Parliament of Fools
From the Hansard records, first a discussion in Parliament yesterday at 3:24 pm, some excerpts:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2019-06-24/debates/966D70D4-A8F6-457D-8812-34C6EF20089C/EuropeanCouncil?
* * *
The Prime Minister: Earlier this month the UK became the first major economy in the world to commit to ending its contribution to global warming by 2050, and I am pleased that the regulations to amend the Climate Change Act 2008, which are being debated in this Chamber later today, have received widespread support from across this House. Ultimately, we will protect our planet only if we are able to forge the widest possible global agreements: that means other countries need to follow our lead and increase their ambitions as well.
At this Council the UK helped to lead the way in advocating for our European partners to follow suit in committing to a net zero target by 2050. While a full EU-wide consensus was not reached, “a large majority” of member states did agree that “climate neutrality must be achieved by 2050”, and I hope we can build on this in the months ahead.
In the margins of the Council I met Prime Minister Conte and discussed the UK’s bid to host next year’s UN climate summit, COP 26, in partnership with Italy. This will continue to put the UK at the heart of driving global efforts to tackle the climate emergency and leave a better world for our children.
* * *
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab): I also welcome the EU Council’s discussion of climate change, which emphasises how important it is to continue to work with progressive forces to tackle the climate emergency, which this House declared on 1 May. I welcome the EU’s continued commitment to the Paris climate agreement and to deliver a practical plan of action to meet its obligations, and I also welcome the fact that COP 26 will be jointly hosted by Britain and Italy, with some events being held in London.
* * *
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab): On the Council conclusions on climate change, does the Prime Minister agree that all EU member states need to show leadership and sign up to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, as we all hope the House will do later when we vote on the motion? If she does agree, what assessment has she made from the discussions she had at the European Council of the chances of persuading the four member states that currently refuse to do so to change their minds before COP 26 next year?
The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman is right, and I want all EU member states to sign up to net zero by 2050. There was indeed a small number of member states that did not feel able to sign up to it at this stage; some of them want to look further into the implications and work through it before they sign up to the 2050 target. I will continue to encourage all member states to sign up to the 2050 target. It is absolutely right that we have led the way, but we need everybody to play their part.
* * *
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con): When it comes to protecting the environment, the UK has long used its relationship with its European neighbours to help leverage and magnify our call for action on the wider stage, so may I congratulate my right hon. Friend on making sure that we are the first country to legislate—or the first major economy to legislate—for net zero and that the vast majority of EU countries will follow suit? Would she care to name and shame those who are not quite there yet?
The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is tempting me to do that. There is a reason why the EU Council conclusions did not identify those member states who do not feel able to sign up to net zero for 2050 at this stage. I fully expect, as I indicated in response to the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), that those member states, in doing further work on this issue, will be able to accept the 2050 date and that we will be able to have a collective European Union approach on this matter.
* * *
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab): It has already been mentioned that the intransigence of just four countries held up an EU-wide commitment to binding net zero emissions targets by 2050. Can I press the Prime Minister to expand on what she thinks it would take to change the minds of those four recalcitrant states, and can she say a little about what she will do in advance of this weekend to ensure that a handful of intransigent states does not prevent bold new climate agreements being reached at the G20 summit?
The Prime Minister: For those states that have a concern about the impact on jobs and the employment of their citizens, I would argue that the UK has already seen 400,000 jobs created in the green economy and we look forward to seeing many more. It is not a choice between climate change and economic growth: we can have both and the UK has been a fine example of that.
* * *
And then at 5:43 pm, Minister for Energy and Clean Growth Chris Skidmore begged to move “That the draft Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019, which was laid before this House on 12 June, be approved.”
The debate can be found in its entirety here:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2019-06-24/debates/28C238E5-2CA0-421C-AE98-B2588C102CB0/ClimateChange?
Following are a few of the lowlights:
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op): The Minister will know that the NFU has set a target for earlier than 2050. At the very least will he look at options for bringing forward the date by which we should be able to meet the target of net zero emissions?
* * *
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con): This measure is not long overdue but it is welcome, and I believe it will be very popular right across the country.
* * *
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab): The Government have committed to phasing out new sales of the internal combustion engine by 2040. My Select Committee on Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has recommended that the date be brought forward by almost a decade, if there is to be any chance of meeting the commitment of net zero by 2050. Will the Minister look again at the phasing out of the internal combustion engine, so that we can get more electric vehicles on our roads and bring down carbon emissions?
