Climate Protests & Alienating Working Classes–Lisa Nandy
By Paul Homewood
h/t Robin Guenier
In a number of ways, a quite remarkable article by Guardian standards, not least some of the comments!!
Lisa Nandy is Labour MP for Wigan, and was also Shadow Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change between 2015 and 2016:
Next week thousands of Extinction Rebellion protesters will descend on Westminster, the latest example of direct action in a year when committed women, men and children across the world have pushed climate change to the top of the global agenda, where it belongs. Although London will again be the focal point, the movement mustn’t overlook the committed activists in places such as Bolton, Wigan, and Sunderland who are also spreading the message across the country. For the climate movement to succeed we have to build a broad coalition that covers our nation’s towns as well as our cities, and reaches out across class divides.
Calls for individual action can’t just be modelled on the lifestyles of middle-class city dwellers. Telling people to get out of their cars can’t be the solution in those parts of the country where decades of chronic underinvestment have left us without public transport. In towns such as Wigan, jobs have disappeared as investment flowed into cities, creating lengthy commutes on public transport for most working-age people. Trains are overcrowded, deeply unreliable and ceased to function entirely for a large part of last year, while the buses are few and far between, and often more expensive than getting a taxi. Demanding people abandon their cars isn’t realistic if the alternative is a round trip of 42 miles a day on foot or by bike, just to get to work. Campaigns to tackle climate change need to link up with campaigns for better transport and fairer funding for it, particularly for buses.
Rooting calls for action in the reality of people’s lives is essential if the battle against climate change is not to become a battle against each other. It is galling to be lectured on not eating meat when you and your family are struggling to get by and relying on help from friends and local food banks. It isn’t fair to ask families to forfeit the one foreign flight they have saved for all year, while we have global corporations whose business models rely on frequent air travel and governments that refuse to tax them for it.
Climate activists must also rethink their language. Phrases such as “dirty coal” are profoundly condescending to communities in which generation after generation did dangerous, backbreaking work down the mines to build the country’s wealth and influence at great cost to themselves; pneumoconiosis victims are still fighting for justice decades after the mines closed. We are owed new clean energy jobs, and the infrastructure to create them. In Wigan and Barnsley, the desire for good jobs that provide a sense of purpose is palpable. Positive movements for change, such as the One Million Climate Jobs trade union campaign, provide an antidote to the stark warnings about climate scenarios that often leave people feeling powerless to act.
We must not let the climate crisis become a further source of division in Britain. The last Labour government’s decision to load the cost of clean energy subsidies on to energy bills left the poorest people paying six times as much of their disposable income on energy bills as their wealthy counterparts. If climate change becomes a major cause of migration it may prove fertile ground for the far right looking to exploit disillusion in towns that have experienced rapid, relative decline.
Instead, let’s seize this as an opportunity to rebuild our towns so they can play a major and significant part in our national story once again. Fighting for a better environment was always part of socialist tradition, as working-class people living among the smoke and soot of industry fought for parks, protection of the countryside, wildlife conservation, clean air and fresh water.
The first Bolton Extinction Rebellion meeting saw people queueing out of the door on a hot summer evening, and I get more letters about the environment from my constituents than any other single issue. Building an environmentally sustainable future will require the talent, intellect and hard work of the whole of our society – so it’s time for the climate movement to break out of the cities to make itself a movement for the many, not just the few.
There is the compulsory plug for XR, bit what Nandy is really admitting is that climate policies have been harmful for her natural working class constituents, most of whom don’t give a fig for climate change.
She admits that XR activism is modelled on the lifestyles of middle-class city dwellers. And that telling people to get out of their cars won’t go down well with most ordinary people.
She tries to blame the latter on decades of chronic underinvestment have left us without public transport, disappearing jobs and length commutes. This is simply left wing drivel. In towns up and down the country like Wigan, ordinary people have been moving out of the city centres for decades, preferring to live in more amenable surroundings in the suburbs. In addition, jobs have tended to migrate out of city centres and into purpose built industrial estates. As a result, cars have become of vital importance for commuters.
