WHAT does the future have in store for us? The Government diktat that the sale of petrol/diesel cars and vans will be banned from sale from 2030 is irrational, and few other countries have said they will follow. China alone, which is responsible for 30 per cent of global emissions, has 365million motorised vehicles – does anyone really think they will go all-electric?
There are 1.2billion vehicles in the world and this is forecast to rise to 2billion by 2035. This means that the UK with 40million cars and 1.13 per cent of global emissions will never alone ‘save the planet’.
There will be a ‘them and us’ situation. The wealthy will be able to afford an EV and they will drive on quieter roads, get free parking and other privileges. The rest of us will have to travel by public transport and a journey which by car would take 30 minutes will now take an hour or more via several buses or trains.
How will tradesmen cope with their heavy tools on public transport once their reliable diesel vans are banned? Visiting relatives and friends will become an onerous task. Hospital visits will be the same. Restrictions on our right to come and go as we please could lead to civil unrest.
This virtue-signalling and the horrendous cost of climate change expenditure is meaningless whilst other countries are doing very little.
There have been 25 years of United Nations climate change (COP) conferences but the promises given by countries show that the world is still on the path for a 3 to 4C rise in warming, well above the 1.5C deemed to be the limit.
So far 125 countries, which are coming to COP26 in Glasgow, have failed to present tougher emission targets to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
If countries were taking this seriously they would have passed legally-binding Climate Change Acts but only five governments have done so, viz Scotland, the UK, France, New Zealand and Sweden.
The whole global warming threat has been grossly exaggerated and the UK’s decarbonisation policies are not only futile but also expensive and will cost every UK household £525 to £655 every year. All this pain for the UK’s minuscule 1.13 per cent of global emissions whilst China with 30 per cent and India with 6 per cent continue to build coal-fired plants not only in their own countries but in other countries for political gain.
There have been hundreds of failed climate predictions over the last 30 years. The Maldives have not disappeared into the ocean, and although we have been repeatedly told that polar bears are endangered by climate change there is a healthy and growing population of 40,000.
Twenty-five years of hot air is enough.
