Vocal Voices

You've got to love politicians.
George Eustice our farming minister is quoted today in the Telegraph as "signalling his support for meat taxes".
Only being a politician he can't quite bring himself to say it. "Meat taxes will encourage British farmers to become Greener", says Eustice.
Eustice says that the government is already working on a new tax system for parts of the food sector that contribute most to global warming, like meat and dairy.
"By placing levies on high polluters, such a move could cut down emissions and help British farmers compete with post-Brexit imports".

So let's have this in plain English. The government is going to knowingly increase the price of food. Meat, milk, cheese.
This is on top of the horrendous price of the heat pumps they want us all to have.
This is on top of the taxes they are going to put on flights, 'cos they give off carbon too, y'see.

Going green means one thing - your life is going to be made worse. Higher taxes, dearer food, dearer energy, restricted travel. oh, and you are going to have a tidal wave of propaganda on the TV telling you how essential this is and how "more needs to be done". And every mainstream party in the UK is signed up to this.

I am all for being greener, for being more efficient, using fewer resources, recycling, repairing more and less consumption... of everything. What I am against are non-solutions such as heat pumps and EVs that use more resources, even CO2, in their production and life cycles than will ever be recovered. And I will not jump on bandwagons such as the impossible (wet) dream of net-zero or Useless Eustice and the Vegans' meat agenda.

A useful thing to note is that on average each human being exhales about 1kg of CO2 every day - that's 7.9 bn kg today, tomorrow - or 2.8 bn tonnes a year. Ah but it is not "added" claim the Vegans because it is what all the cereals, vegetables and fruits that we eat took out as they grew. We are just putting it back in a closed-loop cycle.

Well, NO! The world's population is growing - 2.7 billion more of us in the last 35 years. All the vegetation those extra people have been eating would have once rotted on the ground where it grew. As it decomposed it would have given off some noxious fumes but most of its CO2 would have been absorbed by the soil. Once there microbes and bacteria would have broken it down to turn it into sugars and other compounds for their survival. When they died what was once atmospheric CO2 would have been converted into what made up their microscopic bodies and locked away, white cliffs of Dover like, though not so concentrated.

As for the cows (sheep, goats, pig, chickens) and the Vegan's closed-loop. If it works for humans then it must also be true for the animals as well. Last time I looked they were eating vegetation that grew on Earth so they too must only be putting it back and not "adding" anything.

The real problem is too many of us consuming more finite resources and at a faster rate, but nobody wants to talk about that. 10.7bn by 2100.

The suspicion has to be that we are doing with beef and lamb farming what we did with our industry - outsource it overseas.
So the carbon produced by beef and lamb farming in the UK will vanish, but it will be replaced by the carbon produced in Australia and New Zealand where they will be producing our beef and lamb; and then there will be more carbon produced as their meat is shipped to the UK.
Absolute madness.

Just keep doing your bit is the message------never mind Biden and his entourage of 85!!!! vehicles in Rome produced 2.2 million gone of co2

It's very much a case of do as I say, not do as I do.
But meeting net zero by 2050 means that we are going to be taxed more. Our taxes are now at a 70 year high, and that's before Eustice's green taxes on food come in, and before other green taxes are added on top of that (such as a tax on overseas flights, which will surely come).
Net zero is going to mean massive cuts in consumption enforced by tax rises; higher bills and a corresponding drop in living standards.
The economist Dieter Helm has said that political attempts to deny this are at best delusional and at worst mendacious.
People don't realise what's coming.

cromwell wrote:People don't realise what's coming.

That's because they only follow the mantras: Green is good; Meat-free diets are good. Anybody who questions the perceived wisdom, even if they offer alternatives, is bad and has to be silenced. Newspapers, magazines and websites are full of populist articles enforcing the "right thinking" group think. If there is any mention at all of different ways of doing things it is to trash it or ignore it and move on.

In many ways it is not worth talking about.

For 150 years the world has been burning the candle at both ends. Burning fossil fuels like a mad cossack drinks vodka and cutting down the lungs of the earth (trees), as if it doesn't matter. All sacrificed on the altar of "economy".

The other part of it is we went from really good at burning fossil fuels in the 19th century, to Absolute Megastars at burning fossil fuels in the latter part of the 20th century through to today.

All of this burning of fossil fuels and taking away carbon sinks (trees), is now coming to a head.

The message is simple and if anyone thinks that "going green" or "changing their diet to vegetarian" is going to make one iota of a difference, they aren't just kidding themselves, they aren't even in lala land, they're having the biggest acid trip on the planet.

There is one thing and ONE thing only which has a hope in hell of leaving our planet anywhere near the current topography that we have today. That is we CEASE, CO2 emissions, Totally, within the next 20 years.

Everything else? Talk. End of story.

So when we whinge about EV's and "not ready", all we're doing is Ensuring we won't make that 20 year cut off. Because it will take 20 years for the change over at current rates of vehicle consumption. Also because if we wait until we're "ready", we'll never be ready. We live in a democracy and we have a dynamic capitalist economy. That economy will _never_ be ready until there is a need. If we do not force the need, the "readiness" will never happen.

All countries in the world need more clean power. NOT just renewable power, CLEAN power. Nuclear is Clean in that respect. More water power, more geothermal, damned sure more wind and solar and one Hell of a lot more storage.

What it does NOT need is blue hydrogen, coal or gas fired power stations or gas heated homes.

That's it, end of story. Everything else is just somebody's hobby horse. Unless they are talking the above, then they're lying to you and promoting their own agenda. Environmentalists and all.

We also need to update our reference point. Save the planet? Not really, the planet can take care of itself. Save the human race, yes, because if we don't the planet is going to save itself, by getting rid of us.