Leaked documents reveal Blair's global warming betrayal

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/contentlookup.cfm?ucidparam=20050116132000&MenuPoint=D-A

Last edited: 16-01-2005

Greenpeace today accused Tony Blair of a 'betrayal' after leaked documents revealed the Prime Minister was boasting about global warming commitments in keynote speeches while his government was simultaneously trying to ditch them at European meetings.

The documents, which can be seen at www.greenpeace.org.uk, show that the British government attempted to remove a commitment for huge cuts in greenhouse gases by 2050 from an EU council document setting out European climate policy.

Mr Blair has made no secret of his desire to get the US to join a climate agreement while he holds the EU and G8 presidencies. But rather than trying to strengthen the American position, today's revelations reveal Mr Blair has instead been trying to weaken the progressive European position.

The documents reveal that the British government tried to have the 2050 commitments deleted from the key European text at meetings between September and December 2004. At the same time the Prime Minister was making a series of speeches and comments urging action on global warming, including calling for the same sweeping long-term emissions cuts that his representatives were trying to ditch in Brussels.

Stephen Tindale, Executive Director of Greenpeace, said:

"Blair is selling-out on one of his two great international themes in an effort to appease his friend in the White House. He thinks that getting the US to sign-up at any cost can be spun as an historic achievement, but it's classic Blair - appearance trumping substance. He's undermining the progressive position of the EU and reneging on promises he simultaneously boasts about. This is a betrayal of trust on an issue he claims to be passionate about. Just as over Iraq, his behaviour towards Bush is so craven it would make a lapdog blush."
<SNIP>

[Matilda]

1. I don't believe Blair's a fool, so what drives him?

How can he believe that it enhances his standing to be seen as a Bush
toady?

In some ways he's more dangerous than Bush, because he does come across
as intelligent and he does sincerity so well. He had me fooled on
the environment - I thought well, thank God he's doing the right thing
for once. Looks like I'm a sucker.

[KittyWampus]

2. Britain Was An Empire After All

And although many citizens and some politicians were against going into Iraq... I can't help but wonder if there's some lingering notion of "white man's burden" lurking under the surface of their collective psyches.

And remember, Prince Harry wore that Nazi costume to a party with the theme of "Colonials and Natives".

[Matilda]

11. Tell me about it.

To them, I'm just an ignorant colonial.

[bin.dare]

7. bLIAR had us all fooled ...

... with his "third" way and "new" labour. He speaks the good talk, almost as good as billy boy, but it is all lies, lies. Pure unadulterated lies.

The thing to remember about bLIAR is what maggie thatcher said: asked what does she judge as her legacy, she responded Tony Blair and New labour. That says it all. BTW, she was one of the first people he called after his election; he is the son she wished she had, not that fucking idiot she is stuck with.

[Demeter]

14. He's a Religious Nut.

[AP]

17. I believe that he's CoE, but he goes to Catholic Mass with his Catholic...

...family.

[xchrom]

3. shock and awe!

uh, not so much.
blair doing what blair does best.

[AP]

4. Playing "Blair's Advocate" here: the problem with the US not

cooperating with global warming agreements is that it puts every other industrial nation at a huge competitive disadvantage. If Britain and other countries with manufacturing agree to EU standards, but the US doesn't agree to global standards, then the EU manufacturing countries will lose out to American companies.

Therefore, there's nothing incompatible with begging the US to cooperate with global standards and then turning to the EU and saying please don't hold us back from competing with the US if they're not going to meet lower standards. In fact, it is not only not incompatible, it's the logical consequence of the US not agreeing to lower standards.

And isn't it just like Bush and the RW to turn their own bullshit into a story that hurts the other side of the political spectrum?

And I think that unless Greenpeace wants to help Tories win the election, I wonder why their frame for this story is not the frame I just gave.

Now, of course Blair could fuck over the factories in the UK by saying what the fuck, I'll hold back output here no matter what the US does. But how's he going to explain it to the working class when their jobs get exported to a country which can compete with the US's polution? He's not going to be able to explain it, and Labour will lose elections becuase of it.

[Hoping4Change]

8. If so why doesn't Blair lay these concerns on the table?

Why the double speak?

[AP]

10. I actually believe that he has made statements suggesting that this

is the concern. I believe Labour has made a point that the the rest of the world requires the US's participation in order to get this job done.

Notwithstanding, this is an example of one of progressives' biggest problems, which is caused by not having a coherent cognitive framework explaining what they believe in.

