Climate polity could pitch people with a low income against the wealthy who can buy carbon credits, solar panels and electric cars

A letter from Sarah-Jayne Pomeroy:
Letter to the editorLetter to the editor
Letter to the editor

Local biodiversity is under threat in Northern Ireland where we have one of the lowest levels of woodland cover in Europe. Intensive agriculture can be insatiable.

It depletes the soil, creates lower quality produce that requires supplementary feeds (incurring higher costs), and inevitably results in the need to expand into marginal habitats used by wildlife. But nature can provide natural services, such as pollinators, that contribute to the economy. Regenerative agriculture, organic farming, and agro-forestry are viable alternatives.

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However climate change policy is a gateway into increased economic marginalisation between the rich and the poor, it benefits corporations rather than small family businesses and households. The vision is more dystopian than holistic.

Things do need to change, but will the coming economy do away with gluttonous consumerism, only to replace it with a tiered society? This would be a ‘pay to play’ society where the rich offset their luxurious lifestyle while the lower incomes are conformed to less and less. Cultural disdain for ‘benefit slobs’ could be replaced by a disdain for ‘useless carbon producers’.

This would be the result of our value-systems shifting from a producer-consumer value-system, to a carbon value-system. Those with a lower income will be pitched against the buying power of the wealthy who can afford to purchase carbon credits, electric cars, heat pumps, solar panels, and wind turbines.

I would like to see the people of Northern Ireland find a way to develop an economy and agricultural sector that is fairer and kinder to both people and the environment.

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Yet corporate and political interests might hinder this, and have the potential to create something worse than we have already. Society can be dehumansing enough at times without having human worth measured against a carbon counts, values, and policies that discriminate against the working class.

Sarah-Jayne Pomeroy, Drumquin, Tyrone (Author, PgCert Wildlife and Conservation Management student & doctoral candidate)

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