Reclaiming the Economy

 

Davos 2014: Who is Wearing the Trousers?

 

Surely one of the important roles the media plays in our modern society is framing the narrative, determining the parameters within which we understand reality. This week the world's media is doing an important job in normalising a situation where politicians who should be representing us are instead subjugating themselves to the elites who gather annually at Davos.

In my recollection the role of the journalist at this point would be to challenge a situation where the most important decisions about how our economy will evolve over the next few years are being made by a group of self-selected wealthy people inside a ring of steel in a Swiss ski resort. But times have changed and journalists no longer see their role as having anything to do with speaking truth to power or working for the common good. In the reality they are normalising through their breathless broadcasts their role is to rush about the expensive venue seeking out the most important, rich, or famous person that they can find so that we will be gratefully able to hear their views.

This morning, for example, I discovered that Matt Damon found himself surprised by the youth of the Finnish Prime Minister. Thanks for that helpful insight into the leading issues of the day. It's not that I don't like Matt Damon or that I'm not interested in his opinions, it's just that in my version of reality he belongs in Entertainment just as Michael Schumacher belongs in the Sports section of the broadcast, and the weather belongs in, well the weather. When I pay my TV licence I think the news I am paying for should be about important significant events and how those who we have elected to run the country on our behalf are going to tackle them.

Which brings me to David Cameron, who is making a speech at Davos today. You might ask why he is making a speech in Switzerland rather than Scunthorpe or Swansea or somewhere in this country where people have the chance to vote for him and people are expecting him to represent them. The answer is very clear: he does not believe that the economy is any longer subject to any sort of democratic control.  He has gone to Davos to offer the services of the working people of Britain to a corporate boss and what he is offering is cheap labour with poor conditions and cheap energy with wasted environments. If the Davos elites need fracking we'll give them fracking.

Surely even Tory voters are horrified by this lack of self-respect in our country and our citizens. Are we so desperate that we have to send our politicians to Switzerland with a begging bowl to rattle in front of the corrupt and exploitative corporate elites? But our current politicians are working hand in glove with the corporations where they will take up well-paid non-executive positions when they retire, having worked for them undercover during their time in office. This unhealthy relationship has seen our resources privatised, our public services destroyed, and now our creative energies being sold off to the lowest bidder.

It is this process of undermining democracy through the use of economic power that I would like to see dissected by decent journalists working to challenge power rather than rushing about through marbled halls sycophantically seeking it out.
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Owen Paterson: The Badger Bites Back

Since I was given the opportunity to respond to his inane remarks about fracking back in the summer I have taken an increasing interest in the escapades of Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, whose suggestion that his failed badger cull was the fault of the badgers has brought him greater public attention recently. When asked for that comment I had just eaten a particularly dreadful railway burger and so was feeling irritated before I even read his remarks, hence my suggestion that he was only a so-called environment secretary.

With the benefit of some reflection I actually feel my comment was well aimed, since the problem I have with Paterson is about what he thinks the environment means and therefore what it means to be the minister for it. Paterson is clearly taking a definition of ‘environment’ that is diametrically opposed to my own and one that exposes him out as a classic representative of the man-in-dominion approach to the natural world. This comes easily to those who have grown up owning large stretches of countryside and seeing it as a playground for them to cavort in and a place to shoot any creatures that might make their home there. A Green environment secretary would take the perspective of humans as part of that environment not an external, colonising force. Shifting from the view of land belonging to humans to the view of people belonging to the land was an important step in my ecological evolution.

Paterson’s increasingly strident attacks on the opponents of fracking, those who attempt to defend badgers, and to protect our environment against genetically modified crops have made it clear that Patterson has been Crosbied. Lynton Crosby's main influence on the government has been to persuade them to abandon any pretence of basing policy on scientific evidence or even to debate with their opponents at all. Instead the strategy is to go for full frontal assault on people who do not share their view, calling them wicked and shameful and suggesting that they revel in childhood blindness or the slow death of soft fluffy animals.

Paterson was clearly chosen for this role because of his fondness for seeing the environment as something to be exploited and a ‘wholly owned subsidiary’ of UK plc, rather than understanding that the economy is entirely dependent on the environment, as Herman Dally suggested an ecological approach to economics requires. Hence the NPPF (the coalition government's planning policy), with its presumption in favour of growth and an undebated and unrestrained support for fracking no matter what the environmental and social cost.

Paterson's suggestion that the badgers moved the goalposts was greeted with hilarity but is in fact one of his more sensible suggestions. If he could only begin to see parts of non-human nature as having agency and deserving respect we might see some improvement in his hitherto dire performance in protecting the environment.

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No Fracking Way

I try not to be too party political on this blog, but it will hardly have escaped notice that I am the Green Party's Economics Speaker and that I have been selected as the top candidate for the south-west for next year's European Elections. So I will be seeking votes during this year, although I hope this will not affect the focus of the blog too heavily.The reason I stand for election is because I would trust myself to make the right decisions for the right reasons more than a member of any of the other parties. Unless you have decided that democracy is so corrupt that it is best avoided, a position I think has been created and is being reinforced by the corporate lobby, then you will end up having to make a choice next year and the following year.

Which brings me to the purpose of this blog: to express my utter disgust at the prospect of the fracking industry turning into some sort of Wild West boom in our pleasant countryside as it has in the US, and to explore how the other parties are reacting to the possibility of fracking. The evidence is that all three parties that make up the corrupt political establishment are supportive of this new, dirty and expensive fossil fuel. In their world, where economic growth is the holy grail and profit is king, bizniz must chase after this next opportunity to make money and we must bear the cost in our communities.

