Not a day goes past without a Just Stop Oil protest, either at a major sporting event or a random location designed to cause maximum inconvenience. Because JSO is an abrasive, uncompromising organisation its existence generates more heat than light in any discourse. I want to step back from the shouting to examine JSO, and David Byrne-style ask, “How did we get here?” In the last five years JSO is one of three new direct action groups focused on the environment using shock tactics familiar to radical students in the 1960s and 1970s. Alongside Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain, JSO is part of a new environmental protest culture.
Boy did we drill
JSO, XR and IB are not universally popular, in fact I know so pretty mild-mannered people who’ve had their cages REALLY rattled by these new groups. Everything happens for a reason, however, and there are many reasons why these groups have been founded. If I cast my mind back to the 1980s, as a boy I was taught about the Greenhouse Effect and man-made climate change – we’d made quantum leaps in our understanding of climate science at the time. I was also taught about the concept of peak oil – reeling from the oil shock of 1973, the developed world had a lot of anxiety about the extent of oil supplies and believed peak oil was going to be reached around 2000, thereafter oil would become increasingly scarce. Pretty much all of the predictions about climate change made in the 1980s have come to pass, the predictions about peak oil, on the other hand, have been way off. Back then were keen on coal, apparently there was 200+ years worth of coal left under Britain, but we’d have to get used to diminishing oil supplies pretty soon. What actually happened? Consumption of oil, gas and coal globally rose throughout the ‘80s, ’90’s, ‘00s and 2010s. It’s possible we’ve just reached peak coal, consumption has levelled off and hinted at a decline, there’s been little discernible process with oil and gas. It turns out the world had far more oil and gas than was estimated in the 1970s.
Fossil fuel consumption: only coal shows signs of even levelling off, all of these have to decline fast
Saudi Arabia miraculously declared their known oil reserves to increase by exactly the same amount as they’d extracted for many years. A friend of mine worked at the Bahrain Grand Prix one year, rubbed shoulders with many ex-pat oil industry workers, one said to him that Saudi has hundreds of years of oil left but it won’t let on. If it did the price would crash. States in the Middle East are doing all they can to keep the status quo going – oil dependency and a price that works for them. Their desperation is understandable, most places reliant on extractive industries rarely have a second act – just witness the fishing ports in Canada still crying out for the Grand Banks to be reopened for Cod fishing, 31 years after they closed, despite the fact that stocks are still less than 10% of historical levels.
On a precipice
So we’re consuming fossil fuels at a level not foreseen 40 years ago, this is due to globalisation and reserves being far greater than first thought. Our consumption will have to fall off a cliff in all three categories for us to avoid going over the 1.5ºC threshold and trigger runaway global warming. Unless an unforeseen method of carbon sequestration comes along that can lock in gigatonnes in a short space of time, our days of mass carbon consumption are over. Past performance suggests that our progress towards Net Zero, and moving towards a post-Carbon world isn’t happening nearly fast enough. Time is running out, the new environmental organisations reflect the anger, fear and urgency that many committed environmentalists feel – they haven’t been listened to, policies move in the right direction but are half-hearted. Too many people talk of being an environmentalist in aspirational terms but own an SUV and tarmac over their front garden.
What of the Green Establishment?
That we have new groups, and they are militant, says a lot about the green lobby establishment. I believe groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are caught between two stools. On the one hand they are not new and fresh with ground breaking ideas, on the other hand they’re not using their familiarity and reputation for being responsible to work with major landowners. The green establishment should have built up long term relationships with Britain’s major landowners – the Churches, the MoD, the National Trust, the Crown Estate, the RSPB etc to improve habitats on large tracts of land. If they had, we wouldn’t be the most nature depleted country in the world. This week sees an interesting development – Britain’s largest corporate landowner United Utilities embarking on the phase out of grouse shooting on its land, hopefully this land will be rewilded and cleared of lead shot. Notice no mention of any establishment environmental bodies in its decision.
If Greenpeace and FoE were really effective lobby organisations we’d have seen 15 – 20 announcements by major landowners like United Utilities over the last few years. The green establishment has had a tendency to document and articulate the facts and figures surrounding climate change, biodiversity decline and habitat loss without working on projects to counteract any of it. What are ordinary people supposed to do if they’re not offered any solutions? I received a leaflet from a local wildlife trust that mentioned the decline of a few species of wildlife in Kent. It said nothing about buying land or starting any breeding programmes, or any achievements in habitat restoration in the past. Perhaps I’d have donated if they had a track record or a well-thought out plan, but they didn’t.
