Is opposing HS2 the best use of the left’s political energy?
Unlike most infrastructure projects, HS2 has potential ecological benefits, which means that environmentalists have to choose between two harmful options. Yet we cannot consider HS2 in the abstract: we must approach it as part of broader political strategy, situating it in the bigger picture of transforming and decarbonising our transport system and our relationships with Nature.
Is HS2 good or bad?
In Chris Saltmarsh’s recent article for Bright Green, he approaches the question as ‘Should the left support HS2?’ Similarly, much of the discussion from campaigners and activists, such as Extinction Rebellion/HS2 Rebellion and the Stop HS2 campaign, seem to frame it as ‘Is HS2 Good or Bad?’ Instead, I think a better question is: how should we approach HS2 in the context of working towards broader transformation.
Before coming onto broader political questions, I’ll consider briefly the arguments around HS2:
For | Against |
Improved rail capacity and shorter journey times |
Ecological harm from construction: destruction of habitats, including ancient woodland; other harms from waste and pollution. |
Reduced greenhouse gas emissions | Emissions as part of construction |
Economic benefits | Cost (£100bn or more) |
Other transport improvements would be better |
It is important context that HS2 is government project (from New Labour and continued by the Conservatives) and is well underway. Our influence on it is, sadly, quite limited. It might be scrapped or only partly completed, but changing the route, for example, is quite unlikely. There is little point considering alternatives that don’t have real-world possibility.
In this article, my focus will be on the ecological case for and against HS2. I do not have space to cover all of the economic arguments too, and these are covered in Chris Saltmarsh’s piece. But I will say that I think most of the discussions around the cost of the project or what to spend the money on are misguided. It isn’t a question of HS2 or Northern Powerhouse Rail, or what the best use of £100bn would be: if it is worth spending money on, it is worth spending money on. We should not be stuck in flawed neoliberal or austerity logic, but instead support all investment which helps us decarbonise. And we certainly do not have to choose between proper transport investment and adequate funding for the NHS.
Ecological trade-offs
Put simply, building HS2 gives the possibility of reduced greenhouse gas emissions by enabling more train journeys instead of car and plane journeys, but the construction involves significant destruction of nature. Having an ecological benefit on one side sets HS2 apart from other infrastructure projects, such as fracking, roads, coal mines and even some housing developments, which pit some economic (human) benefit against an ecological harm, and are often much more straightforward for environmentalists.
Whether HS2 will reduce carbon emissions is complex, and opponents often point to reports and reviews which openly conclude that it is unclear whether HS2 will have a positive or negative effect. Yet the point is that HS2 is only one part of a broader system, and changing this part could go either way. Having a second north-south trainline allowing for more and better train journeys could be part of reducing car and plane journeys. Or, car usage could continue to grow and HS2 makes flying easier. Yet these points, and the net effect of HS2, is really about the transport system and broader transport policy, not HS2 specifically.
For the sake of argument let’s assume that HS2 does make it easier to reduce carbon emissions from the transport system as a whole. And let’s turn now to the harm to nature caused by construction. This includes emissions from construction and the general destruction of habitats, including the destruction of ancient woodland. Ancient woodland and other habitats are effectively irreplaceable: they are complex ecosystems developed organically over hundreds of years. Making up for this by planting new trees is nonsense akin to replacing the variety of food we eat with a diet of only green beans.
The impulse that forests are being destroyed and we should stop this is generally a very good one. There is little to protect nature apart from activists and campaigners. But taking a position on HS2 requires us to decide whether it is justified to destroy habitats to reduce carbon emissions (which contribute to habitat destruction from the effects of climate change).
Even if HS2 is, on the whole, ecologically net positive, we must recognise that this perpetuates the dynamic of destroying nature for human benefit. The ‘benefit’ of reduced carbon emissions is actually about allowing us to continue living highly mobile western lifestyles in a less ecologically damaging way, instead of purely just reducing the harmful behaviour. This is a compromised position, though it may well be a justified one if this sort of harm reduction is what is needed to bring people with us politically.
Political strategy
Whatever our view on HS2, we must have a broader political strategy. We should have a positive vision of a world we want to see, take actions which bring us closer to it, and tell stories that bring people with us.
Campaigning against HS2 is about stopping the project. While this would of course preserve some habitats, the campaigns do not seem to tie into something bigger.
This isn’t a criticism of any person involved: I would guess that almost everyone is also involved in other projects and campaigns too and will have a vision beyond just this campaign. I only mean that the campaign itself is lacking in this. This can be seen in the pick-and-mix way that arguments against HS2 are sometimes made: if the destruction of ancient woodland is wrong, it’s irrelevant whether the cost is £10bn or £100bn.
On the left, and as ‘environmentalists’, we have limited energy. We cannot act to oppose all injustices, or address all of the many transformations we need at once, either individually or collectively. I do not mean that we should put aside addressing social inequalities or racial justice to focus on ecology, as many right-wing ecological approaches do: these are all intertwined parts of a social and economic system we need to change. I just mean that in our campaigns, we are in the difficult situation of having to pick and choose our focus. Though of course, whatever our strategy, we should always be trying to grow the movement too.
My personal conclusion is therefore somewhat agnostic on HS2. I would certainly have made some quite different decisions if I was in charge of the project, but as it is, my vague feeling is that it is generally worth it. Yet even if it is a bad project, it does not seem to me that campaigning to stop HS2 would be the best use of my energy, and so I work on other things.
I am not necessarily saying that other people should not oppose HS2, but I would urge anyone who is to carefully consider the bigger political picture and make sure that campaigning against HS2 takes us towards a better world. Either way, though, whatever our view on one (huge) railway construction project, the focus must be on the much bigger visions of decarbonising our transport system and the wholesale protection and restoration of nature from human destruction.
