Green Around The Gills

 Saint Greta of Thunberg has been in the news again and she is still happily berating the grown-ups for all the evils of the world. It was a quiet morning at work, so I walked the half-mile to the Co-op Local shop and thought about what I had done. I was appalled at the sheer amount of litter at the roadside. Packaging, takeaway wrappers, indeed quite a lot of once-edible food, and plastic bottles as far as the eye could see.

Quite apart from the obvious eyesore, this speaks to a separation of self from society as people discard things with no consideration for those who will see it, those who will, eventually, pick it up and the very planet everybody now pretends to care so very much for.

We throw away perfectly usable stuff and we carelessly hoard things of little value to us. For example, there is more gold in a tonne of mobile phones than in a tonne of gold-bearing rock, and it is easier to extract, but we cling onto our old phones as the value of recycling is relatively small to us individually. And then, minerals, metals, finished products and other valuable resources are daily committed to the grave of landfill with impunity. We have grown up spoilt, but the fluffy rug of abundant cheap energy has been brusquely whipped from beneath our feet and we have no idea how to keep our balance.

I think about this sort of thing, a lot. I am concerned at the general level of ignorance and incuriosity about our world. What is energy, where does it come from and why does it cost what it costs? Looking out at vast cities, how is it possible that their denizens are fed and watered and cleaned and kept free from disease? What is this thing made from, and how do we know about gravity, time, electromagnetic radiation, the elements, the stars, the universe? And why does humanity keep on coming back to the fictions of deity?

So, when I mischievously tweeted about how one might find the shiny new electric vehicle they have just purchased has become a financial millstone around one’s neck, I was expecting both agreement and disagreement, and this is how it transpired. On the one side, many Tweeters agreed, retweeted or liked my original thread in all its hyperbolic glory. On the other, a relatively small number (mirroring, I expect the relatively small proportion of RV owners out there) bristled at my ignorance and launched full-on rebuttals of all my assertions.

Par for the course, naturally; you are either right or wrong on social media, and sometimes both at the same time. Schrödinger’s opinion. But, for what it’s worth, here is my stance on all things net-zero related:

·       One size, one solution. does not fit all.

·       Is it accessible?

·       Is it affordable?

·       Is it reliable?

·       Does it cost more than it saves?

·       Does it do less environmental harm than what it replaces?

·       Is it wise to replace now, or should I let my current technology run its course?

And what of the future? How will my new life paradigm evolve over the next year, next 10 years, next 50 years? At the moment there are dozens of apparent solutions to the one big problem. In time there will be fewer mainstream technologies and the rest will be in the hands of the eccentric few who can afford to indulge their passions and invest their time and money in novel ways. But it is a fact that the majority of us will have to toe the line; I just want it to be the right line. And right now I don’t think anybody knows where that line will be drawn.

Compromise is the key!

As it stands, going green may well be good, but it is a long way from being cheap and what sways most people is cheap, rather than good. The EV discourse attracted thousands of likes and a good many replies, most of which I tried to address in a placatory tone – I’m not anti-Electric Vehicles, I’m just sceptical about everything – but some respondents showed up with fists clenched. Let’s not make it a fight, eh? But, when it comes to the whole net-zero strategy, let’s all ask the hard questions before we part with our hard-earned.

Spring Fever

The spring has sprung, the grass is riz, etc. It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life and all that. Actually, although we are into the first spring month, March, official spring doesn’t being in the UK until the 20^th this year. That gives the weather less than three weeks to get its act together, not that the daffodils seem to care. The spring blossoms are pushing ahead with business as usual and no matter how many lawns the climate crazies want to ruin, nature will take its course anyway.

It’s all so exhausting, this climate change malarkey, and it’s somewhat perplexing that the world’s governments seem to be happy to let the most annoying population sector take the lead. I mean, come on, you’re taking your cues from children? The members of Extinction Rebellion may be a little older but no more mature, hailing, as is so often the case, from that peculiar proportion of the comfortable middle classes who swallow all the hippy aphorisms whole.

Whichever group you despise the most is irrelevant; they all preach an unwholesome message of doom. Greta Thunderclap Newman thinks the world is on fire; she should have been looking out of my window for the last six months where it has barely stopped raining. And the XR lot want us to return to a pre-energy age where they can try out their weird brand of communism. Communism of course, involves hardship, starvation, torture and sans electricity threatens to bring death by boredom. Why did she die? She just wanted to.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? I mean, we’re going to die anyway, so why begin now? If the human race is going to become extinct and with it the rest of the planet, why not go out in a blaze of glory, rather than cowering like helpless wimps as the flames lick towards us and the famines take us? Why not buy the most luxurious car you can afford and swig Champagne as you burn up the country roads at fifteen miles to the gallon on your hedonistic way to whatever takes your fancy?

The preachers see only horror and squalor and, fetishists as they are, they sound as if they welcome it. Ten years to save the planet… again? Because, see, even if we are headed to hell in a handcart it’s not happening in ten years, nor even a hundred. Humans will adapt and survive or, yes, we may actually die out. But not in the immediate future. Think of the children? Oh, please, they will have their own children and grandchildren and on and on because they will find a way. It’s what we do.

And so what if it actually does come to pass in a few hundred or a few thousand years? Why limit the life chances of all those future generations because we were too frit to live our own? And in any case, if you like your conspiracy theories extra gloomy, the corona virus is going to get you soon. So, I say ignore XR, tell Greta to get to fuck and carry on regardless. Enjoy your life, what’s left of it, because you only have the one. If the Earth is on fire it is likely due to all the hot air spouted by juvenile climate alarmists. My message to those future generations? Future generations can suck my dick.