THE CLIMATE CRISIS IS ALSO AN ECONOMIC CRISIS

A new report has revealed that the richest one percent of people are responsible for double the emissions of the poorest 50 percent of the global population. So why are the Green Party continuing to claim that our economic system -and its owners - are not responsible for the crisis of climate change?

LAST MONTH Oxfam released a report on climate change that would of made uncomfortable reading for Green co-leader James Shaw. I have no idea whether if he has actually read the report but, if he has, he certainly has never drawn attention to it.

The report, Confronting Carbon Inequality, draws on the research of the Stockholm Environment Institute and assesses the consumption emissions of different income groups between 1990 and 2015. This was a period when the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubled.

James Shaw, throughout his time as Climate Change Minister, consistently downplayed the central role our economic system has had in driving the world to the edge of the ecological precipice. Even when its been generally known that one hundred corporations are responsible for over 70 percent of the world's carbon emissions, Shaw still told Parliament last year that it was 'people' who were to blame for climate change.

At the time I thought this was a scandalous assertion by Shaw, based not on any kind of scientific evidence but on his own ideological prejudices. But, in a sense, 'people' are responsible for climate change but its the people who control and profit from the very economic system that Shaw continues to support and pedal illusions about.

Confronting Carbon Inequality tells us that the richest ten percent of the planet accounted for over half (52 percent) of the emissions added to the atmosphere between 1990 and 2015. The richest one percent were responsible for fifteen percent of emissions during this time – more than all the citizens of the European Union and more than twice that of the poorest half of humanity (seven percent).

Annual emissions grew by 60 percent between 1990 and 2015. The richest five percent were responsible for over a third (37 percent) of this growth. The total increase in emissions of the richest one percent was three times more than that of the poorest fifty percent.

In stark terms the report reveals the richest one percent of people alone were responsible for double the emissions of the poorest fifty percent of the global population.

I imagine that some people will begin to drift away as the numbers tumble out, but the fundamental point is that we cannot even hope to tackle climate change unless we also tackle the economic system that is driving the crisis. And that means confronting the power and interests of the one percent - and not playing footsy with them under the negotiating table.

Unfortunately James Shaw still clings to the belief that we can make progress without offending those in power. Like the world's richest man, Jeff Bezos, he believes that capitalism can solve the climate crisis that it is responsible for in the first place.

When real change is needed Shaw is content to play with the levers and dials of the very machine that is eating up the planet. If some folk are still looking to Shaw and the Green Party to have a progressive influence on the Labour's Government's dire approach to climate change then they are going to be disappointed. Because like Labour, James Shaw and the Green's have no desire to topple the status quo. 

But as the report says, we must put both the economic and climate crisis at the heart of any coronavirus recovery. Simply rebuilding the status quo, 'making it better' as Jacinda Ardern has remarked, is not acceptable if we want to avoid an uncontrollable and irreversible climate crisis.