* * *
Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Ind): I would really welcome an earlier shift towards electric cars and electric bikes, but is it not the case that, where possible, we really need to be getting people out of their cars altogether and encouraging greater use of cycling and walking? Will the Minister assure me that there will be increased investment in cycling and walking?
* * *
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab): The Labour party has long called for that change. My hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) called in the House for net zero as long as a year ago, as indeed did the Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). The change has, of course, been widely called for by climate strikers and green activists across the country. This first step in the right direction is for them as much as for the Members debating it today. It also a tribute to the sagacity and draftsmanship of the original Climate Change Act 2008.
… The UK’s contribution to the global effort has to ensure that we can achieve net zero emissions by 2050—or, I would hope, before 2050. That has to be our new target and it has to be enshrined in our legislation. I say before 2050, because it may well be that further scientific advances indicate that we need to achieve the target before then. I think that that will be the case and the Act could be amended further, if necessary, to take that into account.
* * *
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD): Can we encourage the Minister to acknowledge—I wish he would listen—that as the 80% target now needs to be 100% by 2050, now is the perfect time to say we no longer support fracking?
* * *
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con): My hon. Friend has campaigned so vigorously on this issue. He is right to say that this is world-leading legislation and that the UK is taking the lead, but does he agree that China, whose carbon emissions are something like 25 times that of the UK, really needs to play its part?
Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesborough South and east Cleveland) (Con): I do. That is not a counsel of despair. In many ways, we are setting a powerful example that other countries will be inspired to follow. By legislating for net zero, we start to create some of the economic opportunities that other countries will, in turn, be keen to seize. We can set a powerful moral and economic example for other countries to follow. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind words. He, too, has fought long and hard to make this happen, and I thank him for that.
* * *
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con): I very much support this motion and I congratulate the Government on bringing forward this legislation so quickly after the passing of the motion on 1 May accepting that there was a climate change emergency.
I hope that the motion will be approved this evening. If it is, we must not rest on our laurels but move immediately to provide the full policy framework so we can deliver what is an ambitious target.
* * *
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab) … It is excellent that we shall be hosting the conference of the parties next year, but let me say to the Minister and to the House that this is a massive challenge. It is an incredibly important moment for the world, when every country has to update its Paris targets. In a way, this is the last chance for us to get on track for what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has described to us as a really dangerous and urgent situation.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con): It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), who has been one of the world leaders in the debate on this issue.
* * *
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op): I welcome this statutory instrument, but have to say that although it is necessary it is insufficient. The Government lack ambition in this area; an 80% reduction on 1990 levels and a 2050 date are not the levels of ambition that I would expect if we are to avert catastrophic climate change. This is not net zero; this is net zero-lite.
* * *
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green): This is the most ambitious target for emissions reductions that the UK has ever had, but it is still not enough: 2050 is too late.
* * *
[Question put and agreed to. Resolved.] That the draft Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019, which was laid before this House on 12 June, be approved.
Utter, utter fools.
Climate Scepticism 
I’m glad that there will be a permanent record of this moment, of the names of those who took part and the words that were spoken. In time, I hope they will be carved in stone. We are living through wonderous and appalling times. I am literally awestruck.
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There aren’t enough hands in the world to express the required amount of facepalm such virtuous vacuity demands.
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We never got offered a Referendum to decide whether the population of the UK agrees with Greens destroying the UK
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“…it is welcome, and I believe it will be very popular right across the country.”
Initially, maybe. But in years hence when the public find out what this means for them, and realise too that no official attempt was ever made to explain the impacts, indeed virtually no MPs had any idea themselves, goodness knows what will happen.
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When Gail Bradbrook appeared before the BEIS committee last week*, the chair asked her what she thought would be the benefits of adopting XR’s 2025 zero-carbon deadline rather than the govt’s proposed 2050 deadline. Bradbrook didn’t answer the question. Instead, she just got all feelz. Fighting back tears, she said that climate change is killing all life on Earth, children will starve, civilisation will collapse and she was heartbroken by it all.
Some might say that someone who behaves like a swooning heroine from a 19th-century novel shouldn’t be allowed to influence public policy and that such behaviour discredits modern feminism but that would be to forget that in today’s world past wrongs can be redressed by repurposing past bigotries. Is it perhaps not a good thing that today’s women can reclaim a derogatory 19th-century cliché as their own and use it to prove that hysteria can be powerful – that it can, at the very least, shift a few Overton Windows?
===
*Two years after she was ejected from BEIS for faking orgasms in its foyer as part of an indecipherable anti-Tory protest.
