However, this week, his political fortunes rest upon the fate of Geronimo the alpaca. With all due respect for those who know and love Geronimo, surely we should be more concerned about what a billion burping cows are doing to the world’s climate than the life of one consumptive camelid?
Like other beasts, it could be argued that journalists aren’t responsible for their choices. They just instinctively respond to the public appetite for sentiment and sensation. But if so, then the denizens of Downing Street should be all the more careful about making themselves the story. If a Hollywood director kept wandering into shot, he or she would be sacked. And yet the equivalent doesn’t seem to be a problem for our political auteurs.
Part of the reason why the press is so fascinated by the spin doctors, wonks, spouses and pets of Downing Street is that they’ve been starved of drama at ministerial level. The PM is famously averse to reshuffles, and thus the press has to satisfy itself with the below stairs gossip. However, that might be about to change, with rumours that Boris Johnson is losing patience with his Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and would like to take him down a peg or two (as I argued he should a few weeks back).
I very much doubt that the PM is an avid reader of my columns, but on the off-chance that somebody he knows is, let me offer some unsolicited advice: don’t assume that the difficult economic decisions that lie ahead will do more to damage Rishi’s popularity than your own. You may never be in a more powerful position to act than you are now. If the Chancellor really is standing in the way of what you believe the country needs, then he must be moved — or else you might as well resign and let him do your job instead.
Either option would be preferable to the sort of deadlock that paralysed the Blair-Brown government for years. At the very least, it would be another distraction just when Boris needs to concentrate on saving the world.
In the next few months we’re going to see the most retrograde parts of the Right do everything they can to divert the Government from its climate agenda. And like the worst parts of the Left, they’re going to try and turn the environment into a culture war. But it isn’t. In this country, the fight for a greener, cleaner future is a unifying issue. It appeals to voters in the South of England — who the Conservatives risk losing to the Lib Dems and the Green Party; and it also appeals to voters in the North and Midlands who want to see investment in clean technology to revive local economies.
The awkward squad on the Conservative backbenches are threatening to make trouble over the cost of net zero, but the PM needs to remember he’s got more allies than enemies. The Conservative Environment Network has a caucus of more than one hundred MPs — and will mobilise against any attempt to blow Britain’s big chance to lead the world on this issue.
It’s a strange twist of fate that has placed such heavy responsibilities on the shoulders of so lighthearted a prime minister. First there was Brexit, then Covid and now climate change. Still, as a classicist, Boris Johnson should be familiar with the story of Atlas: the cocky Titan who was condemned by Zeus to hold up the sky for all eternity.
The good news for the Prime Minister is that he only need do the same for a few more years. Indeed, a few more months would do the job.
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SubscribeLet’s see:
cold homes; private transport and overseas holidays only for the wealthy; massive energy bills; huge tax increases; less meat for everybody (except presumably the wealthy); increasing unemployment; rampant inflation (as the economy collapses under the burden of energy costs far in excess of our competitors and the value of sterling declines). “Unifying” indeed.
Quite. All of us down at the sharp end know exactly where this is heading.
In 1837 Ireland. It rained 365 days. Were the crops rotted in in the fields and animals died because there was no fodder. And death and famine stocked the land. with co2 at 250 pp million. Now that’s a climate emergency. You live in the best possible time of human history. And all you want to is destroy it.
I see:
regular flooding; storm damage; frequent travel disruption; overheated homes during heatwaves; wildfire; broken communication lines; tidal inundation; power cuts; climate refugees; water shortages
and you’re worried about your annual fortnight in Mallorca. That is the definition of myopia.
Well said. Don’t care how many idiot downvotes I get, either.
aa
Apocalypse now… I guess there was no flooding , forest fires, heatwaves ( one of the biggest was in the 30s America) before …
Another journalist who doesn’t realise how many ordinary people not only see through all this hysterical guff but also deeply resent it.
I’ve no time for Allegra Stratton, who is a prime example of the hypocrisy of the metropolitan “do as I say, not as I do” set. And if the writer thinks that the Government would be better off without a Chancellor who at least attempts to raise the issue of cost controls, then he’s part of the problem.
The fact is that industrialisation and technological development give us better protection from the ravages of the natural world, which have always existed and have been far worse at times in the past. 8 billion people (and rising) will have a damaging effect on the natural world: it is inevitable that we use more land and resources and emit more pollutants, but the answer is not to reverse industrialisation; that would be far more inefficient and damaging both to human well-being and the environment.
