Everyone knows that I think that global warming is, as a theory, pure bunkum unbacked by evidence or science. And so it is not a surprise that Met Office data admitting that global warming stopped 16 years ago was greeted with a ‘Gotcha’ from me on Sunday. The response from one tweeter was “Yey! Keep driving 4×4’s, don’t recycle burn it, destroy forests, pollute rivers, Go man go. Must feel good knowing all a scam.” Au contraire you have got it all wrong. Being a global warming sceptic is in fact the green thing to do.
You will note that one of my blog roll heroes is a man called John Seymour. He was the guru of self sufficiency and a great influence on my late mother. As a boy (do not laugh) I spent quite a bit of time on hippy communes with my mum and other “believers.”
You can buy a copy of Seymour’s classic work: A complete Guide to Self Sufficiency
I do not think communes work as a unit. The idle laze about and the hard working become demotivated. Certainly that was what I seem to remember. I believe in a smaller individual unit which gives liberty and opportunity to that individual. But I am also a devotee of Seymour. He argued that 99% of what comes into our houses today goes out as waste: packaging, energy consumed, sewerage, etc. So much of this could be avoided. And it makes sense to do so in ensuring that our planet is cleaner and uses up less scare resource and is also more efficient. In a Seymour perfect house there is effectively no waste, everything is recycled. I shall write about eco-loos another day. It is my goal to live in such a house one day soon.
But what about global warming? Well the hard data now shows that it is bogus science. As such the gazillions invested in reducing the carbon footprint and the (normally regressive) taxies levied to drive changes in our behaviour were all wasted. That is the sad truth. And of course the waste and taxes continue. I would rather that the Government reduced the deficit so that the UK did not go bust. If there is spare cash then please use it on things that matter such as river-clean projects.
Do I want the Government subsidising me to install a solar panel or wind turbine on my house? No. A Government going bust should not be subsidising any private scheme. But equally I would personally wish to move to a position where I was self-funding in power both by using less electricity and by generating some myself. But I should self-fund that. I should not have to fund the whims of others by a penal tax on my 4×4 (not that I have one) which is levied simply on the basis of bogus science.
To me the Global Warming nutters are the un-Green brigade since they have ensured that gazillions are spent on projects which do not assist the natural world at all. Meanwhile in levying draconian taxes to ensure policy change they have somehow made folks think that preserving the planet is down to the clunking fist of the State. It is not. It is something which, in many ways, we can do best as individuals. Again it is a matter of individual responsibility versus the crushing power of the state.
There is nothing to stop one being both a pretty dark green in many ways but also a global warming sceptic.