No conspiracy over climate
D BAGNALL’S letter (‘Climate is an excuse,’ Viewpoints, December 6) once more reruns the public bar lecture of climate change caused by mankind is a conspiracy dreamt up by the UN ‘...as its tool for a world anti-Capitalist government – ruled by itself...’
In contrast, a couple of pages earlier we read the Met Office’s warning of vastly increased likelihood of record-breaking temperatures.
And updated news tells of the accelerating melting of the Greenland ice sheet, in places a mile thick, releasing gigatons of melt-water into the oceans, raising sea levels 30 feet and messing up the currents which give us mild winters.
Bagnall does bring out the old chestnuts of ‘there was more CO2 in the past’ and taunts those who accept the advice of 97+ per cent of scientists who know a thing or two about the subject with the term ‘an inconvenient truth.’
This is the name of Al Gore’s 2006 documentary that woke people up to the threat to our natural world, food supply, economy and very life.
But here it is asserted ‘man-made climate change is the biggest hoax in history and our taxes will keep increasing in order to fund it.’
Well, I think there we have it. denial spawned by self-interest. The trouble is, he is nearly right! He should have said: “Man-made climate change is the biggest crisis in history and our taxes will keep increasing in order to fight it.
“Unless we stop now and turn things around with a total singleminded ‘war effort.’”
This was done during World War Two and needs to be done now.
And the technologies and new approaches spawned will give us true wealth.
Let’s hope we and our political servants have a Churchillian will to overcome in this conflict.