The messaging and the methods of the green lobby establishment weren’t nearly good enough, it created a vacuum and the founders of XR, JSO and IB have stepped into that vacuum.
How do we stop Oil?
Now comes the life affirming bit – transforming our habits to make fossil fuels peripheral to our lives will take some effort but technology exists to substitute just about every aspect fossil fuel use. All forms of ground transport can be electrified – cars, vans, buses, motorbikes, trucks, earth working machines. We’re not talking prototypes, fully working models exist for everything. Battery technology is moving fast, the United Bank of Switzerland, those well-known bunny huggers, stated in a technology investment report that the life cycle cost of electric cars had come down so much there was no need to buy a combustion engined car on economic grounds after 2024. Low carbon or no carbon tech is being developed for everything, the UK, for example could go 100% renewable as we could tap into all eight major forms of renewable power – wave, wind, tidal, hydro, biomass, biogas, geothermal and solar. Not every country is as lucky as us, but every inhabited place in the world could use at least one renewable. The renewable world is a far more equitable one, in terms of energy resource, than the hydrocarbon one. Net Zero isn’t just about electricity and transport, however low carbon methods are being developed for a lot of raw materials production – low carbon cement, steel, glass and ceramics. Renewable heat is one of the biggest game changers. The Ukraine – Russia war has been a major catalyst to ending Natural Gas use, we’ll see millions of heat pumps installed across Europe in the next 20 years. Many old houses aren’t suitable for heat pump installation, perhaps district heating systems will come to the fore in heritage areas. Decarbonisation will take a lot of work and lot of investment, but the technology exists, and in many cases it’s cheaper than its fossil fuel equivalent.
The counter narrative
This week we’ve seen a surprise result in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by election. Labour was expected to win this, but the Conservatives held it by the skin of their teeth. It’s been interpreted as a big win for the anti-Green movement, a middle-fingered salute to the ULEZ roll out across outer London. For the right wing press this is part of a wider anti-Green agenda. For years they were against renewables, now they’re anti-EV, anti LTNs, anti active travel (remember big Auto advertises more in newspapers than big Shoe) and anti clean air measures. Never mind that IB is trying to save you money, never mind that JSO is trying to save your lungs and never mind that XR is trying to save the planet. The freedom of the Sun, the Times, the Mail and the Telegraph is to drive where you damn well want, park where you damn well want and concrete over everything, even on a flood plain. The propaganda of the newspapers must, to an extent be working. The fact is that upon implementation only 10% of cars and vans would be liable for the ULEZ charge and that figure would drop away to near zero within five years with normal replacement rates. Someone vox popped in Uxbridge said, “All my friends drive and all of them were going to be hit by the ULEZ charge,” he either has an exceptional social circle or he’s talking rubbish. Where are the mainstream politicians taking a lead and making the case for the ULEZ, correcting and clarifying all the misinformation? Again there’s a vacuum, the Conservatives exploited it as an issue even though it’s their policy and Labour have suddenly become very divided on it. This timidity in the face of a very determined right wing media smear campaign is why JSO, XR and IB exist, you can’t rely on the establishment Greens and you can’t rely on mainstream politicians to gain enough attention and stand strong at a point of reckoning.
What do I make of the ULEZ? I went to school in Dartford, a school friend suffered from chronic Asthma and Eczema all throughout school. I mentioned this to my best friend’s mum, who was a school nurse, and said my friend lived in Greenhithe, right on the river. She replied, “Oh I’m not surprised, all the pollution blowing out of London down the Thames estuary causes Asthma and Eczema in places like that.” The anti-ULEZ agenda played on class connotations, with people lining up to defend the working class who apparently couldn’t afford a 13-year old third hand car that would be ULEZ complaint. In my experience distinctly working class places like Thurrock, Tilbury, Pitsea, Benfleet, Dartford, Gravesend, Erith and Slade Green have been dogged by London’s pollution blowing over them for decades, with very little concern shown for their welfare. Turn ULEZ into a class issue of you want – you’ll have me and my friends in the Thames Gateway to answer to. I’m happy to make the case for all the clean tech, and pro-clean air policies, I’m aware of the right-wing counter narrative. I also know that there’s only a handful of voices in the mainstream media supporting the green agenda – Chris Packham, George Monbiot, Joanna Lumley. Even as I type this blog #ClimateScam is trending as a hashtag on twitter – measurable, provable scientific fact that is consistent with the predictions made in the last 50 years is apparently forever up for debate. That’s not good enough, until we make more progress on fossil fuel use and the green voice is louder within the cultural mainstream JSO will continue to do it in the road.
returnoftheliberal 