THE CARBON WAR

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The Winning of The Carbon War
money would be used would rest solely with the government, with the Bank
of England simply acting as a bank. Governor Mark Carney has already said
it is technically and legally possible for the BoE to act in this way.
That doesn’t sound too scarily unfeasible, does it?
Not to the Financial Times’s Alphaville column. “Corbyn’s ‘People’s
QE’ could actually be a decent idea,” it concludes. “We don’t understand the
negativity.”
And there is a lot of that negativity. Predictably, it extends across the full
spectrum of rightist political thinking. Somewhat less predictably, it spans
members of Corbyn’s own Labour party, including fellow contenders for the
leadership. Corbyn and his exploding support base would say that includes
rightist political thinking, of course.
I make my way to my next appointment, in the West End of London,
reflecting on the politics at work here. I have always said that climate change in
the UK is not a party-political issue. It looks as though I might have to modify
that opinion. I know generalisations are dangerous when it comes to politics.
But it is beginning to look, in the UK, as though the political left is lining up
to defend what I would have to say are the correct policies for our times. The
political right – on the whole, at the collective level – is lining up to defend,
well – what other way can I put it, really – the indefensible.
I suspect Pope Francis might agree with that thought, given the tenor of
his encyclical.
I say this not as a card-carrying member of the political left, or as a
Catholic. I say it as a citizen of the world desperate for humankind to avoid
the fate that unconstrained global warming holds for us. I am convinced that
Pope Francis is right that we will need not just to count emissions and cut
them, but refashion society’s operating manual to address the root causes for
our headlong rush to self-destruction.
Tea with a senior executive who must remain nameless from a major resource
company that must also remain nameless. He is guilt stricken, and in a swank
London hotel he tells me why.
His story is not surprising to me. The only thing that surprises me – still,
after all I have experienced this past quarter century – is that I don’t come
across more people like him.
The climate clock ticks on, louder than ever as a result of reports these
last few weeks. The Earth is now halfway to the UN’s intended global warming