In fact I find the suggestion that people would be much better of without cars, if only public transport was better, highly patronising.
She also admits that lecturing people not to eat meat and not fly abroad, though once again she wraps both up in irrelevant nonsense about food banks and global corporations.
Above all she recognises that renewable subsidies are in effect a highly retrogressive tax:
The last Labour government’s decision to load the cost of clean energy subsidies on to energy bills left the poorest people paying six times as much of their disposable income on energy bills as their wealthy counterparts
But she fails to ask the obvious question, how else can they be paid? The only other logical alternative is to load them onto public spending, but that what about all the “schools and hospitals” that could have been funded instead? The obvious conclusion is that those green subsidies should never have been paid out in the first place.
As for those “new clean energy jobs”, perhaps she should be more concerned at the loss of real jobs because of high energy costs.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
“Trains are overcrowded, deeply unreliable and ceased to function entirely for a large part of last year, while the buses are few and far between, and often more expensive than getting a taxi.” trains ceased to function for a LARGE part of last year? I don’t think so. Buses are OFTEN more expensive than taxis? What planet is she on?
It’s certainly one in the outer reaches of our galaxy since it bears no resemblance to the one we all live on. To think people in Wigan actually voted for a woman writing this sort of tripe.
The trains did cease to function on a number of occasions last year in the region she’s on about. That was due to the unions striking frequently in protest at guardless services, which is not their remit, in my opinion. There was a lot of disruption caused by the introduction of new engine units ie upgrading the rolling stock, for which there was only a limited training programme for the drivers, this being unavoidable due to the logistics of not many instructors being available in those early days of new stock. Further complications arose due to a less than efficient new timetable introduction. Further, matters weren’t helped by the Manchester mayor, Andy ‘listen to me, listen to me’ Burnham denigrating Northern Rail at every opportunity, calling for them to be stripped of their franchise, which, again im my opinion, encouraged the strikers. This Nandy woman is a semi local MP and is a favourite of Granada Reports, so we see her a lot on news items, she exaggerates wildly and is less than truthful with her statements, her interpretations of cause and effect bear little resemblance to reality She is, to be fair, pure Labour. Yet another delusional female politico.
And one of the most recent train problems was caused by the partial grid failure caused by too much unreliable generation that made all the Thameslink trains shut down.
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.press.
I just do not recognise the “climate emergency” that XR and Greta and most councils up and down UK have declared. I am fairly well off financially, old and not quite as healthy as I once was, so I definitely have degraded!
I see no environmental degradation in the countryside, in fact I think it has got better in the past 50 years with much cleaner air, rivers etc. we don’t burn stubble and straw anymore and that is a good thing, maybe?
However degradation can easily be found in our large normally the northern cities, I often comment ” do people really live in conditions like this in UK, in the 21st C ?” and the answer is “they do”.
Politicians feel they have to climb on any passing bandwagon, but my view is they will get a surprise!
John, wait till they find out how all these unnecessary measures, and ones we haven’t yet seen, are going to affect their lives and how much it is going to cost them and then the CC’s will see how much support they really have. It’ll be a shock when their speeches are not greeted with universal rapture, like our esteemed Chancellor experienced at the party conference. I don’t often laugh out loud when witnessing somebody’s pain but the look on his face was a tonic that exercised my facial muscles. Thank you Savid.
A typical example is air pollution – you wouldn’t know it from either the Mad Greens or our politicians, but the levels of typical pollutants are now 30% of what they were in 1970. To put it the other way around, pollution is less than a third of what it was. Yet apparently this level is killing tens of thousands. So where were the hundreds of thousands being killed not that long ago?
Phoenix, Q: “Yet apparently this level is killing tens of thousands. So where were the hundreds of thousands being killed not that long ago?”
A: Awkwardly and somewhat inconveniently their life expectancy was growing ever longer.