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I mean, the answer to all the worlds problems are right there. Just imagine what these people could achieve! We can end world hunger in 30, no 20, let’s make it 10 years and throw in world peace at the same time! There’s no problem which can’t be solved simply by engaging in a virtue signal circle jerk of oneupmanship and making the result a legal requirement!
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Ben gave a live twitter commentary on the second “debate”, the 5.43 one where it was waved through in 90 minutes without a vote, starting here and ending here.
In the picture in this tweet from Lucas you can see that about 20 MPs turned up to discuss spending over £1000000000000.
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There’s a blog post by Paul Homewood / Robin Guenier on
The World’s Most Expensive Suicide Note
At the end, it points out that the 2008 CCA said “The economic case for the UK continuing to act alone where global action cannot be achieved would be weak”.
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Excellent fisking by Ben. Also kudos to Graham Stringer for raising the matter of an impact assessment. Oh, not needed, according to Chris Skidmore. That’s all right, then… 😦
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I’ve been reading the transcript again, and I’m dumbfounded. It can’t be healthy to simultaneously experience simmering rage, baffled incredulity, and an almost manic amusement at the absurd that I don’t believe the english language has a suitable word to express.
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Deben is burbling away in the House of Lords right now…
https://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/36ddc0aa-d3af-44f6-a071-cff3f4098c0e
… and Ben is off again:
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The parallels with the Xhosa cattle killings in the 19th century are painfully obvious. Inspired by a 15 year old girl who convinced the elders that all they had was bad, and if only they got rid of their wealth, they would triumph over the white invaders. So they did, and it was a complete disaster for them. See, for example, http://xhosaculture.co.za/nongqawuse-xhosa-cattle-killings-1856-57/
Now the parallels are clear. Just put Greta in there, and CO2 instead of the white devils, and industrial wealth and progress instead of the Xhosa cattle, and so on and on.
The parliamentary fools are indeed intent on destroying our wealth, whether they all realise it or not. I suspect they don’t. I don’t think they think quite that deeply enough. Just one layer under the scare slogans might have been enough to give them pause, but no. Ah well. We still have work to do.
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John, well spotted. I’ve been researching Nongqawuse for a couple of weeks for a deepish piece I’ve started writing for Climate Etc. In practice, as this is low priority among other things, and I’ve yet to trawl through other research related to children and culture, it may be many weeks more before it comes out 0: But indeed (notwithstanding the complexity, and contention on some parts of the story), the parallels are striking.
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Paul,
per your Tweet: ‘Deben falsely claiming that skeptics have to show that there isn’t an emergency. No. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You need to show that there is an emergency. You haven’t even tried.’
one can understand the public thinking this, because of the part of the catastrophe narrative that says it is underwritten by science. But notwithstanding huge emotive bias, it’s always difficult to get one’s head around the fact that despite *mainstream* science says there isn’t an emergency (so no need even to reference anything skeptic), this fact never makes it through to leadership echelons across the world who are promoting the catastrophic / emergency. The mainstream scientists have a lot to answer for in their prolonged silence.
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Andy: “The mainstream scientists have a lot to answer for in their prolonged silence.”
Yes, I think this is something that gets overlooked, when exaggerated claims about the science fill the airwaves – it’s like the “curious incident of the dog in the night-time”.
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Andy, 4.32pm. Thanks for your comments. The first time I came across the story was thanks to a booklet called ‘Roosters of the Apocalypse – How the junk science of global warming nearly bankrupted the western world’, by Rael Jean Isaac, 2012, published by the Heartland Institute. I would have been OK with the ‘nearly’ back in 2012, but we seemed to have moved a lot closer to making it seem a bit on the optimistic side now.
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Ben’s live tweeting on the Lords debate was tremendous late yesterday. I’ve given some pointers on Geoff’s BBC Two thread.
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The Lords debate was slightly better than the Commons one, thanks to the presence of Donoughue, Ridley and Lilley.
See GWPF report (“As Viscount Ridley explained, the figures provided to the House by the Committee on Climate Change on the cost of Net Zero were vague and opaque”), Guido Fawkes (“It beggars belief that this ludicrously costly policy was passed on a whim without any scrutiny whatsoever. This should not be how the world’s fifth largest economy conducts its affairs…”) and the Hansard report.
I like this interjection after 15 minutes of tedious rambling from Gummer:
“My Lords, I hate to interrupt the noble Lord, but is he aware that the Companion suggests that speeches should be limited to 15 minutes, otherwise they engender boredom?”
