It’s Blog Action Day and thousands of people across the world are writing about what inequality means to them. The rich/poor divide is grotesque: the 85 richest people in the world are as wealthy as the poorest 50%. There is no point in me writing about how inequality exists, because not even the most deluded toff could challenge that assertion. Instead, with this topic, I have a great opportunity to celebrate how fantastic the poorer communities in Wales have been in taking enterprising action against climate change.
This week, Renew Wales won the Engaging in the Community Award at the Wales Green Energy Awards. Wales’ Commissioner For Sustainable Futures, Peter Davies, explained that Renew Wales had in part won the award because we have “been working with communities that are not the usual suspects…communities that you wouldn’t associate with renewable energy developments – in the poorer communities across Wales”.
One might have thought that those struggling for food security, in fuel poverty and seemingly helpless to their land being used for gain by big energy companies, might have reason to be slightly resentful towards the world and especially the sustainability of it. Instead, the response we have had from people wanting to get involved and the community spirit that Renew projects have driven across the country have been overwhelming. Inequality is glaringly apparent when inspecting people’s bank accounts, but all that green saved away and accumulating interest seems not to have a correlating effect in increasing one’s green credentials: those who have nothing are proving that you can still make a difference.
At a Renew Wales mini-conference in July that explored how local action can help us meet the challenges of rising fuel prices and climate change, Shan Ashton of Bangor University gave a great ‘Angry Welsh Woman’ inspired talk about how we can and should be taking control ourselves. She insisted we should stop asking permission all the time and just start. Every community that needs houses will need to build them, so just build them!
There is no need to be put off by made up figures that pinpoint exactly how much it will cost to save the world. As the old Chinese proverb goes: ‘Many hands make light work’. The 85 richest people in the world may well be as wealthy as the poorest 50%, but how much damage can 85 people do to the world compared to 3.5 billion? It’s essential that every person feels as important as the next if we want to achieve climate change goals. A slogan fitting to how we must approach action against climate change comes very inappropriately from a brand that thrives on inequality, but it’s true, we really must: ‘Just Do It’.
Whilst the response from poorer communities has been encouraging, from the other end of the spectrum, it is still depressingly true that inequality & more specifically the maintaining of inequality, is completely chaotic and detrimental to climate change targets. Just today, the former Environment Secretary (who still held this role as recently as July), Owen Paterson, claimed that fracking “could be a real boon to poorly remunerated parts of the country”. You might struggle to forgive a man who held such influence over the UK’s handling of the environment for singing the praises of fracking, but he knows how to put the nail in the coffin. He may as well have suggested that those poor people he’s heard of in towns far away might be able to get high off the fracking fumes – ‘screw all this nampy pampy pogwash, they’d only be sniffing glue anyway…we’re doing them a bloody favour!’ Paterson’s thoughts are a depressingly hollow echo of the Conservative peer, Lord Howell, when he said in 2013 that “derelict and desolate areas” such as the north-east of England should be fracked. O, and by the by, this man is George Osbourne’s father-in-law – I know right – gobsmacked…
Unfortunately I failed what I set out to do. My attempts to celebrate people’s positive action towards climate change in the face of extreme inequality morphed into a miserable rant about how so many with power are undermining these efforts. It is no surprise that those who benefit from inequality, in positions of great power, will often have vested interests that aren’t necessarily in line with what is beneficial for the environment. The only way inequality might die is if our planet dies with it and so it is more important than ever to stand up and realise that we must all work together to move towards a sustainable future and one more time, for irony’s sake: Just Do It.
Will Renew Wales 