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Image credit: Les Chatfield – Creative Commons
“Is opposing HS2 the best use of the left’s political energy?”
No, the left is best off not backing a far right movement. There is NIMBYism and neo-Nazism in opposition to HS2, but not environmentalism. If you’re gullible enough to be the Nazis’ useful idiot here, don’t be surprised if you can’t get a hearing from the mainstream on other matters.
I think one of the important things to note is that any infrastructure project that is predicted to cost over £1 bn will on average cost twice the predicted sum. So when people say that we could instead could support £100 bn of other rail projects, that figure should actually be £50 bn.
Even according to HS2, the C02 production from constructing HS2 will not be compensated for until the trains have been running for 100 years. Too late.
If all the people who currently fly within the UK, between destinations served by HS2, were to transfer to rail they would occupy less than one trainload per day. And in fact, most fly Scotland to London such that HS2 will not provide them with a timely (or well priced) alternative. There are no Birmingham or Manchester to London flights currently. On the contrary, ask yourself why Birmingham, Manchester and East Midlands airports are leading protagonists for HS2. HS2 is central to their expansion of UK long distance flying, maximising the use of existing runways.
The environmental claims for HS2 are predicated on the HS2 line carrying 18 trains an hour (tph) in each direction. Nowhere in the world is that frequency of operation achieved on an ultra high speed line. Stopping distance – and so train separation – is increased exponentially as speed increases. 12 tph is currently realistic. They have exaggerated the potential benefits by at least 50%.
The necessary technology might be developed to enable such train frequency at the speeds proposed – integrated in cab signalling, continuous train location monitoring, automatic computer controlled train and points operation. But, if that same type of technology (that already exists) was applied to the existing lines – East Coast, West Coast, Midland and Chiltern – their trains per hour capacity could be increased to such an extent that HS2 would be wholly redundant (even if there was to be a return to pre-covid train seat occupancy). And those lines already serve stations in the towns and city centres where people actually live and work. They do not require the construction of wholly new stations in the middle of the countryside, around which the conurbations are planned to further sprawl.
Most of the HS2 expenditure to date has been acquisition of land and property. Cancellation and recouping by selling of those assets is wholly possible. But the further construction costs of HS2 will devour the rail funding, that clearly is needed otherwise, for decades. Electrification; new, more and longer trains; restoration of Beeching cuts; – All these environmental essentials demand the scrapping of HS2 before any of its CO2ncrete is poured.
If environmentalists genuinely want to “focus on the much bigger visions of decarbonising our transport system and the wholesale protection and restoration of nature from human destruction”, then they must campaign for rail and for integrated public transport, and so they have no option but to campaign, urgently, to cancel HS2.
When we talk about ecological trade offs, in regards to HS2, it depends if you buy into the science of irreversible tipping points being reached this decade.
Personally I do, and therefore even if HS2 was good in the long run, that will be long after we have surpassed those tipping points.
When the climate crisis continues to hit, with severe catastrophic events, I doubt many will be saying, “Oh well at least we have HS2” of course not it will be irrelevant then. HS2 is the wrong thing at the wrong time. The Concorde of the railways.
Yes, this is a good point.
I think we should be trying to reduce carbon emissions, and other ecological harms, as quickly as possible. In that framework, HS2 as it currently is would not be right. I wouldn’t know whether other rail improvements might be. Given that isn’t what is happening, and in the current situation we are in, HS2 might be net positive for the transport system.
But — my argument is more, this abstract question about whether HS2 is right seems to me to be the wrong question. Instead we should ask: this is where we currently are, what should we do?
This article’s strongest point is that the bird has already flown, opposition to HS2 is wasted. But that does not make HS2 right.
Large investments do not grow on trees. Perhaps we should try to get on the front foot, and get past being heroic protesters against causes already lost.
How about a network of new large canals? How else are we going to replace the distribution of goods by road and air? Canals must be better than rail, and could provide new better habitats along with their economic functions. Any other ideas?
We must think big, we must seek to lead. At the moment we are stuck on the dead-end of powerless local government, with its trivial remits without consequence.
Thanks Bernard — your comment maybe even restates it better than my article! “We are where we are — what now?”. I like these ideas.
My gut instinct is to oppose all habitat destruction and any further ecological damage, so I approached this article with some prejudice, but I found it very thoughtful, honest and sensibly pragmatic (depending on how far down the slope of ecological collapse you think we might now be). Thanks, plenty to discuss with friends who have been out resisting HS2. I guess part of the problem is that HS2 being accepted as a lesser-evil “green” step forward may simply reinforce our existing delusions and play into the green modernising, green capitalist expansion and acceleration agenda, which may in turn come to predominate in the Green movement.
Thanks Theo — this is exactly the sort of response I was hoping for, so I’m pleased to read your comment.
As I say, that’s my instinct too. So much has already been destroyed. The only reason I can accept for destroying more is to prevent a greater destruction, which may be the case with HS2 (through reduced greenhouse gas emissions), though that would be a complicated comparison to make… And my initial reaction to HS2 was ‘Well, we need to invest in better public transport, so it is sadly necessary to destroy Nature to do so.’ And it was the tension between those two that led to this thinking. It’s sad to see environmentalists pitted fiercely against each other, when we must work together towards the bigger picture.
And I completely agree that the lesser evil is always a slippery slope, which has been used for a long time. We must be based on sound ecological principles, while also addressing social inequalities and bringing people with us. It’s a difficult road ahead, as it has been a difficult struggle throughout history.
“plenty to discuss with friends who have been out resisting HS2”
Or you could try not remaining friends with Nazis…