Conflicted Realities

Gareth Wyn Jones

Practitioners of ‘Realpolitik’ think of themselves as hard-headed; realists taking pride in recognising where power lies, undeterred by ideologies or even moral scruples.

They are grounded in the tough, rough world where financial, commercial and military might prevail, with an occasional nod to popular opinion.

In their differing ways both Trump and Starmer are part of this world. One glorying in the seemingly unbridled power of the President of the USA exerting a huge influence over policy, business, the law and the media, and international affairs. Starmer, by contrast, is acutely aware of the limits to his power.

He lacks deep public support, has inherited a weak economy, a largely antagonistic media and, post Brexit, an ill-defined place in the international order.

Their economic agendas differ. One is happy to use tariffs and commercial and military power to try and cow opposition and, hypothetically at least, drive American economic growth, even at the expense of the rest of the world. The other is even more desperate for economic growth but is ham-strung by Brexit and by years of decay and under investment, especially in the manufacturing and public sectors.

Both are, however, committed to the neo-classical agenda of ever increasing economic growth, as measured by GDP. Growth driven by infinitely-expanding, consumer demand and technological innovation, especially AI and AIG.

Both are beholden to global capital markets, characterised by their mobility and by favouring pliant regimes.

Both would maintain that there is no other realistic option.

Flawed

There are, I would contend, compelling reasons to believe these agendas are fundamentally flawed and deeply unreal.

Trump and his acolytes explicitly deny the scientific understanding of how our planet works and supports all life, not excluding that of the most affluent. Paradoxically this denial extends to the billionaire techno-barons of Silicon Valley whose fortunes are based on science but are drawn, inexorably, to the corruption of power.

Starmer is not a science denier but, when faced with harsh choices, opts for policies which are incompatible with the evidence. He is given to platitudes about transitioning to an improbable net zero while compromising on emissions reductions by promoting new runways and, possibly, new fossil fuel sources.

Faced with physical reality, Trump is a brazen liar and denier; Starmer, merely a dissembler and compromiser. The latter appears to expect, by investing billions in unproven small modular nuclear reactors as well as the equally unproven carbon capture and storage or maybe global geo-engineering, he will dig himself and humanity out of a hole of their own making. Trump and his tech bros, despite their current denial, will come to see such technologies as business opportunities and glory in their infallibility.

Clearly the engulfing problems of climate change and global warming are the major and most pressing examples of these tensions between the political and earth science realities.

‘Drill baby drill’

Trump is busy advocating “drill baby drill”, reversing any attempts to limit US Greenhouse Gas [GHG} emissions, even seeking to limit the dissemination of climate data and to doctor US web sites.

This despite mounting evidence of a crisis. 2023 and 2024 were the hottest years in human experience and even January 2025 (in a La Nina period) was a record high. The +1.5oC target is breached. Even more disturbing, the atmospheric concentrations of the main GHGs, CO2 and CH4, not only continue to grow, but to do so at an accelerating rate.

The global sea ice levels are at record lows and glaciers receding, including those feeding water to major cities in South America. The evidence for increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather (heat waves, great rain storms, droughts etc.) is all around us including in the USA, with tragic consequences for some in Pacific Palisades and hefty insurance bills for many more.

In a clash between Trump and fundamental physics there can be only one winner.

But the problems extend well beyond global warming. We are losing important habitats and biodiversity at an alarming rate. Our oceans, fresh waters and soils are being polluted and abused. We are not only changing the carbon cycle but also modifying the global nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. Polar ice sheets are melting, places are running short of water while others are experiencing temperatures near 50oC and on their way to being too hot for safe human habitation. We are perilously close to the precipice.

Colonising

Humans have been colonising all aspects of this planet to the detriment of many other life forms. We are powering dangerous changes whose effects, known and unknown, will in turn drive us to a dependence on speculative, technological fixes. As Peter Frankopan shows in ‘The Earth Transformed: An untold Story’, such greed and hubris is not new and has led historically to countless local disasters. Now we are experimenting on a planetary scale.

This is the reality of Trump’s bombast and Starmer’s caution and concerted attempts by the populist press to rubbish any attempts to loosen the grip of fossil fuels and energy-driven consumerist growth.

But ‘realpolitik’ has other faces. Many in the developed world feel let down as the promised increases in their living standards have not materialised. Even, if in employment, they may be on zero hours contracts or poor wages, being buffeted by rising costs, poor basic services, and a sense of powerlessness and, unlike the rich, unable to opt out.

People, naturally, look for scapegoats, and find them in immigrants, in overseas competition perceived to be unfair, in environmental and other regulations, in anyone ‘different’, in reviving grand mythical histories and for some, white supremacism. So the pressure grows to cut immigration, limit overseas aid and reduce regulations in a desire for a short term fix.

Beggar their neighbour and the environment. Growth is all and energy must be found to drive it. The international cooperation essential to drastically cutting our GHG emissions is but a distant, mocking dream.

Few seem concerned that for decades, economic growth has been geared to making the rich richer with little trickling down to the general population. A system has emerged which allows trillions to be concealed in tax havens. It is estimated nearly $500 billion is lost to the global public purse, annually, by cross border, tax abuse by multinational companies and wealthy individuals.

This loss accentuates and perpetuates gross inequality: in wealth, in GHG emissions and in energy use. The rising tide of global ‘heating’, driven almost entirely by the rich, can only make this worse and push more, especially the brave and enterprising, to try to migrate to more temperate regions. Globally, mean atmospheric temperature increases of at least 2.5oC can be expect which imply +3-4oC over land and perhaps +6 to 7oC in some places and, in time, metres of sea level rise.

Acceleration

Reality has many guises including the quite startling acceleration in the rate of social and material change since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. This acceleration, I argue in Energy and Power: Our Perilous Obsessions, is itself major threat to human wellbeing as well as to planetary health. As energy, irrespective of its source, has been more effectively coupled to work and power, a more complex dynamic, fast changing world has emerged where energy and information merge. It is making insistent demands on global natural resources as well as challenging our social structures and our personal self-worth. Accelerating change creates a problematical need for new regulations and seems threatens our democratic freedoms.

Nevertheless the underlying pursue of power is deeply embedded in the human psyche and the age old warnings of its danger go unheeded.

A policy to reduce our energy use especially that of the rich and both slowing down and reducing inequality would seem rational and go some way to reducing the threats of both global warming and ever acceleration change. Seeking to live well on less is not new but, In reality, has little traction especially in the world of the elite and tech barons. The idea of humanity recognising their dependence on planetary health and working for a common good is, sadly implausible.

In all probability in the immediate future, a small elite will benefit from this energy-intensive, brave new cyber world while many may face serfdom. In the longer term, the future is opaque.

The undermining of the health of the planet on which our wellbeing depends is all too obvious. But the uber capitalist, hubristic, techno-elite who dominate believing that their prowess and ingenuity will fix anything (or maybe simply that they can buy themselves out of any crises – disasters are for the poor). For the many, poverty and insecurity define their lives. For them and many much better-off, the promise of increasing riches entices. It can lead to support for plausible demagogues or risky migration. Such hopes and expectations are yet another face of reality.

Can these realities be reconciled? Who knows but existential clashes are all to likely?

Gareth Wyn Jones will be discussing ‘Challenging the Energy Consensus’ in The Drwm/Y Drwm at the National Library of Wales at 13.00 on Friday April 11th 2025.