Don't Save Airlines Or Oil Giants

**cyrille** · 29-04-2020, 08:02 PM

A well argued piece, imo.

Airlines and oil giants are on the brink. No government should offer them a lifeline | George Monbiot | Opinion | The Guardian

Airlines and oil giants are on the brink. No government should offer them a lifeline
George Monbiot

Do Not Resuscitate. This tag should be attached to the oil, airline and car industries. Governments should provide financial support to company workers while refashioning the economy to provide new jobs in different sectors. They should prop up only those sectors that will help secure the survival of humanity and the rest of the living world.

They should either buy up the dirty industries and turn them towards clean technologies, or do what they often call for but never really want: let the market decide. In other words, allow these companies to fail.

This is our second great chance to do things differently. It could be our last. The first, in 2008, was spectacularly squandered. Vast amounts of public money were spent reassembling the filthy old economy, while ensuring that wealth remained in the hands of the rich. Today, many governments appear determined to repeat that catastrophic mistake.

The “free market” has always been a product of government policy. If antitrust laws are weak, a few behemoths survive while everyone else goes down. If dirty industries are tightly regulated, clean ones flourish. If not, the corner-cutters win. But the dependency of enterprises on public policy has seldom been greater in capitalist nations than it is today. Many major industries are now entirely beholden to the state for their survival. Governments have the oil industry over a barrel – hundreds of millions of unsaleable barrels, to be more precise – just as they had the banks over a barrel in 2008. Then, they failed to use their power to eradicate the sector’s socially destructive practices and rebuild it around human needs. They are making the same mistake today.

The Bank of England has decided to buy debt from oil companies such as BP, Shell and Total. The government has given easyJet a £600m loan even though, just a few weeks ago, the company frittered away £171m in dividends: profit is privatised, risk is socialised. In the US, the first bailout includes $60bn (£48bn) for airlines. Overall, the bailout involves sucking as much oil as possible into strategic petroleum reserves and sweeping away pollution laws, while freezing out renewable energy. Several European countries are seeking to rescue their airlines and car manufacturers.

Don’t believe them when they tell you they do this on our behalf. A recent survey by Ipsos of 14 countries suggests that, on average, 65% of people want climate change to be prioritised in the economic recovery. Everywhere, electorates must struggle to persuade governments to act in the interests of the people, rather than the corporations and billionaires who fund and lobby them. The perennial democratic challenge is to break the bonds between politicians and the economic sectors they should be regulating, or, in this case, closing down.

Even when legislators seek to represent these concerns, their efforts are often feeble and naive. The recent letter to the government from a cross-party group of MPs calling for airlines to receive a bailout only if they “do more to tackle the climate crisis” could have been written in 1990. Air travel is inherently polluting. There are no realistic measures that could, even in the medium term, make a significant difference. We now know that the carbon offsetting schemes the MPs call for is useless: every economic sector needs to maximise cuts in greenhouse gases, so shifting the responsibility from one sector to another solves nothing. The only meaningful reform is fewer flights. Anything that impedes the contraction of the aviation industry impedes the reduction of its impacts.

The current crisis gives us a glimpse of how much we need to do to pull out of our disastrous trajectory. Despite the vast changes we have made in our lives, global carbon dioxide emissions are likely to reduce by only about 5.5% this year. A UN report shows that to stand a reasonable chance of avoiding 1.5C or more of global heating, we need to cut emissions by 7.6% per year for the next decade. In other words, the lockdown exposes the limits of individual action. Travelling less helps, but not enough. To make the necessary cuts we need structural change. This means an entirely new industrial policy, created and guided by government.

Governments like the UK’s should drop their road-building plans. Instead of expanding airports, they should publish plans for reducing landing slots. They should commit to an explicit policy of leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

During the pandemic, many of us have begun to discover how much of our travel is unnecessary. Governments can build on this to create plans for reducing the need to move, while investing in walking, cycling and – when physical distancing is less necessary – public transport. This means wider pavements, better cycle lanes, buses run for service not profit. They should invest heavily in green energy, and even more heavily in reducing energy demand – through, for example, home insulation and better heating and lighting. The pandemic exposes the need for better neighbourhood design, with less public space given to cars and more to people. It also shows how badly we need the kind of security that a lightly taxed, deregulated economy cannot deliver.

