So it looks like DESNZ is going to get a rebrand.
The ‘Energy Security and Net Zero’ committee of cross-party MPs released a report this morning titled ‘Zero sum game: How the UK can reframe the energy transition’. It is a sure sign that the term ‘Net Zero’ is going to be dropped by Government.
The ‘Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’ (DESNZ) will soon, almost certainly, have a new name.
However, whatever DESNZ is rebranded as, it will continue to frame climate action as a problem that can be 'solved' in isolation from all the other problems that also need solving.
This is how Government operates, it’s how the world operates. It is reductionism, it’s what one does when one is too afraid to look at the whole system; one looks only at the parts.
That Government inhabits this vantage point is a function of the Government's reluctance to acknowledge, and therefore explain, that all of the problems we face have shared roots.
These roots are the principles that guide the socioeconomic system we're living under. That system is driving extreme inequality, mental and physical ill health, racism, sexism, loss of nature, war, genocide, political polarisation, social isolation, pandemics, etc, etc, etc... and - the ever more powerful superboss character - climate change.*
As these problems have grown, successive Governments have played whack-a-mole as they’ve attempted to address them all. For decades they have tried to solve problems one by one without ever properly questioning or addressing the root causes that drive them.
If anything, in recent years, they've only really been adding fertiliser to those roots, making the problems worse. Tragically, they’ve been doing this at exactly the moment they should be digging the roots up and holding them to the light for us ordinary folk to look at and better understand.**
But there has been an interesting development. Andy Burnham has started to join the dots a little by critiquing neoliberalism - he named the problem. He did this before he became PM and (without being quite bold enough to name it) in his first PM statement to the House too. This is really interesting because it represents an opening.
Burnham chooses his words carefully and talks about 'good' growth endlessly, but his calling out of neoliberalism could have triggered a national conversation about it and the principles that guide it. Predictably, this national conversation hasn’t started.
The people who are really in power (those who control the media) don't want that conversation to start. Sadly, the climate movement (still dominated by liberalism) has also failed to seize on the opportunity Burnham gave them. They haven't jumped on his statement and used it to expose the roots yet either. There is still time, but the reluctance is plain to see. Silence speaks volumes.
All of which is to say that debates about whether or not 'net zero’ is the best wording are a distraction. The debate should be about deeds, not words. It is the substance of what DESNZ and other parts of Government are doing on climate change that matters. Just as it is the substance of what Government are doing on health, poverty, inequality, genocide, war, water, care, social atrophy and on, and on, and on, that matters.
Truth is, across the piece, there isn’t much substance; they’re ‘managing’ symptoms, they’re being reductionist instead of holistic in their approach, and they’re barely looking at, let alone addressing, the root causes.
They will remain in this paradigm until they are forced out of it.
Let’s have a national conversation. Let’s look at one of the root cause issues, one that is at the heart of neoliberal capitalism (and capitalism itself): hyper-individualism.
Hyper-individualism is an extreme social and cultural mindset that prioritizes personal independence, autonomy, and self-interest far above community responsibility and the collective well-being.
It is what the relentless promotion of the ideology of individualism has led to in the UK and the many other countries who adopted neoliberalism in the 1980s. It is disastrous for the climate for two reasons***:
Individualistic countries almost always have higher ecological footprints; and
‘Rugged’ individuals are less inclined to the sort of collective action that huge shared problems like climate change require of us.
Hyper-individualism needs to be reined in, and it can be reined in, other cultural mindsets are available; they can be nurtured.
The best way to rein it in is to be the antidote to it. That’s why The Miracle Inn is focused on re-weaving the social fabric. We bring people together, we encourage other campaign organisations to focus on bringing people together, and we are preparing to campaign for the provision and maintenance of spaces (like inns, but also cafes, parks, playgrounds, village halls) where people can come together.
If The Miracle Inn were a Government department, it would be the ‘Department for Interdependence’, maybe that’s what DESNZ could be rebranded as?
*These symptoms do not operate in isolation from each other, they act as threat multipliers on each other, they feed off each other as well as their roots if their roots are not weakened.
**As an aside, I wish this had been what the National Emergency Briefing team had set out to do.
***I covered this in my 2025 TEDx Talk, you can watch it on our ‘about’ page
