To save his job or to save the planet?
Tony Blair is as aware as anybody that climate change is a huge threat to civilisation and perhaps even to the continued existence of the human race. He has said so - in slightly more compromising terms - several times. So have several of his ministers, most notably Margaret Beckett since she took over as Foreign Secretary.
But if he starts to take the drastic action necessary to save us all from disaster (assuming it's not too late already), he calculates that he will lose votes, and - worse! - he will lose corporate donations. The aficionados of cheap flights, the motoring lobby and the oil industry will rise up together and smite him hip and thigh. Why this should bother him when he is going to be stepping down within the year anyway I do not understand, but it does. I also happen to think his judgement is wrong. A substantial proportion of the electorate is getting very worried about climate change and are looking for a governmental lead; they would follow him if he were brave enough to make the case and follow through - and he's good at making cases, having had lots of practice with much worse ones than this. There would certainly be plenty of opposition, but also much relief. In any case, his big concern now appears to be his legacy, and "The man who led us down the road to catastrophe" doesn't have quite the ring I think he's looking for.
The crunch, though, for anyone, politician or otherwise, is what do you do when you perceive that inaction spells certain disaster for many while action may mean personal sacrifice? When the disaster is planet-wide and possibly species suicide, and the personal sacrifice is a job you will only have for a short while longer anyway, to fail to act is quite monumentally, staggeringly cowardly.
Yet Mr Blair continues to promote airport expansion and road building. He has resisted for as long as he could the introduction of a Climate Change Bill. Having now apparently bowed to the inevitable in the face of the signatures of over 400 MPs on an early Day Motion, he seeks to emasculate it by holding out against statutory year-on-year targets. We've seen what happens to long-term, non-statutory targets with the failure to meet the minimal aims he set himself at the time of Kyoto. It is fine to have long-term goals, but you also need to keep checking as you go along: are we in line to meet the targets? That means you need to know where you should have got to at any given time, and that's where year-on-year targets come in. When you miss one - and you will, after suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, even if you are doing all you should - you know to try a bit harder next year.
Mr Blair is a strange mixture: so impervious to public opinion over Iraq, so scared of it over climate change. And maybe that's the comparison that gives it all away. His Master's Voice does not want anything to do with tackling climate change, so neither does the faithful poodle.
What can we do in the face of such intransigence? We could wait to see what that other faithful poodle (maybe more the whipped cur, baring its teeth behind the master's back) Gordon Brown does when he finally slips the leash, but I'm not holding my breath on that one. Anyway the problem is too urgent to wait. A first step is to join the National Climate March from Grosvenor Square to Trafalgar Square on Saturday week, or the I-Count mass rally in Trafalgar Square with which it will join up. See the Campaign Against Climate Change or Friends of the Earth for details. Ther'll be plenty of organisations there competing for your support if you want to do more.
There are events happening that day and the following Saturday around the world to coincide with the UN Climate Talks in Nairobi from Nov 6th to 17th. Click here for details of those.
Read the Independent's report on the state of play on the Climate Change Bill, or the Times' version. Check whether your MP has signed the EDM calling for a Climate Change Bill with teeth.
Lot of useful information are there. Its really keeps me updated. Thanks to Author.
Posted by: usedcarsforsale | August 19, 2011 at 07:09 PM