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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
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Speaker 2: This year on Zero, we've talked a lot about UK politics. It's not just because I live in London, but because what's happening in the UK is a strong example of both what's going right and wrong with action on climate. The country which created the world's first national legislation on climate change no longer has a political consensus on climate action. And it's happening just as impacts of climate change are becoming not just unignorable but unbearable. In the UK, we've had one of the driest summers on record, with London receiving no rain in the month of July, the first time that's happened in recorded history going back to eighteen seventy one. That's why I think how the UK handles its climate politics has lessons for many. This is zero. I am Aksha Drati and this week where next for climate politics? Joining me on zero this week is Caroline Lucas, formerly the leader of the UK's Green Party and a longtime member of Parliament. Recently she hosted a podcast series for The Rest is Politics called When Nature Becomes a Security Threat. Caroline, Welcome to Zero.
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Speaker 1: Thank you so much. For having me.
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Speaker 2: Now you've done this for a long time. But I want to start with a big picture. How do you define your environmentalism?
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Speaker 1: Well, that is a big subject. How do I define my environmentalism? I mean, I don't like the word environmentalism because it immediately feels like it's in a particular box, in a particular compartment. So I guess for me and for the Green Party, concern about the environment of our own climate is central to absolutely everything, So it's absolutely linked to social justice, but it also runs right across the economy, education, health, any other subject you like to see. So I suppose I would say that for me, it really is totally all encompassing, but at its heart it absolutely has social justice as well.
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Speaker 2: So now let me go to the other extreme of a question that is much more focused on one place. There was recently a wildfire on the Suffolk Coast, very close to size Well Nuclear power plant. I heard from somebody in the region who said they've been working on raising awareness about climate change for the last twenty years of their life, and they would distraught about the fact that climate impacts are now on their footsteps. You've been doing it for forty years more than forty years. Their question, which I want to ask you, what has all this work been for?
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Speaker 1: Well, I have a great deal of sympathy with the person who asked that question, because it is deeply frustrating that despite decades of so many of us warning that the climate is heating, that the impacts are going to be incredibly serious, that the sooner we act, the better chance that we have of avoiding the worst. Those messages, in many respects do feel as if they've fallen on deaf eears. I mean, if we were to be charitable and we could look at lots of the positive things that have happened, and you know, certainly there's been huge investments in renewable energy that's very positive. I think there's a general understanding now that the climate crisis is real, but I think what we're still lacking is the urgency that's required to tackle it. So, yes, I do feel frustrated. I do feel angry that so many people are going to be put through so much pain unnecessarily, because if we'd started to act on this agenda decades ago, when so many of us began raising it, then not only would it have been a much cheaper thing to do, we would now not be on the trajectory that we are in terms of climate catastrophe. So I think things are pretty grim and I can't quite think of a of a more positive way of putting it than that, I'm afraid.
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Speaker 2: But you have kept at it for quite a bit longer than this person. You know, you have been the leader of the UK's Green Party for a long time. You were the only member of Parliament for the Green Party between twenty ten and twenty twenty four. You resigned from the frontline of politics that year, and that year the Green Party also had its biggest ever haul in members of Parliament, winning four seats, and that was under Zach Polanski's leadership, who we've had on the podcast before. So just as the Greens were gaining momentum, you sort of stepped back from frontline politics.
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Speaker 3: Why I stepped back from being an MP, frankly because I was absolutely exhausted, and at the time that I did it, that was actually before Zach became leader and before it was clear that we were going to have four Green MPs now five.
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Speaker 1: I mean, being the sole representative of my party for fourteen years, I can't quite tell you what that was like, I mean, it was an extraordinary privilege, of course, but it was also utterly exhausting doing eighty hour weeks and you know, beginning to wonder am I ever going to be joined? You know ya others. Clive Lewis the labor and he put it really well. He said, you know you must feel like like green MPAs are like buses. You've been stood at that bus stop for so long twenty fifteen, twenty seventeen, twenty nineteen, waiting for more green MPs to join, and they didn't, and then just as you started to walk away, then four come together, and of course a fifth more recently. Now I hope those things were not related. I don't think they were related, but yes, it was just exhausting. And there was a sense as well, I think that I wanted to be able to focus more on climate in nature. And when I was the sole green MPa, any soule green mp then of course you have to cover absolutely everything. You know, you have to be in one hundred different places at once, and as the climate in nature crises become more and more present, in the sense, I wanted the time and the space to be able to work on those more exclusively as well. I guess that was also factored into my decision making.
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Speaker 2: Well, you were one of those rare politicians who managed to increase their vote share at every single election. What was the secret behind that?
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Speaker 1: Well, thank you for pointing that out. And it was so important to me that we were able to do that because back in twenty ten when I was first elected, you know, the people of Brighton Pavilion were taking a risk. This was a brand new party in terms of having representation at Westminster. So to get reelected in twenty fifteen was just so important as a kind of a sense of proof of concept, if you like. And I think the secret was to make sure that we always put the people of Brighton Pavilion first and also making sure that you know, I had a fantastic team around me, I'm very grateful to say, and they did such a great job in terms of being that kind of response of MP when it came to all of the constituency work as well. So I think it was that combination of people enjoying seeing a different kind of politics on the national stage and feeling a certain pride that Brighton had put me there. But also I think there was a huge amount of work that so many of my staff helped me do when it came to all of the constituency work as well.
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Speaker 2: Your career twenty ten to twenty twenty four was at the same time as the consensus on climate change took root in the form of the two thousand and eight Climate Change Law and became part of the legislative and thus action agenda for the government throughout that period even today, and you also were just about walking away from frontline politics as that consensus was starting to break down, because today the left is for climate action, including the Green Party and Labor Party, and the right is against net zero and mostly against climate action. True of the Conservative Party, true of Reform and Restore. What do you think caused that rupture?