I am starting from my backyard because it is the part of the world I feel responsible for protecting. I grew up in Bath and brought up my own children in Blagdon, in the Mendips, so I found to my horror that licences have been granted all round that area, seeking to exploit the gas reserves in what was once the Somerset coalfield. The local campaign group Frack Free Somerset have provided a map of the licenced areas and also a list of suggested actions you can take.

The economics of fracking demonstrate the extractive and exploitative approach to everything of value typical of capitalism. Licences to what are natural resources, and therefore in my book a common heritage, are auctioned by the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The prices look absurdly cheap to me, which probably explains the glee with which the energy industrialists are pushing forward with fracking. Cuadrilla's licence to destroy the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire cost just £160m. for an area of 450 square miles between Blackpool and Preston. There are tax breaks too: Britain will have the lowest tax rate for the fracking industry anywhere in the world, with a tax break called the 'shale gas allowance' more than halving the tax payable from 62% to 30%. This is one of Osborne's wheezes to make the economy boom in the run-up to the 2015 general election, and our local environments will bear the cost.

With their friends and relatives in the oil industry and advisor Lynton Crosbie also having strong links to the oil and gas industry we should not be surprised that the Tories are supporting fracking. What about their partners the Liberal Democrats, those well known supporters of all things enviromental? When he spoke at the end of the last parliamentary session, Treasury Secretary Danny Alexander could hardly contain his excitement at the prospect of so much money to be made. It was Alexander who announced the bribes for local communities, which are in fact paltry compared to the profits to be made. For a mere £100,000 and 'at least 1 per cent' of overall revenues undefined 'communities' are lured into selling the birthright of their grandchildren. Unsurprisingly, where profits are concerned it turns out that it is not we who are the 99%.

As befits a party seeking election within the next 18 months, Labour has been less sanguine about the prospects for such an unpopular and exploitative industry. Back in June 2011 Labour's energy spokesman Huw Irranca Davies called for a temporary moratorium while a review on safety was undertaken. His replacement as shadow energy minister, Tom Greatrex, continues the line of the need for better regulation rather than opposition to fracking in principle. In an interview with Business Green he argues explicitly that 'an absolutist position' is not in our interest, so we cannot expect opposition to fracking from Labour, whose opposition is avowedly conditional.

Aside from the planetary pollution there is also the certainty of more local environmental pollution. Fracking is a vile industrial process that uses toxic chemicals that will contaminate our land and our water supplies. It is entirely inappropriate in our small island. It will set back the attempts to reduce our climate-damaging carbon emissions, which were already failing due to inconsistency and attempts to revive the economy through boosting energy-intensive consumption. But it also provides a way of avoiding the fundamental changes to our lifestyles and industrial processes that we know are ultimately necessary. To support fracking is like a parent encouraging their child to eat more sweets and drink more fizzy drinks while at the same time telling them that they need to lose weight.

So, you know where I am going, and I at least have the excuse of having made this clear from the start. If you really want a party that will oppose fracking as part of a consistent policy to reduce energy use and undertake a transition to a fossil-free future you know what to do. The Green Party stands against fracking. Caroline Lucas's rousing speech this past weekend at Balcombe makes the arguments clear, but in case you think we are jumping on a bandwaggon you can also watch her demolish the greedy pro-frack apologist on Newsnight in March 2012, while successfully putting Paxman in his place. As she argues, fracking will divert effort and investment from the expansion of renewables that is so urgently needed. It is dirty and dangerous to our health: we must stand together to oppose it.
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What the Frack is Going on?

I must confess that my disappointment at learning of the advance of the shale frackers into my backyard rapidly morphed into the miserable realisation that I am going to have to learn about a whole new energy technology. Unwanted technical knowledge is the inevitable lot of the environmental activist. The shale oil drilling has reached public consciousness because of the suggestion that the operations of the Cuadrilla company near Blackpool has caused two minor earthquakes. In my backyard there are threats of similar developments by a previously unknown company called Coastal Oil and Gas which has already submitted plans to begin drilling at Llandow industrial estate in the Vale of Glamorgan.

There is limited information available about the Bridgend-based company Coastal Oil and Gas, although local campaigners claim that it is a husband-and-wife team which is fronting up a major investment from a larger Australian company. Certainly, whatever the past activities of the company they appear to have left no internet trace. The difficult question for me is precisely how this company came to own the rights to what is a natural resource. My best information so far is that, in our bizarrely feudal system, all land in the UK, and the resources in it, belong to the Crown. So can we assume that Gerwyn Williams, MD of Coastal Oil and Gas, has taken a trip to the palace with an envelope of greasy tenners? Answers to this question would be very welcome.

Although the quantities of gas available appear to be fairly limited, the race is on to profit from this latest energy boom. In South Wales this boon for a tiny number of people while the majority bear the cost has haunting echoes of the history of coal. It was a small number of English coal barons who grew fat, while the working people of Wales suffered and died in the pits. This time around there should be no permission given to exploit natural resources unless the value of those resources is shared fairly amongst the local community.

You can post your opposition to fracking and support the call for a moratorium until a participatory democratic process guaranteeing environmental safety and fair sharing of the proceeds here.
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