Election year climate considerations
The choices are simple in the US, more complicated in other countries
A newsletter I read regularly apologizes every time it turns to foreign policy - apparently click-counts drop when Americans are asked to think about the rest of the world.
That ship has sailed, as far as I’m concerned, and recent events have made me realize that my own global perspective has been limited (I knew nothing about Ukraine, or Myanmar). But climate change isn’t limited at all. I thought it would be useful to look at a few 2024 elections that will affect our common future.
While I write here about climate policy, war and global warming are closely related. What keeps coming to mind is the men I met at a dinner at the Four Seasons in New York soon after 9/11. It was a gathering of people who’d contributed to a newsletter that was mostly about investment, but they’d asked me to write an article about home ecology and that got me on the invitation list.
I arrived straight from the train and was exhausted. “Just enjoy the food and keep your head down,” I told myself. But the discussion took on a color that startled and then alarmed me. The men around the table saw the 9/11 attack and the war to come as a business opportunity, at home and abroad. I think of that now, as we devote vast sums to war. There are many who benefit from wars being prolonged, and simply predicted. As we listen to politicians and votes we need to consider the military-industrial-congressional complex that President Eisenhower first described.
People are dying, cities are being destroyed, land is being devastated and air polluted, and the opportunity cost is huge: imagine if all that money could be devoted to climate mitigation and adaptation, to trains and bus systems, to more efficient heating and cooling, to renewable energy transmission lines and to water lines that don’t lose as much water as they deliver.
Nonetheless, as we were reminded this week, the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landing in Normandy, some wars must be fought. My Ukraine flags are still flying, and I might just put out the stars and stripes on the 4th of July.
Anyhow, first up is the UK election on July 4th (an amusing date to choose, as Prime Minister Sunak must know). Labour is expected to win big, ending a long and turbulent period of Conservative governance. In general, Labour is considered more concerned about environmental issues, but in contrast to the US, the Conservative Party has also made climate mitigation central to their policies. (Climate denial and the pro-fossil-fuels politics of the US right-wing doesn’t get much play elsewhere.) But it’s complicated when cost of living and the struggling health service are the big issues. Here’s a section from the Friends of the Earth green policies analysis:
4. Reduce carbon emissions from transport
Conservative Party. The Conservative government’s flagship policy on transport emissions was the 2021 Transport Decarbonisation Plan. Analysis by academics revealed that 72% of the potential ambition set out in the plan has since been lost in the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan. Since then, Rishi Sunak delayed the target date for the cessation of sales of new petrol and diesel cars, although targets on manufacturers to increase sales of electric vehicles remain. Abysmal. 2/10
Labour Party. Labour has given us its plans for buses, which are key to reducing car miles and all the environmental and climate harms they cause, but what we haven't seen is the financial resource that will be made available. Labour’s policy for the railways is a good start but doesn’t centre on climate imperatives, and it isn’t developed enough yet to assess how well it would contribute to the 20% modal shift to sustainable transport that’s needed. Would Keir Starmer's Labour introduce a frequent flyer levy? And what's on offer for the most environmentally friendly forms of transport of all: walking and cycling? We need more. 6/10
Liberal Democrats. One of the weaker areas of Lib Dem policy from what we can tell, and one with lots of room for improvement. Overall, it doesn’t get to the heart of the problem and acknowledge the need to reduce car use. Without that, the party’s policies on rail electrification and new bus routes are welcome but ultimately window dressing. 5/10
Green Party. The Green Party has a strong package of transport policies, centred around the important truth that we need to reduce the number of trips made by the most polluting forms of transport: cars and planes. Again, we need more specific commitments, eg on bus franchising and the level of funding for public transport, so let’s see if the manifesto can deliver it. 7/10
Everyone seems to be complaining about the cost of Britain’s huge, incomplete rail projects. (Why is France so much better at trains?) Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh asks about “the point of a ‘binding’ net zero law in a nation that contributes 1 per cent of global emissions.” Then there is the question, relevant to every country, policy maker, and citizen: where are we going to find the money?
Dr Anne Owen, a carbon footprint expert at the University of Leeds … said the government’s levies on home energy bills to raise money for net zero policies showed the problem of ignoring the great carbon divide: “You could not pick a worse product to place a carbon tax or levy on.”
Owen’s research shows that the lowest-income households spend 10% of their income on heating and powering their homes, while the highest spend less than 1.5%. So the increase in prices hits the poor disproportionately, despite their much lower carbon footprints.
“Instead, the levies could be put on air travel – then you would end up getting the richest in society paying far more,” she said. “Or you could just put it on income tax, which is already designed to work with people’s levels of income.” The latter option would cut energy bills for 65% of households.
Read the whole article in The Guardian.
Around the world
The surprise election results in India may change the direction of negotiations on water, as this article in Dialogue Earth explains. We have a lot of water-related negotiation going on in the western US, too, and the relations between the 7 US states is also complicated. Our federal system creates real challenges when it comes to issues of this kind - cooperation does not seem to be rewarded.
Mexico may be the most interesting case this year: a woman becoming head of state as the protegee of a man, rather than as wife or widow or daughter. And the woman in question, Claudia Scheinbaum, is a scientist, whose career includes a time as a member of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (Background here from Reuters: “Mexico's Sheinbaum: from activist to climate scientist to presidential frontrunner.”) Yet there’s no prospect that her leadership will make Mexico a leader in renewable energy. Some, including Quico Toro, who has been keeping me alert to issues in Latin America, see her election as a bad sign indeed for democracy in Mexico.
When we turn to Asia, I remember a taxi ride in China early in 2001. We were chatting to the taxi driver about American presidents and my son asked, “When do you hold your elections?” He then realized his gaff. The Chinese do have elections of a sort, but at the national level there is never a competition, no pretense of democracy as we see in Russia and some other countries.
Last year’s election in Thailand was seen as hopeful, but things aren’t going well. Climate is one of the issues: “Worse is the government’s failure to follow through on its promise of major debt relief for many small and medium-sized Thai companies as well as Thai farmers, who have been hit hard by climate change and fluctuating prices for their crops.” Read more.
And in a few days, an election takes place across a region that encompasses 15% of the global economy, roughly equivalent to the United States. Yet even in EU countries it doesn’t get much attention. My Portugal-based pal Alex Marshall explains:
The EU sets the floor, walls and ceiling for much of the daily life of EU members, including of course in Portugal, down to the coins in pockets. It is so essential that, like the air we breathe, it’s easy to forget about it. It makes policies and spends on trade, health, immigration, infrastructure and more. Most of the important stuff, basically. It’s the reason you can travel freely across borders and even more importantly, it’s the reason Portugal is no longer fearing Spain might attack it.
There are many more examples - this is a big year for elections - but we can probably agree that the election that takes place in the US in November, and its aftermath, is going to be the most consequential for the future of the planet. How to make a difference in that election is the question that keeps me up at night, and spurs me to finish The Great Good Place, because I do think third places have a crucial role to play in solving political polarization as well as climate change.
