Vocal Voices

Imagine you live in one of the UK's most polluted cities London, Leeds, Birmingham, Glasgow and the likes, where pollution levels are said to be 'moderate' at 40, yet they still cause the deaths of some 43,000 people per year.

Well pop over to New Delhi where the pollution level is off the scale at 900! Get that - 900! This this the capital of a country with a growing population of well past one billion people. A country building more and more coal fired power stations, it has 434 so far. It also has 206 gas fired stations and 49 diesel powered units. It also has a culture of burning crop stubble rather than ploughing back in and this is estimated to produce 44% of all pollution after the harvest season. It is growing its industry exponentially.

It is the third largest polluter in the world and 14 out of 15 of the world's most contaminated cities are in India, so what is it doing? Well cars with odd or even number plates can only use the roads on alternate days - during an emergency!

Meanwhile the UK, ranked 18th with 1.2% of emissions, is about to spend something like £260bn in the next decade, regardless of the party in power, attempting to become CO2 neutral by 2030(ish).

Methinks Greta and Extinction Rebellion should be having words with China, the US, India and a few others and give us some slack. The top six polluters produce 67% of all emissions annually and if they do not cut back, as seems to be the case, all the rest with the best of intentions are just pi55ing in the wind. New Delhi will come to us despite what we do.

This pollution problem is an extremely serious matter, and it really needs to be tackled by all countries.

The trouble is that in the last 100 years mankind worldwide has invented and adopted forms of transport
which produce vast amounts of pollution, but which are now considered to be impossible to live without.

I'm afraid I can't see the matter being satisfactorily resolved until the reality of it is universally accepted.

Ah dear little Greta
Wont take on the worst polluting countries because she knows what they will tell her --do one
Crossed the ocean in a pollution free sailboat ---what about the 2 guys that FLEW to U.S.A to bring the sailboat BACK !!!

If the "climate crisis" is a global problam, what do you need to combat it?

Global power.

Now, that to me means some unelected body telling elected parliaments what to do. I can't say I'm keen on this.

Not necessarily, we could have global consensus. You know, where governments meet every so often in 5* resorts and agree the action everyone will take.

But instead of them all wandering off and doing sod all it needs to be policed, and if governments do not act in the way they promised then they get beaten with the global power stick.

I'm all for that.

What I am not for is this pretending that there is no crisis. There is, but it is not 'climate', and describing it in such closed terms bugs me no end. It is climate and environment and population and finite resources and we need to look at them in the round and stop cherry picking and saying there is no (pick a topic) problem.

I'm sure it's real Frank, it's just that politicians will imo if they can turn the situation to their advantage re money and power, which shouldn't be the name of the game.

A group of scientists have now mentioned the unmentionable - over population. In their view the population of the planet should be reduced. This is political dynamite. I don't watch much BBC or Sky news now so I don't know how much coverage this has got. Not much is my guess.

Link is here.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/12005 ... on-control

This will probably play out as anguished middle class women from Hampstead pledging to never have kids whilst ignoring the fact that overpopulation is being driven by the exploding population of the third world. (Nigeria's population is now past 200 million. In 1969 it was 54 million).

Cromwell, the article was also on the BBC website - it's still there. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50302392

You should go have a read of the accompanying HYS and see just how many deniers are out there, it's ridiculous. And whenever anyone mentions population all they get back is something like "Will you be first?" It's as though these idiots think people are suggesting a cull or such like when the reality is that we need to reduce our breeding over the next couple of decades.

Like you I did not see it on any main broadcast news - too much of a hot potato?