In other words, let’s have what many people were calling for long before this disaster hit: a green new deal. But please let’s stop describing it as a stimulus package. We have stimulated consumption too much over the past century, which is why we face environmental disaster. Let us call it a survival package, whose purpose is to provide incomes, distribute wealth and avoid catastrophe, without stoking perpetual economic growth. Bail out the people, not the corporations. Bail out the living world, not its destroyers. Let’s not waste our second chance.

**Iceman123** · 29-04-2020, 08:12 PM

George Monbiot, well known lefty and greenie, unfortunately he has no clue about economics. Well written as he is a professional journo.

Very hard to envisage how we can save the workers whilst letting our industries go to the wall.

**raycarey** · 29-04-2020, 08:21 PM

in theory i'm inclined to agree....especially after the many years of obscene executive compensation and share buybacks....but one of the direct consequences would be a lot of people out of work....and all the social problems that come along with that.

IMO, governments should step in to save the companies which are considered most vital to their economies....but there should be iron-clad regulations on reducing their carbon footprints, executive pay, share buybacks, etc... to ensure that the companies reduce their negative impact on the environment and pay back whatever they were given to stay afloat. and those regulations need to stay in place long after the money is paid back.

**HuangLao** · 29-04-2020, 08:24 PM

Originally Posted by raycarey

in theory i'm inclined to agree....especially after the many years of obscene executive compensation and share buybacks....but one of the direct consequences would be a lot of people out of work....and all the social problems that come along with that.

IMO, governments should step in to save the companies which are considered most vital to their economies....but there should be iron-clad regulations on reducing their carbon footprints, executive pay, share buybacks, etc... to ensure that the companies reduce their negative impact on the environment and pay back whatever they were given to stay afloat. and those regulations need to stay in place long after the money is paid back.

Kinda naive, aren't ya Ray.
Typical of your circles.

**raycarey** · 29-04-2020, 08:31 PM

kinda semi-literate, aren't ya jeff?

i'd tell you to detail specifically what in my post you take issue with, but everyone is well aware of your chicken-shit posting style....and you're just going to run away like a little bitch.

**raycarey** · 29-04-2020, 08:32 PM

oh yeah.....FOJ.

**Klondyke** · 29-04-2020, 09:57 PM

Originally Posted by Iceman123

Very hard to envisage how we can save the workers whilst letting our industries go to the wall.

So, who will decide which industry has to be helped to and which industry not?

**cyrille** · 29-04-2020, 09:58 PM

In the longer term the wisdom of this piece is inarguable imo, but more immediately it's human nature for us to be groping towards the familiar.

I do think the need to change our ways will be seen as more immediate from now on though, and hope that as a race we'll see the harm that rapacious, unfettered greed has wreaked over the last twenty years or so.

It's true that programmes like HS2, a planned high speed rail link in the UK, now seem rather less than desperately needed. And also true that the people working at the front line of the NHS deserve more than just rounds of applause.

They deserve to have the equipment they need, they deserve to get paid more, and people not from the UK working in it shouldn't have to pay 600 pounds a year as a premium just to get treatment within it.

**NamPikToot** · 29-04-2020, 10:03 PM

Gosh,

**Jack meoff** · 29-04-2020, 10:06 PM

Originally Posted by cyrille

and people not from the UK working in it shouldn't have to pay 600 pounds a year as a premium just to get treatment within it.

Agree with you on that, especially when they are paying tax & NI.

**taxexile** · 29-04-2020, 10:25 PM

Do Not Resuscitate. This tag should be attached to the oil, airline and car industries.

They deserve to have the equipment they need,

no oil..... no plastics ppe equipment.

no oil..... no airline travel and extreme poverty in countries that depend on tourists for income. to say nothing of the unemployment that will occur.

no oil..... no cars, trucks etc. all the more need for hs2 and improved public transport and freight links.

.... and please dont mention electric cars, they have a far larger carbon footprint thanks, among other things, to the vast resources needed to extract all the minerals needed for the batteries.

note to the third world, .......... want to "save the planet" ....... stop having so many kids. you are poor enough already. dont make it worse.

**harrybarracuda** · 29-04-2020, 10:46 PM

Originally Posted by cyrille

people not from the UK working in it shouldn't have to pay 600 pounds a year as a premium just to get treatment within it.

Why not, when people from the UK have been paying into it from the working age of 16 or thereabouts?

