Today we are saying no to @JustStop_Oil and their political wing the Labour Party
We will power ahead with new oil and gas because it’s in the best interests of the British people, of our economy and of our national security pic.twitter.com/KO8zujUkdM
— Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP (@grantshapps) July 31, 2023
No matter how many hot summers we have, people still want gas. They still want the economy to grow. They still want national security. And no one seems to have enough imagination to figure out how to provide those things without the dirty, atmosphere destroying fuels.
Tell me again that humans are intelligent beings? I seem to have forgotten.
Short-term self-interest trumps everything else. (Or should that be ‘Trumps’ everything else?) Perhaps Schapps MP should be reminded that the short-term interests of his lot do not trump (Trump?) the laws of Nature. And that Nature always bats last.
The Tories think that they have new ‘wedge’ issue which they can exploit: pouring trouble on oily waters. I doubt that it will work. They’re desperate.
Elections are expected in the UK next year and the Conservatives are forecast to lose humiliatingly. PM Rishi Sunak appears to smell an opportunity: undermine environmental protections. He also stepped into a debate over the fee levied on drivers who enter London city centre in polluting vehicles, challenging such “anti-car schemes” and assuring motorists he was on their side. Next, he would grant hundreds of new licences for oil and gas extraction in the North Sea [see above].
An unwitting accomplice is the protest movement Just Stop Oil whose activists specialize in P.R. disasters. The right-wing press devours such scenes. “Certain environmentalists don’t want to save the planet so much as to control its inhabitants.” (Allister Heath, The Telegraph)
It doesn’t help matters when climate/environmental activists focus on the wrong targets (e.g., regular people rather than corps) or stop mothers from taking their infants to the hospital.
In London, there have been controls over private vehicles entering the city centre for years, with no great protests, because the superb public transport options were in place first. The new controls are controversial because they will extend the zone to the suburbs, which don’t have the same level of public transport, and with no appreciable notice, which means that almost all people who need a car for getting to work will suddenly find themselves with a vehicle which they can’t afford to use and can’t sell; few of these people will have the means to buy a new one which meets the limitations (largely by creating even worse pollution somewhere else, but don’t get me started).
It affects me directly, too. My mother and two of my siblings live within the proposed new limits, and we just spent our savings on a new vehicle which is wheelchair adapted and being turned into a campervan so that I can visit them and not have to drive to the nearest shopping centre in order to be able to go to the toilet, which is what we’ve been doing (all three homes have theirs upstairs). Now we’re going to have to pay a fine of ten quid per visit, just so that I have an accessible loo.
(Whilst they all have multiple diesel-powered busses passing their front doors every day, which presumably don’t get fined, none is equipped with a toilet, and their drivers would be unlikely to be happy to be flagged down just so that I could use it if they did. /s)
I should perhaps clarify the situation with suburban public transport around London. Where it exists, it is almost entirely focussed on getting commuters into the centre of London, so radial rail services, and the bus routes terminating at railway stations, are excellent.
Moving between suburban communities just ten miles apart, however, can often only be achieved by going into London, fifteen miles away, and back out again to your destination. The time this consumes can be considerable, as can attempting to avoid the city by changing busses. My mother doesn’t drive. When she was visiting my father in hospital every day, taking two busses in each direction, it used to take her an hour each way even though the hospital is barely five miles away.
Here’s a new one I saw from some random MAGAt commentator on Facebook:
I lived through the mini ice age, the acid rain, and I was especially upset when we lost the ozone layer. Good thing all the ice on the planet was gone by 2020. Leading scientists are always spot on.
Because of course governments did nothing to address acid rain or the destruction of the ozone layer.
Because of course governments did nothing to address acid rain or the destruction of the ozone layer.
Quite. Not to mention that this year Antarctica is around 8.9 million sq km short on sea ice and no-one is quite sure why because the models for this year don’t predict that big a deficit. That’s an area about the size of Argentina. The significance is less sea ice means a weaker pulse of cold saline water to drive ocean circulation. See previous recent articles and discussion.
