Written by Ann Farmer

 

Following the apocalyptic new UN report on climate change, the Express’s Environment Editor John Ingham criticises political leaders for ‘partying wildly’ while ‘[c]limate warnings come and climate warnings go’; he says they ‘smile, promise to sober up… and then crack open more fizz.’ He maintains: ‘The warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cannot be starker. The changes caused by man’s activities are already underway and are “unprecedented” in hundreds and thousands of years. Without immediate action, we’re heading for a world of more extreme weather, rainstorms, droughts, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, failing agriculture, millions of climate refugees and so on.’ However, he continues: ‘The good news is that swift, global cuts in greenhouse gas emissions can bring global warming under control’ (Daily Express, August 10, 2021).  

Apparently, in the words of P. F. Sloan’s 1960’s pop classic, we are ‘on the eve of destruction’ – again. Since that decade we have been warned about global cooling, a new ice age, desertification, a hole in the ozone layer, mass starvation, running out of oil and coal, global warming, and finally, ‘climate change’, all caused by ‘overpopulation’. And as before, there are no solutions to this massive problem apart from turning back the clock of progress that has – as they imply – succeeded in making the West healthier and more secure than ever before. This time the solution is to reduce man-made carbon emissions, but with no details about how this drastic measure will affect us – although we do know that the developing countries will not be allowed to develop. This, apparently, is the ‘good news’.

Mr Ingham says: ‘Britain is leading the way.  We’re legally committed to be Net Zero – with all emissions eliminated or offset – by 2050. But no one really knows how we will achieve this or how much it will cost.’ However, some people have costed the regressive measures involved in this elimination, and found that it would entail eliminating a great many things we take for granted in a civilised society, like private transport, heating our houses, possibly meat, and even having children (paywalled link) – minor details that are being kept strangely secret – see e,g. this –  although it seems that Chancellor Rishi Sunak knows something we don’t.  

 Mr Ingham complains: ‘Promising something in 30 years is easy for politicians who may be gone in five.’ And yet no government should be able to bind the hands of its successors, as Tony Blair did with his Climate Change Act of 2008 – which committed the UK to emissions reduction targets in law – or we are no longer living in a democracy. 

Indeed, the heavily recycled ‘green scare’ seems to be gradually pushing us towards an environmental dictatorship under which ordinary people are thrown out of work and impoverished so that the Really Important People can jet around the world telling them not to destroy the Planet.

This strictly policed Green future sounds very much like Red China, although John Ingham bewails the fact that ‘the biggest emitters’ of CO2 are China and America, who need ‘to really start greening up their act. Yet China is still addicted to coal-fired power stations and America to its cars.’ And yet we will still need coal and oil – and gas – unless he can find a way of making the wind blow in an even, controlled and strictly equitable fashion all day and all night (link). 

And the much-heralded nuclear future is also in doubt with the sinister Chinese influence overshadowing our long-awaited new generation of nuclear power stations (link). However, we can safely bet that China will carry on polluting and emitting CO2 while we close down our industry and go back (literally) to the dark ages. Yes, we are ‘leading the way’ – right off the economic cliff edge.

Laughably, John Ingham concludes by saying: ‘Only proper, enforceable, worldwide commitments will do – and this from many totalitarian governments which do not take kindly to scrutiny.’ So some faceless, unelected, unrepresentative global committee will ‘enforce’ these punishing ‘commitments’ on ‘totalitarian governments which do not take kindly to scrutiny’? How they must envy the dictatorial powers of the Chinese communist dictatorship.

We in this country have elected just one Green Party MP since the 1990s, demonstrating just how highly we prioritise these issues, but despite this,  seizing the opportunity to deliver virtuous sermons to the racist, bigoted, thick, lazy, greedy electorate on the need to curb their expectations, politicians of all parties have jumped on the green bandwagon. However, they did so before they knew where it was going. Issuing warnings, making threats and signalling virtue could only take them so far, but now we can at last see the final destination – financial ruin for the nation and individuals – they can either change course or drive us all to hell.

For hundreds of years we widened the roads, straightened them out and made them weatherproof, but thanks to ‘green’ concerns we have reinstalled the bumps and allowed rain-filled cratereous potholes to appear. All of these ‘traffic calming’ measures have been designed to drive drivers off the road, but have instead driven them mad with frustration; pollution has actually increased, but even that has been exploited by the green lobby to argue for even stricter measures, just as they have blamed wildfires and floods on ‘climate change’ when in fact they are the result of ‘green’ opposition to traditional forest management techniques, and the reckless new policy of building houses on flood plains (see here).

In the days of carriages and carts, the horses had to be fed and rested overnight; then we were told that we must ‘go electric’ and rest our cars overnight so they could recharge their batteries. We put up street lights for safety and security, and now we must dim them in case we confuse a bat, regardless of the risk of accidents and even while women are attacked on our city streets. The Anglo-Saxons cleared the land of trees, brambles and weeds, but now we must allow them to flourish in order to ‘increase biodiversity’ and of course ‘offset our Carbon footprint’.

It is only too possible, having made life so terrible for those on the bottom social rungs, that many will decide that life is not worth living, thus fulfilling the final aim of the population control movement that started the bandwagon rolling in the first place – have no children and die. But the globe-trotting elites will be thrilled to know that while the peasants are dying like flies, the ‘green’ bandwagon will be the only vehicle left on the road.  

 

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