Do Climate Protesters Have Mobile Phones?

I've been wearing bamboo socks for years but that is because they are better for my feet - I have had to wear pressure stockings for over 25 years!

 

Holes in jeans are all the rage now Jiffy, you should sell them on ebay.

 

Didn't know you could get those!

 

I try to do my bit for the environment - I fart in the bath to keep the pollution down

Seriously though, I am one of those on the list to be vilified because I drive a diesel car. The fact that it is Euro 6 seems to escape the majority and that coupled with the fact that I do circa 6-7k miles a year and the car never gives me below 40mpg even in the worst of conditions means that my impact is relatively low.

I recycle as much as I can, I compost whatever I can, I repair whatever I can; I don't fly or go on foreign holidays (have never done so) and all my gas and electricity comes from renewables or carbon offset sources.

We do shop online and have things delivered, but that is more often than not because we don't have a choice, especially this past two years.

I have only just recently re-done a lot of draught proofing and insulation in the house, have bought a cracking new clothes airer that takes two washing machine loads so the tumble dryer is hardly ever on.

Meanwhile, most of those banging on about climate change have spent years flying here, there and everywhere and choose to show their disdain for those of us who dare to drive to work of have a warm home by gluing themselves to the M25 or smashing up the front of banks in central London. We take climate advice from a teenager, yet won't listen to educated people with years of experience, and the outcome always seems to be that we have to dip our hands in our pockets more and more as if that in some way will stop the climate changing.... oh, and we chop down trees in their millions to erect wind turbines. This is about one thing and one thing only - Money.

 

I will thank @gks for the link I was going to post regarding the felling of trees in Scotland. That, for me, is one of the biggest things we are missing here, almost indicative of the things we could (and should) be doing.

Money has been being taken in the name of the climate for at least the past 30 years (fuel duty escalator being one main example) yet where has that money gone? It certainly hasn't been well spent in mitigation measures to help us cope with a changing climate, it hasn't been used to produce a countrywide waste/recycling strategy, nor does it seem to have been used to put in sensible mitigation and infrastructure to help communities cope with the changes to climate.

Taking this as an example - Southern Scotland braced for more downpours - the lead image in that article is my hometown. The image there is of Whitesands, a road along by the river that has flooded like that every year, without fail for as long as I have been alive and many decades beforehand. When I was a child, it was bad weather that caused it, but now it is conflated with climate change (see related article here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-59089076); there have been a number of flood mitigation schemes proposed and many thousands of pounds spent on arguing about them over at least 25 years (if not more) yet not a spade has been lifted to actually construct anything at all.

We spend summers crying that we don't have enough water for our gardens, yet we haven't built a reservoir in this country since the 80's, nor have we implemented things such as grey-water recovery schemes or improved drainage in many (if not all) towns and cities.

If I can work this out, why can't those clever folks work it out? Or are they too busy flying around the world on private jets to lecture the rest of us that we are evil for daring to drive to work?

 

Personally I would much rather there was no finger pointing, but instead some joined-up thinking to improve the things that we can improve in a sensible fashion whilst also being aware of the laws of unintended consequences. Many things were done for the very best of reasons and they have backfired quite spectacularly (the burning of wood pellets for power being just one of those)