We will consume the Earth its just when.
I too agree with your comments. How and why did we virtually abandon clean nuclear power.
It can be safe!
Thank goodness I am a ‘retrograde part of the Right’ and have been imbued with reason and common sense in this net zero nonsense. It is nonsense. Even if we ever reached the silly ‘0’ it would make no difference at all to the world’s climate but all other nations would look at us and think: there but for the grace of God … Rushing into this unthought-through political policy is foolish in the extreme and the cost is so huge as to be uncountable. Thorough research and listening to both sides of the debate (yes, it is a debate), along with a measured and reasoned approach to what might well be a Good Thing if tackled sensibly and economically is fine and why not? But as we are doing at the moment it will be disastrous and most likely fail.
We will never reach Net Zero, since it’s not a measured (or measurable) outcome but a calculated one. So the more we reduce CO2 emissions, the more the Climate Class will look for new and exciting sources of emissions, real or notional, as calculator inputs
We could stop breathing out CO2. Er…..
I thought I’d take a look at the historical precipitation figures for Greece, which are available on the World Bank website. I was struck by the extreme variability with wet years alternating with very dry ones. Is this climate change or natural variability? It is hard to see.
In addition, what other factors might be involved – severe budget cuts in maintaining forests, fire-breaks and fire-fighting, for starters? This seems to be the case for Greece after EU imposed budget cuts. I understand that many of the fires in Greece burned out of control because the few available resources were used to save Athens.
Add to it increased urbanisation in or near the forests (as has happened in California), channelling of water courses, car-parks and roads, interrupting drainage patterns. More people around lighting barbeques or throwing fag-ends into the bush.
Nope, the automatic reaction is catastrophic climate change, and we are doomed unless we spend trillions of dollars this minute. I agree that climate change is happening, but not a panic reaction that we spend trillions on deindustrialising in the west that might reduce CO2 levels by a few percent.
Then there is little concern for the poor sods who cannot afford the electricity bills or their hydrogen boilers, or for the billion people in the world who live on a few dollars a day. They can’t have economic development and must stay in their tin and cardboard shacks, and drink out of the polluted river.
Yes, we should shut the coal-fired power stations and other so-called ‘low hanging fruit’, but we should also spend more wisely on sensible mitigation such as, for the Greek forests, a proper fire protection service for the dry years. Furthermore, China, India, Brazil, Russia and the rest of the developing world will still continue to develop their own economies regardless of Britain’s fine example of a zero-carbon economy. Why should the rest of the world take any notice of Britain? And what happened to nuclear power?
AIUI the fires in Greece occurred in publicly-owned woodland. The privately-owned areas were unaffected.
I am sure that is true in Greece as elsewhere. Private forests are managed for the wood not for ashes. The temperatures dry out dead wood but they don’t set fire to it. Paper burns at Fahrenheit 451 and we are a long way from those temperatures.
This is drivel of very highest level. The world may be slightly warming, it is not “burning”, nor is the science settled – certainly not anywhere near justifying beggaring ourselves in order to subsidise a switch to hopelessly expensive renewable electricity.
And only the gullible herd are prepared to take as gospel the hysterical alarmist narrative put forth by the provably biased and corrupt climate ‘science’ profession at the behest of their paymaster the state, that stands to benefit from a successfully frightened public.
Time for UnHerd to unherd.
‘And Britain is leading the way. No country in the G7 — or the G20 for that matter — has done more to decarbonise its economy than we have’.
I wonder how much of that is because we have farmed so much of our industrial and manufacturing activity to China.
I wonder also if the Chinese take vicarious moral pride in our C02 credentials which rely upon their industrial output.
“Unifying issue”?
Nobody votes for this stuff.
That’s why they’re trying to do it by supranational committees.
“Setting an example”?
Germany is clearly not looking to UK for an example. So who is?
Here’s an idea:
How about COP26 set an example and have their gabfests by Zoom?
“Aris Roussinos’s searing account on UnHerd yesterday” was a throw-away piece of vacuous non-analysis. Deeply unserious.