It seems that the Lords voted in favour of an amendment regretting that the Government had “given little detail of how the emissions target will be met” but I can’t find the exact full wording of that amendment.
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The insanity spreads – on Channel 4 News this evening, a report of the first NHS trust to declare a climate emergency.
“This is a bold move – the first hospital trust to declare a climate emergency. But it’s likely that many others will soon follow suit, and certainly something has to happen. Here’s a little-known fact – the NHS is responsible for 50% of all public sector emissions, that is more than the output from Heathrow.”
Well yes, I’m sure many others *will* follow suit – “baaaa” goes one sheep, and then another goes “baaaa”, pretty soon they’ll all be going “baaaa”.
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Perhaps someone there figures that if you announce your praise for the emperor’s clothes early and loudly enough, it will put you beyond suspicion. Or maybe they plan on reclassifying undercooked barbecue food poisoning as climate change casualties.
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Having given it some thought, I now realise there’s a whole raft of injuries that could be re-purposed to support the climate change narrative. Wasp and bee stings, sunburn, getting into difficulty while swimming, all manner of gardening accidents, ice cream headaches, unwashed salad poisoning, foolhardy attempts to light barbecues involving petrol and matches, cliff diving tragedies, treading on spikey sea urchins, crab pincer nips. It’s a dangerous world out there when the sun comes out.
Although, every cloud… if a significant percentage of the easily frightened decide to hide indoors from July to September, maybe there’ll be more space at the beach for the rest of us?
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Alex
“a report of the first NHS trust to declare a climate emergency”
The world is going bizarre.
If ever an organization should know the meaning of the word “emergency”.
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I’m assuming they’ll need some new climate emergency vehicles – perhaps they could buy a new fleet of ice cream vans and fit them with klaxons that play “In The Summertime”? The question is whether they’ll dispense ice lollies or mental health services. When you call the Climate Hotline (sorry) the first question will be “Overheating body or overactive imagination?”
Extinction Rebellion could provide volunteer drivers, although with their taste in the absurdly overdramatic I expect they’d insist on using customised hearses. They could decorate them like ghostbusters cars, and drive around playing “She’s Not There” on the siren vainly hunting for The Ghost of Climate Emergency Future.
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Letter from over a thousand health professionals, all breaking their Hippocratic Oaths, in the Guardian today. The world is definitely bizarre.
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“a report of the first NHS trust to declare a climate emergency”
maybe it’s a good thing. As this spreads to more orgs and businesses, how long can it be before the fictional nature of the emergency (corresponding to unsupported imminent global climate catastrophe), and its virtue signalling fever, becomes too obvious to too many. Like a flash fire it might be intense, but possibly consuming all the remaining fuel of credibility in unrestrained burn, hence of short duration?
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Andy West,
The mythical fiction underlying the USSR lasted nearly 70 years. It corrupted every aspect of the empire. It killed millions, enslaved many more, wasted assets and resources, relied on suppression and censorship, waged war on science, art, literature and families. It imperilled the world with war, its imperialism put kleptocracies in power that enslaves millions to this day.
And Russia, the core of the USSR, is to this day still not free
So to answer your comment that maybe the victory of climate change mythology over reason and rational thought will blow itself out….
I hope you are right.
I think what we are seeing instead is a late Roman conversion to Christianity blended with Soviet apparatchik banality.
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It is tempting to treat this as a battle to ensure that the truth prevails but, of course, the truth is not what is really at stake here. If I may quote one of the greatest thinkers of modern times:
“Because sometimes…the truth isn’t good enough. Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.” (Batman, The Dark Knight)
Yes, it is beginning to look like the people will be rewarded with the fate they deserve.
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Paul, Lord Grantchester’s amendment is at the top of this transcript of the Lords debate:
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/lords/?id=2019-06-26a.1087.0
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“and that this House supports the objective of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.”
Wise words indeed. Carbon must be accounted for. No sane person would disagree. But we need to go further. Obviously the UK has a serious, long-standing debt to repay. Carbon emissions resulting from the industrial revolution are barely calculable.
Although I’m sure someone with an earnest temperament can give it a whirl.
Perhaps we may be permitted to accept solid carbon inputs in exchange for our historical gaseous carbon outputs? We’ve already been doing our bit, albeit in a minor, lacklustre and wholly inadequate way by importing carbon-based life-forms as fast as planes, trains and rubber dinghies can carry them, but I feel certain we can do more.