Progressives generally believe that power and wealth needs to flow down to the people, and that means that in a situation where the environment and good jobs are in a conflict, a progressive might chose to compete with the US through not limiting itself with CO2 emission standards which are unworkable, while trying to limit the destructive impact of polution in manners that have smaller impact on competitiveness vs the worlds biggest power.

However, liberals tend not to have coherent cognitive frameworks. Therefore, a single issue progressive group like Greenpeace can get worked up about their single issue and progressives collectively don't step back and say, wait a minute: there's a much bigger picture here. Instead, the knee-jerk response is, That Tony Blair is NO good, and I don't care if we replace him with a Tory (like a Tory is going to protect the environment at all -- a Tory would sell out the environment AND the working class!)

Progressives will only be successful when liberals respond to stories like this through applying a congnitive framework -- a system of values -- that helps them make sense of stories like this.

[Hoping4Change]

12. These are very interesting points.

Particularly illuminating is your observation about single issue groups not looking at the larger picture. I think the attraction of single issue groups is that there is a sense of enpowerment when one can simply choose one side or another of an issue.

[AP]

13. Lisa Duggan's book The Twilight of Equality...

...talks about how until the early 70s single-issue progressive groups tended to articulate their possitions in a manner that was not incompatible. Women's rights, civil rights, environmental rights groups generally argued that political, economic and cultural power should devolve down to the people. And the cognitive framework for the individual groups worked to explain what the others were seeking too.

She says that in the early 70s corporations got nervous about their profit margins and began a quest to break down the coalition on the left into single issue groups that had incompatible messages. So, environmental rights became incompatible with labor, for example. Economic development was environmental destruction, which led to a lot of blue collar voters voting Republican.

She does a longer case study on the HRC -- the gay rights group. She describes how it has become so intertwined with the the corporations that support it that it is no longer primarily interested in making sure that gay people on the bottom get political, economic and cultural power through good, well-paying jobs, job security, and health care benefits. Instead, it is more like a way for companies to target the gay marketplace. Ie, it's more interested in finding way of flowing money OUT of the gay community than flowing money (and, therefore, political and cultural power) into the gay community.

She also talks about Andrew Sullivan for a long time. She notes that his gay rights argument is about integrating gays into the most conservative institutions in America. It's not about flowing power down. It's about getting people into the social structures that are driving a conservative agenda today: conservative notions of family, the idea that only one person in a couple should work, that people need to accept less so that corporate America can get richer, etc.

It is because I read her book that I look at stories like this one very skeptically.

Although I totally respect Greenpeace, I know why a corporate media company would jump all over this story. It's sets up the industry vs environment dichotomy that big business has been pushing since the early 70s which they know brakes up coaltitions on the left. And I know that liberals (like those at DU) have been conditioned over the past 30 years not to see the big picture -- to see politics as islands of single-issues that have no common themes. So stories like this are kind of distressing to me because the responses are so predictable and self-destructive (as can be seen by the posts outside this subthread).

[Hoping4Change]

15. I will definitely check out Duggan's book. However i question whether

the fragmenting you refer to is the result of corporate interference. This is not to say that the corporations haven't benefited from this divisiveness and haven't substantially helped people like Sullivan however I think it more likely that these groups felt that having to band with other groups was holding them back from achieving their respective goals. Perhaps when push came to shove there was no larger framework of values they all could agree upon.

[AP]

16. Perhaps. But I think Duggan's point was that...

Before the 70s, these groups weren't coordinating their efforts. They all just happened to interpret the liberal project the same way: that power needed to flow down to the people rather than to the top of a very tall, steep-sided pyramid.

And what it took for that to change was not the rejection of external influences (or autonomous growth). It was external coordinated influences on these groups from their sponsors and from the way the media molded people's perceptions of these groups. The movie Network might be seen by liberals as a critical commentary on the media, but it also totally mocks Black Panthers too.

I think the example with the HRC, Duggan talks about how the corporations that support interest groups (and NGOs for that matter) have a lot to say about where their focuses are. The events that get a lot of corporate sponsorship are the ones that establish the oranization's tone and aims. The corporations also get some say on who gets to sit on the board of directors.

[UL_Approved]

5. No confidence.

Parliament just needs to call for a no confidence vote.

[bemildred]

6. Yeah. When is this swine going to be removed for incompetence.

(I know, I know, right after the Shrubster ...)

[sweetheart]

9. Blair's lips are moving.... he must be lying

Whatever... he lies... we already know. Its really pathetic to
have to discover the truth through the back door, and in all honesty
that the leader just lies all the time, is really pathological,
that other liars in the parliament can't hold him to any truth
whatosever leaves a distinctly sour taste about any claim to
inegrity that his government makes.