Not big enough... not green enough

Boris has missed an opportunity with his new deal, fears Mario Du Preez

IN an attempt to emulate Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Great Depression-busting ‘New Deal’, Boris Johnson recently announced a “Rooseveltian” £5bn programme of expedited infrastructure investment to aid a job market decimated by the Covid-19 pandemic – what the PM called an infrastructure revolution, another example of Boris’s gift for cosmic parody.

Not unlike Roosevelt, who resoundingly won the US presidency with 57% of the popular vote, Johnson also emphatically ascended to the highest office by securing a commanding 80-seat Parliamentary majority. But unlike Roosevelt, who faced Teamster rebellions, general strikes, shutdowns of ports, and autoworker sit-down strikes fuelled by joblessness, inequality and a shrinking economy, the British PM is facing similar economic woes, albeit driven by a pandemic, as well as humanity’s most diabolical foe to date: a climate catastrophe.

Johnson’s task is huge. In order to limit warming to 1.5 °C, the soft target of the Paris Climate Accords, net greenhouse gas emissions would need to be halved by 2030, and completely halted by 2050. Each and every country must take actions, dwarfing any others undertaken to a global problem.

In a way, the Covid-19 pandemic serves as a precursor to the real thing; a dress rehearsal if you like; and thus, an ideal, pre-emptive opportunity for countries to reset their economies. Some refer to the reset as the Green New Deal, which entails colossal investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency, clean transportation, and the adoption of free universal health care, child care, and higher education, via the mobilization of financial and technology transfers coupled with the safeguarding of transitioning workers’ wages and benefits.

So, what does the PM’s new deal look like? In his speech, Johnson said that “We will build, build, build. Build back better, build back greener, build back faster and to do that at the pace that this moment requires.” Build what? Well, hospitals (including more A&E capacity), schools and more prison cells. But that’s not all. The build programme also includes improvements, upgrades and maintenance of road networks, bridges, railway lines, prison and youth offender facilities, lawcourts, schools and Further Education colleges, local high streets, local transport and parks. “Building back greener” entails planting 75, 000 acres of trees every year by 2025, and a £40m commitment to boost local conservation projects, which will create 3,000 jobs and safeguard 2000 jobs.

Do these actions and commitments translate seamlessly into the all-encompassing, energy efficient, consumerism-ending, decarbonising, fossil fuel-eliminating, green reset required by the climate crisis? No, not at all. For a start, building means more steel, iron, bitumen and cement; products manufactured by some of the most environmentally destructive industries in the world. According to the think tank Green Alliance, the government should be spending an estimated £14bn to meet CO2 targets. Johnson’s £5bn package (0.2% of 2019 UK GDP) is, thus, £9bn short and will mostly be spent on projects that ostensibly harm the climate. If only Johnson’s offering was “Rooseveltian” in both name and quantum – FDR’s spending amounted to about £168bn in present-day pounds Sterling (or about 40% of US GDP in 1929).

At first, the pledge to plant 75, 000 acres of trees appears laudable until one learns that biomass – burning wood chips – still comprises almost 40% of renewable energy consumption, which renders the tree-planting regime wholly inadequate, even farcical.

There was no mention of any embargoes on fossil fuel subsidies and the use of tax havens. No mention of higher carbon taxes and electric vehicle subsidies.

And, although UK homes are the draughtiest in Europe, and although the insulation sector is an emission cutting, job-creating enterprise par excellence, Johnson failed to mention any plans to enhance energy efficiency via a national programme of home insulation. This was despite the Conservative Party’s £9.2bn pledge in its 2019 election manifesto.

Apparently, Dominic Cummings deemed that programme ‘boring.’ Johnson also failed to truncate the £27bn roads programme, which will increase emissions and create far fewer jobs than the Trades Union Congress would like.

There are other omissions, inadequacies, and climate damaging projects in Johnson deal, proving three things. The first is that either Boris’s fiancé Carrie Symonds is not truly green or her recommendations were vetoed by Cummings.

Second, that the UK dare not provide guidance and leadership to smaller countries on managing the climate crisis. Third, a supercharged, green-infused amalgam of FDR’s New Deal, a wartime-type mobilization, and a Marshall Plan is needed to fight climate change.

■ Mario du Preez is an environmental writer

> Boris Johnson in full flow in Dudley at his New Deal launch earlier this week