Being Red and Green

 I’m astonished that the world’s business and political leaders, who have been to school, don’t just say f*** off to the White House fool

  Rachel Reeves appears to be trying to persuade Ed Miliband and others that Heathrow expansion should be allowed on the basis that there will be a dramatic increase in the use of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). Critics point out that widespread use of SAF is itself ‘unsustainable’. Half of the agricultural land in the UK would have to be given over to growing biofuels in order to create enough SAF to support current levels of flying.    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jan/23/rachel-reevess-bid-to-expand-heathrow-could-add-40-to-airline-ticket?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other     Going back a few years the ‘Director of Downstream‘(!) at Shell Oil set the ambition of producing 2 million tons of SAF by 2025.    https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/09/aviation-flight-path-to-net-zero-future/   A recent report by the IATA (the airline industry trade body) advised that the total amount of SAF produced in 2024 was less than 1 million tons, and points o...

The ‘Thin as Ice’ document is an important contribution from Compass and a welcome response to Labour Together’s triumphalism about the success of their ‘Red Wall focussed’ election strategy. This may have won Labour a huge majority, but it was with a low proportion of the vote and of the electorate and at the expense of losing supporters on its left.   Disappointingly lacking in ‘Thin as Ice ‘ is sufficient recognition of the growing severity of the Global Climate Emergency, which threatens to consume us all and is likely to be a central issue in the next General Election. There is also a lack of a strategy for achieving the ‘progressive coalition’, committed to electoral reform, which Compass correctly advocates.  In my opinion the climate crisis provides an opportunity to create such a coalition, possibly one which can last for two or three election cycles and certainly until proportional representation is implemented. The General Election of 2029 or late 2028 is onl...

A positive outcome from this election, along with the Tories getting thrown out of office and (hopefully) the election of a handful of Green MPs, is likely to be that the demand for electoral reform becomes unstoppable. This poll of polls probably understates support for Reform, which is ( sadly) almost certainly growing. It might end up winning nearly 20% of the votes but still only win less than a handful of seats. Labour on the other hand are likely to win a huge majority with a little over 40% of the vote, with the Tories holding on to more than a hundred seats with barely more than half of that. Electoral reform can’t come soon enough and may even contribute to building the coalition for serious action on climate change that we so desperately need.

https://youtu.be/Gy4NT6K4TUY

  WE NEED GLOBAL GREENS TO HELP LEAD A MOVEMENT FOR GLOBAL ACTION IN RESPONSE TO THE CLIMATE AND ECOLOGICAL EMERGENCY The outcome of COP28 was as unsatisfactory as we all expected. Although there was agreement (at last !) to transition from fossil fuels this only applies to energy generation. There remains no firm commitment to stop using fossil fuels for transportation, construction, food production or anything else, and no commitment even to encourage people to move away from  a meat-based diet. Time is fast running out. In the meantime, Greens in the UK and elsewhere continue to focus on electoral advancement, based largely on a commitment to mitigate the worst effects of the Climate and Ecological Emergency on their own localities, regions and nation states. Such an approach is an unsatisfactory response to the scale of the emergency and imminent global catastrophe. We would like to see greens leading governments across the planet. Realistically we know this isn’t going to...