Net Zero: A Green Ideology That Doesn’t Add Up
We’re told to bankrupt ourselves for the planet, while China and others burn fossil fuels without restraint. If it doesn’t make sense, that’s because it doesn't...
The last few years of government authoritarianism and tyranny - whether it's locking us in our homes in a failed bid to stop a largely mild seasonal virus, making us say that men are WOMEN now, being forced to take a medication most people statistically don’t need, or printing money apparently without consequence, if something doesn't make sense, it's because, well, it doesn't make sense. Which takes me to Net Zero. Now I'm all for cleaning up the environment; it's quite clear - whatever your politics - that we are wrecking the planet. Human activity, and industry in particular, is polluting our air, our land, our food and our water supply. There's now more plastic in the ocean, than in Sharon Osborne's face. I've all but given up eating tuna, one of my favourite foods, such is the volume of mercury that can be found in it. Plastic waste is off the charts, with so many products in needless packaging, including supermarket food items, that when I was a kid were accommodated in a brown paper bag. Look at the toys that kids get given, that are played with for a couple of years and thrown away. And whilst I'm a huge fan of cheap clothing retailers like Primark, who make fashion accessible to all of us, to go into one of their stores and look at a SEA of polyester is somewhat depressing. The clothing industry alone is absolutely terrible for the environment, with toxic dyes leaking into local rivers, with single use clothing items, sometimes just bought for a party winding up - like everything else - buried in the soil, leaking into our natural landscape. And don’t get me started on those face coverings and plastic testing kits used during the pandemic. There is a mountain of that crap the size of the Himalayas festering in the sea, entering fish and therefore ultimately us. I go around on a little moped, a 125 motorcycle. I look ridiculous on it, because I’m far bigger than IT is. And when I’m on it, I sometimes have to hold my breath when going past certain vehicles, so noxious are the diesel fumes. And how can our tap water be completely clean and safe – as the authorities tell us - given where it's come from. I think the best you can say is it won't kill you, which is not exactly a ringing endorsement. So I'd be happy to make lifestyle changes to benefit the planet. It is our duty and responsibility to hand the Earth over to the next generation in a better state than we found it. Currently we’re making it worse. But a concern for the environment, which was shared by most people before it became so political, is not the same as the ideology of Net Zero. I call it an ideology, because it is rooted in an unshakeable belief system that somehow we have to adopt a sort of green communism 2.0 to stop the planet blowing up by next Tuesday. At best net Nero Zero is a political project, at worst, a chilling, authoritarian cult. Proof of that, is it cannot be criticized, and if you question some of the numbers involved, the projections, the so-called “science”, you are a bad person and a non believer. Except if you can't debate it, or question it, or be sceptical, or look at the numbers, then it isn't science at all. Because science is a conversation, it's an argument, it is the competition of ideas and it is evidence-based.
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