The DWP confirms that draconian ‘savings’ are coming down the track. Are we a nation that will repair hospitals, but not help a nurse with long Covid?
In the days after the budget, the headlines were dominated by talk of Rachel Reeves’s “tax and spend” bonanza. The message was clear: austerity is officially over. When there was concern about squeezed incomes, it was solely for workers. As the Mail front page put it: “Reeves’ £40bn tax bombshell for Britain’s strivers”. Almost a week later, there has still barely been a word about the policy set to hit the group long scapegoated as Britain’s skivers: the billions of pounds’ worth of benefit cuts for disabled people.
Making up just a couple of lines in a 77-minute speech, you’d have been forgiven for dozing past Reeves’ blink-and-you’d-miss-it bombshell. With a record number of Britons off work with long-term illness, the government will need to “reduce the benefits bill”, she said, before noting ministers had “inherited” the Conservatives’ plans to reform the work capability assessment (WCA). That plan, let’s not forget, was to take up to £4,900 a year each from 450,000 people who are too sick or disabled to work – a move that the Resolution Foundation says would “degrade living standards” for families already on some of the lowest incomes in the country.
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Much like when George Osborne aimed to cut the disability benefits bill by a fifth, “welfare reform” based on arbitrary cost-cutting says the quiet part out loud: benefits won’t be awarded based on who needs them – just on what they cost. It is social security by spreadsheet, severing the social contract that promises the state will be there in times of sickness and disability, and adding a footnote that says, “but only if we can afford it”. That last week’s budget revealed huge investment for infrastructure at the same time as disability benefit cuts exposes how even the affordability argument is largely fabricated. There is money to fix hospital buildings but not to feed a nurse bedbound with long Covid.
The financial impact of such “reform” on those relying on benefits is well established but the psychological toll should not be underestimated. Since gaining power, Labour has drip-fed the rightwing press sound bites and op-eds on potential benefit cuts, leaving news outlets to speculate wildly for clicks. The budget’s half-announcement has only added to the confusion and fear, issuing vague dog whistles of “fraud” and high “benefit bills” while forcing millions of people to wait months to find out if they will lose the money they need to live.
Speaking at the UCP annual general meeting, the Premier took shots at the federal government and vowed not to “budge an inch.”
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith pledged to “triple down” on conservative principles, including energy extraction and anti-trans policies at the Alberta United Conservative Party’s annual general meeting in Red Deer today in front of an energetic crowd of 6,000 people.
“We will build new pipelines, oil and gas facilities, petrochemical plants, hydrogen plants, and more because Alberta is an energy superpower, and we will not apologize for it,” said the premier, who was defiant against the federal government and any attempts to regulate energy and greenhouse gas emissions.
Taking a shot at the federal government Smith decried federal attempts at regulating carbon emissions during her speech.
“Justin Trudeau, Steven Guilbeault and their band of woke MPs have done everything they can to shut down Canada’s and Alberta’s most economically important industry as quickly as possible,” said Smith.
In a particularly spicy moment, the Premier dismissed federal environment and climate change minister Guilbeault’s “tantrums” and “green schemes,” suggesting that Alberta would not “budge an inch … EVER.”
Smith threatened to continue to block any legislation that affects the energy industry.
“We have already invoked the Sovereignty Act against Justin Trudeau’s reckless and unaffordable 2035 net-zero electricity regulations, which we will not enforce in Alberta,” she said.
Premier Smith is facing a leadership review as a part of the AGM and met with members at an accountability session where they discussed past policy proposals including the proposal to ban solar farms on agricultural land.
Last year, the Alberta government imposed a seven-month moratorium on renewable energy projects after this policy proposal passed.
According to the Canadian Press, a webinar used as a part of the government’s engagement process said that Alberta is looking to prohibit wind and solar farms on irrigated land.
In the afternoon, the members will debate a policy resolution that would “recognize the importance of CO2 to life and Alberta’s prosperity” by abandoning “Net-Zero” targets and recognizing that CO2 is a “foundational nutrient to life.”
Alberta’s United Conservative Party has passed a resolution to rebrand carbon dioxide — the chief gas whose overabundance in Earth’s atmosphere is causing the climate emergency — in a brazen display of climate science denial that harkens back to the 1990s fossil fuel industry playbook.
Resolution 12, which falls under the “environmental stewardship and emissions reduction” area of the policy discussion, will “recognize the importance of CO2 to life and Alberta’s prosperity.”
In approving the resolution, the UCP resolved to abandon the province’s net zero targets, remove the designation of CO2 as a pollutant, and further “recognize that CO2 is a foundational nutrient for all life on Earth.”
“We must prioritize policies that protect our economy and our way of life. CO2 is an essential nutrient for mass, driving growth and boosting plant production. According to the CO2 Coalition, higher CO2 levels have led to healthier crops and improved food security worldwide,” said a UCP member speaking in favour of the policy who cited the notorious CO2 Coalition.
The resolution passed by a wide majority.
A member who spoke against the bill, saying that just like like someone can drink too much water and experience water poisoning, too much CO2 can be bad. He was booed by the crowd.
The policy discussion took place in Red Deer, Alberta, where 6,085 UCP members and observers debated 33 policy resolutions at their annual general meeting. Earlier in the day, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith pledged to “triple down” on conservative priorities, including further expanding oil production and attacking Canadian climate policies.