😉
In the 1950’s, I used to regularly climb Alexandra Palace to play in the funfare and paddle boats as a child. Looking out to central London, I might if I was lucky enough, spy the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral though most of the time it was lost in a shroud of smokey air. Images abound of looking along London River from one bridge, and see the next half hidden in haze. Then there were the days when my Father would wear a dampened handkerchief around his face (looking like a Cowboy ‘bandit’) before stepping out of the house to be consumed in the smog having taken just three paces, while Mother shut the door and stuffed damp, rolled up newspaper in the gaps around the door, and the sash windows. London’s river held no fish, it was too polluted.
Compare to today. The view is clear, the buildings stand out sharp. Smog is a thing of the past, and there are fish in the river. People cycle and jog – yet we are bombarded with tales of pollution and the need for ULEZ. It’s not the air that needs cleansing, it’s the money grabbing politicians and their ever restricting policies on the public at large. We are cash cows being milked beyond belief.
It’s good to see a politician realized energy price increases impact the poor and working class more severely that urban middle class but rural residents also use 3x more energy per capita than urban residents in a place like NYC. But what she fails to realized in lower density population cities like Phoenix, Arizona public light rail usage at non peak times is so low the total energy use per ride mile makes the system less efficient than driving Cars.
The Telegraph this mng reports the following retort from Vlad Putin aimed at Greta.”I don’t share the common excitement about Greta’s speech in NY.
No one has explained to her that the modern world is complex and diverse.
People in Africa and some Asian countries want to live at the same wealth level as in Sweden. Go and explain to developing countries why they should continue living in poverty”.
I don’t know if this is true or not but if it is then Vlad has gone up in my estimation. He is the first world leader not to grovel and fawn at Greta’s feet.
Even I had to grudgingly admit Vlad’s comments were spot on.
So what are the rest of us doing about it? I echo a comment on WUWT this morning. We are busy arguing the science to people the overwhelming number of whom do not have the intellectual capacity to understand or to sit still while we explain why “degrees Celsius” is not the same as “Celsius degrees” (something that allegedly intelligent journalists get wrong!) or why temperature numbers are a useful metric to tell us whether it is time to put the central heating on but in reality tell us laymen very little about actual heat.
And Putin cuts through all this undergrowth with the very simple, “who are we to tell the poor of Africa and Asia that they have no right to the living standards — and just as importantly the political freedoms — that we have?”
THAT is the battle that needs to be fought!
Oddly enough i was saying a similar thing to my daughter last night about gormless Harry and his speech about Africa. Telling people, much, much poorer than you that wanting to be richer was “greedy” is so arrogant and so self-interested that it is appalling. A
“Vlad has gone up in my estimation. He is the first world leader not to grovel and fawn at Greta’s feet.”
No he’s not.
What about Trump?
The real problem, Paul, is that we ( I mean readers of your blog) are talking about this article as if it was somehow a move in the right direction. That is a sign of total failure. This article assumes we are all convinced in the ’emergency’ and are just debating about the fairest way of applying the medicine.
What I find completely alarming is that all the UK’s political parties are running with the same agenda, just with slightly different nuances. No one is listening , they have all turned a deaf ear to dissent.
As well as virtue signalling and worries of losing votes , the real reason politicians of all hues are taking this approach is because they see ‘carbon taxes’ as the only way to balance the nations books. Its about screwing the populous who don’t shout ‘rape’, but welcome it with a religious zealotry.
The western world is truely sick.
“…committed women, men and children across the world have pushed climate change to the top of the global agenda, where it belongs.”
It doesn’t belong on the agenda at all you deluded fool.
And the word should be sectioned rather than committed. Preferably by surgeons….
Yes definitely, it all seems to be a scam of the highest order. And I am not liking the cold side of it
In contrast to the UN survey which put it at the bottom of the list of the concerns of normal people.
Unfortunately we cannot ‘vote with our feet’ as all the parties seem wedded to the green ideology. But in Holland they ave a different method…
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/10/01/dutch-farmers-in-mass-protest-against-green-fascism/
“She also admits lecturing people not to eat meat and not fly abroad”
The latest lunacy, from some deranged supporter at one of AOC’s press conferences, is “We have to start EATING BABIES!” No, I’m not making that up:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1179908480322289664
That wasn’t there when I started to post!