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Speaker 1: Well, the first thing I would say is that I think we to make a distinction between the leaderships of those parties on the right and far right and the people who vote for them. And I think there's plenty of evidence to suggest that actually many Conservative voters, many voters even for Reform and Restore, actually are in favor of action on climate. So I think we need to make a distinction between what the leaderships are saying and what the voters are thinking and to try to explain that, because obviously one would normally assume that leaders are going to try and reflect what they think their voters want. I think it's been very convenient for people like Nigel Farage to make a culture war out of climate change, to kind of address it as part of the weaponization of what he sees as kind of woke policy. And I think, to be honest, that the green movement in its widest sense, have made it a bit too easy for him to do that as well, because I think in some of the language that we've adopted, we have allowed it to sound as if climate change is rather technocratic and could be perceived to be top down and elitist. And by that, I mean, you know, all of this language about net zero or biodiversity net gain, I mean, what on earth do those terms mean? You know, it could not have been designed to be more meaningless and to put more people off if you tried. And so I feel, and this is something that I'm working very closely with a group called the Climate Majority Project on. I feel that there's a job of work to be done, in particular right now, it's very timely to be talking much more about climate adaptation, Which is not to say that decarbonization and getting emissions down is any less urgent. Clearly it is. It is vitally urgent. But the advantage of addressing people through the lens of climate adaptation and climate resilience is that it means that the actions that we're talking about are much more meaningful in people's everyday lives and their communities. And so when you're talking, for example, about how to help communities become more resilient in the face of floods or right now in the cases of drought, when you're talking about how to build stronger communities around coming together to address those issues, I think you've got a better chance of being able to demonstrate to people that this is an agenda that has immediate benefits for them, that it is not something that is imposed from the outside, that it is something that is meaningful, and that it is something that can actually improve their everyday lives.
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Speaker 2: Now, So, is this the reason why when you made this series for the Rest is Politics, the title was when Nature Becomes a Security Threat, because you wanted to reframe the polarization that has happened on climate as a way of actually bringing it back to real things that are going to affect real people's lives today.
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Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. That it was about trying to make it more more direct, more meaningful, to demonstrate as well, frankly, that this is not just an agenda that is the re of Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth or the Green Party. That we've actually had a suppressed report, the Joint Intelligence Committee report that was produced by m I five by six by GHQ. You know, these are basically key security chiefs, intelligence chiefs in the UK, who are themselves saying that this is that the climate collapse and nature collapse are one of the greatest challenges that we face in terms of national security, right up there with cyber attacks or terrorism or anything else. And so it felt to me that it was an important way of being able to demonstrate that this is a widely shared agenda. This isn't some kind of niche concern. This is a concern of the people whose job it is to try to protect us and keep the country safe.
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Speaker 2: You know, one of the guests you spoke to was a retired Army general, Richard Nuji, who we also had on the show, who talked about how he saw climate change play out on the battlefield, where, at least in his regiment, the people hurt during the Iraq War weren't hurt because of the war, but because of the temperatures that they were experiencing and how they were adapting or dealing with it. This is only going to happen more and more and more now. The urgency to act on climate change is something that has always been part of the conversation around climate change. At what point do we go how much more can we make this case? How much stronger can we make this case for people to take it seriously? Like, at what point do you think there is an inevitability to action?
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Speaker 1: Well, if you had described the situation that we find ourselves in today, if you had described that to me some years ago, I would have said, well, surely this is it, you know, this is it. We are in the widespread drought, the second drought I think in three or four years. We've got farmers who are telling us that they are desperate about harvests and that our own food security could be at risk. We've got the Joint Intelligence Committee, are key security chiefs in the country telling us that this is a massive problem. And yet at the same time there's a live conversation going on about whether or not we should have more drilling in the North Sea. I mean, honestly, you could not make this up. I think when people look back at this moment in history, they will just not understand how we could have had such I mean, to call it cognitive dissonance is pretty generous. I mean, it is just total madness to be talking about getting yet more oil and gas from the North Sea, or indeed anywhere else, when we know that existing reserves already contain far more than enough to take us well over one point five degrees of global heating. So to answer your question, I mean, it's a question I asked myself regularly. You know, what more can the natural world throw at us before we finally wake up? And I suppose the way I answer it right now comes back to my earlier answer around around adaptation, around trying to make local communities more resilient, about working at a local level, and demonstrating that this is an agenda that is about making people's lives better, that it is about, for example, all of the jobs you could get by properly insulating people's homes which keep them warmer, in the winter and cooler in the summer, and all of the kind of co benefits that we know come from the kinds of measures that we need to put in place.
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Speaker 2: You brought up the Nazi, and you know, I get the scientific case for why you shouldn't be drilling in the Nazi. And in a way, the debate on the Nazi has become such a focal point for the opposition to the Nazi versus the supporters of Nazi that it takes up It feels to me far too much political oxygen. There's so many other important things that need to be talked about, the stuff you've mentioned on adaptation, the sort of successes you can have in reducing energy prices by going towards clean energy. There is so much to be done. And yet, whether it was Curious Armor or now Andy Burnham, who apparently is considering drilling in the NOAZEA, that debate is just taking too much space, isn't it.
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Speaker 1: I don't think it is, because I think it's a signal as well as the literal amount of oil and gas that might be left in the North Sea, And as you know, it's a declining basin and it's not really going to make a huge amount of difference in well, it won't make any difference when it comes to fuel bills or indeed to energy security. But I think it matters. And the reason that it's got such kind of tutemic resonance, if you like, is partly because of the message that it sends out to the rest of the world that a country like the UK, the sixth richest in the world, is still thinking that more more oil and gas is the way to go, so that in a sense gives a license to many other countries to do the same. I think it does also send out contradictory signals to investors and undermines confidence and capital that are needed to power our UK clean power goals. So I think it does really matter, and it kind of gives you a sense of whether or not Andy Burnham is going to be the kind of Prime minister who will face down the fossil fuel vested interests that are pushing him to try to get him to give them a green light. And I think to that extent it is a useful litmus test as to what kind of climate leadership he's going to show with.
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Speaker 2: The way things are going. Given the kind of response that we need to have on climate. Do you envision there being strict responses coming in, just like the COVID lockdown, because you know, we've had failed harvest or such extreme mut wave that people can't go out Like there is a way in which environmentalists have been blamed for being too alarmist, But then when the reality becomes so extreme, governments do need to act, and we've seen them do so in COVID. Do you see a response of that kind coming to climate at some point.
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Speaker 1: I very much hope it doesn't have to, but I certainly wouldn't rule it out. And one of the reasons I wouldn't rule it out is partly to do with that Joint Intelligence Committee report which did talk about you know, very serious food shortages, for example, as a result not just of current droughts, but as a result of ecosystem collapse around the world. So, you know, could we envisage a situation where once again we have to look at food rationing. Yes, I think we could be looking at something like that. I hope we're not, but I certainly would not rule measures like that out. I think the best way of protecting communities and trying to ensure that some of the more draconian policies don't need to be brought through. It is absolutely about that locally led, community based adaptation and resilience. We can get that right, then is our best hope of protecting people from some of the worst that is to.
