Sixteen years ago, on this day, March 6th, 2009, Peter Mandelson launching low carbon industrial strategy says 400,000 jobs in the next decade..
. https://www.letsrecycle.com/news/mandelson-launches-low-carbon-strategy/
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 387ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that with the Global Financial Crisis in full swing, Peter Mandelson recently returned from time as a European Commissioner and bringing back a new-found love of industrial policy launched the first “low carbon industrial strategy with the all singing, all dancing Copenhagen climate conference coming up in 10 months. And of course, the Climate Change Act passed into law only two months previously. So this needs to be seen in the context of UK/EU/global efforts.
What I think we can learn from this is that “industrial policy” as an okay thing goes back further than we thought – I mean, it was a standard Keynesian tool. However, after the post-stagflation triumph of the monetarists/neoliberals, it was career suicide in the 80s and 90s and first half of the noughties to say it, because you would be met with “beer and sandwiches at number 10” as an insult and apparently argument-winningpoint.
What happened next
Well, Gordon Brown’s premiership was at this point, already clearly a dead duck. There was an election in 2010 and to the shame of the Liberal Democrats, hungry for limousines and red boxes, they enabled the Tories (but then Nick Clegg is a Tory on everything except Europe). And although portions of the green rhetoric were kept, it was adios to industrial policy in any meaningful sense.
The low carbon industrial policy went south, but then came back and back and back again, and a new one is going to be launched in June (already pushed back from March).
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
March 6, 1992 – #survival emissions versus outright denial
March 6, 2002 – ABARE cheerleads Bush. Blecch.
March 6, 2009 – the UK gets its first “low carbon industrial strategy”