It would appear that Boris Johnston does not share the sense of emergency regarding climate change as felt by the youthfully inspired Extinction Rebellion, who he shrugged off early this week as “Uncooperative crusties!” His father Stanley, by contrast, has come out in support of the insurgents: he’s obviously spending time with the grandchildren.
Politics Live on Tuesday [7Oct2019] referred to the Boris insult, by way of an introduction to a discussion of the protests with a panel which included Rupert Read of Extinction Rebellion. Rupert was quick to draw attention to his uncrusty appearance – a smart jacket and tie, constrasting strikingly with the tieless Nigel Evans MP, who frankly, struck me as rather disheveled; too many late Brexit nights perhaps.
It wasn’t long though till Rupert put his sartorial status at risk, rolling up his sleeve and baring his forearm to show us, not tattoos, but the names of his nieces, hand written, rather roughly, in marker pen. It was concern for their future which was the source of his campaigning energy, he told us with some emotion.
Other panelists were journalist Madeline Grant and Labour MP Jess Philips. In summary the discussion was a tussle between the rather relaxed approach of the politicians and the passionate commitment of Rupert Read. Madeline Grant just seemed uncomfortable to be seated so close to the slightly unhinged zeal of Rupert Read.
None of the panelists denied the threat of climate change: however, Nigel Evans was content with the Conservartive Party target of carbon zero by 2050, Jess Phillips with the Labour target of 2030, whilst Rupert was adamant that we all need to be prepared for sacrifices to achieve the Extinction Rebellion Target of carbon zero by 2025. Indeed he was insistent that in a mere 5 years time we must forsake air travel, private motor cars and instead commit to travelling by public transport, bicycles or walking. “What!” Madeline Grant screamed. “If this is what saving the planet means, then I’m out”….well actually she didn’t say that, but her rather expressive face suggested this may have been the thought which came first to her mind.
When challenged with Rupert’s 2025 plan, Nigel’s first instinct was continuing advocacy for a third runway for Heathrow whilst Jess staunchly defended HS2.
Though a little unusual on Politics live, the media in general loves a debate to be livened by theatrical behaviour and emotion, preferably tears. Personally I think that emotion, or passion as it is often styled, in the context of debating important issues, is much overrated. But Rupert did indeed express himself with obvious passion as he advocated democracy and citizens assemblies, not really explaining how the two processes would interface in this case, without one compromising the other. I found it hard not to dismiss him as a bit too keen to be down with the kids, and to further dismiss the Extinction Rebellion target of carbon neutral by 2025, as a fantasy.
Yet the truth is, for all my discomfort with his presentation of the arguments, I am with Rupert Read on this one. Accurately forecasting our unfolding climate crisis is a challenge, subject to the same vagaries as forecasting our weather. The storm may arrive exactly as predicted, but it may just as likely arrive late, or on the other hand it may come early, and be more severe than anticipated: some of us can remember the Michael Fish forecast of 15th October 1987, which spectacularly underestimated the storm which was on its way at the time. I note just one comment at the bottom of the YouTube video of his embarrassment: “The next morning, our summerhouse was in next door neighbours garden.”
With climate change, the stakes are a great deal higher; it’s just common sense; why take the risk? We should of course try to be carbon neutral by 2025, however improbable a target that may be. The idea, as Madelaine Grant interjected at one point, that pursuing this objective will “send us back to the stone age” is foolishness. Failure to act is more likely to take us there.
Ann Pettifor in her book The Case for the Green New Deal proposes a Keynsian methodology for getting to carbon neutral, based on the use of all of our available resources. It offers an opportunity to spread prosperity that is not currently available from our moribund economy. That does not sound like the stone age to me. Ann Pettifor does suggest that we may have to forgo some of our habits of consumption, but there is every reason to suppose that the outcome could ensure that we are well fed, clothed and housed, have excellent health and social care, education, training, public transport and a well cared for public domain. So, a very modernised version of the stone age.
When we do eventually arrive at carbon neutral, we may of course conclude that the 2050 target would have been just fine: but really, will that be a problem? Once we are in the clear, we can relax and and start to enjoy ourselves, though my prediction is that at no point in this process need we stop enjoying ourselves.
So yes, I stand with Stanley Johnston and the grandkids (whatever their number) on this one: I support Extinction Rebellion’s ambitious targets, even though I fear their members are too often happy to lead with worst case scenarios and exaggerated claims and are careless of disrupting the lives of others. The exhilaration of taking part in such activities is a dangerous intoxicant. Meanwhile the sober onlookers, are irritated or dismissive: “uncooperative crusties” is probably one more of the more repeatable descriptions of the protesters circulating.
Later in the week, Zion Lights of Extinction Rebellion, was grilled on the Andrew Neill Show. Neil reasonably enough demanded evidence supporting claims by some members of Extinction Rebellion, that “billions of people will die.” Zion kept her nerve, stuck carefully to the science and made it clear that such extreme predictions were indeed supported by some credible scientists, but readily accepted that they did not represent a scientific consensus.
Still, when one really starts to think about the possible impacts of climate change, with displacement of people and increasing competition for scarce resources, it is not hard to imagine the world sliding towards a Hobbsian nightmare. I’m well into the second half of my lifetime but I’ll be happy to see out the rest of it in an economy governed by the values of Ann Pettifor’s Green New Deal.
Carruchan 
Donald Trump First, Donald Trump First, Donald Trump First
Recent events in Charlottesville have shone a light on the attitude to race of President Trump and his now departed political strategist, Steven Bannon.
