Humanity faces an existential crisis – Labour must join the fightback

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/12/existential-crisis-environmental-catastrophy-alexandria-ocasio-cortez

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Here’s the bad news. We are quite in a lot of trouble. A new study by the Institute for Public Policy Research suggests that a series of crises – from global warming to soil infertility – are set to hit us at the same time. The consequences could include massive destabilisation, not just in individual countries but on a global level. From the damage inflicted on human health, to a possible economic meltdown caused by mass insurance claims if the US is ravaged by floods and forest fires, we are not remotely prepared.

Consider just one scenario. According to Laurie Laybourn-Langton, the lead author of the report, climate crisis could lead to 10 times more refugees from the Middle East than the 12 million who fled during the past few years of upheaval and turmoil. The far right skilfully manipulated and inflamed backlash over this last refugee crisis: that’s partly why Donald Trump is now president of the US, why the far right are in coalition governments in Italy and Austria, and why Viktor Orbán’s Hungarian regime has been able to consolidate its authoritarian rule. What will happen when refugees come in far greater numbers? A twisted irony beckons: that extremists in the Trump administration, aptly labelled climate change “arsonists” by writer Naomi Klein, will make mass forced migration more likely because of their environment-wrecking policies, and then reap perverse political benefits by whipping up hatred against the resulting tide of human misery.

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But there is hope. That’s important to state, because the danger with exclusively focusing on apocalyptic climate change scenarios is that much anxiety is caused, but nothing else: it is demobilising, demotivating, because it seems to present an insurmountable challenge. It is too late to stop many of the adverse consequences of overlapping environmental crises, but not too late to stop catastrophe. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s game-changing political ascent has transformed the conversation on climate change in the US: the Democratic establishment has been forced to embrace her Green New Deal agenda, such as committing to zero carbon emissions, repairing and upgrading national infrastructure, making all buildings energy efficient, and investing in affordable public transportation and high-speed rail.

The magic of the Green New Deal is it argues that confronting the environmental crises cannot be separated from social and economic justice: its other proposals include guaranteeing every American a job with decent wages and conditions, as well as high-quality healthcare, affordable housing and economic security. This is critical. Climate change, to many, seems important in the abstract, but too technical, and seemingly in competition with what seem, superficially, to be more immediate concerns.

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When confronting environmental crisis becomes a bread-and-butter issue, about housing, jobs and living standards, public enthusiasm is all the more likely. Investing in renewable energy, after all, could create millions of secure, skilled jobs across the world. Environmental crisis risks exacerbating existing inequalities; a just transition would reduce them.

The Labour MP Rebecca Long-Bailey has done admirable work in developing ideas for a so-called Green Transformation. But the party as a whole – and the wider left and labour movement – is failing to put sufficient emphasis on tackling the impending crises, and needs to be more radical in its answers. Ocasio-Cortez has shown that even in the age of Trump, a national debate on tackling the existential crises facing humanity can be triggered. Labour must follow her lead, and passionately make the case that saving the planet will help free it of the social and economic injustice that blights it.