We humans dream of colonizing Mars, building flying cars, and achieving immortality. Yet, amidst this fervent pursuit of futures that sometimes drift into fantasy, we’re neglecting critical problems of the present.
An example is rampant pollution of our waters. This neglect exists even in advanced societies such as the United Kingdom, where untreated sewage spills into the Thames and other rivers, turning them into fetid cesspools.
This isn’t some dystopian vision of the future. It’s happening right now, under the noses of complacent governments and a distracted public. While headlines scream about a fabricated climate emergency decades away, actual environmental crises fester — not to mention potholed streets and collapsing bridges.
Thames filled with Sewage: A Global Problem
The U.K.’s aging sewage infrastructure simply can’t handle the demands of a growing population. During heavy rain, overflows release raw sewage directly into rivers. Recent findings suggest that since 2020, Thames Water—the U.K.’s largest water and wastewater services company—has discharged a minimum of 72 billion liters of sewage into the river Thames, equivalent to approximately 29,000 Olympic swimming pools of water.
In 2024, the company was fined 3.3 million pounds after causing the death of over 1,400 fish with the release of millions of liters of untreated sewage. Despite these incidents, Thames Water continues to discharge sewage into bodies of water.
Numerous images and videos shared on social media depict holidaymakers witnessing the presence of brown-colored sewage-contaminated waters along beaches and river banks in the U.K.
The neglect of river pollution has dire consequences for public health from a range of waterborne diseases, including cholera, dysentery and hepatitis A. The presence of harmful bacteria such as E. coli in rivers and coastal waters poses a direct threat to communities that rely on these sources for drinking, bathing and recreation. In fact, recently, thousands of people fell ill with diarrhoea as they ingested parasites from contaminated water in Devon, U.K.
In Bangladesh, the Buriganga and linked rivers in the country’s capital region receive daily about 60,000 cubic meters of wastes from the nine major industrial clusters. The river is so toxic that locals consider it biologically dead.
In New Delhi, the capital of India, the Yamuna River has been heavily affected by the disposal of harmful chemicals and untreated sewage. As a result, certain parts of the river exhibit a murky appearance, with foamy froth and plastic waste along its banks. Another river in India, the Ganges, is one of the world’s most polluted, receiving every day more than one billion gallons of raw sewage and industrial waste.
The problem is not exclusive to these countries. The list goes on and on. But the elephant in the room is the fact that these nations have allocated billions of dollars towards initiatives aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions—an endeavor that remains scientifically unjustified.
The U.K. has been vocal about it’s desires to implement net zero—an amorphous term used to denote zero greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. India is spending billions on wind and solar, and even Bangladesh has been waxing eloquent on the subject, launching its first ever Climate Action Plan.
Net zero will have zero effect on the climate and threatens devasting consequences for the supply of affordable and reliable electricity. Net zero is perhaps the most futile initiative mankind has ever undertaken and certainly the most expensive. Pouring trillions of funds annually into managing an uncontrollable climate is utterly ridiculous.
Instead of addressing pressing environmental issues such as river pollution, governments are misdirecting resources and energy in response to unsubstantiated claims like the climate crisis.
More people will die from real environmental problems than from the climate in 2050, whether it’s warmer or colder. We need to move beyond attention-grabbing headlines about distant imaginary threats and focus on actual ones.
This commentary was first published at California Globe on May 20, 2024.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, U.K.
It’s easier to propose solutions for imaginary dangers than for real ones.
Pithy
And it’s more lucrative. Real world solutions are hard, imaginary future ones are easy.
If it gets too warm- and the oceans boil- we’ll just all move to another planet. 🙂
Far easier to spend the other person’s money and to apportion the blame to themtoo than for spendthrift states to display a lack of prescience. The British Prime Minister asks for more investment in automated crop gathering, while activist groups talk about back breaking work and the practise of using eastern Europeans for the last sixty years to do the work that our own people seem too shy to attempt! Shock horror, those people should be doing it. They can be out in all weather without proper ‘facilities’.The sixty years lost in bumping-up immigration to salve the consciences of idle thinkers who cannot embrace change, anticipate change.No wonder British productivity is in the toilet! Our rivers are dying and the unsuspecting are swimming in the open sewer sea. And here utility companies are asking for record level customer payment rises. Floods and sewage do not have to be acts inflicted on us by nature, scapegoating, it could be that they are a problem as a result of the failure of engineering to keep pace with a vastly changed conditions, a far more cluttered world
There is nothing too unimportant to spend someone else’s money on.
Is there such a thing as a “spendthrift state”?
The misdirection is especially egregious for while governments neglect genuine pollution they sustain the mammoth waste of wealth and human resources by incessantly misnaming beneficial CO2 as ‘pollution’ in order to confuse and ‘gaslight’ the public.
Note without comment
Every sale is accompanied by a rate increase to the consumer to pay for the purchase. This is never considered by the bureaucrats that approve the sale of what was once a publicly financed business.
Continued…
So in summary, while Macquarie claims it financially strengthened Thames Water, the evidence suggests its ownership focused on extracting high returns for investors through heavy borrowing rather than prudent long-term investment, leaving Thames Water financially strained.
Source: perplexity.ai
leaving Thames Water financially strained
Don’t forget us, michel. We will end up taking the strain….
“Thames Water has made a fresh bid to hike bills by 40%, promising more spending on environmental projects, but questions still remain on whether it can secure the funding required to deliver it.
