Yeah, I agree with you here. I really, really, really don’t see Starmer doing anything at all about climate change.
Nobody will until it’s too late. Not because they’re stupid or evil, but because the structures of neoliberalism, of the state that supports it, or the financial interests that drive it, will prevent anything meaningful being done before material circumstances make the current economy literally impossible.
I don’t see any action before the suffering in The “West” getting substantially worse. Until then, for the interests of capital, large-scale change is literally unthinkable.
Vanessa Machado de Oliveira writes in Hospicing Modernity that “There’s a popular saying in Brazil that in a flood situation, it is only when the water reaches people’s hips that it becomes possible for them to swim.” I think she’s right (in that).
Eventually those with the power to act will reach a point where the choice is made for them and “business as usual” becomes intolerable. Until then, the Guardian and others will be arguing that the devestment movement, like Fossil Free Books, are “misguided” and “only serving to defund literary festivals” and that “Baillie Gifford only invest 2% of their clients’ money in fossil fuels”. Despite the stark truth that unless we make it too difficult for companies like Baillie Gifford to invest anything at all in fossil fuels, we’ve got no chance of stopping things getting worse, never mind working towards making things better.
So it’ll continue to be a Common Sense narrative of “annoying hippies” on the one hand and “economic probity” on the other until the water is chest height.
