Tag: Hypocrisy

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Back in August it was revealed that department for business energy and industrial strategy – responsible for climate remit, had taken 619 domestic flights in the previous 2 years

We have an extensive train network. We also have an extensive motorway network. With all the check in and the traveling to and from airports which are usually some distance outside cities, many domestic flights take longer than their train or car equivalent.

More importantly, these other methods have a fraction of the carbon footprint. This was also after signing a net zero emissions target. Importantly, this does not include travel to Northern Ireland as this is more easy to justify.

34 of these flights were by the minister themselves.

This only came to light through a freedom of information request from the shadow minister for green transport.

In the 6 months after the 2050 net zero target was signed into law the department took 395 domestic flights.

These all happened in the run up to us hosting a conference on cutting emissions.

We can only hope that now the COP26 has happened, the government starts to practice what it preaches.

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Do rich countries need to target aid more carefully?

Air pollution kills more people than Malaria Aids and TB combined, yet it receives just 1% of the aid budget.

Alarmingly, last year, rich countries gave 20% more to fossil fuel projects than to programmes to cut the air pollution they cause. Dirty air, is responsible for roughly 4 million deaths a year.

If comparing the number of years of life lost to each cause of death, HIV receives 34 times as much funding, and. Africa and Latin America have 500,000 deaths a year from air pollution, yet they receive 5% and 10% of the funding respectively.

Now it is true that greening the economies of the world may in the future, eliminate many of these deaths, but we also give more money to fossil fuel projects than we do to green power that might replace it – this is despite the fact that the green project is often cheaper to build and to run and doesnt have the negatives on local people that come with burning things.

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What should we do when our government makes a big show of new climate commitments which are actually recycled?

The British government is continually making good noises about cutting emissions.

At the beginning of June they announced half a billion pounds for a blue planet fund – but this was merely repurposed money, from the conservative manifesto in 2019. A total of £11.6 billion has been pledged to fight climate change by the British government in this term, which means that this pledge is nothing more than deciding where to spend the money.

Is £11.6 billion spent across a parliamentary term a good amount of money. 

It is certainly a lot of money, however in 2020 the government spend over 900 billion pounds, meaning that this advertisement is roughly 0.2% of our spending each year for the next 5 years. This is not fighting for our lives and that of our children’s future. Indeed if we truly consider environmental change an existential threat to our current way of life if this is chump change.

The fact that new pledges the government make then come out.of this small amount should be an embarrassment. I suspect that it will be highlighted multiple times during the the climate conference being held later this year. I hope other countries point out the absurdity of this position.

We are an island country! We stand to have our country changed dramatically if the amount of sea level rise that is possible actually happens. The idea that we can’t even put 1% of our GDP towards fighting this is a problem and one which future generations would have a right to point to.

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Mc Donald’s doesn’t import beef from the Amazon, but much of the British beef is fed on soy- grown on deforested land in Brazil

Mc Donald’s has made a big issue out of the fact that they are no longer buying beef from amazonia. I fully approve of this move, but it appears that they are now importing large quantities of soy grown in the Amazon, and still requiring deforestation. 

Huge monoculture of soy, are as damaging (possibly more) than cattle ranching, as ranches often retain small pockets of forest and individual trees, so while most of the wildlife is lost, with soy plantation virtually all its lost. 

I am sure mc Donald’s understands that British people have an issue with deforestation, not with beef ranching. Better choices must be made. We must all make noise and complain about this underhand behaviour- and force them to improve their behaviour, if this doesn’t work, boycotting their restaurants might be the only way to stop ir.

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