UK Election Special: Climate

The LRB Podcast

London Review of Books

Society & Culture

4.4 • 582 Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2024

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the first in a series of episodes on the UK general election, James Butler is joined by Ann Pettifor and Adrienne Buller to discuss climate policy and its apparent absence from the campaign so far. Several years ago the Labour Party was committed to a Green New Deal but has since backed away from that promise, while the Conservatives have decided that abandoning their own climate commitments is a vote-winner. Ann, Adrienne and James consider why political leadership and courage have disappeared on this issue, what environmental policy might look like with a Labour government, and how Chinese bicycles demonstrate the problem of international climate action. Read James's latest blog post on the election: https://lrb.me/butlersunakpod And more on climate in the LRB: Will Davies on why capitalism won't save the planet: https://lrb.me/daviesclimatepod James Butler on Andreas Malm and ecoterrorism: https://lrb.me/butlerclimatepod2 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome to a special UK election series from the London Review of Books. I'm James Butler,
0:08.1	and over the next three weeks or so, I'll be taking an in-depth look at some of the big issues
0:12.7	of the campaign, or issues that should be big in the campaign at least. What might change or not
0:18.6	change with a new government? What are the parties saying or failing to say?
0:23.5	And are there any reasons to be hopeful?
0:26.6	So far, we've heard quite a lot about taxes, about national services,
0:30.7	about nurseries, absences from D-Day commemorations,
0:34.1	but not much about this topic yet.
0:36.6	Even though you might say it's the most important of all.
0:40.1	Today, we're talking about climate.
0:45.0	And joining me to do that is the political economist, writer and pioneer of the Green New Deal,
0:50.0	Anne Petterford. Hello, Anne.
0:51.7	Hi, hello, James.
0:53.2	And Adrienne Buller, who is also a writer,
0:56.9	author most recently of The Value of a Whale, an excellent book from Manchester University
1:01.9	Press, I think, and also a fellow at Commonwealth. Hello, Adrienne. Hi, James. So let's start by
1:09.4	just before we zoom out to the bigger climate issue, looking at where we are in the campaign.
1:15.2	Now, we're recording this on Wednesday.
1:17.2	It will come out on Thursday.
1:19.0	And so we've had the Conservative manifesto yesterday on Tuesday.
1:22.7	The Green Manifesto today, which has just come out.
1:25.2	I've had a very quick look over it before we started
	...

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