The unifying issue won’t survive contact with realities. Here’s mine. Listed building. Can’t have solar panels, or double glazing. Underfloor heating technically possible if we move out for months but unaffordable. Nowhere to double up the number of radiators. Nowhere to put an air source pump. Not enough ground for ground source. Extreme example, but vast numbers of householders will face similar problems. At least they won’t have problems with chargers, because they won’t be able to afford the cars. Meanwhile, thousands of new houses being built. No solar panels to be seen. Mr Franklin applauds the fact that we have outsourced manufacturing to coal powered China, largely by insisting on expensive domestic electricity, and is presumably happy that the wealth generated there is being used to buy or bribe much of the developing world. Worse still, he harbours the insane delusion that we can set an example that will be followed the world over. Of course, we should be cleaning up our city air. Of course, EVs make sense for some people in some situations. Of course, we should be trying to reinvent our once world leading nuclear industry. Of course, we should be encouraging healthy dietary habits. Of course, there is more we can do. But this Government has a sound bite not a policy. It has no idea how to get to net zero, and simply will not confront the truth that when we are there we will have made no difference to global warming. Thank goodness for the back benchers who will show Boris the door rather than go into an election with a suicidal manifesto.
Nobody does
Oh! Come on. There is no evidence or any indication that CO2 has done anything to the climate. There is nothing for the leaders to solve. But there is everything to gain from making people think the phantoms are real.
There is rather a lot of evidence, I think I will take the IPCC’S view rather than random UnHerd contributors, but unfortunately deniers simply carry on denying, and then go on to demonising the scientists. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, as I’d hope any child with some physics should know. Have you seen the glaciers in retreat – this is everywhere in the world? It is pretty absurd to deny climate change, and it is extremely likely that man made emissions are a major contributor, I will leave it like that.
That is not the same thing as believing we have to shut off the world economy within some arbitrary period, that the world is ‘burning’ or about to come to an end.
If Johnson heaves Sunak out of the Treasury I assume national bankruptcy will arrive a little sooner than otherwise.
More media nonsense. The climate crisis and environmental concerns all centre around the ridiculous belief that CO2 is warming the Earth. This is not possible and all known physics proves this, but deluded thinking has taken over from science. All the past records of temperature show that it was warmer 100 years ago compared to today. There is no sign of accelerating sea level rises over the same period. There is no sign that storms are getting any worse or that there are more deaths due to weather events, the opposite is true. The areas damaged by wildfires is also much less than 100 years ago. Wildfires don’t destroy privately owned forests grown for the wood. They are due to poor forest management of public land.
There have been various experiments on TV claiming to demonstrate that CO2 traps heat and all are effectively the equivalent of magic tricks to fool the viewers, and showing the ignorance of the general population about science. Heat by definition cannot be trapped and people don’t understand even this basic scientific concept. Heat is thermal energy transferring from high to lower temperatures regions. Heat cannot be trapped because there is always a temperature difference. When there is no temperature difference the entire universe will be at absolute zero. Plus if heat really is trapped in the atmosphere it cannot be heating the Earth’s surface as claimed.
if you want to learn why CO2 cannot warm anything, then look up the simple equations to calculate the energy content of a gas. Then consider a theoretical example, a box of air with 0.04% CO2. Imagine you wanted to increase the temperature by 1C and the only way to do it was by somehow first increasing the temperature of the CO2 and then waiting for a new equilibrium temperature to be reached. What temperature would the CO2 have to reach. I haven’t done the calculation but at a rough estimate it would be about 2500C. Then repeat this simple calculation for the CO2 heating the oceans and you will see what utter nonsense these claims are.
The article ignores the fact that technology can be used to cleanup the exhaust from fossil fuelled power stations so it is not the dirty fuel claimed here. Fossil fuels are cheap but are being made expensive in the west by subsidies to support renewable energy, the most expensive and unreliable energy sources. If the poverty in Africa and other parts of the world is to be solved then they must have access to cheap fossil fuel.
Not so, AGW per se is not a contentious issue. However it remains true that we can’t yet measure it, hence the heavy reliance on models (which are not doing very well).
‘AGW per se is not a contentious issue’ I think you’ll find that’s a very contentious statement.
A classic example of a little knowledge, going in ever decreasing circles trying to argue against basic well understood 19th century science – we are not talking about quantum physics here. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, pretty amazing that you don’t understand that concept. It is the reason Venus has such extremely high temperatures, not just on the side facing the sun. Heat cannot be trapped? Well all the people growing warm climate crops in greenhouses better give up their futile endeavours
You are right and the world’s scientists are wrong?
