Environmentalism: class warfare?
Once you've started thinking about class, you begin to see it everywhere. This has resulted in some right nonsense from various "Marxists" over the years. Then again, maybe there's something in it.
George Monbiot has a column in the New Statesman this week, in which he argues that voluntary environmentalism is hopeless, and government regulations are necessary to save us all from ultimate doom. He's probably right, but in passing, he made a very interesting proposal about voluntary environmentalism - failing to link it to government-led energy reductions (it would have been tangenital and somewhat contradictory to the thrust of his argument.).
"At its worst, and especially when articulated by the elite, it is a means of securing ecological space for yourself against the competing claims of the hoipolloi. The environment movement in Britain and its colonies arose in part from anti-poaching efforts: game reserves were turned into nature reserves for the continued benefit of the hunting class. Will climate change campaigns now reserve airspace for pop stars?"
The answer to his question appears to be a very definite yes. Aside from some vague statements about nuclear (fission, then fusion) being the only realistic way to go, the government's environmental policies aimed at reducing consumption all have one thing in common: they're rooted in regressive taxes. Probably the most important anti-consumption measure the pressure groups want the government to take - and probably the one it will implement - is a tax on air travel. At the moment, air passenger duty (APD) is a specific tax - varying depending on what kind of seat you have and where you're going - while fuel tax is a sales tax. That means both APD and fuel tax are regressive (for APD, highly regressive), and no one seems to be proposing changing the nature of the tax - the pressure groups just want it to go up.
This means that airspace for pop stars is exactly where we are heading. Put APD up to £500 - still specific - and you've priced the working classes out of the market entirely.
If the government follows its current plans, the effect will be precisely to secure necessarily scarce space on planes for the rich. Whether Britain's working and middle-classes will stand for any of this remains to be seen; perhaps they can be won over by threats of ultimate doom if they refuse to comply, who knows.
Monbiot is right to say voluntary environmentalism is hopelessly hypocritical. What seems to have escaped his attention is that the same is true of our government.
George Monbiot has a column in the New Statesman this week, in which he argues that voluntary environmentalism is hopeless, and government regulations are necessary to save us all from ultimate doom. He's probably right, but in passing, he made a very interesting proposal about voluntary environmentalism - failing to link it to government-led energy reductions (it would have been tangenital and somewhat contradictory to the thrust of his argument.).
"At its worst, and especially when articulated by the elite, it is a means of securing ecological space for yourself against the competing claims of the hoipolloi. The environment movement in Britain and its colonies arose in part from anti-poaching efforts: game reserves were turned into nature reserves for the continued benefit of the hunting class. Will climate change campaigns now reserve airspace for pop stars?"
The answer to his question appears to be a very definite yes. Aside from some vague statements about nuclear (fission, then fusion) being the only realistic way to go, the government's environmental policies aimed at reducing consumption all have one thing in common: they're rooted in regressive taxes. Probably the most important anti-consumption measure the pressure groups want the government to take - and probably the one it will implement - is a tax on air travel. At the moment, air passenger duty (APD) is a specific tax - varying depending on what kind of seat you have and where you're going - while fuel tax is a sales tax. That means both APD and fuel tax are regressive (for APD, highly regressive), and no one seems to be proposing changing the nature of the tax - the pressure groups just want it to go up.
This means that airspace for pop stars is exactly where we are heading. Put APD up to £500 - still specific - and you've priced the working classes out of the market entirely.
If the government follows its current plans, the effect will be precisely to secure necessarily scarce space on planes for the rich. Whether Britain's working and middle-classes will stand for any of this remains to be seen; perhaps they can be won over by threats of ultimate doom if they refuse to comply, who knows.
Monbiot is right to say voluntary environmentalism is hopelessly hypocritical. What seems to have escaped his attention is that the same is true of our government.
posted by UK plc at 7:16 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home