Environmental crisis

Marking seven years since the Grenfell Tower fire in west London, in which 72 residents of a tower block of social housing died because of cost-cutting and profiteering, facilitated by central government and the local council, and in which almost the entire building industry — and especially the manufacturers of insanely flammable cladding materials — were complicit, I invite you to reflect on my conclusions seven years down the line, as, still, no one with responsibility for the safety of tenants has been held accountable for their deaths, that it represents a prime example of what I call cannibalistic capitalism, or economic terrorism, whereby our lives are, at best, secondary, and, at worst, irrelevant, to the all-consuming greed for profits of the corporations and the politicians who ought to be responsible for our safety. Examining the housing crisis in its entirety, I note how this cannibalistic capitalism is so rapacious that it also includes those who have bought into the notion of a property-owning democracy, as the cladding scandal also involves numerous private new-build projects, and I point out how it also extends to the privatised water industry, and to the greatest crisis facing all of us: the runaway climate collapse that is already happening, but which those wedded to cannibalistic capitalism (the politicians, the corporations and, for the most part, a servile media) are doing all they can to ignore or to sideline. I conclude by asking how, with a General Election just weeks away, in a broken system that can only enshrine a corrupted party in power, anyone with any sense cannot conclude that what is actually needed is a revolution.

My annual article marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Beanfield, 39 years ago today, when 1,400 police violently attacked and “decommissioned” a convoy of travellers heading to Stonehenge to establish what would have been the 12th annual Stonehenge Free Festival. Lamenting the demise of the festival as the last great, weeks-long unlicensed autonomous gathering in the UK, and the violence of Beanfield as a significant marker in the ongoing assault on civil liberties in the UK, I also include my memories of the festival, an account of the various forms of dissent that have continued ever since, and the various ways in which successive governments have sought to suppress that dissent, and I end by noting how, despite all these efforts, dissent cannot be eliminated, especially as so many horrors currently exist that must be fought against with all our might, most noticeably, right now, Israel’s western-backed genocide in Gaza, and, of course, the unparalleled threat posed by accelerating climate collapse.

In my latest article about Israel’s genocide in Gaza, I examine a little-discussed aspect of Israel’s actions — the lack of an exit strategy. With no prospect of any other countries accepting the population of the Gaza Strip as refugees, I conclude that Israel’s genocidal actions are actually a “final solution” to the Palestinian “problem”, and that President Biden, who leads the west’s largely unconditional support for Israel, also endorses this approach. Criticizing western leaders for the emptiness of their support of Israel’s “right to defend itself”, I also condemn their refusal to recognize that Israel’s two stated aims — to “destroy” Hamas and to free the hostages seized on October 7 — are either unworkable or self-defeating, and conclude my analysis by comparing how the west’s position on Israel is as dangerous and irresponsible as its failure to take climate collapse seriously, and warn that, by allowing Israel to so blatantly shred international humanitarian law, and by using fake antisemitism claims to suppress dissent and to further stifle protest, they are ensuring that, not only is nowhere in Gaza safe, but nowhere in the west is safe either — not from any external “terrorist” threat, but from our own governments.

My reflections, at the end of an unprecedented summer of catastrophic, human-induced climate chaos, about what we can do and how we can cope with ever-increasing climate collapse in the face of a persistent refusal, by politicians and the media, to respond to the gravest existential threat in all our lifetimes with anything resembling the urgency that is required.

As heatwaves of unprecedented ferocity grip much of the world, I ask why it is that the mainstream media are still unable to recognise that climate collapse is the biggest disaster in all of our lifetimes, and that they have an obligation to cover it as much as possible, particularly in the absence of any meaningful action from our political leaders.

Reflecting on the toxic orange skies that recently engulfed New York City and Washington, D.C., caused by ferocious wildfires in Canada, I ask whether they were alarming enough to effect significant political change, or whether the endless cycle of distraction in the mainstream media, and the entrenched and corrupt power of the fossil fuel companies will continue to prevent urgent action to curb their homicidal and ecocidal activities. I look at the Paris Agreement, C40 Cities (featuring the Mayors of nearly 100 cities worldwide), and the governments involved in BOGA (the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance), with particular reference to the need for all new fossil fuel extraction to be stopped, and how we might meet our commitments to cut fossil fuel emissions by 50% by 2030, and I call on the media, in particular, to start discussing the gravity of the climate crisis, educating people about what cuts are needed, and which are possible, to start the urgent national and transnational conversations that are required.

My call for England’s water companies to be re-nationalised, as the mostly foreign and largely unaccountable private companies running them (since their privatisation in 1989) have presided over persistent sewage spills, killing our rivers and polluting our beaches. This is because their purpose is to make profits for their shareholders (and their overpaid CEOs) rather than investing in their infrastructure to provide clean water and to prevent sewage spills.

My review of four decades of repressive public order legislation by the Tories, marking the 38th anniversary of the Battle the Beanfield, running from the 1986 Public Order Act to the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, and on to the 2022 Police, Crime Sentencing and Court Act and the latest version of the Public Order Act. Aimed at criminalising the way of life of Gypsies and Travellers, the legislation is also aimed at criminalising any form of even mildly disruptive protest, of the kind currently being undertaken by climate protestors, whose actions would chime with the beleaguered travellers, festival-goers and environmental activists of 38 years ago.

15 months since the war in Ukraine began, I express my concerns about the extraordinary propaganda to which we in the West have been subjected, portraying Vladimir Putin as a figure of pure evil, and glossing over the US’s role, via NATO, in encroaching on Russian territory for the last 30 years, with particular reference to the “red line” that Russia always drew when it came to Ukraine’s membership of NATO. I also condemn a recent New York Times article, breezily suggesting that the EU and the UK will have to make hard choices about the affordability of their “social safety net,” in light of demands for unjustifiably huge increases in war spending, and point out that the most significant war is actually the one being waged by humanity — via the oil and gas companies, but with our tacit support — which is making the entire planet uninhabitable, and threatens the lives of untold numbers of people in the not too distant future.

Linking to and discussing my interview with Chris Cook for Gorilla Radio, about the Coronation of King Charles III, the suppression of protest and the criminalization of refugees under home secretary Suella Braverman, as well as a discussion about Guantánamo.