Yes, those are rookie numbers. We need to get those numbers up. Here’s a modest proposal: The Rest Of the World could send us coal which we would pledge to bury. Send us your evil, unwanted carbon and we’ll bury it in the holes in the ground under our old disused coal mines.
Think of it as the great circle of life.
Admittedly there’s a chance we may go too far and our net carbon influx could overshoot, but of course that wouldn’t be a cause for concern would it, you can’t have too much sequestered carbon? Can you? Can you?
No, that’s absurd.
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Alex, in that Channel 4 piece about the Newcastle NHS trust declaring a climate emergency, the journalist started by asking ‘how much harm is done to the climate and therefore the public’ by the trust’s hospitals. She answered by saying that the hospitals produce more than 5,000 tons of waste each year and that this is ‘more than the weight of a UK nuclear submarine’.
What was she smoking?
1) What does hospital waste have to do with climate change? She didn’t say.
2) Why choose nuclear subs as a comparator? To make the waste seem more toxic? (Modern Royal Navy subs weigh a lot more than 5,000 tons.)
After talking about waste for a couple of minutes, she finally turned to greenhouse gases, specifically nitrous oxide. She said that one of the trust’s doctors ‘has taken to hiding [nitrous oxide] in a cupboard so that anaesthetists don’t use it without thinking’.
What next? Hiding the keys to the trust’s ambulances?
I mean, it *is* an emergency, so why not?
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Fenlander,
It is time for Carbon Reparations!!!!
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Judging by their lamentable failure to meet even the minimum target of a four hour waiting time at Accident and Emergency, it seems to me that most NHS Trusts do not indeed comprehend the meaning of an ’emergency’. So it’s laughable (in the sense of very, very dark humour) that pen pusher managers running these Trusts are now in the process of declaring ‘climate emergencies’.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-crisis-hospital-waiting-times-winter-patients-england-flu-weather-a8778886.html
People in Newcastle should dial 999 and request an ambulance. When asked by the operator the reason for requesting an ambulance, they should state that their grandchildren will be suffering heat stroke in 2100.
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While the climate madness is cause for sadness, the UK has been through Cromwell and at least one socialist government.
The US has survived a terrible bloody internal history as well.
The key to this is an observation by a member of this very community that the climate cult is “all Lent and no Easter”.
Continuous suffering imposed by people not much different than UFO fanatics is not a recipe for long term acceptance.
At least the other great mythos offered forgiveness and salvation as a reward.
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“some excerpts: ”
For one brief moment I thought you said “some experts”….
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Some interesting comments on May’s twitter thread:
There is much talk of Climate Justice by the many activist groups out there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_justice
“Climate justice is a term used for framing global warming as an ethical and political issue, rather than one that is purely environmental or physical in nature. This is done by relating the effects of climate change to concepts of justice, particularly environmental justice and social justice and by examining issues such as equality, human rights, collective rights, and the historical responsibilities for climate change.
A fundamental proposition of climate justice is that those who are least responsible for climate change suffer its gravest consequences.”
A fundamental conclusion of of climate justice action is that those who are least able to afford such action, suffer its gravest consequences.
And from Lord Stern’s former carbon trading colleague, (http://sppiblog.org/news/a-nest-of-carbon-vipers), former UNFCC chief, Christiana Figueres, we get: https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3074748/christiana-figueres-not-even-a-stretch-for-uk-to-achieve-net-zero-emissions-by-2050
She is now based in London as chief propagandist for http://www.mission2020.global. I wonder if she has been round to No 10 for tea?
Note on the 2020 website, is JOHAN ROCKSTRÖM, DIRECTOR, STOCKHOLM RESILIENCE CENTRE, now co-Director at Potsdam and co-author on the Hothouse Earth paper which preceded SR15:
https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-news/2018-08-06-planet-at-risk-of-heading-towards-hothouse-earth-state.html
This has been a long global campaign, with all the pieces now fitting together as the various groups co-ordinate their actions. https://www.earth.com/news/countries-net-zero-emissions/
https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/conferences/bonn-climate-change-conference-june-2019/bonn-climate-change-conference-june-2019
https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/
“To boost ambition and accelerate actions to implement the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, UN Secretary-General António Guterres will host the 2019 Climate Action Summit on 21-23 September to meet the climate challenge.
The Summit will showcase a leap in collective national political ambition and it will demonstrate massive movements in the real economy in support of the agenda.
Together, these developments will send strong market and political signals and inject momentum in the “race to the top” among countries, companies, cities and civil society that is needed to achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.”
