Dave B wrote:I took the petition as a way of registering a complaint against the policies rather than any real attempt to oust Paterson.
Me too Dave. One Tory
bastard honourable member is usually as way off beam in 'I'm alright Jack' land as the rest... until the floods were on the Thames, when suddenly 'no expense will be spared' apparently. I wouldn't expect any of this government to actually do anything about global warming as it's too expensive and not enough votes. Yet, as Dave says, it makes the point.
I signed
this one today, which is perhaps nearer my position:
As concerned citizens, we urge you to live up to your claim to lead the "greenest government ever" by supporting a 50% target to reduce carbon pollution by 2030. Scientists say the extreme floods happening now are being fueled by climate change. We must move beyond quick fixes and get to the root cause of the problem with deep cuts to our pollution. Europe will set its targets in the next month, your leadership now can bring hope from the floods and set the pace for others to put us on course for a clean, dry and safe climate future.
Interesting article Nick: Firstly, I'm not an apologist for the Greens. In an sensible society the Environment Minister would be fully conversant with the link between global warming and the recent weather. Sadly, our society is not that sensible. From the article
In fact, even in terms of emissions the globalised (whether capitalist or social democratic) families produce fewer emissions than the autarkic ones
This is surely easily explained by autarkic families generally being in the developing world where burning fossil fuels is one of the cheapest ways of producing power.
I think we have to take a closer look at expectations, starting at the household level:
Firstly, we need to recognise that our consumption is not sustainable; Huge food miles for out of season fruit and veg is pointless - apart from the growers who aren't feeding their communities but our landfill because it's not 'economically viable' to grow crops for local consumption; Using cars to drive children to school as there are feet, bicycles and buses; Heating our homes so we dress in summer clothes indoors in the winter; seeing clothing as fashion rather than practicality, adding more to landfill; buying into the consumption model through clever marketing telling us we 'need' a new sofa, huge TV, i-everything; losing our sense of community in a personal family bubble that never interacts; moaning about old lightbulbs not being sold as we can't wait a wee while whilst our mostly constant power warms a more efficient one up; despite the interweb folk not looking beyond their acquisitive bubble... I could go on, but guess my drift is followed
Many good folk I know have been addressing these personal issues for years: for instance I was considered a nutter 20 odd years ago when I campaigned for local recycling facilities and encouragement to reduce, re-use and recycle. Now it's mostly the norm. Westminster for sure hasn't caught up with this. A few areas such as London transport provision, the foundations of which were built by Ken Livingston, were not followed UK wide as the politicians don't have the balls to make hard long term decisions. Which, impo, has let all of us down negating our strive to be more sustainable on a personal level and wish to see it countrywide and globally.