The looming climate crisis debate – will the Greens regret swallowing dead rats?

Late last year, Labour and the Greens were under immense pressure from a bewildered 60% of the electorate (who had handed them a majority and unprecedented mandate for change) to actually, you know, do some fucking change.

After watching Labour refuse to remove a racist drug law, do anything meaningful on welfare reform and ignore a wealth tax, the criticism was Labour (and the Greens) were implementing tepid nothings rather than bold visions.

To counter this criticism of tepid nothingness, Labour (and the Greens) passed a meaningless climate crisis declaration that didn’t actually trigger the emergency management powers.

That’s right, to counter claims they were tinkering, they declared more tinkering!

Great.

The point of the declaration was to provide some moral cover for the report due in February from the Climate Change Commission that will demand new cut backs in methane and co2.

The political pressure will be immense not only on Labour, but especially on the Greens who spinelessly signed up to this nonsense after the election despite a last minute shift of support from the Left to once again save them from political oblivion.

Will the Greens regret swallowing those dead rats?

The problem is that the suggestions coming back are still welded to this notion of being carbon neutral by 2050, that’s 29 fucking years away and the naked reality is that IF you actually believe the climate crisis is an existential threat to us as a species, you will know that doing something maybe in 29 years is no solution.

The deciding political calculation will actually be the climate itself.

If the extreme weather we are already experiencing becomes a cascade event of more and more serious extreme weather events, holding up a list of promises to maybe do something 30 years from now will look as meaningless as it actually is.

The Greens need to seize this moment to actually articulate a new green deal that goes well beyond what the Climate Change Commission will end up recommending or end up being seen as propping up even more tepid nothings than actual solutions.

Unfortunately the Greens are more likely to burn any political capital they have on the looming hate speech vs free speech debacle rather than championing a real response to climate change.

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