Why should Johnny Foreigner get a fucking subsidy exactly?

**Jack meoff** · 29-04-2020, 10:52 PM

So on that theory some UK kid at 16 or thereabouts should be paying the £600 surplus?

**NamPikToot** · 29-04-2020, 11:09 PM

^^ ahh a Hazza brainfart, they occur with the same frequency as pre-COVID London busses.

**OhOh** · 29-04-2020, 11:30 PM

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Why should Johnny Foreigner get a fucking subsidy exactly?

Many people have health insurance as part of their employment contract. Easily added to "Johnny Foreigner's".

**cyrille** · 29-04-2020, 11:33 PM

Originally Posted by taxexile

no oil..... no plastics ppe equipment.

Originally Posted by taxexile

no oil..... no cars, trucks etc. all the more need for hs2 and improved public transport and freight links.

You realise you're conflating the comments in the piece with my comments, right?

'No cars', your deliberately ridiculous exaggeration of the position, would not mean a greater need for the faster trains of hs2.

You do know what the 'hs' stands for, right?

**OhOh** · 29-04-2020, 11:34 PM

Originally Posted by cyrille

Airlines and oil giants are on the brink. No government should offer them a lifeline

Let us save all our comrades.

**Switch** · 30-04-2020, 12:59 AM

Airlines and oil companies should not be subsidized by governments, but Monbiot is a fruit loop. Environmental conservation needs to be more pragmatic. You cannot uninvent the car. It’s about bringing humanity closer to nature. Humanity, like nature, needs time to adapt to cyclic and anthropogenic changes in the worlds climate.
Idealists like Cyrille and Monbiot don’t realize this.

**NamPikToot** · 30-04-2020, 01:14 AM

^ and right on cashed up lefties, its the lower income populous who'll struggle with the increase in cost whilst Greta and friends are turning left on boarding.

**harrybarracuda** · 30-04-2020, 02:18 AM

Originally Posted by Jack meoff

So on that theory some UK kid at 16 or thereabouts should be paying the £600 surplus?

You're an idiot and you can't read.

**harrybarracuda** · 30-04-2020, 02:24 AM

Originally Posted by OhOh

Many people have health insurance as part of their employment contract. Easily added to "Johnny Foreigner's".

Exactly. Let them get private health insurance or buy their way into the NHS with a premium.

Otherwise it means the British that have paid their stamp from day one are effectively subsidising them.

**pseudolus** · 30-04-2020, 03:36 AM

Originally Posted by Iceman123

George Monbiot, well known lefty and greenie, unfortunately he has no clue about economics. Well written as he is a professional journo.

Very hard to envisage how we can save the workers whilst letting our industries go to the wall.

Well there's the rub, they go down and a void is created, and someone steps in. You'd think the capitalists would approve of this, but no. It's socialism for them, and capitalism for the poor.

**OhOh** · 30-04-2020, 10:01 AM

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

t private health insurance or buy their way into the NHS with a premium.

I'm sure the medics have:

1. Unions,
2. Racial discrimination/human rights laws,
3. Professional cabals

which can be utilised to deflect, to a convenient slop barrel, away such racist demands.

I suspect young, newly educated and expensively trained by UK taxpayers, are not required to "buy their way into the NHS with a premium".

But "Johnny Foreigner", presumably with the correct visa/permission to work ..., educated and trained by foreign taxpayers/self funded, bringing much needed capacity to the NHS, will be required too.

Is there not a pool of impoverished medics, from the newly admitted to the EU, to tap?

**cyrille** · 30-04-2020, 10:18 AM

Originally Posted by pseudolus

Well there's the rub, they go down and a void is created, and someone steps in. You'd think the capitalists would approve of this, but no.

Strange that, isn't it.

They hate the Chinese beating them at their own game too.

It's at that point, and only at that point, that the 'Queensbury rules' become sacrosanct.

**AntRobertson** · 30-04-2020, 10:34 AM

Originally Posted by taxexile

.... and please dont mention electric cars, they have a far larger carbon footprint thanks, among other things, to the vast resources needed to extract all the minerals needed for the batteries.

That is simply not true. All factors taken into account electric cars have a considerably smaller carbon footprint over their lifetimes.

That they don't is a persistent myth, and one usually repeated by those who have an agenda of 'Greenie bashing'.

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