The primacy of climate change

The Guardian is the only newspaper to recognise the seriousness of the threat we face from accelerating climate breakdown. Yet you, like Labour, still treat it as an “add-on” – as a separate subject, not something that, in Naomi Klein’s words, changes everything. Thus Jonathan Haidt and Pamela Paresky (Opinion, 10 January) write about the mental effects of childhood stress, never mentioning how terrifying it is for children to live in an environment of existential threat coupled with denial. Thus Owen Jones (Opinion, 10 January) discusses Labour’s Brexit choices and the need to reverse austerity, with no recognition that redistribution must now be within an economy focused on reducing emissions to net zero by 2030, not on “good” growth. All discussion of Brexit or any other policy issue should now be in the context of the need for central and local government to enter emergency mode.
Caro New
Green party of England and Wales campaigns coordinator (jobshare)

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