Climate Emergency

I don't know whatever next! If we don't cut our carbon emmisions to net zero within a decade we will all be living underwater soon.

Global leaders are full of so much hot air!

This week the front page of every newspaper here in the UK was a picture of the raging wildfires in Greece and a woman crying out as the fires had destroyed her village.

Of course these events are sad and distressing for those affected however Greece is a hot country during August and wild fires have always been common.

Every single time there is a flood, fire or other weather related disaster of any kind it is always said to be because of man made climate change.

Is that really the case, does the weather not have natural cycles which it goes though. The weather has always been changeable.

Its funny that this 'climate emergency' will also mean that we will all need to move to driving electric cars soon, more green taxes will be introduced for businnesses which pollute too much, we will all need to upgrade our boilers and have more efficient light bulbs.

Its almost as if it is being used as a method to keep us hard working people of the world constantly needing to consume, upgrade and buy new products all the time. Kind of handy for the economy then as well then.

Never mind that getting rid of lithium ion batteries at the end of their life is difficult, the raw materials for battery technologies are mined in dangerous ways by poorly paid people in the third world and the electricity needed to charge these batteries does not come out of thin air but from power stations which pollute the atmosphere.

Surely the best way to keep our carbon emmisions low would be to make the things we currently have last longer. The energy used to produce a medium sized new family car will produce on average more than 15 tonnes of CO2. In other words it may be better for the enviroment to keep your old car on the road for longer as it will take many years to see the benefit of driving an electric car if you take into consideration the carbon emmisions involved in building a new car in the first place!

I do think that we should look after our planet and think about our energy use and how much we send to landfill each week. Its tragic that much of the plastic we send for recycling is shipped off to the far east and then often burned illegally as it is cheaper to get rid of it this way than actually recycle it. The chemicals released by burning this plastic are highly toxic and terrible for the enviroment.

Here in the west many people are oblivious to the fact that we are simply exporting our plastic waste problem to the far east.

I don't know how much impact man has made on the climate for certian. There are many scientists who are skeptical that the warming of the planet is entirely man made, though many are afraid to speak out as they may lose their jobs, have their funding for university cut, or be subject to persecution in other ways for daring to question the official narrative.

Once this current pandemic has finally been brought under control I wonder what the next reason could be to keep us all indoors and restrict our freedom to travel.

Could it be a 'Climate emergency'

My own article

Pictures courtesy of Pixabay