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Speaker 2: Come after the break. More of my conversation with Caroline Lucas. If you're enjoying this episode of Zero, please take a moment to rate and review the show on whichever platform you're listening on. Recently, Listener Cha wrote a great episode, insightful, realist and essential listen. Thanks Cha. Now, there is a perception of the Green Party which holds back many people from joining are that it is considered to be sort of anti consumption, anti tech, does not really want to build things, you know, not just an opposition to nuclear which there are historical reasons for, but opposition to transmission in one way. Some people put Green Party as being not in my backyard? People, do you think the Green Party is a nimbi party?
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Speaker 1: I think there's so much to actually push back on about what you've just said. I mean, we're not against technology, We're just in favor of the right technology in the right place and you mentioned nuclear power, and nuclear power is very clearly the wrong technology at the wrong time. I mean, it's slow, it's massively costly, and won't help us to get to where we need to be in terms of extra energy and in terms of getting our emissions down anything like fast enough. In terms of NIMBI, in terms of planning laws, I think we care about everyone's backyard and we want to make sure that we've got the right housing in the right place, and therefore that we have a proper debate over development and make sure that we're hearing people's concerns, but also recognizing that we do have a housing crisis in this country. So yes, let's start building on brownfield sites. Let's not listen only to the house builders who again have a vested interest in building straight away on green belt. They already have thousands and thousands of housing stats that they could be putting in place if they chose to, but it's kind of lucrative for them to wait until the prices go higher. So I think, you know, there are all sorts of reasons why we want to challenge the existing system, but I think simply to label that NIMBY is slightly missing the point.
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Speaker 2: There is a form of environmentalism that is growing on the left which is going against the Nimbi philosophy. This is sort of showing up in the abundance agenda in the US, for example, and the creation of what are now called the Yimbi's which is yes, in my backyard, please build more, please. What do you make of that reaction to the Nimby problem that may not be any green problem, but certainly is a problem.
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Speaker 1: I mean, I just think that these labels aren't terribly helpful. I think it's much more helpful to talk about what kind of economy we want, and how the economy is a kind of subset of the wider environment the planet, and not the other way around. And so when it comes to the abundance agenda, you know, I'm all for abundance when it comes to you know, hedonism and having a good time and so forth. But if that somehow means that we just ignore the fact that there are limits to ongoing, ever increasing economic growth, then I would have deep concerns about it. I mean, yes, of course, we all know that the economic development can be made more efficient, and it's right that it should be. But at the end of the day. There's nowhere on Earth that has totally decoupled production from emissions, and therefore there are some parameters within which development needs to take place and not exceed. And you'll know better than I that you know all of those models that look at whether or not we're overshooting the kind of safe space when it comes to you know, way production or various different emissions from different kinds of sources. You know, we are pushing those planetary boundaries in a way that is totally unsustainable. Right now, we are well, you know, bursting outside of those planetary boundaries on many on many accounts, and therefore it is right that we look at how we bring our emissions back down into a way that is fair and guarantees that everybody can live in a way that is decent. I mean, it comes back to Kate Rayworth and her famous donut, you know, to make sure that nobody falls down in the middle, in other words, in that space where they don't have enough, but at the same time making sure that the rest of us are not kind of pushing so widely at the at the outer limits of that donut that we're exceeding those planetary boundaries.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to come back to planetary boundaries, but there was one way maybe in which I can make the example specific. So given I don't know if we're in the fourth or the fifth heat wave of this summer. Here in the UK, there is a conversation around air conditioning and some people are calling for their being deregulation because currently lots and lots of planning laws stop people from building or putting an air conditioner in the air apartment. I'm in one of those apartments, a new build where you know, regulations will stop me from having a condensing unit that goes outside my flat. How do you deal with the question about whether the UK should get more air conditioners and do so through deregulation for adaptation reasons? It sort of combines all these questions of building, about adapting, about the cost of adaptation. Do you think the UK should get more air conditioners as a part of a deregulatory agenda.
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Speaker 1: I don't think it should be as part of a deregulatory agenda, as if it's some kind of you know, logical consequence from deregulation. I think it should be based on in the under of need, and it's very clear that if you're talking about hospitals or increasingly school classrooms, then places like that definitely need air conditioning. I mean, it was outrageous really that we had to close schools during this most recent heat wave because we haven't built them in such a way that is resilient to more and more heat. So I absolutely agree that kind of retrospectively, yes, we need to be looking at where those air conditions as are vital for life and for things like kids being able to learn. But at the same time, we have got to change the way we build going forward. We can't simply think that we can retrofit our way out of this. That we need to have much better planning laws about planning and building in a way that keeps properties cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. You know, I heard your conversation with Dale Vince just recently where you know, you're pointing out to him that that heat pumps can also become coolers, and that seems a positive thing too, to the extent that we can make sure that some of the poorest families can also get access to those, because we know that it's often poorer families who are going to be in places where it's going to be much harder even if they could afford it, frankly to be able to have access to air conditioning. If I could just say one more thing, which would be that it feels to me that a really important missing part of this conversation would be about how we have community areas that are cooler. And so, just as you know, when very very cold spells, then you know libraries and other public spaces will open their doors to people to keep warm. You know, we absolutely need to have an adaptation strategy that is based on places where people can come to keep cool as well.
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Speaker 2: And so, going back to your conversation about planetary boundaries and the donut economics gatory worth formulation, part of that formulation is, of course, don't let people in the middle in the hole. But the other one is that there are these boundaries that we must respect. Now on respecting those boundaries, it inevitably raises a question about whether there sure should be de growth, whether we should not be just chasing economic growth. Where do you stand on de growth and do you think de growth agenda can ever win an election?
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Speaker 1: I mean, I share your skepticism if if you mean, you know, can I imagine people kind of marching through the streets with placards saying, what we want de growth, when do we want it now? I don't think it's going to be a popular slogan, if you like, but I do absolutely think that there needs to be limits to the amount of indiscriminate economic growth that is going on. Again, I still feel slightly resistant to labels, particularly when you call it de growth, because I think as soon as you do that, you're talking about you're raising the issue of growth, and then you're trying to negate it. You're not talking about anything that's very positive. I don't think d growth in itself sounds like something that people are going to aspire to, whereas if we talked about thriving communities irrespective of whether or not they're growing, that it feels to me is somewhere where people can feel attracted, they can be interested, they can think, well, what water a thriving community really look like? And it probably wouldn't necessarily be looking like, you know, maximizing every last drop of GDP, because we know that gross domestic product GDP can rise, you know, as high as you light. But it doesn't necessarily mean that it's reaching those people who need greater income and prosperity in order to thrive. So I think let's talk about what we do want, which is thriving communities within a framework which does not bust through our planetary boundaries, rather than have these labels, which I think for most people don't really mean anything, and even if they do, they don't sound terribly attractive.
