A new Hobson’s Choice: Burn the planet or blow up the planet

Jun 16, 2025

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

The military and the monetary

Get together whenever they think it’s necessary

They are turning our people into mercenaries

They are turning our planet into a cemetery^A

How is it that, as a society, we have reached a stage where, on the one hand, we face multiple real and existential crises – poverty, homelessness and hunger, declining and inadequate public services, and the threat of climate change to name a few – yet, on the other hand, all our attention is focused on the ‘problem’ of migrants while the solution to our economic difficulties is being pinned on ramping up arms production to support wars both real and imagined? By any objective perspective we have entered the realms of psychopathology.

The traditional argument has been, justifiably so, that dealing with the real problems set out above requires co-operation, collaboration, an emphasis on collective solutions, and on equality, all of which are incompatible with a market-based system of competition and the continuing elevation of a tiny elite above all others. Why else would we even be contemplating significant investment in a long and painful development, with no guarantee of success, of Carbon Capture and Storage¹ when we could just be expanding the use of energy that emits no carbon and therefore renders CCS redundant.

The simple answer is, of course, not to save workers jobs but to preserve corporate profits into the future. The fact that workers have jobs in the fossil fuel industry and could either be transitioned (justly) to equivalent jobs in renewables or made redundant, is incidental to the industry itself. If corporations could extract oil and gas completely automatically, without need of a labour force, they would; there is nothing intrinsically ‘worker friendly’ about fossil fuels that warrants trade union support beyond protecting the jobs, pay and conditions of the members that work in those fields.

Unfortunately, some unions do adopt a ‘follow the money’ approach to these developments that leads them to actively support the current direction of travel. Hence we have one General Secretary, in an interview from the Morning Star², advocating for the Reform line of ‘maxing out’ oil and gas while also welcoming the increase in defence spending. To be fair, he correctly diagnoses some of the ills of our society (‘very concerned about benefit cuts…underinvesting in the NHS’ etc. and very accurately for the climate debate ‘closing down rigs prematurely with no alternative employment’, all good stuff) but then misuses these to support solutions that are either short term, superficial or morally unsound (‘maximising extraction of oil and gas would give us money to invest…defence spending is bringing real jobs’). What isn’t addressed is WHY that alternative employment isn’t currently offered, and how do we change that, while the risk of war is met with deflection, all mixed with an altering of reality to justify trashing the Left. These comments also have what we might call ‘tabloid appeal’.

As an example of that last point, defending Keir Starmer is not something we envisage doing very often, but even he, in legislating that there should be no new oil and gas licences³ (and leaving the ambiguity around that pronouncement aside for now), is NOT saying to workers in those sectors ‘don’t bother coming in on Monday morning, you’re all out of a job as of now’. As watered down as Labour’s plans are, it remains a Transition, albeit the level of justness involved might differ from what we would wish. To claim the ‘no new licences’ policy as a clear and immediate threat to current oil and gas workers is akin to Trump claiming that drinking bleach can cure you of Covid. It’s a level of hysteria typical of Right Wing hyperbole which we need to avoid if we’re to come to rational solutions about future energy use, its cost to the public and its impact on the climate.

Mercy mercy me, things ain’t what they used to be

What about this overcrowded land, how much more abuse from man can she stand?^B

Take the unqualified support for continued fossil fuel expansion. One can only assume that, from the perspective of an elected official, this makes for some good sound bites, fighting talk, and the kind of rhetoric that members might want to see; by contrast, mention of transition carries the implication of threat to members jobs which might or might not be mitigated depending on the mood of government. We can understand that interpretation at the surface level. The problem with that approach is where is the vision, the looking over the horizon, the consideration of the long term interests of workers everywhere and in every sector? After all, those employers will still be looking to cut down on labour costs and forcing you into industrial struggles, they really don’t value their workforce.

