“Tax the Rich”: The Successor to Net Zero?

“The fact that Roger Hallam wants to use coercive government to impose his ‘solutions’ on others is a bulls-eye refutation that he is more of a megalomaniac than a clear-eyed scholar. His fringe views should be rejected and his proclivity for violence condemned.”

Roger Hallam, cofounder of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, as well as a jailbird from his disruptive climate protests, is ready to throw in the towel on Net Zero. Regarding UK climate politics, he posted:

If there is one article to read to understand why the present economic and political arrangements are going to collapse then this is it. There are only two alternatives:

1. The Labour government keeps with the net zero target for 2030, bills rise, Reform gets in and ensures the target is trashed.

2. The Labour government trashes the target itself so bills don’t rise and so creates a chance that Reform won’t get in.

Either way the target is trashed – the world goes over 2C in the 2030s and social/ecological collapse gets locked in. Either way suicidal short term-ism wins, either in its neoliberal version or its fascist version.

But there is an alternative we cannot speak about – which is to tax the rich who created the mass death project in the first place.

The reality is that net zero by 2030 is expensive and that by dashing flat-out towards it, the result will be even higher costs. The price is not coming down; it is going up.

What a depressing — and errant — analysis and outlook. Neo-Malthusianism lives despite the evidence and without a theoretical basis. There is little reason to believe in doomism. The Julian Simon et al. rejoinders are on the shelf and await an open mind.

The fact that Roger Hallam wants to use coercive government to impose his ‘solutions’ on others is a bulls-eye refutation that he is more of a megalomaniac than a clear-eyed scholar. His fringe views should be rejected and his proclivity for violence condemned.

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Roger Hallam describes his story:

As an organic farmer for over 20 years, I could no longer sustain my vegetable growing. The impacts of climate change were decimating the livelihoods of farmers such as myself. Something was very wrong with the world; I could feel it, I could see it and I knew that something had to be done about it as our entire food production system was at stake.

I studied the science and realized beyond unequivocal doubt that the extinction crisis was upon us and that our impending annihilation was being perpetuated by psychopathological criminals who have no interest in the wellbeing of the average human being or the natural world.

Never in doubt, he continues:

Something needed to be done; I gave up everything I had and left for Kings College where I spent the next 4 years sleeping in my car in order to complete my studies in the science of mass mobilization in the tradition of Martin Luther King and Gandhi. I found the answers to the questions I had been seeking. I discovered the actions that we need to take in order to buy ourselves as much time as possible and mitigate indescribable suffering that awaits us as most of the planet becomes uninhabitable and we risk unspeakable horrors such as mass slaughter, starvation and rape, and the rise of fascistic regimes as the scramble for water and land takes off.

Remember the Club of Rome in the early 1970s? “Limits to Growth”? Roger Hallam is in a time warp where he believes that what he believes is real–and sober reality is not.

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