared with other countries. This was partly to keep my piece brief. But these are huge issues nevertheles, as you rightly imply.
On the threats to democracy, I think these come both from existing dictatorships and from within countries such as the UK and the USA where plutocracy seems to be on the rise. I see climate change possibly accelerating a collapse both of democracy and of civilisation more generally. But those are just my dubiously-informed hunches. My main aim in the article was to make sure the big issues are on our agenda.
Thank you all for your contributions to the discussion.