And another thing…

OKAY, he didn’t quite say that, but he might as well have.

“Give up meat to save the planet“? I don’t think so, old chap. I love meat, me: I rarely eat anything that didn’t once have parents.

If the government and its advisers want to get the public onside in the battle against climate change, they’re going to have to accept a few reailities of life. The first of these is that as poorer countries become wealthier, the more they tend to eat meat. China is the most dramatic example of this. Beijing slaughterhouse is like Piccadilly Circus at rush hour these days, or so I’m told. Except with more blood and entrails, obviously.

Similarly with the effect on jobs. Don’t waste your breath telling someone who’s lost their livelihood that their sacrifice will help save the world. He won’t care, and neither should he. If we can’t find a strategy that allows us simultaneously to curb our emissions and grow our economy, then the battle against climate change is already lost.

As for urging us all to go veggie… yeah, good luck with that one, Your Lordship. You couldn’t get me a Bic Mac meal with strawberry shake while you’re out, could you? And go large…

I WAS reading Ronnie a bedtime story tonight, entitled, “How to Drown Bunnies”.

It’s quite an original tale, set in a strange land where it occasionally doesn’t rain. Very strange indeed. Anyway, all the grown-ups in this land are evil and enjoy nothing better than killing their children’s pets, then standing around pointing at the dead carcases and laughing as their children burst into tears.

“Does it have a happy ending?” asked little wide-eyed Ronnie.

“Not really,” I said. “Unless by ‘happy’ you mean grown-ups will have to spend less time cleaning out rabbit hutches.”

Ladybird books have gone right downhill since I was a kid, if you ask me.

I THINK my last post was far too subtle for its own good.

Just to be clear: I was not suggesting that belief in man-made climate change is in itself “progressive”; trust in objective science, whatever its conclusion, is progressive. I was simply trying to make the point that David Cameron is either (a) wildly out of step with his own party in the policy stances he has adopted since becoming leader; or (b) has the same view as most of his members on the minimum wage, grammar schools and climate change (as represented by most of the Tory blogs and the various Tory commenters here) and is therefore being profoundly dishonest.

The alternative to (a) and (b) is (c): that the majority of Tory Party members wholeheartedly support the minimum wage, oppose expansion of grammar schools and believe action to halt or mitigate the effects of man-made global warming is urgently needed.

Which do you think is more likely?

And since we’re talking about blogs, let me ask this genuine question: can someone point me to an established, popular Tory blog which has advocated the positions in (c)?

I GRACIOUSLY forfeited the opportunity this week to table an oral question to the Secretary of State for the Environment and Climate Change. No specific reason: I just wasn’t sure if I’d be available to attend the chamber at that time on that particular day.

But in chatting to the PPS who had invited me to submit a question, I found myself recollecting a meeting I chaired years before I was an MP. The chief press and marketing people of the UK’s passenger transport executives would meet regularly to swap ideas and experience. As chief PR and marketing officer for Strathclyde PTE, I was hosting this particular meeting in Glasgow. The agenda included a discussion about what activities each of us had planned to mark National Environment Week.

With dead-pan face, I announced: “Actually, we haven’t anything planned because it would interfere with our policy of burning piles of old tyres.”

 

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My deputy dutifully laughed (it was part of her job description) but everyone else just looked confused and, yes, a bit frightened, until I explained it had been a joke.

Not for the first time, and certainly not the last, I reflected on the observation that nobody gets me.

HERE’S a question that’s been puzzling me for some time now: why are climate change sceptics almost always on the right wing of politics?

And if there is some dispute about the empirical data underpinning current climate change theory, why is it only those on the right who have doubts?

I admit to not knowing as much about the science as I should, but it strikes me as an issue that should be beyond politics, surely? 

I’ve written on this site before about my impatience with some on the left who seem to have embraced the whole climate change issue with a fervour that makes me suspect that if it turned out not to be man-made, they’d be heartbroken. All the same, science is science, fact is fact. When the comments start appearing here, I think I can guarantee that those who present “facts” undermining the International Committee on Climate Change will be of the right wing. 

I ask this in a genuine spirit of inquiry, because as a believer in science, I cannot accept that something like global warming can be a matter of opinion: its causes must surely be fact, or, if theory, based on hard evidence.

Discuss.

Josepf Fritzl kept his daughter prisoner and subjected her to appalling levels of abuse during her many years in captivity. A more hateful individual it is difficult to imagine.

The Bishop of Stafford doesn’t seem to agree. He has told parishioners that when it comes to the causes of climate change, those who refuse to face the truth are as guilty as Fritzl. He later tried to justify his use of this entirely inappropriate comaprison by saying: “I am simply trying to use an analogy to get people to wake up to the consequences of what we are failing to do, because if we don’t there won’t be a future for our children either.”

But in fact, what he’s done is claim that those who either don’t understand the science behind global warming, or who simply don’t believe it’s caused by human activity, are in the same league of depravity as Fritzl.

Why use such extremist language? The reasons for global warming are scientific fact. If someone refuses to believe the facts when presented with them, you might question his or her reasoning. But someone who genuinely – for whatever reason – refuses to accept that human activity contributes to climate change – my father, for example – can’t be accused of being evil as a consequence.

I would have hoped that a bishop of the Church of England would have a greater perspective on such things – as well as a better understanding of the true nature of evil.