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Speaker 2: So at the moment you have in Andy Burnham a prime minister who's probably more on the left than there has been a prime minister in the recent few decades in the UK.
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Speaker 1: That's called at BA. But yes, yes, true.
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Speaker 2: But even Andy Burnham, you know, is now starting to talk about drilling in the Nazia, is having to talk about the bond markets, is having to worry about these things because of the financial situation that he finds the country in which now he is the leader, and that financial situation is of real debt to real investors, which is why the bond markets show up as this powerful force, even though they seem wonky and don't seem like they connect to real people's lives. They do because it is the money that the government has borrowed from the market to allow for the services that the government must provide to its citizens, and the bond markets are one of the places where the strongest push for economic growth comes from, because yes, if you do have economic growth, your ability to pay back the debt and invest in the things that the government must invest in becomes easier. I take your point about making the message about thriving communities. I think that's a much better positive frame in which the things that the government needs to do, regardless of economic growth, can fit in. But in a financial situation as it is for the UK, and this is not just a UK problem, it's a problem for many, many other countries, how do you make that case. How do you make the case for investment when you can't even borrow to provide the services that you need to provide today?
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Speaker 1: Well, I think I would challenge that slightly. I mean, I think there's a huge difference between borrowing to give people massive tax cuts, which of course was the Liz Trust approach, which very soon kind of hit the buffers, and borrowing to invest in the green economy, for example, which we know is just about the fastest area of the economy that is growing, and therefore people can feel confident that there are going to be positive returns on that investment. So I think it does depend on what you're investing in. And I think as well, when it comes to finances and so forth, you'll know that one of the headline proposals from from from Zach from Zach Polanski is absolutely around a wealth tax, and he is by no means alone in saying that we should be looking at measures like that. So I think, you know, if the political will is there, there are ways of doing wealth taxes. I should kind of put it in the plural because I think, you know, there are all kinds of different ways of doing it, but there would be ways of doing it that would be perfectly fine for the bomb markets because what they want essentially is certainty. They want clear guidelines of what a government is planning to do, and I think there's a way that we could do that in a way that would raise the money that we need and allow us as well to borrow to a certain extent if it is for investment in that kind of green economy.
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Speaker 2: So looking forward, now we do have this broken political consensus in the UK for the very first time. Yes, the general election might be a few years away, but there's a real risk that there's a party of the right, one of those three gets elected or a combination of them, and the climate agenda falls off, at least politically from the governing class, if not from the mindset of people. How do you stop that from happening, or do you work towards trying to bring the right back into the fold of a political consensus.
00:31:35
Speaker 1: Our responsibility is to demonstrate to those people that might feel tempted to vote for parties on the right or even the far right, that there are other ways of expressing their frustration and indeed of choosing parties that can make them will make a difference without voting for a party like Reform, which I would say is very anti immigration, can be very racist, and so forth. Well, it pushes the agenda of electoral reform and cleaning up politics. And if I had one message other than than the Green message for Andy Burnham, it would be please use this opportunity that you have to clean up politics, to change the voting system so that we don't ever have a situation again where a government can be formed by by a party that has just twenty nine percent of the vote or something like that. That is what could hand the keys to Nigel Farage at the next election, and while he's at it, let's make sure that we get those donations, those private donations out of politics. Let's make sure that we do reform the House of Lords. You know, there is a whole package there of cleaning up politics, which I think would help those people that are currently tempted to vote for other parties to believe that actually there is a party that cares about making sure that we bring integrity back to politics and the political system, as well as making sure that we don't have a situation where, yeah, where we could have a far right government election on twenty nine percent of the vote.
00:32:59
Speaker 2: Do you think politics today is more divisive, more aggressive and a place where it's much harder to cross the aisle than in your forty years being in politics.
00:33:11
Speaker 1: I think that, on the face of it, the last few years, the rise of social media, the rise of parties like Reform, has meant that there has been a much more course and aggressive language that gets used around politics, which I think turns a lot of people off and indeed puts off a lot of people who might otherwise want to get involved themselves in the political process. I think underneath that there are still those strong relationships which make politics a place where where you know, you want to try to get involved and you want to make difference happen. So I don't understand so negative such that it's going to put off even more people. It's self evident that the discourse has become harsher and more aggressive, but I think as well that you know there is all to play for in terms of promoting a different kind of politics, and again at a local level it can often feel very different.
00:34:08
Speaker 2: Now we have a global audience and we're lucky to have one. What would be your lessons from forty years of green politics that other parts of the world can learn from.
00:34:17
Speaker 1: I think one of the lessons would be to make sure that you talk in a way that is accessible and meaningful and easily relatable. That sounds very obvious, but I think sometimes, particularly within those green debates, we have lapsed into a very kind of technocratic language that has just put many many people off. So I think doing that demonstrating very early on whose side you're on, by the kinds of policies that you promote, and showing that you're alongside so called ordinary people. It's not a phrase I like, I think making sure that power is taken away from Westminster and all credit I mean, I'm saying Westminster in the UK situation obviously, but basically diva and decentralization, and credit to Andy Burnham on that he does seem to be serious, for example, about giving more powers to mayors and hopefully down to regions and localities as well. I think the bottom line is that people want to feel that they have agency, and that is the big lesson from Brexit, from from so much of the kind of swing to the right is that people don't feel that they have any agency over the decisions that are made about their lives. And I think we need to trust people a heck of a lot more, give people power back, trust them to use it well, and put that within that wider framework of the government doing the right thing as well.
00:35:38
Speaker 2: Thank you, Caroline, thank you so much, and thank you for listening to Zero Caroline. Series for the Rest is Politics When Nature Becomes a Security thread is out now and linked in the show notes. Now for the Sound of the week, That is the sound of a controlled explosion carried out by the Romanian Navy in the Danube. The navy is trying to redirect water flow to help cool a nuclear power plant as dry conditions continue across Europe. If you liked this episode, please take a moment to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify. This episode was produced by Oscar BOYD. Special thanks to Olivia Rudgaard, Moses Andem, Summer Maxwell, and Amanda Hurley. I am Akshadati back soon.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
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Speaker 2: This year on Zero, we've talked a lot about UK politics. It's not just because I live in London, but because what's happening in the UK is a strong example of both what's going right and wrong with action on climate. The country which created the world's first national legislation on climate change no longer has a political consensus on climate action. And it's happening just as impacts of climate change are becoming not just unignorable but unbearable. In the UK, we've had one of the driest summers on record, with London receiving no rain in the month of July, the first time that's happened in recorded history going back to eighteen seventy one. That's why I think how the UK handles its climate politics has lessons for many. This is zero. I am Aksha Drati and this week where next for climate politics? Joining me on zero this week is Caroline Lucas, formerly the leader of the UK's Green Party and a longtime member of Parliament. Recently she hosted a podcast series for The Rest is Politics called When Nature Becomes a Security Threat. Caroline, Welcome to Zero.
