Climate Change – why we’ve got it wrong

I blogged about climate change last summer (no longer available but I might post it again in due course) shortly after the really really hot spell. In a nutshell I said climate change was real, but we needed to keep on top of the science and continue asking difficult questions, otherwise we’d get our solutions wrong. That made me a climate change denier. Daft, eh?

Not only daft, but dangerous. Here’s why.

If anyone were to check out my followers and followees on social media, they’d be confused: friends, associates and the like-minded, of course; but also remainers / rejoiners, polluters, wokies, lefties and some a-bit-too-uncomfortably righties, because it’s important (and fascinating) for me to know how others think, their sources and their logic. It’s from this strange set of bedfellows that I realise how prevalent climate change denial – or intolerance – still is, and it’s the fault of many believers.

Firstly, it’s got boring. There’s so much on LinkedIn lecturing and freaking out about climate change, climate solutions, melting ice caps, rising sea temperatures, dos and don’ts, that it's a yawn fest and I hardly read any of these posts anymore. 

Secondly, any dissent or raised eyebrow on any level of detail isn’t tolerated, as I found out myself last year. That leads some to question what the zealots, because that’s how they come across, are afraid of?

The result is a kickback from those who are seeing ulterior motives in the climate change discourse, such as government trying to exert greater control over our lives, and corporates creating a false market for their wares. I don’t write this stuff. I read it. And it’s scary.

Then there’s the eco-nutters disrupting traffic and preventing people getting to work, school, hospitals and funerals. How NOT to win hearts and minds. Some are nuttier than others, threatening to cause carnage at the London marathon: you know, the event that raises squillions for good causes? Doh! One set of nutters were actually against such tactics, which led the Daily Mail to dub it the “War of the Wazzocks.” Disrupting the Grand National and the Snooker was also an own goal – middleclass snowflakes lecturing the working class and spoiling their downtime. Not a good look.

The ‘haves and have-nots’ was also brought into focus, along with the North-South divide, with the proposed Whitehaven Mine. I’m a member of the Mine Supporters’ Facebook group and read post after post of complaints from locals (Marrars) incensed at the monied south interfering in their community that wants to better itself. It’s not just that; Marrars also have a better grasp of the science and the wider context, being able to differentiate between national and global Greenhouse Gas emissions (GHGs), and short and long-term security of the steel industry, for whom the coal would be mined.

In general, local and national policies, and finger-wagging, to achieve net-zero disadvantage the least well-off and least able. Buying electric cars. Buying bikes. Turning the thermostat down. Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. Ultra Low Emission Zones. Who loses out? Not the middle-classes, who can not only afford everything they need to buy, or can afford to ignore the ‘advice’, but can afford to hop on a GHG-spewing plane (hypocrites) to earn bragging rights at dinner parties cooked in their Agas. You can’t blame everyone else for saying ‘stuff climate change’.

And ‘everyone else’, isn’t afraid to shout out the elephant in the room. What’s the point of us doing our bit if China, Russia, India, Brazil ignore the problem and in fact make it worse? And there’s more. What’s the point of us reducing our GHGs in Blighty if it means we import stuff (like solar panels) from China where they spew out GHGs while manufacturing them and spew out more while shipping them to us. And why deny us the new coal mine if we’re going to continue importing the stuff from dirtier, less-regulated mines and ship it over? And (I still haven’t finished) what’s the point of securing this mythical net-zero if we sacrifice our farmland to tree-planting and our fish-breeding ‘shallows’ to off-shore wind farms and worsen our food security? Marrars in Whitehaven understand all this, and they haven’t been to Oxbridge (too white northern working-class for the DEI box-tickers).

So what do we do? I have two broad approaches: Demand Management and Mother Nature

Demand Management

We have to reduce our global GHG footprint because every little helps, and it demonstrates global leadership.

The most effective, cheapest and easiest way to cut GHGs from energy production is not to produce the energy in the first place. Simples! Some years ago, we were threatened with four humungous wind turbines in a nearby village. I calculated, using the developers’ own figures, that those four turbines would produce enough electricity to allow every household on the British mainland to watch 30 minutes of television – in a year! Surely forgoing one episode of Coronation Street each year is a greener, cleaner, prettier, safer solution.

And instead of taking up farmland or spewing out methane while producing ‘sustainable’ fuels to replace the need for oil, it’s better to reduce the number of flights – tax the blighters out of the sky according to the polluter pays principle.

The main argument against reducing demand is that it will harm the economy. It’s obvious to me that the demand for energy/travel can be switched to something else. How about the demand for cleaner and more efficient food production. If we’re not paying for electricity we’re not using, we’ll have more dosh to pay for our food and support our farmers. And we could increase the demand for home insulation.

The solutions are so obvious I’m getting bored writing about them, so I’ll move on.

Mother Nature
If anyone can moderate climate change and adapt to it, it’s Mother Nature, and she’d do a much better job if we stopped beating her up. Stop building on green spaces that are great carbon sinks – there’s plenty of poor quality land elsewhere, but it’s cheaper and easier for developers to destroy nature than to work with her or at least around her.

Help farmers green their operations, not sacrifice them for offsets that justifies – in developers’ warped thinking – destruction of nature elsewhere. Recreate floodplain meadows that protect communities from flooding, are great carbon sinks, water purifiers, and biodiversity havens.

Plant trees that are resilient to climate change, host other biodiversity and keep us all cooler.

Install sustainable drainage solutions to reduce water in our sewers and eventually pollution of our watercourses so that the fish and insects and birds and plants can flourish.

There’s more, but it’s time for Coronation Street, which I won’t watch. I’ll go for a walk instead and reduce the need for wind turbines.