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There is still a great deal of reluctance to accept climate change amongst republicans (this is odd in a country with one of the highest education levels in the world). There is also a certain amount of those who have publicly accepted it, saying humans cannot do anything about it anyway (so why should we try).What is worse, is that a number of them must recognize that climate change is a threat to their state and the people who live there, but are campaigning against it because of the narrow interests of a car company which is based in their state. This video outlines it well

Half of the American states are trying to slow the advance of electric cars. These are all republican states – so called conservatives. The suit was filed by attourney generals from Kentucky and west Virginia. So how many people do these half of states represent? 89.75 million – this sounds a lot, until you realize that the USA population is currently 333.3 million, which means that these 25 states represent just short of 27% of the population of the country (it should be noted that these 25 states get 50% of the senate seats – not particularly fair).

So why are they against this move? Why are they against cleaning up the air in the USA?

The white house wanted a figure of 56% but reduced it after pressure. The EPA rules aim to cut fleetwide tailpipe emissions for cars and light trucks by nearly 50% (after pressure from states) over 2026 levels in 2032, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7.2 billion tons through 2055. Now, the road emissions make up 29% of USA carbon emissions on their own – however, given their aim to reduce these emissions over time, it does not require anyone to replace their car now, merely to buy an electric one next time (and for the manufacturers to only sell them (most manufacturers have no electric cars to sell).

Russell Coleman the attourney general for Kentucky said it would “increase the price of cars, put pressure on local jobs and harm the countries economy”. I do wonder what Russell thinks will happen to Kentucky if he gets his wish? what will happen to any factories in his state? They will make a vehicle which in 10 years no one will want to buy, and the factory will go out of business, along with all internal combustion engine car factories in the USA. This will destroy all of the local jobs from these factories, and the price of vehicles will likely go up, as all will need importing. Of course, if Telsa grows at half the speed that is predicted, it will be able to sell 10 million vehicles a year (if it succeeds, it is aiming at 20 million a year), and moves like this will help, as they will not have to compete with factories in Kentucky. Does this governor think that people like paying thousands of dollars for petrol each year? One of his reasons is cost, but it is cheaper, over the life of the car, to drive electric, so who is he helping?

Without rules to save the combustion engine car in the USA, and to ban electric cars, the combustion engine car is dead. Perhaps not yet, but in 20 years it is likely to be a far rarer sight. As models like the Tesla model 2, along with the VW id1 and the electric ford, all aiming at the $25,000 pounds or less, they will largely take out the legs from new combustion engine cars (particularly if the exchange rate was fair to the UK, at times giving a starting price of £16,000). At the moment, even a fill-up every other week costs 1750 a year, taking 1750 time 7 off the cost of a car, shows how good value the car is.

The problem is that should we want to actually halt climate change, we need action now.

The Greenland wolf, is known from remains, to have lived in Greenland for at least 7600 years, though, given Caribou have been there for 8900 years, it is quite possible that they have been there for longer.

It is a small population of around 200 individuals, so encountering them is rare. This video to the right is an incredible encounter a photographer had, when she realized that she had been surrounded by them. As you can see, wolves do not generally consider humans as food.

We have not been as kind in the past, and between 1920 and 1932, 35 wolves were killed in the core wolf range, forcing the population to decline rapidly to extinction.

It should be noted, that there is only a small population in Greenland, and it is a huge landmass, so it is quite possible that the population is larger.

Thomas Crowther was an ecologist whose work inspired many tree planting projects, the problem is that this is a more complex idea than it first seems, and more importantly, mass plantations do not help.

Forests take up vast quantities of carbon, but the whole ecosystem must benefit, otherwise while trees may get planted, they are likely to fall foul of pests, or similar.

One of the simple requirements, is to plant trees more like a rainforest would. We cannot plant monocultures of a single tree – this is simply the equivalent of rolling out a picnic rug for the specific pests which feed on the tree in question. Instead, we need hundreds of tree species in each acre. Amazingly, without this, the trees ability to do what we want and draw down carbon dioxide is severely limited, so will fail.

Interestingly, preserving remaining forests has a far bigger impact on carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere, so this is not only beneficial to the wildlife that lives there, it is also one of our most effective tools, to avoid climate change.

Think of all the primates, great apes and many other species that would be saved, if we just started to do what is best for ourselves.

This is not a melanistic whale, instead it is a beluga whale, which is usually white. Filmed in January it is only the sixth time that this species has been sighted in Scottish waters, generally living in the icy arctic waters.

This species has around 150,000 individuals left in the wild, making them more safe than many species. However, living in the Arctic where global warming is changing things fast, we need to remain viligant, as it could be quite a different situation after not much time.

To view our page on Beluga whales, and any other mention that the species has had in the past, click here

I wrote a month ago, about Rishi Sunak and the foolish plans of the UK government to try to max out oil production from the North Sea. The governments argument was that it would help bring down costs for UK people.

Unfortunately, this argument bares no water, as the extracted fossil fuels would be sold on the open market, and there would be no discount at all in the UK. As such, this will do nothing to help the UK people save money, merely give some fossil fuel companies some money, and potentially some tax revenue for the UK government, though whether this is worth the costs that will have to be paid is the future is being questioned increasingly loudly.

What is unfortunately clear, is that the things that are going to be best for the UK public is additional insulation in houses, and renewable energy. Unfortunately these are two projects which the government is increasingly eager to turn its back on.

The green housing grants, during Covid, were aimed at improving the housing stock of the UK, and it did, but only for around 1% of the houses that need to be dealt with. Furthermore, this was really a boost for the building firms, rather than the green housing grants in particular – they charged as much as possible, and the work did not really continue after the end of the period in question.

Why politicians keep spouting information that is so easily destroyed is hard to understand. It seems hard to believe that a man with the amount of money that Rishi Sunak and his wife has, would be influenced by the performance of his investment, however, given where we are going, I would argue that investing in fossil fuel extraction is a foolish move – whether in the next decade or further ahead, the fossil fuel industry must die, and it is likely to happen fast when it truly starts. Rishi Sunak has been accused of dodging scrutiny on this subject by failing to appoint a climate change committee chair (for over 18 months since Lord Deben retired) – and now the independent watchdogs chief executive has resigned in frustration. Given this position was there to keep the government to account on climate change and changes that will limit its effect

What is Rishi Sunak afraid of? Either he is attempting to avoid scrutiny, or he is incompetent – which is it?