No Politician Left Behind….except Trump, who they keep trying to get rid of.
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Actually, I have clear evidence that the Prime Minister was showboating in parliament last week. I have discovered that the original script written for her read as follows:
“Earlier this month the UK became the first major economy in the world to commit to correcting its typographical errors relating to reducing contributions towards global warming by 2050, and I am pleased that the regulations to amend the typographical error in Climate Change Act 2008, which is being debated in this Chamber later today, have received widespread support from across this House. Ultimately, we will protect our planet only if we are able to forge the widest possible global agreements: that means other countries need to follow our lead and correct their typographical errors as well.”
It’s just typical that sceptics should latch onto such a trivial error and make a big song and dance about it, but I suppose the Prime Minister has only herself to blame for making out that it was something so important.
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The Maybot stick insect shuffled onto the stage at the G20 summit, sporting a two-piece skirt-suit in fetching socialist red, and implored all other 19 leaders to sign up to a pledge on the “climate crisis”. Donald Trump snubbed her. Good for him. He was the only one who did. What a joke. She isn’t even a ‘leader’ anyway, having resigned her leadership of the governing Conservative party and now just effectively a caretaker PM dragging her massive ego around the world trying to create a legacy out of a derisory failed premiership. She certainly is adding to her legacy of hypocrisy, incompetence, lies and miserable failure. Maybot will be remembered for a very long time indeed.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/06/29/trump-snubs-may-g20-plea-tackle-climate-crisis-leaders-sign/?hootPostID=28b97534748c4c51f5eeb208b9998ba4
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There’s now a map of Local Council Declarations (on a dedicated Climate Emergency UK website):
https://climateemergency.uk/blog/map-of-local-council-declarations/
It’s now gone beyond the usual suspects (e.g. Brighton, Bristol, Norwich, Totnes etc., you know who you are…) to envelop much of the country – we’ll soon have a wall to wall Local Council Climate Emergency declared in the UK!
Earlier I noted that Hounslow Council was showing signs of resistance, but sadly it looks like they capitulated last week…
An alarming red widget on the website shows that “Our climate has accumulated 10,304,194,469 [and counting] Big Bens Full of Dynamite of heat since 1970”.
If that’s not scientific, I don’t know what is!
And on a warm Saturday like this, who knows how many Big Bens Full of Dynamite of heat have been added to the UK alone, probably quite a few every second!!
ZOMG, time to panic – or maybe have a cup of tea.
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Must be something wrong there Alex. Are they seriously telling us that Big Ben has been packed full of gunpowder 10.3 billion times since 1970 and not ONCE has there been a Guy Fawkes moment in adjoining Westminster? Politicians really must lead charmed lives in that case.
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Andy West, John Shade
The Xhosa cattle story was first given prominence in “Crowds and Power” by Elias Canetti _ a useful source for all things mass hysterical
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Thanks Geoff, but some historians are apparently not keen on his account, believing it to be based almost exclusively on quite older sources (i.e. even for the time of writing), which makes it too European-colonialist-view-centred. OTOH some accounts more modern are also challenged regarding potential mistakes (of a different nature). In practice, none of this level of detail really impacts my points. I only dug somewhat because I like to know what I’m building on and it’s potential cracks. The basics appear to be consistent across several sources including mainstream like sahistory.org and even wiki, plus the only potential spoiler of colonial conspiracy seems to be firmly ruled out (notwithstanding they, overall and despite very minority assistance, took great advantage from the event).
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Darren Grimes at Spiked:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/07/03/no-one-voted-for-net-zero/
No one voted for Net Zero
Politicians have nodded through a disastrous climate policy with zero scrutiny and zero mandate.
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Here we go again –
”An SNP minister has admitted it could be cheaper to scrap one of the troubled CalMac ferries currently under construction and start again.
But Neil Gray said the Scottish Government would push ahead with finishing the existing vessel as a new ferry could not be deployed until 2027 at the earliest. CalMac is currently waiting for two new vessels – Glen Sannox and the as-yet unnamed 802 – to be constructed at the nationalised Ferguson Marine yard in Port Glasgow.
But completion is now several years late and costs are massively over budget.
In a statement to MSPs, Gray said: “Our island communities deserve to be supported by two new, energy efficient vessels with the capacity and reliability required to support vibrant island economies. ”
If they had built standard ferries they would have been sailing by now. These are dual fuel energy efficient vessels that have never been built in Scotland before, why go down that route when the ferry system needed new boats fast ???
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