Jeremy Corbyn: Nationalize, Democratize Electricity Grid to Avert Climate Crisis

UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said making the nation’s electricity grid publicly-owned is the best course to “put tackling climate change at the heart of our energy system.”

Speaking Saturday at a conference in London, Corbyn decried the failure of privatization of public services and laid out an economic vision that addresses the climate crisis while narrowing inequality.

“The challenge of climate change requires us to radically shift the way we organize our economy,” he said.

The Attlee administration that presided over Britain following World War II and created the welfare state, he said, “knew that the only way to rebuild our economy was through a decisive turn to collective action.”

“Necessary action to help avert climate catastrophe requires us to be at least as radical,” he said.

The Tory-led government of Prime Minister Theresa May has not taken that radical action, Corbyn charged, instead having “licensed fracking, declared a moratorium on renewable levies while massively subsidizing fossil fuels, dithered over tidal, held back onshore wind, U-turned on making all new homes zero carbon, and is failing to take the necessary measures to meet our legal commitments to reduce CO2 emissions.”

As such, “A green energy system will look radically different to the one we have today,” he said. “The past is a centralized system with a few large plants. The future is decentralized, flexible, and diverse with new sources of energy large and small, from tidal to solar.”