Tony Blair’s intervention on climate change is a familiar lament: the same centrist fatalism dressed up as hard-headed realism, the same capitulation to capitalist interests framed as pragmatic policy. His call to tear down COP, abandon serious attempts at fossil fuel phase-out, and instead pursue techno-fixes like carbon capture is not a “reset” it is a white flag to capital and the fossil fuel industry.
Blair laments that voters are growing sceptical because they are asked to make “sacrifices” for minimal impact. But he refuses to confront the real reason for public cynicism: decades of political betrayal, of which he himself was a leading architect. It was Blair’s New Labour that turbocharged neoliberalism in Britain, widened inequality, hollowed out public trust, and taught citizens that politics is powerless against the market. Climate scepticism doesn’t arise from irrationality. It flows from material experience in a system Blair spent his premiership reinforcing.
“Climate scepticism doesn’t arise from irrationality—it flows from material experience in a system Blair spent his premiership reinforcing.”
His central claim. That demanding consumption limits and fossil fuel phase-outs is “doomed” is not only wrong but dangerous. It is an argument for continued extraction, continued profit, continued planetary destruction, cloaked in the language of “realism”. Fossil fuel consumption must fall, and quickly. Pretending otherwise is not pragmatism; it is surrender to the energy monopolies and billionaires already profiting from climate breakdown.
His proposed “solution” prioritising carbon capture, AI, and techno-optimism, betrays the same fantasy thinking that has plagued elite climate strategy for years: the idea that the same forces of technological innovation and market competition that created the crisis can somehow solve it, without confronting the structures of capital accumulation driving environmental collapse. Technology can assist, but it cannot substitute for radical systemic change. A decarbonisation plan based on protecting capitalism at all costs is no plan at all.
“A decarbonisation plan based on protecting capitalism at all costs is no plan at all.”
Blair’s argument is also politically bankrupt. He wants a “new coalition” of the largest countries. Meaning, of course, the imperialist core, to dictate terms to the global South. His vision abandons the multilateral principles, however imperfect, embodied in COP in favour of a new form of green colonialism, where rich nations entrench their dominance by monopolising new energy technologies while leaving the global poor to bear the brunt of climate impacts.
Ed Miliband is right to “stand firm” on net zero targets and renewables. If anything, the government should go further: nationalising energy production, massively expanding public ownership of renewables, ending fossil fuel subsidies, and investing not just in new technologies but in workers and communities to build a just transition. Climate action must be tied to class struggle, not abandoned in favour of corporate-led fantasy solutions.
The reality is simple. The climate crisis is a capitalist crisis. Blair’s “pragmatism” is simply another way of saying that capital must never be seriously threatened. If we accept his argument, the planet burns and he will write another comment piece explaining why it was inevitable.
“The climate crisis is a capitalist crisis.”
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