// Can you show me where the government are doing that? Their policies are intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That’s not controlling the climate.//
Their policies may be to reduce greenhouse gases but the entire thrust of “COP26” focussed on the “urgent global action needed to limit global warming to 1.5 °C”. That’s what the headlines to that jamboree focus on. The UK was party to that extravaganza and is committed to that aim. If that is not an undertaking to control the climate, what is it?
//You just can’t be arsed.//
In order for me to be “arsed” (i.e bothered to help impoverish this country, destroy its businesses and the economy generally) there has to be a point. If the UK’s carbon emissions reduced to zero tomorrow (that’s absolute zero, not the fanciful and meaningless “net zero” bandied about) it would make absolutely no difference whatsoever to climate change. None at all. If you believe it would, please let me know how. We’ve set all the good examples, we’ve stopped burning coal (though continue to burn freshly felled wood processed and ferried from 4,000 miles away because the emissions produced do not count), we’re committed to ending IC powered cars and gas powered boilers, we’ve covered the countryside and the coast with inefficient wind turbines. All of these measures (many of which have not been properly thought through) will place an enormous burden on the population.
If we went the whole hog to absolute zero we would reduce the global emissions total by a little under 1%. China (with about 20 times the UK’s population) is responsible for over 30%. By contrast to our efforts, China burns more coal than the rest of the world put together and has no significant plans for that to change. It has been opening a new coal-fired power station every 10-14 days for a number of years and has around 200 more in the pipeline. So the 0.9% (approx.) of global emissions that the UK will save by turning out all the lights will be more than offset by the power stations the Chinese plan to open in the next year or two. And that’s just the Chinese. So our efforts (and our impoverishment) will be absolutely pointless.
I have a very small car and drive fewer than 2,000 miles each year (and in fact for two years recently, considerably fewer than that). My house is well insulated and my energy consumption is about as low as it can get. That’s not for altruistic reasons – I’ve no real interest in cutting my personal carbon emissions for the reasons above. It’s simply because I prefer to spend my cash on something other than energy which has been made expensive by successive governments’ failure to develop a realistic energy strategy. I have no intention of stopping flying (all the people who tell me I should seem to have no compunction to jet around the globe), I have no plans to install an ineffective heat pump to keep my house warm in the winter (I already have a new gas boiler, securely stored in the garage to together with a plumber lined up ready to install it if mine croaks it when they are no longer available. But before you suggest I “cannot be arsed”, it would be nice if you could first think things through for yourself instead of simply following the hysterical fearmongering that seems to have become prevalent with this and every other “crisis” the world encounters.