Is antipathy to fossil fuels simply virtue signalling?

Chris Garrard’s call, published in Arts Professional, to end all fossil fuel sponsorship prompted me to respond. The recent travails of the Edinburgh Book Festival show where it can lead. After activists persuaded it to jettison its sponsor – financial services giant Baillie Gifford – over some minor fossil fuel investments, festival managers found themselves looking at a potentially terminal financial shortfall.

In the event, they got lucky. A few weeks later, in close succession, we saw the appointment of a former Scottish National Party (SNP) adviser to run the festival; the sudden disappearance of the financial black hole as the SNP administration in Holyrood delivered £300,000 of public funding; and then the equally rapid appearance of former SNP First Minister Nicola Sturgeon at the top of the festival programme.

Reasonable people might think this was just an extraordinary set of coincidences, but it is equally possible to speculate on something more sinister, and to wonder if this money was any less ‘tainted’ (Chris Garrard’s word) than the Baillie Gifford money it replaced.

The children of wealth

The idea that fossil fuels are tainted is muddled thinking – a luxury belief we can no longer afford. The truth is fossil fuels are indispensable. Without them there would be no pharmaceuticals, no chemicals, no plastics or – more relevant to the arts – no cosmetics, no paints, no synthetic dyes and no artificial fibres.

But there is a more fundamental dependency on fossil fuels too. The arts are the children of wealth. They flourish here because we are a rich country with millions of patrons to support them.

Ordinary people buy tickets, bringing revenues to venues; they pay their taxes too, which fund the subsidies that keep high-cost operations such as ballet, opera and arts festivals afloat.

The rich, and the businesses they own and run, play an important part too – not just because of their taxes, but because of the sponsorship they willingly offer up.

Grandchildren of fossil fuels

But we need to understand where this money comes from. If the arts are the children of wealth, then they are the grandchildren of fossil fuels. As coal succeeded wood as our main source of energy in the 17^th century, national wealth exploded.

The newly minted middle classes, with money to burn, wanted entertainment, and artists were the beneficiaries. At the start of that century, Dowland and Gibbons were playing lute songs for the wealthy few. And long before it was up, Purcell was composing for huge theatres flung up to meet the burgeoning demand.

Then the Industrial Revolution kicked in, and by the end of the 20^th century Queen was filling Wembley Stadium. Each ticketholder was, and is, in their own small way, a patron of the arts.

Virtuous circle

Throughout those centuries, there was a virtuous circle of growing energy use, growing wealth and further flourishing of the arts. But it doesn’t have to be this way; there is no law that says things can’t go into reverse. And that’s the way things are going now.

We have tried to replace fossil fuels with renewables, and the result has bordered on catastrophic. Electricity prices have doubled in real terms. And as a result, we have deindustrialised.

Whole industries – aluminium, fertiliser, steel – are gone, or almost so. The chemicals industry is on the brink. Tens of thousands have been flung out of work. That’s tens of thousands no longer patronising the arts through ticket sales or taxes.

We have tried to make up the difference by fleecing the rich, but they are now leaving the UK in staggering numbers, taking their taxes and their sponsorship money with them.

Spiral of decline

The virtuous circle has been replaced by a spiral of decline – falling energy consumption (down 30% since 2005), less wealth and a squeeze on the arts now being felt in earnest.

And it is set to get much worse. The economist Professor Gordon Hughes, a former adviser to the World Bank, has suggested government’s plans for the next five years would raise the cost of the electricity by £25bn per year. That’s electricity at 40p per kilowatt – rather than the 25p that is already proving disastrous for British householders.

At those prices, necessities will be so expensive the arts will be squeezed out of the market. Will anyone be able to afford to see a live performance or buy a recording? How much business profit will there be to tax? Will anyone be able and willing to sponsor a festival or a show?

And for that matter, how many venues could afford to keep the lights on?

What about the climate catastrophe?

The counter argument always contains the question ‘But what about climate catastrophe?’ That’s a discussion for another time but let me leave you with the following thought. If – and it’s a big if – the climate models are correct, and we dropped Net Zero, the arts and everyone else might be in trouble in a hundred years’ time.

Climate dangers are distant, poorly understood and uncertain. But the climate policy dangers are here, now and very clear. If Ed Miliband ploughs on, the arts face certain decimation over the next five years. I know which option I’d choose.