ULEZ: normal people do not want to be forced to pay while big companies get off scot free

FOR many years, big polluters have evaded responsibility for the damage they do to the environment and public health by shifting the blame from the corporation to the individual.

Famously, British Petroleum (BP) promoted the term “carbon footprint” in 2004, offering a “calculator” that allowed the consumer to assess the climate impact of their daily lives.

The campaign was a stroke of genius, allowing Big Oil to promote the idea that pollution is the result of individual consumer choice – not of structural corporate wrongdoing.

And while there is much to be said for personal virtue when it comes to tackling air pollution, changes made at an individual level will never offer a comprehensive solution to this environmental and public health crisis.

On Tuesday, London mayor Sadiq Khan made good on his promise to roll out the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) across all London boroughs.

Despite much criticism from the Conservative party, the rollout of ULEZ is the final chapter of a story that started with Boris Johnson in 2014, when the then London mayor announced the policy.

There have been many bogus and hypocritical arrows aimed at the policy in the lead-up to the expansion. But the most difficult criticism to dismiss is the idea that ULEZ is a punitive measure that will impact the poorest the hardest.

The ULEZ policy is guided – at least in theory – by the “polluter pays” principle. This is defined by the London School of Economics as a practice whereby “those who produce pollution should bear the costs of managing it to prevent damage to human health or the environment.”

The problem with ULEZ is that it is being enforced in a context where the “polluters pays” principle applies only to individual drivers – but not at a structural level to large corporate bodies who are causing the most damage. Against this backdrop, it is unsurprising so many are recoiling from the policy.

Following their recent shock by-election loss in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, the Labour candidate and Camden Square Councillor Danny Beales said ULEZ had “cut us off at the knees.”

This analysis misses a wider and more fundamental point: that normal people do not want to be forced to pay while big companies get off scot free. As the Labour Party crafts its manifesto ahead of the next general election, they must pair clean air zones with a commitment to making the real polluters pay.

Air pollution and the climate crisis will only be solved through state-wide, collective action. Making people change their lives in small ways will only ever be a small part of the solution.