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Speaker 1: Thank you so much. For having me.
00:01:29
Speaker 2: Now you've done this for a long time. But I want to start with a big picture. How do you define your environmentalism?
00:01:36
Speaker 1: Well, that is a big subject. How do I define my environmentalism? I mean, I don't like the word environmentalism because it immediately feels like it's in a particular box, in a particular compartment. So I guess for me and for the Green Party, concern about the environment of our own climate is central to absolutely everything, So it's absolutely linked to social justice, but it also runs right across the economy, education, health, any other subject you like to see. So I suppose I would say that for me, it really is totally all encompassing, but at its heart it absolutely has social justice as well.
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Speaker 2: So now let me go to the other extreme of a question that is much more focused on one place. There was recently a wildfire on the Suffolk Coast, very close to size Well Nuclear power plant. I heard from somebody in the region who said they've been working on raising awareness about climate change for the last twenty years of their life, and they would distraught about the fact that climate impacts are now on their footsteps. You've been doing it for forty years more than forty years. Their question, which I want to ask you, what has all this work been for?
00:02:46
Speaker 1: Well, I have a great deal of sympathy with the person who asked that question, because it is deeply frustrating that despite decades of so many of us warning that the climate is heating, that the impacts are going to be incredibly serious, that the sooner we act, the better chance that we have of avoiding the worst. Those messages, in many respects do feel as if they've fallen on deaf eears. I mean, if we were to be charitable and we could look at lots of the positive things that have happened, and you know, certainly there's been huge investments in renewable energy that's very positive. I think there's a general understanding now that the climate crisis is real, but I think what we're still lacking is the urgency that's required to tackle it. So, yes, I do feel frustrated. I do feel angry that so many people are going to be put through so much pain unnecessarily, because if we'd started to act on this agenda decades ago, when so many of us began raising it, then not only would it have been a much cheaper thing to do, we would now not be on the trajectory that we are in terms of climate catastrophe. So I think things are pretty grim and I can't quite think of a of a more positive way of putting it than that, I'm afraid.
00:03:58
Speaker 2: But you have kept at it for quite a bit longer than this person. You know, you have been the leader of the UK's Green Party for a long time. You were the only member of Parliament for the Green Party between twenty ten and twenty twenty four. You resigned from the frontline of politics that year, and that year the Green Party also had its biggest ever haul in members of Parliament, winning four seats, and that was under Zach Polanski's leadership, who we've had on the podcast before. So just as the Greens were gaining momentum, you sort of stepped back from frontline politics.
00:04:35
Speaker 3: Why I stepped back from being an MP, frankly because I was absolutely exhausted, and at the time that I did it, that was actually before Zach became leader and before it was clear that we were going to have four Green MPs now five.
00:04:51
Speaker 1: I mean, being the sole representative of my party for fourteen years, I can't quite tell you what that was like, I mean, it was an extraordinary privilege, of course, but it was also utterly exhausting doing eighty hour weeks and you know, beginning to wonder am I ever going to be joined? You know ya others. Clive Lewis the labor and he put it really well. He said, you know you must feel like like green MPAs are like buses. You've been stood at that bus stop for so long twenty fifteen, twenty seventeen, twenty nineteen, waiting for more green MPs to join, and they didn't, and then just as you started to walk away, then four come together, and of course a fifth more recently. Now I hope those things were not related. I don't think they were related, but yes, it was just exhausting. And there was a sense as well, I think that I wanted to be able to focus more on climate in nature. And when I was the sole green MPa, any soule green mp then of course you have to cover absolutely everything. You know, you have to be in one hundred different places at once, and as the climate in nature crises become more and more present, in the sense, I wanted the time and the space to be able to work on those more exclusively as well. I guess that was also factored into my decision making.
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Speaker 2: Well, you were one of those rare politicians who managed to increase their vote share at every single election. What was the secret behind that?
00:06:11
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for pointing that out. And it was so important to me that we were able to do that because back in twenty ten when I was first elected, you know, the people of Brighton Pavilion were taking a risk. This was a brand new party in terms of having representation at Westminster. So to get reelected in twenty fifteen was just so important as a kind of a sense of proof of concept, if you like. And I think the secret was to make sure that we always put the people of Brighton Pavilion first and also making sure that you know, I had a fantastic team around me, I'm very grateful to say, and they did such a great job in terms of being that kind of response of MP when it came to all of the constituency work as well. So I think it was that combination of people enjoying seeing a different kind of politics on the national stage and feeling a certain pride that Brighton had put me there. But also I think there was a huge amount of work that so many of my staff helped me do when it came to all of the constituency work as well.
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Speaker 2: Your career twenty ten to twenty twenty four was at the same time as the consensus on climate change took root in the form of the two thousand and eight Climate Change Law and became part of the legislative and thus action agenda for the government throughout that period even today, and you also were just about walking away from frontline politics as that consensus was starting to break down, because today the left is for climate action, including the Green Party and Labor Party, and the right is against net zero and mostly against climate action. True of the Conservative Party, true of Reform and Restore. What do you think caused that rupture?
