The 'Hothouse Earth' Report makes grim reading and questions whether we can 'safely park' global temperature rises at 2 degrees C and indicates that we may have set in train a series of carbon releasing events that will be difficult to stop and that we may end up with global temperatures around 4 to 5 degrees C higher than the pr- industrial era. This really is a nightmare scenario with a significant rise in sea levels, highly disrupted weather threatening food supplies and much more frequent extreme and violent weather events. It is a respected summation of current peer reviewed climate science and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A number of things have concerned me over the last few weeks. One is the cheery assertion by Conservative Government Minister Michael Gove that Climate Change and higher temperatures in the UK is a great opportunity for British Farmers to produce good quality sparkling wine. Now of course there may be some truth in this but it indicates a lack of perception of the grim reality of climate change. You could argue that what he said was taken out of context and that really he really does 'get it'. I'd like to believe that but you see the vote on the 3rd runway at Heathrow, the permission to commence Fracking at Preston New Road and the 4 new gas turbines at Drax that are on the cards and you can only conclude they don't believe and don't care about climate change. Sadly that goes for a lot of Labour politicians as well.
Michael Gove gave the impression when he was first elected that he had hugged plenty of huskies in the fashion of David Cameron when he was in his 'vote blue go green' phase. With his positive comments on neonicitinoids and their impact on the bee population I thought well this is a little bit different from before. Now it seems that this is yet another attempt to detoxify the Tory Party using 'green issues'. Actually it is difficult to work out which needs the most detoxification Gove or the Conservative Party. So yes maybe there will be a brief mini-sparkling Wine Age before the very worst impacts of Climate Change hit us but we desperately need to be acting NOW to reduce emissions for the sake of civilization and human sentience on this planet. Even if they had the time away from their headlong pursuit of Brexit I doubt it would make them act any more responsibly.
Thanks to Ros for the picture.