Ye – it’s WordPress playing silly buggers again! I posted it at 13:58 but it wasn’t visible even a couple of minutes ago, not until I refreshed the page…
Clearly a joke to send up AOC but the woman was to deadpan and the audience and most viewers didn’t get the irony..!!
*too
Someone’s been reading Jonathan Swift again…
From Notrickszone: We need to eat the babies, bomb Russia……
There is a serious point to this woman’s obvious mental illness – it has been caused/fed by the MSM and the eco-fanatics spreading lies for political ends.
There is no doubt this climate hysteria is already driving people to depression and suicide (one case left an orphan that survived the parents’ suicide pact and that was in 2010 – the tidal wave of deranged rhetoric has exploded since then).
The young are especially vulnerable, and the overwhelming sense of despair from being brainwashed into believing that there is ‘no future’ is driving children in the UK and all over the world into misery, depression, suicide, and drug use.
“driving children in the UK and all over the world into misery, depression, suicide, and drug use”
Just like “The Doomsday Clock” in the 1950s.
Two minutes to midnight — and then: KABOOM!!
How we suffered, living under the Shadow of the H-Bomb.
Damn you Truman, damn you Stalin, you robbed us of our childhood.
Not.
There’s a big difference.
We were aware of the issue of nuclear warfare, some more than others, and lots protested, but ATEOTD we got on with our lives as happily as various economic/industrial woes allowed.
But now with the 24hr saturation of the BBC et al’s climate obsession, and with sophisticated propaganda techniques, a lot of people are being made seriously miserable and frightened, driven to mental illness and nihilistic pursuits.
“ATEOTD we got on with our lives as happily as various economic/industrial woes allowed.” refers largely to adults.
We children (can’t speak for teenagers or adults) I were aware of the A and H bomb in abstract, but more aware of WW2. We didn’t shoot down Communist planes but Germans. (And we didn’t bomb cities, just dog fights in our Spitfires.)
But even in the decades following the late 40s early 50s, I seldom came across anyone whose behaviour (other than that of protesting for CND) was informed by an awareness of possible Nuclear annihilation.
Perhaps we needed a British “Duck and Cover” to put us in the correct frame of mind – miserable and frightened.
“It’s being so cheerful as keeps me going”.
I’m not sure what your point is Fred.
Anyway, these should be compulsory watching for all kids:
https://www.prageru.com/video/ep-102-climate-change-is-not-an-existential-threat/
Merely that the Doomsday scenario of AGW is “driving children in the UK … into misery, depression, suicide, and drug use”, whereas the Doomsday scenario of Nuclear Annihilation of the late 40s early 50s (my schooldays’ childhood) didn’t.
The Americanis[z?]ation of childhood – misery and fear?
From the beginning, it has always only and ever been a humanity-hating movement. ‘The young’ have to wake up, smell the coffee and fight it.
Lisa Nandy doesn’t mention how those who lose their jobs because their employers can’t pay crippling energy costs imposed by climate policies feel about the matter.
Politicians of all persuasions have been very adept at shunting the blame onto the electricity suppliers who have been moderately content to keep quiet because it doesn’t do their bottom line any harm.
Employers pay up or go bust … or both. Trying to do anything about it when all around you are declaring a climate emergency (the 2010s equivalent of the nuclear free zone) and only three MPs voted against the Climate Change Bill in the first place would be futile.
I am taking this simple fact sheet around to small businesses, shopkeepers etc having briefly quizzed them about what their perception is of climate change. They are generally pleased to accept it. Everybody needs to do the same – edit it or add other facts to it:
GLOBAL WARMING – THE FACTS
Climate is the most complex, non-linear, chaotic system known to man and therefore cannot be predicted. To ignore chaos is fraud.
Carbon dioxide is a tasteless, odourless, colourless, non-toxic gas essential for all life on Earth.
A typical sample of dry air consists of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and the remainder consisting mainly of the inert gas, argon. Carbon dioxide is at 0.04% of the atmosphere. Methane is at 0.000175%.
96% of carbon dioxide comes from natural sources – the remaining 4% from man`s activities.