00:07:57
Speaker 1: Well, the first thing I would say is that I think we to make a distinction between the leaderships of those parties on the right and far right and the people who vote for them. And I think there's plenty of evidence to suggest that actually many Conservative voters, many voters even for Reform and Restore, actually are in favor of action on climate. So I think we need to make a distinction between what the leaderships are saying and what the voters are thinking and to try to explain that, because obviously one would normally assume that leaders are going to try and reflect what they think their voters want. I think it's been very convenient for people like Nigel Farage to make a culture war out of climate change, to kind of address it as part of the weaponization of what he sees as kind of woke policy. And I think, to be honest, that the green movement in its widest sense, have made it a bit too easy for him to do that as well, because I think in some of the language that we've adopted, we have allowed it to sound as if climate change is rather technocratic and could be perceived to be top down and elitist. And by that, I mean, you know, all of this language about net zero or biodiversity net gain, I mean, what on earth do those terms mean? You know, it could not have been designed to be more meaningless and to put more people off if you tried. And so I feel, and this is something that I'm working very closely with a group called the Climate Majority Project on. I feel that there's a job of work to be done, in particular right now, it's very timely to be talking much more about climate adaptation, Which is not to say that decarbonization and getting emissions down is any less urgent. Clearly it is. It is vitally urgent. But the advantage of addressing people through the lens of climate adaptation and climate resilience is that it means that the actions that we're talking about are much more meaningful in people's everyday lives and their communities. And so when you're talking, for example, about how to help communities become more resilient in the face of floods or right now in the cases of drought, when you're talking about how to build stronger communities around coming together to address those issues, I think you've got a better chance of being able to demonstrate to people that this is an agenda that has immediate benefits for them, that it is not something that is imposed from the outside, that it is something that is meaningful, and that it is something that can actually improve their everyday lives.
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Speaker 2: Now, So, is this the reason why when you made this series for the Rest is Politics, the title was when Nature Becomes a Security Threat, because you wanted to reframe the polarization that has happened on climate as a way of actually bringing it back to real things that are going to affect real people's lives today.
00:10:48
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. That it was about trying to make it more more direct, more meaningful, to demonstrate as well, frankly, that this is not just an agenda that is the re of Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth or the Green Party. That we've actually had a suppressed report, the Joint Intelligence Committee report that was produced by m I five by six by GHQ. You know, these are basically key security chiefs, intelligence chiefs in the UK, who are themselves saying that this is that the climate collapse and nature collapse are one of the greatest challenges that we face in terms of national security, right up there with cyber attacks or terrorism or anything else. And so it felt to me that it was an important way of being able to demonstrate that this is a widely shared agenda. This isn't some kind of niche concern. This is a concern of the people whose job it is to try to protect us and keep the country safe.
00:11:47
Speaker 2: You know, one of the guests you spoke to was a retired Army general, Richard Nuji, who we also had on the show, who talked about how he saw climate change play out on the battlefield, where, at least in his regiment, the people hurt during the Iraq War weren't hurt because of the war, but because of the temperatures that they were experiencing and how they were adapting or dealing with it. This is only going to happen more and more and more now. The urgency to act on climate change is something that has always been part of the conversation around climate change. At what point do we go how much more can we make this case? How much stronger can we make this case for people to take it seriously? Like, at what point do you think there is an inevitability to action?
00:12:43
Speaker 1: Well, if you had described the situation that we find ourselves in today, if you had described that to me some years ago, I would have said, well, surely this is it, you know, this is it. We are in the widespread drought, the second drought I think in three or four years. We've got farmers who are telling us that they are desperate about harvests and that our own food security could be at risk. We've got the Joint Intelligence Committee, are key security chiefs in the country telling us that this is a massive problem. And yet at the same time there's a live conversation going on about whether or not we should have more drilling in the North Sea. I mean, honestly, you could not make this up. I think when people look back at this moment in history, they will just not understand how we could have had such I mean, to call it cognitive dissonance is pretty generous. I mean, it is just total madness to be talking about getting yet more oil and gas from the North Sea, or indeed anywhere else, when we know that existing reserves already contain far more than enough to take us well over one point five degrees of global heating. So to answer your question, I mean, it's a question I asked myself regularly. You know, what more can the natural world throw at us before we finally wake up? And I suppose the way I answer it right now comes back to my earlier answer around around adaptation, around trying to make local communities more resilient, about working at a local level, and demonstrating that this is an agenda that is about making people's lives better, that it is about, for example, all of the jobs you could get by properly insulating people's homes which keep them warmer, in the winter and cooler in the summer, and all of the kind of co benefits that we know come from the kinds of measures that we need to put in place.
00:14:32
Speaker 2: You brought up the Nazi, and you know, I get the scientific case for why you shouldn't be drilling in the Nazi. And in a way, the debate on the Nazi has become such a focal point for the opposition to the Nazi versus the supporters of Nazi that it takes up It feels to me far too much political oxygen. There's so many other important things that need to be talked about, the stuff you've mentioned on adaptation, the sort of successes you can have in reducing energy prices by going towards clean energy. There is so much to be done. And yet, whether it was Curious Armor or now Andy Burnham, who apparently is considering drilling in the NOAZEA, that debate is just taking too much space, isn't it.
00:15:23
Speaker 1: I don't think it is, because I think it's a signal as well as the literal amount of oil and gas that might be left in the North Sea, And as you know, it's a declining basin and it's not really going to make a huge amount of difference in well, it won't make any difference when it comes to fuel bills or indeed to energy security. But I think it matters. And the reason that it's got such kind of tutemic resonance, if you like, is partly because of the message that it sends out to the rest of the world that a country like the UK, the sixth richest in the world, is still thinking that more more oil and gas is the way to go, so that in a sense gives a license to many other countries to do the same. I think it does also send out contradictory signals to investors and undermines confidence and capital that are needed to power our UK clean power goals. So I think it does really matter, and it kind of gives you a sense of whether or not Andy Burnham is going to be the kind of Prime minister who will face down the fossil fuel vested interests that are pushing him to try to get him to give them a green light. And I think to that extent it is a useful litmus test as to what kind of climate leadership he's going to show with.
00:16:40
Speaker 2: The way things are going. Given the kind of response that we need to have on climate. Do you envision there being strict responses coming in, just like the COVID lockdown, because you know, we've had failed harvest or such extreme mut wave that people can't go out Like there is a way in which environmentalists have been blamed for being too alarmist, But then when the reality becomes so extreme, governments do need to act, and we've seen them do so in COVID. Do you see a response of that kind coming to climate at some point.
00:17:13
Speaker 1: I very much hope it doesn't have to, but I certainly wouldn't rule it out. And one of the reasons I wouldn't rule it out is partly to do with that Joint Intelligence Committee report which did talk about you know, very serious food shortages, for example, as a result not just of current droughts, but as a result of ecosystem collapse around the world. So, you know, could we envisage a situation where once again we have to look at food rationing. Yes, I think we could be looking at something like that. I hope we're not, but I certainly would not rule measures like that out. I think the best way of protecting communities and trying to ensure that some of the more draconian policies don't need to be brought through. It is absolutely about that locally led, community based adaptation and resilience. We can get that right, then is our best hope of protecting people from some of the worst that is to.