Heat cannot be trapped?! Wow! Who knew? Do you not own any sweaters then?
‘journalists aren’t responsible for their choices. They just instinctively respond to the public appetite for sentiment and sensation.’ So journalism is only interested in clickbait cr4p to sell copy, but it’s the government that must do something about it. got it.
According to a serious scientific review I have seen, the IPCC report is a political, not scientific offering, i.e. softening up propaganda, as you might from anything spawned by the UN and with “intergovernmental” in its title.
The IPCC itself is a politically funded political organisation, wholly dedicated like its parent UN to pushing for world government to eradicate national democracy.
Ludicrous. So the US, Russia, China etc etc are trying to abolish themselves?
I see Unherd has decided to follow the herd.
I’m sorry, but what a load of claptrap! I’m afraid you really lost me at a billion burping cows.
The methane from cows burps remains in the atmosphere for only around 10 years, so their effect is a miniscule constant provided the number of cows stays roughly the same.
The largest wildfires, consuming huge areas of precious forest, are those that burn day and night in the wood fueled power stations that generate what we rather stupidly call ‘green’ electricity.
Chinese policies will not be affected by grandstanding at COP26 – though they may issue a few extra pledges. Here is a quote from John Gray in current New Statesman:
Another take on the foolishness of the present elite approach to climate change was offered by Thomas Piketty – that grotesque inequality in Western societies long ago drained away the social solidarity needed for the sorts of massive changes that these elites think are needed.
The notion that unequal wealth per se is grotesque, is the root of much totalitarianism.
It is not that there is not a climate issue, the issue is how it gets dealt with. Either climate enthusiasts can drive a pure zero agenda or we can be realists, use Nuclear as the least worst alternative and not bankrupt ourselves. We should also put positive barriers up to those who pollute more than us by way of climate emissions tariffs
From a 2007 article in Science by Robert Boyd on human evolution: (https://science.sciencemag.org/content/314/5805/1569)
Humanity survived.
‘….Britain’s big chance to lead the world on’ sacrificing its population on the altar of elite virtue signalling the consequences of which have little or no effect on them.
Would the author please explain the climate over the last 550M years and the changes in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. In particular, changes since the last Ice Age should be explained. Also could the author explain the differences between satellite temperature recordings and those modelled since 1979.
Could the author quantify the following
It is interesting to see how many respondents criticise de CO2 and climate change politics/journalism. They may be right they may not be , I don’t know.
It is important not to think in silos when you think about what is best for the future: on the of the real issues is health, especially in old age which will come to you all.
Good health for a long life will come by passing sufficient time in woods (yes, evidence available), taking enough exercise, and very important eat proper food and live in nice commnities.
Proper food is grown in small farms that have crops and animals (a farm is an organism, not a business that grows only one type of product). These farms can function without pesticides (yes they can , it is difficult) and therefore allow wildlife, and they will be carbon neutral (including burping cows, if this is something you think about): we will eat less and the food will contain proper nutrients (not like the big farming rubbish we eat for the moment). There may also be local business involved with this creating communities etc etc etc
If it is the climate change narrative that brings us to something like this that is fine by me.
The picture of local farming may look utopian but it is not as utopian as one may think: it will need some big changes in how we do things though, even though a good number of people are somewhat aspiring to this. It will be available for all (including the poor) if the government is willing to …. aghhhhh, that is where this falls apart : lobby lobby lobby….. and silly press, silly press, silly press….
aa
“This is a great British success story, which we should be shouting from the rooftops.”
It is simply a massive unforced error which few other nations will be stupid enough to follow. And why should they? Their own emergence into advanced economy status will be made easier by our own withdrawal from competition in global markets for energy resources that actually work.
When I read Peter Franklin I like to imagine a Simpsons character: the hypochondriac science teacher who preaches to the students in a nasally lisp. “Don’t you privileged monsters know the earth is burning!” The children look outside at snow falling gently on the playground.
So you are all idiots? Screaming that the world can do better, but never quite make the effort to do better yourselves. I can’t believe I wasted a subscription on this…
part of the reason you joined was for the informed and interesting debate that follows the articles …….
Indeed – very few of the commentators stoop to insult others, e.g:
“All idiots” …. wrong
“Screaming”. …. wrong
“Don’t make the effort to do better” …. wrong
You forgot to include the question mark, as as well as not understanding my irony…
You think you’re surprised you wasted a subscription on this?