Facing the Apocalypse launch: reply to the discussion
Talks2010sThe discussion at the launch of Facing the Apocalypse, 9 April 2019, and Alan Thornett's reply to it. Only his reply, from 33:20, is transcribed; the contributions from the floor before it are summarised in square brackets. The launch talk itself is a separate recording. Recording on Peter Murry's YouTube channel. Transcript made from a local speech recognition of the audio supplied by the user (faster-whisper, 10 Oct 2026). Square brackets mark words supplied or not clearly heard; figures are as he gave them.
A corrected transcript of the recording. The recording is the authority.
00:00 [Contributions from the floor, 0:00–33:20. Among the points raised: that the IPCC's "12 years" is a newspaper headline rather than the report's own wording, and that climate change is a rolling process, already deadly in Bangladesh; that consumption is driven by the economy as a whole, and by capitalism, more than by individuals or population; that the left must change itself as well as the world, and that the school climate strikers were making demands on themselves as well as on governments; the trade unions' "One Million Climate Jobs" pamphlet, and the need to convert arms jobs; William Morris and useless production; a speaker who regretted that the late Eileen [inaudible], a scientist and member of the organisation, was not mentioned alongside those the book credits; councils declaring climate emergencies, and the need to push them to act; aquifers made irretrievably saline by over-extraction, as around the Jordan; the rise of the far right, Bolsonaro and Trump; the collapse of rural buses; and a proposal for environmental committees and audits in every workplace.]
33:20 Alan Thornett: Well, the conclusion I've reached is that the [book] was wrong [to concentrate so] much on the historical issues and [not] much more on the contemporary. Although I finished this book at the end of last year, October. When I wrote the introduction of this book, in October last year, on the day I finished it, on a Saturday, Extinction Rebellion were blocking the bridges in the centre of London, and I just managed to mention that in the conclusion. And the young people [in the schools] didn't do this at all at that time. So things can move incredibly quickly. But I'll come back onto that in a minute.
34:25 I didn't mention the million jobs campaign. I've been involved in it for years. I've been involved with the Campaign against Climate Change for 10 or 15 years, and I've been involved to some extent in writing both of the pamphlets. It's too much of a discussion to have here, but there has been a discussion in the Campaign against Climate Change about a new pamphlet that changes its emphasis away from the million jobs campaign and towards what this poses for the trade unions. And the problem is, and I've got a chapter on the trade unions in here, that the trade unions are a very tough nut to crack. If we were relying on the trade unions for initiatives, we would be in very deep problems. There are some unions, PCS is the outstanding example, that have taken this seriously for years. I'm a member of Unite, and you'll see a raft of everything [from Unite]; you won't see the environment mentioned. You'll see construction this, construction that. There's nothing, absolutely nothing whatsoever. The unions are a very tough job, and I think the unions will be dragged into it more than they will give a lead. I can't see the unions giving the lead on this, unfortunately.
36:10 OK, so, a few of these things. On the issue of capitalism: I've not made myself clear at all. I'm not saying getting rid of capitalism wouldn't be a very good thing. What I'm saying is that as an immediate demand it's useless. If getting rid of capitalism in the next 12 years is the answer to climate change, there is no answer to climate change; there's nothing [like that] happening in the next 12 years. We used to talk about something called transitional methods and transitional demands, and my attitude really is that we fight for environmental measures in a transitional way, with the end result being the end of capitalism. That's the framework that I'm talking about. I mean, at the demonstration in December 2015, a big demonstration in London, the SWP placard was actually, in big red letters, "One solution: revolution". That was actually their placard. And when you boil down what most left ecological writers are saying, when it comes to the conclusion it is "end capitalism", which is great, but it doesn't tell us anything about the present time.
37:35 Now, when I was saying about banning things: I'm not against banning things. I'm against banning [these] kinds of things. The point I'm saying is that if you're going to take a major measure that will have a big impact on people's lives, and it's going to change their lives in terms of their fossil fuel consumption, you've got to do it with support. If you can't get support, because suddenly everything goes up, cooking, eating, transport, suddenly, very fast, you'll get a massive revolt against it. So I'll just say again: it has to be quick, it has to be dynamic, but it also has to be democratic and socially acceptable and popular, if we're going to do it. And I think this idea of taking money at the point of production, giving it to people, encouraging them to spend it on less fossil things, because the fossil costs will be going up: I think that is the best thing I've seen for being able to really change things quickly.
39:00 On lifestyle: it's highly controversial, what I argue, because many on the left say that all this stuff about changing lifestyle is rubbish: you've got to change the structure of society, you've got to end capitalism, you've got to restructure the fuel industry, all that kind of thing. All of which is true, but you can't [only] do that. First of all, of the decisions taken on fossil fuel consumption, those in a domestic setting are 48 per cent. It's not a small amount. When you decide at home how you're going to run your house, what heating you're going to have, what transport you're going to have, it's half, or more than half, of total consumption. So unless you change people's way [of thinking], to think about what they do before they do it, and reduce their consumption, it's just not going to be resolvable. And also, as somebody said, unless you're prepared to consider your own consumption, what are you doing campaigning? You go on your climate demonstration and pass round the hamburgers: it doesn't make sense. One thing leads to another. It doesn't mean to say people have all got to do the maximum that could possibly be done, but it means they need to reduce their consumption, and think about their consumption when they do it. So lifestyle is important; personal consumption is important.
40:35 Now, on the issue of population, and population's effect on the planet. It is perfectly true that because most of the growing population is in [the poorest] countries, their impact on fossil fuel consumption is not very great. But it misses a point, because in those circumstances what we're talking about is an ecological footprint, not their fossil footprint. In terms of the ecological footprint, everybody's got to live, everybody needs space to live, everybody needs to be able to grow food and all that kind of thing. So everybody has an ecological footprint. And the other thing about those impoverished people is that they don't want to stay impoverished, and we don't want them to stay impoverished. They may be impoverished at the present time, but they want a higher standard of living: they want more meat, they want to drive more cars. So I think that's a [real] problem in terms of population.
41:55 I know there's [a debate] on the left about electric cars. What I'm [saying] here is that there has to be a massive reduction in car use. I have a chapter on car culture and the impact of car culture, and so on. But there has to be a transition while you're cutting down the use of cars. You can't get rid of all cars overnight; there has to be a transitional stage. And it's not true that you get no effect on fossil fuel consumption until the whole [grid] is green. That's not true, because you can charge cars overnight, from the [surplus] electricity [that's produced] overnight, because they can't close the [power stations] down. So actually you get a benefit straight away from electric cars, and then there's the development of [storage] and everything else. So I think we have to support electric cars. Not saying we want to jam all the cities up with electric cars, but we want to reduce the cars, get rid of internal combustion engines completely, and have a smaller number of cars running on electricity, with, as soon as possible, a completely green national grid. That's what I think we need to say about cars. I think that's [about] it.