00:18:03
Speaker 2: Come after the break. More of my conversation with Caroline Lucas. If you're enjoying this episode of Zero, please take a moment to rate and review the show on whichever platform you're listening on. Recently, Listener Cha wrote a great episode, insightful, realist and essential listen. Thanks Cha. Now, there is a perception of the Green Party which holds back many people from joining are that it is considered to be sort of anti consumption, anti tech, does not really want to build things, you know, not just an opposition to nuclear which there are historical reasons for, but opposition to transmission in one way. Some people put Green Party as being not in my backyard? People, do you think the Green Party is a nimbi party?
00:19:07
Speaker 1: I think there's so much to actually push back on about what you've just said. I mean, we're not against technology, We're just in favor of the right technology in the right place and you mentioned nuclear power, and nuclear power is very clearly the wrong technology at the wrong time. I mean, it's slow, it's massively costly, and won't help us to get to where we need to be in terms of extra energy and in terms of getting our emissions down anything like fast enough. In terms of NIMBI, in terms of planning laws, I think we care about everyone's backyard and we want to make sure that we've got the right housing in the right place, and therefore that we have a proper debate over development and make sure that we're hearing people's concerns, but also recognizing that we do have a housing crisis in this country. So yes, let's start building on brownfield sites. Let's not listen only to the house builders who again have a vested interest in building straight away on green belt. They already have thousands and thousands of housing stats that they could be putting in place if they chose to, but it's kind of lucrative for them to wait until the prices go higher. So I think, you know, there are all sorts of reasons why we want to challenge the existing system, but I think simply to label that NIMBY is slightly missing the point.
00:20:25
Speaker 2: There is a form of environmentalism that is growing on the left which is going against the Nimbi philosophy. This is sort of showing up in the abundance agenda in the US, for example, and the creation of what are now called the Yimbi's which is yes, in my backyard, please build more, please. What do you make of that reaction to the Nimby problem that may not be any green problem, but certainly is a problem.
00:20:52
Speaker 1: I mean, I just think that these labels aren't terribly helpful. I think it's much more helpful to talk about what kind of economy we want, and how the economy is a kind of subset of the wider environment the planet, and not the other way around. And so when it comes to the abundance agenda, you know, I'm all for abundance when it comes to you know, hedonism and having a good time and so forth. But if that somehow means that we just ignore the fact that there are limits to ongoing, ever increasing economic growth, then I would have deep concerns about it. I mean, yes, of course, we all know that the economic development can be made more efficient, and it's right that it should be. But at the end of the day. There's nowhere on Earth that has totally decoupled production from emissions, and therefore there are some parameters within which development needs to take place and not exceed. And you'll know better than I that you know all of those models that look at whether or not we're overshooting the kind of safe space when it comes to you know, way production or various different emissions from different kinds of sources. You know, we are pushing those planetary boundaries in a way that is totally unsustainable. Right now, we are well, you know, bursting outside of those planetary boundaries on many on many accounts, and therefore it is right that we look at how we bring our emissions back down into a way that is fair and guarantees that everybody can live in a way that is decent. I mean, it comes back to Kate Rayworth and her famous donut, you know, to make sure that nobody falls down in the middle, in other words, in that space where they don't have enough, but at the same time making sure that the rest of us are not kind of pushing so widely at the at the outer limits of that donut that we're exceeding those planetary boundaries.
00:22:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to come back to planetary boundaries, but there was one way maybe in which I can make the example specific. So given I don't know if we're in the fourth or the fifth heat wave of this summer. Here in the UK, there is a conversation around air conditioning and some people are calling for their being deregulation because currently lots and lots of planning laws stop people from building or putting an air conditioner in the air apartment. I'm in one of those apartments, a new build where you know, regulations will stop me from having a condensing unit that goes outside my flat. How do you deal with the question about whether the UK should get more air conditioners and do so through deregulation for adaptation reasons? It sort of combines all these questions of building, about adapting, about the cost of adaptation. Do you think the UK should get more air conditioners as a part of a deregulatory agenda.
00:23:50
Speaker 1: I don't think it should be as part of a deregulatory agenda, as if it's some kind of you know, logical consequence from deregulation. I think it should be based on in the under of need, and it's very clear that if you're talking about hospitals or increasingly school classrooms, then places like that definitely need air conditioning. I mean, it was outrageous really that we had to close schools during this most recent heat wave because we haven't built them in such a way that is resilient to more and more heat. So I absolutely agree that kind of retrospectively, yes, we need to be looking at where those air conditions as are vital for life and for things like kids being able to learn. But at the same time, we have got to change the way we build going forward. We can't simply think that we can retrofit our way out of this. That we need to have much better planning laws about planning and building in a way that keeps properties cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. You know, I heard your conversation with Dale Vince just recently where you know, you're pointing out to him that that heat pumps can also become coolers, and that seems a positive thing too, to the extent that we can make sure that some of the poorest families can also get access to those, because we know that it's often poorer families who are going to be in places where it's going to be much harder even if they could afford it, frankly to be able to have access to air conditioning. If I could just say one more thing, which would be that it feels to me that a really important missing part of this conversation would be about how we have community areas that are cooler. And so, just as you know, when very very cold spells, then you know libraries and other public spaces will open their doors to people to keep warm. You know, we absolutely need to have an adaptation strategy that is based on places where people can come to keep cool as well.
00:25:47
Speaker 2: And so, going back to your conversation about planetary boundaries and the donut economics gatory worth formulation, part of that formulation is, of course, don't let people in the middle in the hole. But the other one is that there are these boundaries that we must respect. Now on respecting those boundaries, it inevitably raises a question about whether there sure should be de growth, whether we should not be just chasing economic growth. Where do you stand on de growth and do you think de growth agenda can ever win an election?
00:26:22
Speaker 1: I mean, I share your skepticism if if you mean, you know, can I imagine people kind of marching through the streets with placards saying, what we want de growth, when do we want it now? I don't think it's going to be a popular slogan, if you like, but I do absolutely think that there needs to be limits to the amount of indiscriminate economic growth that is going on. Again, I still feel slightly resistant to labels, particularly when you call it de growth, because I think as soon as you do that, you're talking about you're raising the issue of growth, and then you're trying to negate it. You're not talking about anything that's very positive. I don't think d growth in itself sounds like something that people are going to aspire to, whereas if we talked about thriving communities irrespective of whether or not they're growing, that it feels to me is somewhere where people can feel attracted, they can be interested, they can think, well, what water a thriving community really look like? And it probably wouldn't necessarily be looking like, you know, maximizing every last drop of GDP, because we know that gross domestic product GDP can rise, you know, as high as you light. But it doesn't necessarily mean that it's reaching those people who need greater income and prosperity in order to thrive. So I think let's talk about what we do want, which is thriving communities within a framework which does not bust through our planetary boundaries, rather than have these labels, which I think for most people don't really mean anything, and even if they do, they don't sound terribly attractive.
