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Showing posts from November, 2020

What the pandemic tells us about the politics of the climate crisis

In many ways the 2020 pandemic is a rehearsal of the climate crisis. Indeed in many ways the 2020 pandemic is the first part of the climate crisis, the first of many global crises that are coming our way, all linked to the twenty-first century climate and ecological emergency that is upon us. And so this crisis can teach us something about the crises to come. Specifically I think it can teach us something about how politically right wing governments react to crises like this, and what that means for climate activism. The UK/English Conservative government have failed us repeatedly in this crisis, and that failure is not just about incompetence, it is very much about ideology. The fact that the same mistake has been made twice , in both the spring and the autumn, of going into a lockdown much too late, shows us the basic response to crises is to do nothing. Again this is not a matter of incompetence but ideology. The right wing ideology is to do nothing that disrupts the "normal&qu