Some sort of sanity is needed to assess the situation. Three key elements:

Fossil fuels have to end – Unite’s ‘No ban without a Plan’ campaign⁴, which GJA supported inasmuch as it was on behalf of workers, but was nevertheless only half right. We desperately need a plan, and since none of the main political parties look like producing one, the labour movement needs to produce it and campaign on it. But the ‘No Ban’ part is redundant, we can’t consign communities, here and elsewhere, to catastrophic flooding, wildfire and storms. That horse has bolted.
Unionise the renewables sector – Yes, the renewables workforce is largely non-unionised, poorly paid and exploited. Again, there is nothing intrinsic to renewable energy about this, it’s because their development has been left to the market and the last 45 years tell us how calamitous market forces are for working people. Unions are needed in the sector and would provide a rich source of membership as well as laying the groundwork for the future representation of energy workers.
Long term job security – of most immediate importance is what is happening to the workforce right now. GJA’s Paul Atkin penned a response to the Morning Star⁵ interview pointing out the harsh reality that it is the high price of gas that is responsible for the high cost of energy for the public, while the number of workers in a dwindling industry are projected to run at 440 job losses per fortnight up to 2030, regardless of the ‘maxing out’ mantra. In such a context, a shift to renewables is not a threat, but a lifeline to workers.

For all these reasons, our approach to climate and energy has to be more than putting our heads in the sand and hoping it will all go away so that we can carry on as before. We should be leaving that to Reform fantasists.

Father father we don’t need to escalate

War is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate^C

War is not a working-class issue nor is it a trade union issue. Being anti-war is both, so is climate change, so is equality. Poverty, homelessness and hunger are too. But supporting war, where it’s working-class people who are inevitably on the front lines, is definitely not. To welcome the increase in arms spending⁶, at a time when Israel, Gaza (and now Iran), Ukraine, Russia and others are embroiled in deadly conflicts, just because a maniacal Orange figure in the White House demands it, this has no place in the global trade union movement.

Whether it’s the supply of actual weapons, transportation of arms, crucial components, actual soldiers or training of the forces of oppression⁷, our support for the genocide in Gaza is shameful and despicable. Almost as shameful and despicable as a Labour government (repeat, a Labour government, give it that Kinnock inflection) perceiving an opportunity for a potential solution to economic insolvency after a year of failing to reverse the damage done by 14 years of Tory government, or even to attempt to reverse it. Cynicism doesn’t even begin to cover it.

But does that ‘follow the money’ ethos really have to extend to some parts of the union movement supporting this? Where exactly is the solidarity in supplying weapons and the like to kill oppressed working-class people overseas, how can that possibly compute as logical? In an excellent article for Labour Outlook⁸, our colleague Sam Mason contrasts the weaponisation of net zero with the preparations for war that have been flagged ahead of publication of Labour’s Strategic Defence Review. And Paul Atkin (again!)⁹ identifies the Review’s ambition to ‘mobilise the whole population for war readiness’, which is surely exactly what we should be doing for climate change?!

And what about the prospect of sending our own children off to kill or be killed in wars we either have no business being in or have actively provoked in order to justify our political decisions. This YouTube clip of Yanis Varoufakis¹⁰ explains the logic far more eloquently than I ever could, but here’s the nub of the argument: if arms production is made the engine of a revitalised manufacturing sector, we have to actually use those arms to clear the shelves for the next round of production. That means getting into wars ourselves, which might at least partially explain the sudden rush to Israel’s side following its attacks on Iran¹¹. Again, just where is there any semblance of solidarity in sending our own working class people to kill (or be killed by) other working class people overseas. Do the families of soldiers or potential soldiers consider that a fair exchange for a (hoped-for) stable economy?

But it’s so much more than disgust at the creation of a war-based economy to cover for a paucity of imagination or, more realistically, a lack of courage to take on corporate elites. What makes the whole situation absurd is that there are so many things we NEED to do, to employ workers to do, in order to sustain our society. They were listed in the opening paragraph. Production and action to combat climate change, to take but one, IS about solidarity – protecting communities, generating jobs, non-exploitative, providing aid to leap frog dirty industrialisation, an international division of labour to produce what’s needed – and a natural equality in the distribution and use of resources as that transition happens. And unlike in the days of the Lucas Plan, we don’t have to sit down and write a list of socially useful products – we know already what we need. How is this not trade union common sense 101?

That we’d rather promote a war economy than get on with the multitude of productive, constructive, positive tasks that workers could be doing is sad testament to the grip of fear that elites exert over the political sphere.

And the price paid for it is way beyond sad, it’s a human atrocity being carried out in real time, and only we – as a mass movement of labour, communities and campaign groups – have any chance of preventing it.

Free the people, right now, Stop the killing, right now

Do it do it do it do it, right now^D

Tahir Latif, GJA Secretary

References