00:27:51
Speaker 2: So at the moment you have in Andy Burnham a prime minister who's probably more on the left than there has been a prime minister in the recent few decades in the UK.
00:28:05
Speaker 1: That's called at BA. But yes, yes, true.
00:28:09
Speaker 2: But even Andy Burnham, you know, is now starting to talk about drilling in the Nazia, is having to talk about the bond markets, is having to worry about these things because of the financial situation that he finds the country in which now he is the leader, and that financial situation is of real debt to real investors, which is why the bond markets show up as this powerful force, even though they seem wonky and don't seem like they connect to real people's lives. They do because it is the money that the government has borrowed from the market to allow for the services that the government must provide to its citizens, and the bond markets are one of the places where the strongest push for economic growth comes from, because yes, if you do have economic growth, your ability to pay back the debt and invest in the things that the government must invest in becomes easier. I take your point about making the message about thriving communities. I think that's a much better positive frame in which the things that the government needs to do, regardless of economic growth, can fit in. But in a financial situation as it is for the UK, and this is not just a UK problem, it's a problem for many, many other countries, how do you make that case. How do you make the case for investment when you can't even borrow to provide the services that you need to provide today?
00:29:39
Speaker 1: Well, I think I would challenge that slightly. I mean, I think there's a huge difference between borrowing to give people massive tax cuts, which of course was the Liz Trust approach, which very soon kind of hit the buffers, and borrowing to invest in the green economy, for example, which we know is just about the fastest area of the economy that is growing, and therefore people can feel confident that there are going to be positive returns on that investment. So I think it does depend on what you're investing in. And I think as well, when it comes to finances and so forth, you'll know that one of the headline proposals from from from Zach from Zach Polanski is absolutely around a wealth tax, and he is by no means alone in saying that we should be looking at measures like that. So I think, you know, if the political will is there, there are ways of doing wealth taxes. I should kind of put it in the plural because I think, you know, there are all kinds of different ways of doing it, but there would be ways of doing it that would be perfectly fine for the bomb markets because what they want essentially is certainty. They want clear guidelines of what a government is planning to do, and I think there's a way that we could do that in a way that would raise the money that we need and allow us as well to borrow to a certain extent if it is for investment in that kind of green economy.
00:31:01
Speaker 2: So looking forward, now we do have this broken political consensus in the UK for the very first time. Yes, the general election might be a few years away, but there's a real risk that there's a party of the right, one of those three gets elected or a combination of them, and the climate agenda falls off, at least politically from the governing class, if not from the mindset of people. How do you stop that from happening, or do you work towards trying to bring the right back into the fold of a political consensus.
00:31:35
Speaker 1: Our responsibility is to demonstrate to those people that might feel tempted to vote for parties on the right or even the far right, that there are other ways of expressing their frustration and indeed of choosing parties that can make them will make a difference without voting for a party like Reform, which I would say is very anti immigration, can be very racist, and so forth. Well, it pushes the agenda of electoral reform and cleaning up politics. And if I had one message other than than the Green message for Andy Burnham, it would be please use this opportunity that you have to clean up politics, to change the voting system so that we don't ever have a situation again where a government can be formed by by a party that has just twenty nine percent of the vote or something like that. That is what could hand the keys to Nigel Farage at the next election, and while he's at it, let's make sure that we get those donations, those private donations out of politics. Let's make sure that we do reform the House of Lords. You know, there is a whole package there of cleaning up politics, which I think would help those people that are currently tempted to vote for other parties to believe that actually there is a party that cares about making sure that we bring integrity back to politics and the political system, as well as making sure that we don't have a situation where, yeah, where we could have a far right government election on twenty nine percent of the vote.
00:32:59
Speaker 2: Do you think politics today is more divisive, more aggressive and a place where it's much harder to cross the aisle than in your forty years being in politics.
00:33:11
Speaker 1: I think that, on the face of it, the last few years, the rise of social media, the rise of parties like Reform, has meant that there has been a much more course and aggressive language that gets used around politics, which I think turns a lot of people off and indeed puts off a lot of people who might otherwise want to get involved themselves in the political process. I think underneath that there are still those strong relationships which make politics a place where where you know, you want to try to get involved and you want to make difference happen. So I don't understand so negative such that it's going to put off even more people. It's self evident that the discourse has become harsher and more aggressive, but I think as well that you know there is all to play for in terms of promoting a different kind of politics, and again at a local level it can often feel very different.
00:34:08
Speaker 2: Now we have a global audience and we're lucky to have one. What would be your lessons from forty years of green politics that other parts of the world can learn from.
00:34:17
Speaker 1: I think one of the lessons would be to make sure that you talk in a way that is accessible and meaningful and easily relatable. That sounds very obvious, but I think sometimes, particularly within those green debates, we have lapsed into a very kind of technocratic language that has just put many many people off. So I think doing that demonstrating very early on whose side you're on, by the kinds of policies that you promote, and showing that you're alongside so called ordinary people. It's not a phrase I like, I think making sure that power is taken away from Westminster and all credit I mean, I'm saying Westminster in the UK situation obviously, but basically diva and decentralization, and credit to Andy Burnham on that he does seem to be serious, for example, about giving more powers to mayors and hopefully down to regions and localities as well. I think the bottom line is that people want to feel that they have agency, and that is the big lesson from Brexit, from from so much of the kind of swing to the right is that people don't feel that they have any agency over the decisions that are made about their lives. And I think we need to trust people a heck of a lot more, give people power back, trust them to use it well, and put that within that wider framework of the government doing the right thing as well.
00:35:38
Speaker 2: Thank you, Caroline, thank you so much, and thank you for listening to Zero Caroline. Series for the Rest is Politics When Nature Becomes a Security thread is out now and linked in the show notes. Now for the Sound of the week, That is the sound of a controlled explosion carried out by the Romanian Navy in the Danube. The navy is trying to redirect water flow to help cool a nuclear power plant as dry conditions continue across Europe. If you liked this episode, please take a moment to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify. This episode was produced by Oscar BOYD. Special thanks to Olivia Rudgaard, Moses Andem, Summer Maxwell, and Amanda Hurley. I am Akshadati back soon.