As severaloutlets have reported previously, Resolution 12 flies in the face of the scientific consensus on climate change, and the party’s rationale for the resolution states a widely debunked claim that “the Earth needs more CO2 to support life and to increase plant yields.”
Carbon dioxide is the gas principally responsible for exacerbating the greenhouse effect, the consequence of which is global warming. Whereas carbon is a foundational building block of life on Earth, carbon dioxide is an asphyxiating gas whose atmospheric proportions are so high they’re disrupting the normal function of the carbon cycle.
The resolution was submitted by the members of the legislative assembly (MLA) representing the provincial ridings of Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock (Glenn van Dijken), and Red Deer-South (Jason Stephan).
The argument that carbon dioxide is a “gas of life” has been a common yet easily refutable talking point popularized by climate change deniers and other right-wing extremists. One such group, the anti-wind energy group Wind Concerns, referred to carbon dioxide as a “gas of life” in an interview with DeSmog last year. Their leader, Mark Mallett, took credit for contributing to the anti-renewable energy moratorium instituted by Alberta UCP Premier Danielle Smith.
Climate scientists have long confirmed that increased CO2 in the atmosphere does not, as climate change deniers insist, create better growing conditions for plants.
The argument that carbon dioxide is beneficial for the environment appears to have first been made by the Greening Earth Society (GES) in the mid-late 1990s. GES was a creation of the Western Fuels Association, and it was later determined the two groups were one and the same. GES published the World Climate Report, a non-academic and non-peer-reviewed journal that served as a platform for climate change denial. They were transparent in acknowledging their funding from fossil fuel companies, and appear to have originated several talking points now common amongst climate change deniers, including those that advocate for increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, which would result in faster plant growth and greater agricultural yields.
In the “rationale” section of the resolution, the United Conservative Party document argues that “CO2 is a nutrient foundational to all life on Earth.”
While plants need both light and carbon dioxide to thrive, the over-supply of CO2 in recent decades is leading to plants being deprived of their nutrients. One biologist was quoted in a 2017 Politico article describing this as akin to “the greatest injection of carbohydrates into the biosphere in human history,” and that injection is diluting the nutrients in the food supply.
While the resolution notes that the “carbon cycle is a biological necessity,” it doesn’t appear the resolution’s sponsors are aware that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere throws the carbon cycle off balance. This is precisely what’s causing the climate emergency: too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere combined with the destruction of natural carbon storage is destroying the carbon cycle as we know it. The proposed resolution is as contradictory as it is scientifically illiterate.
The resolution also states that current CO2 levels are around 420 PPM, which is described as being “near the lowest level in over 1000 years.” Where this idea comes from is not clear, but it is not supported by verifiable scientific evidence. To the contrary, CO2 levels were 34 percent lower than today in the year 1024, at about 280 PPM. CO2 levels have climbed steadily since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, though they have grown most aggressively since 1950. NASA estimates that, despite wide fluctuations over time, CO2 levels had not exceeded 300 PPM over the last 800,000 years, but have stayed above that level since 1950.
The argument that more CO2 will support life, increase yields, and “contribute to the health and prosperity of all Albertans” — as stated in the resolution — is not supported by scientific evidence. The opposite is a far likelier outcome. As the principal driver of the climate crisis and global warming, increasing CO2 levels will exacerbate droughts, wildfires, and floods, among other disasters, in turn resulting in loss of life and major disruptions to global supply chains. The consequent economic disturbances and their aftereffects will worsen the affordability crisis and result in increasingly negative economic outcomes for all, not just Albertans. Rather than stimulate Alberta’s agricultural sector, climate change will destroy it, and the evidence this is already happening is quite clear.
Another policy resolution is focused on the provincial government’s “scrap the cap” program. The policy builds on a previous resolution to repeal the carbon tax and instead: “Prohibit any consumer carbon tax or carbon pricing scheme or carbon cap and trade system from being implemented in Alberta.”
The resolution also proposes to support “any federal or interprovincial government’s efforts to “axe the tax” (the federal conservative campaign) by eliminating the federal carbon pricing backstop from being imposed on Albertans and Canadians.”
Other resolutions over the weekend have focused on print-based identification, and a requirement for in-person voting “to deal with all the voter fraud.”
HARD-RIGHT shadows lengthened over British politics with the election of culture warrior Kemi Badenoch as Tory leader at the weekend.
Ms Badenoch beat rival Robert Jenrick by 53,806 votes to 41,388 from the shrivelled Conservative membership, less than 73 per cent of whom bothered to vote.
The former business secretary becomes the first black woman to lead a major political party in Britain, a fact she does not make much of.
She inherits the Tory leadership from Rishi Sunak following a Tory election defeat of historic dimensions. Nevertheless, the ineptitude of the Labour government has encouraged hopes in the party of a swift return to office.
The Conservatives are now neck-and-neck with Labour in most polls, with the Farageist Reform party also surging, meaning the two hard-right parties are laying claim to nearly half the electorate between them: quite an indictment of the Starmer administration.
Ms Badenoch is known as an abrasive operator who puts speaking her mind, whatever may be in it, before winning friends.
During the leadership race she called for the jailing of 10 per cent of civil servants, queried the value of maternity pay, dismissed autism as a health issue and suggested migrants should be vetted over their attitude to Israel.