For a moment Trump seemed to be making his position clear:
“When we open our hearts to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice, no place for bigotry, and no tolerance for hate.” [source]
And then, as if uncomfortable with this clarity, Trump slid into an equivalence between the white supremacists and – his own coinage – the “alt left”:
“You had a group on one side that was bad. You had a group on the other side that was also very violent.” [source]
Those who demonstrated in opposition to the white supremacists would probably admit righteous anger; there is indeed a Christian tradition of such anger, rooted in the occasion when Jesus went into the temple to overturn the tables of the merchants and the moneylenders.
What about violence though? Is it possible to offer any proof that, as a group, the white supremacists intended violence and that those opposing them came with no such intention? We know that one of the white supremacists intended violence which led to the shocking murder of Heather Heyer, but perhaps, as Trump implies, this was an exception.
The white supremacists came armed with a pretty mighty array of weapons, at least in the television footage that I witnessed. Doubtless, the cameras were more drawn to the assault rifle bearing “collection of clowns and losers”, [as Steve Bannon has called them], than to other less heavily armed sections of this protest.
In some cases, those expressing anger at the white supremacists felt it necessary to bring with them weapons of self defence, which I believe included clubs, and in some cases, knives.
Criminal intent is a tricky thing to establish, as ultimately it resides in the mind – but speaking personally, I would say the white supremacists looked a lot more like a gang of dangerous criminals than those opposing them; but then I am, in my own way, prejudiced; I believe the statues of General Lee were only erected in more recent years as an expression of unresolved underlying racism.
Prejudice, is at the heart of this issue, and I believe, to properly understand what is happening, we should accept that we are, each one of us, susceptible to prejudice.
In 1979, Psychologist Henri Tajfel, together with John Turner, proposed Social Identity Theory, at the centre of which lay the idea of in-groups and outgroups, and our tendency to favour those in the groups of which we are a member against those who are outside such groups.
Tajfel devised the Minimal Groups study, and was able to gather evidence that instinctive hostility to the outgroup, prompted self harming discrimination.
A little self examination seems appropriate, in the light of this idea.
I do not have people of colour as part of my closest social groupings, I do not encounter many people of colour in my workplace or in the area where I live. According to Tajfel’s theory, it follows that I will have a tendency to be racially prejudiced. But can this really be the case? After all, I was a consistent opponent of apartheid South Africa; I revere Nelson Mandela, and regard Martin Luther King as one of the great heroes of United States history. For me, the idea that I harbour prejudice is a difficult one; yet I would acknowledge that from time to time, I do recognise prejudiced tendencies within my own impulses.
In my defence, I would say that I have an underpinning value system based on the idea enshrined, as it happens, in the American constitution that “All men are created equal”. My more immediate inspiration for this egalitarian thought, given my residence in South West Scotland, would be Robert Burns, who applying himself to the question of social class divisions wrote:
The Man’s the gowd for a’ that. .
[gold]
If we accept this idea, then where society becomes more fully integrated, where in-groups becomes less distinguishable from outgroups; my prediction is, that prejudice will diminish. But such a process of integration, is difficult to manage, frequently resisted by both dominant and minority groups, which, in their different ways, value their own way of life and fear its dilution. Furthermore, in a free society, there is the counterbalancing tendency of schism, where groups evolve their own oppositional identity; punk rock in the 1970’s UK is an example of this par excellence.
But let me return to my original concern: are Trump and Bannon closet racists?
At some level, they have the same tendencies towards prejudice as the rest of us, but my guess is that they will work and socialise with people regardless of race or religion, so long as they find them to be congenial, and in harmony with their own interests. Trump, though apparently born into the Protestant religion, has married a Slovenian Roman Catholic, has a Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and a daughter, Ivanka, who is a convert to the religion of her husband. Kushner is at the very heart of Trump’s administration. My concern about Trump and Bannon is not that they discriminate in their personal conduct, but that they lack any underpinning value system, other than: “America first, America first, America first.”
In the case of Donald Trump it is obvious to many observers that even this value is a piece of theatre, thinly disguising his true core value: “Donald Trump first, Donald Trump first, Donald Trump first.” Once we understand this core value, the unscrupulous driver of his and Bannon’s conduct is thrown into relief. They may not themselves be racist in their thinking, but they are instinctively ready to appeal to the prejudiced impulses which they know lie festering beneath the surface of their core support, a seam which has been fed, in some cases, by an unmonitored nostalgia for the emblems and myths of the old South.
Unlike the white supremacists, I imagine that white working class America, for the most part, knows that racial discrimination is wrong, but like any in-group, white America, to the extent that it has a separate existence from black America, is susceptible to the idea that people of other races and ethnicities are to blame for the decay they have witnessed in their community and across the United States. This susceptibility explains the attraction of many to the fantasy, promoted by Donald Trump, that Barack Obama had not been born in the United States, and therefore was not legitimately president; Trump exploited this falsehood to reach a neglected and credulous constituency, which was to form the base that carried him to the White House.
But, I remind myself: we all have a tendency to be prejudiced. In my summing up, have I been true to the values of the the United States Constitution, that all men are created equal” Have I been true to the values expressed in Burns’s song, A Man’s a Man for a That?
You must judge for yourself.
Wear hoddin grey, an’ a that; [coarse, homespun cloth]
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine; [Give]
A Man’s a Man for a’ that:
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Their tinsel show, an’ a’ that;
The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor, [ever so]
Is king o’ men for a’ that.