The UK produces 2% of the latter which equates to just 0.08% of the total. Cars in the UK account for about 15% of the latter which equates to just 0.012% of the world total.
In the last century the world`s average temperature apparently increased by just 0.6 degrees C
The largest “greenhouse” gas by far is water vapour at around 96% of all “greenhouse” gases.
Other more significant factors affecting the climate include cosmic rays, solar magnetic cycles, sunspot cycles, changes in the earth`s orbit around the sun, volcanic activity, changes in land use (land clearance) to name but a few.
Rising temperatures historically precede increases in CO2 not vice versa.
To infer that CO2 produced by man is the major factor in climate change is fraud. The climate has and always will change naturally, affected by factors as indicated above.
Changes in the amount of CO2 did not cause the Roman Warm Period, the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age. Man wasn`t around in sufficient numbers in those days to have any effect.
The rate of change in sea levels has not changed in at least the last hundred years.
Summary of the Oregon Petition signed by nearly 18,000 scientists and interested parties following the Kyoto agreement:-
“There is no convincing evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases, is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth`s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth`s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural and animal environments of the Earth”.
The Anthropegenic (manmade) global warming enthusiasts are trying to shut down genuine scientific research and debate on climate change. This is anathema to science whose very essence is to research and challenge all theories that are put forward.
The science is not settled as is claimed. See https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com for in-depth analysis of various claims.
I’ve still yet to see climate change, same in the US-
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/climate-information/extreme-events/us-tornado-climatology/trends
“A new statement from NOAA.
NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dyamics Laboratory (GFDL): “Leaders in Climate Model Development and Research.” See their website.
For about a decade (or even longer), GFDL has annually updated their statement on hurricanes and climate change. This excerpt from their 15 August 2019 update lists some of their negative findings about current hurricane activity.
“We find that, after adjusting for such an estimated number of missing storms, there remains just a small nominally positive upward trend in tropical storm occurrence from 1878-2006. Statistical tests indicate that this trend is not significantly distinguishable from zero. In addition, Landsea et al. (2010) note that the rising trend in Atlantic tropical storm counts is almost entirely due to increases in short-duration (<2 day) storms alone. Such short-lived storms were particularly likely to have been overlooked in the earlier parts of the record, as they would have had less opportunity for chance encounters with ship traffic. …
“The evidence for an upward trend is even weaker if we look at U.S. landfalling hurricanes, which even show a slight negative trend beginning from 1900 or from the late 1800s. …
“While major hurricanes show more evidence of a rising trend from the late 1800s, the major hurricane data are considered even less reliable than the other two records in the early parts of the record. …
“In short, the historical Atlantic hurricane frequency record does not provide compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming-induced long-term increase.“
Reblogged this on Zero to Hero Perfectlyfadeddelusions.
I’m sorry Paul, but this is simply unacceptable ignorance:
“She also admits that lecturing people not to eat meat and not fly abroad, though once again she wraps both up in irrelevant nonsense about food banks and global corporations”.
Food banks are a reality – and for many a significant factor in their daily lives which, as Lisa is stating, shape their perspective on the more abstract problems of the world such as climate change. So please, do not dismiss such factors as irrelevant.
I subscribe to this blog for its insight into climate related topics. Unfortunately, as a life long sceptic on AGW I have had to learn to how to filter out the unsavoury drivel of the alt-right, conspiracy wankers, and the many other rather mercenary types who happen to share my views.
Please do not lower this hugely important blog to being just another platform of a ranting conservative fool.
I think we’re saying the same thing!
My point is that ordinary people have more things to worry about than climate change, whether that’s food banks, earning a living, crime, bringing up a family, etc etc etc.
“I get more letters about the environment from my constituents than any other single issue. ”
Really ?
Maybe the letters are orchestrated
Or maybe real constituents have given up on her and Labour
.. re the fails of grooming gang policing, and getting Brexit implemented
jackass plays politics and in whatever they do – ruin people’s prospects and makes people’s lives a vastly over taxed misery.
Must be a Bolshevik, must be a nutter.
It’s emotive political bullshit because they want the votes of the people they will be treading on next year.