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South Yorkshire flooding and climate emergency

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Has the government forgotten so quickly?

It’s been just three weeks since the flooding in South Yorkshire that has left working class communities destitute.

People have been left with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Yet government’s response of a measly £500 to cover the cost of damages and insurance premiums shows just how remote from working people’s lives they really are.

Most of the flooding victims will not have been able to afford the luxury of insurance. They will have been left with absolutely nothing. A life in tatters.

And all the while Boris Johnson messes around with a mop, claiming there is no emergency here.

Well let me tell you Mr. Johnson. There is an emergency. It’s here. It’s real. And it is a climate emergency.

Yorkshire needs a proper, radical response to climate change, because it will be honest Yorkshire folk who will suffer the most from the climate emergency. This election, we need every candidate on record as to where they stand.

These floods are the most recent evidence that working class people are already having to pay the price for the excessive lifestyles of the 1%.

Research this September showed that whilst over half of working people in the UK have never taken a flight, use of private jets has (quite literally) sky rocketed.

But too often it’s the workers in energy intensive industries who are told that they’re the problem.

There are those in the Westminster bubble who want to paint the climate emergency as a fringe issue that doesn’t touch the lives of real people.

Well I’m here to tell the climate deniers and the haters out there that they’re wrong.

The climate emergency is real for the tens of thousands of Yorkshire workers in carbon intensive industries, and they need real, radical responses for their futures.

There are 28,000 jobs in Yorkshire and the Humber that are directly linked to the most carbon intensive industries in the country. These are skilled workers who could be helping deliver the solutions we need to tackle the climate crisis. But without action, they risk being left behind.

This election we need candidates to listen to trade unions and commit to implementing worker-led solutions for a green industrial revolution.

Working class communities have been here before, and we will not allow a transition to a low carbon economy to abandon them.

We cannot be clearer. There is no climate justice without class justice.

And all this government has offered so far is milquetoast responses to the flooding, and milquetoast responses as to how they will grapple with this most urgent problem we face.

We need the government to commit to spending whatever is needed to get communities in Doncaster and Rotherham back on their feet, and then we need to see real action on, and worker-led solutions to, the causes of the climate emergency.

This election, we want to see every candidate in Yorkshire listening to trade unions on what the climate emergency means for our members, and outlining how they plan to solve it.

We will no longer allow working class people to pay the price for the excesses of the wealthy.

It is time to end this climate injustice, for the people of South Yorkshire, and for everyone in this country.

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