No matter how many hot summers we have, people still want gas. They still want the economy to grow. They still want national security. And no one seems to have enough imagination to figure out how to provide those things without the dirty, atmosphere destroying fuels.
Tell me again that humans are intelligent beings? I seem to have forgotten.
See Nate Hagens on utoob The Great Simplification. Oil and gas will stay with us till the bitter end and the end will be bitter indeed
Short-term self-interest trumps everything else. (Or should that be ‘Trumps’ everything else?) Perhaps Schapps MP should be reminded that the short-term interests of his lot do not trump (Trump?) the laws of Nature. And that Nature always bats last.
The Tories think that they have new ‘wedge’ issue which they can exploit: pouring trouble on oily waters. I doubt that it will work. They’re desperate.
Best solution to climate change: The War to End All Wars (but for real this time)
‘wedge’ issue Tim Harris #4
Elections are expected in the UK next year and the Conservatives are forecast to lose humiliatingly. PM Rishi Sunak appears to smell an opportunity: undermine environmental protections. He also stepped into a debate over the fee levied on drivers who enter London city centre in polluting vehicles, challenging such “anti-car schemes” and assuring motorists he was on their side. Next, he would grant hundreds of new licences for oil and gas extraction in the North Sea [see above].
An unwitting accomplice is the protest movement Just Stop Oil whose activists specialize in P.R. disasters. The right-wing press devours such scenes. “Certain environmentalists don’t want to save the planet so much as to control its inhabitants.” (Allister Heath, The Telegraph)
All politics are becoming climate politics.
Tom Rachman The Globe and Mail, Aug. 5, 2023, O11
It doesn’t help matters when climate/environmental activists focus on the wrong targets (e.g., regular people rather than corps) or stop mothers from taking their infants to the hospital.
In London, there have been controls over private vehicles entering the city centre for years, with no great protests, because the superb public transport options were in place first. The new controls are controversial because they will extend the zone to the suburbs, which don’t have the same level of public transport, and with no appreciable notice, which means that almost all people who need a car for getting to work will suddenly find themselves with a vehicle which they can’t afford to use and can’t sell; few of these people will have the means to buy a new one which meets the limitations (largely by creating even worse pollution somewhere else, but don’t get me started).
It affects me directly, too. My mother and two of my siblings live within the proposed new limits, and we just spent our savings on a new vehicle which is wheelchair adapted and being turned into a campervan so that I can visit them and not have to drive to the nearest shopping centre in order to be able to go to the toilet, which is what we’ve been doing (all three homes have theirs upstairs). Now we’re going to have to pay a fine of ten quid per visit, just so that I have an accessible loo.
(Whilst they all have multiple diesel-powered busses passing their front doors every day, which presumably don’t get fined, none is equipped with a toilet, and their drivers would be unlikely to be happy to be flagged down just so that I could use it if they did. /s)
I should perhaps clarify the situation with suburban public transport around London. Where it exists, it is almost entirely focussed on getting commuters into the centre of London, so radial rail services, and the bus routes terminating at railway stations, are excellent.
Moving between suburban communities just ten miles apart, however, can often only be achieved by going into London, fifteen miles away, and back out again to your destination. The time this consumes can be considerable, as can attempting to avoid the city by changing busses. My mother doesn’t drive. When she was visiting my father in hospital every day, taking two busses in each direction, it used to take her an hour each way even though the hospital is barely five miles away.
“…because it’s in the best interests of the British people, of our economy and of our national security”
Because, you see, if we don’t get our hands on some oil, then they will have all of it!
Here’s a new one I saw from some random MAGAt commentator on Facebook:
Because of course governments did nothing to address acid rain or the destruction of the ozone layer.
Quite. Not to mention that this year Antarctica is around 8.9 million sq km short on sea ice and no-one is quite sure why because the models for this year don’t predict that big a deficit. That’s an area about the size of Argentina. The significance is less sea ice means a weaker pulse of cold saline water to drive ocean circulation. See previous recent articles and discussion.