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/thames-water-proposes-extra-1-064505440.html
Many years ago, I worked with a couple of guys, who’d retired from a water company, in northern England. They revealed, that once the company had been privatised there was a massive downturn in maintenance. In addition, there was a redundancy scheme, where they offloaded many of the maintenance personnel. I also heard, that same company, frequently sold water to the Saudis.
I can’t imagine a loan application listing “giving it away” as the intended use. Did they sell bonds? To whom? And if that’s how they raised the money and the company is nationalised, why would the British taxpayer agree to take on the obligation? Surely the bond holders should take a haircut.
I know the British government has a long history of mis-timed interventions, being either way too premature or waaaaaaaaaaay too late, so there is no reason to expect them to wait for Thames water to go bust. But IMO that is what they should do.
(I know nothing about this stuff, as may be clear…)
“In 2024, the company was fined 3.3 million pounds after causing the death of over 1,400 fish”
That’s £2357 per fish. We live in an expensive world.
If it is like it is here in the U.S., that is just the case they have clear evidence for. There may be other fish kills that are not in evidence. Seems arbitrary, I know, but regulators use the tools they have.
At least they were “real” fish, not imaginary fish spawned by a computer model. The latter are worth $ trillions
The Thames….
Has a Victorian system, which now is treated before discharge. However, the problem is the storm drains. London, despite the commons and parks, is a huge area covered in asphalt, paving, concrete etc with no allowance for local absorbtion. It gets easily overwhelmed and they have to open the gates.
That is the problem and given the money and time councils devote to paving etc it’s something they could easily change.
All man made systems malfunction at least some of the time, from rocket ships to sewers. It is a constant challenge to maintain sanitary sewer systems, such as preventing infiltration (water flows in through leaky pipes and connections) and inflow (flooding introduces runoff into sanitary waste sewers). Someone digs underground and damages a pipe – this is extremely common. Sometimes systems fail do to aging and environmental degradation, such as the old fashioned clay pipes that inevitably degrade and have to be replaced. Lift station pumps and their controllers may fail from time to time.
Most residents have no idea what is going on with their water supply and wastewater systems, and most have no desire to know. They just want to know that everything is working properly, and they get a monthly bill, and whenever something breaks they raise hell with the utility.
Don’t forget all the front gardens paved over to provide off street parking!
Thames Water has often been called a cowboy outfit for all the stuff it appears to get away with from high cost for its users to blatant incompetency from the so called Regulators.
But at the end of the day it is democracy, elected politicians and idiot voters who allow this stuff to happen. You get what you ask for from monopoly companies who have shareholders to hold on to.and that should be no surprise to anyone.
Oh and the water is full of **** !!!
it is democracy, elected politicians and idiot voters
Democracy in name only. The last two London Mayoral elections had a turnout of 40% In a real democrcacy only a turnout of 50% + would yield a fair democratic result. Apathy can come in quite handy with the British system of dictatorship.
“As a result of not exceeding the minimum validity threshold of 50% turnout, the results are not legally binding.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Polish_referendum
In the UK democracy is just a word.
I get the author’s warnings against being too concerned with hypothetical future environmental risks vs. taking care of known risks, but he used a poor example. Actually, the Thames River is quite clean today, having been recovered from a declaration that it was “biologically dead” in 1957 (no measurable dissolved oxygen, caused by the biological decay of organic pollutants). Today the Thames has a thriving fishery in it. Large investments were made beginning in the 1960s to improve the sanitary waste collection and treatment systems.
This is true in virtually all urbanized area of the industrialized “first world”. The USA enacted the Clean Water Act in 1972 in reaction to widespread pollution of rivers in urbanized areas, as well as due to untreated industrial discharges. At that time most cities had only primary treatment systems, essentially just settling tanks for the poop to fall out of suspension. After CWA the requirement was established, among others, for all urban treatment systems to use at least secondary treatment, where the wastewater is oxygenated and treated with other chemicals to greatly improve cleaning of the wastewater. And since then many cities, in order to meet their treatment permit limits have gone to tertiary treatment to remove most suspended solids and denitrify the wastewater, including filtration and disinfection if the wastewater is to be reused for irrigation – as is the case here in Florida where most landscape irrigation in cities uses recycled wastewater.
The fact that the Brits issued fines to their wastewater treatment plant operator is not a sign of carelessness, it is actually the opposite, that the systems are being monitored and the operators are forced to improve their operations and make upgrades as needed. Cities grow, and so their infrastructure has to grow with it. Also, no man-made system including wastewater treatment systems works perfectly 100% of the time. Corrections are always necessary, including design upgrades, and just fixing equipment that breaks or wears out.
The Yangtze River in China used to be highly polluted, but with the rise in Chinese economic strength, wastewater treatment has improved and thus the water quality has improved.
In contrast, other major rivers in less advanced nations are severely polluted, like the Ganges in India.
But the author is right that money wasted on “climate change” would be far better spent on assisting developing nations to improve their water quality, which has a direct effect not only on environmental quality but on human health.
From the article: “But the elephant in the room is the fact that these nations have allocated billions of dollars towards initiatives aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions—an endeavor that remains scientifically unjustified.”
Yes, there is no scientific justification for trying to curtail CO2 as a means of controlling the temprature of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Voters need to pick smarter, more honest leaders if they value their freedoms and their livelihoods. These crazy politicians are going to bankrupt us all and they have no scientific basis for doing so. They think they have a basis, but we all know they are mistaken. Unfortunately, they don’t know they are mistaken, or they don’t care because they are making money from it.
“Unfortunately, they don’t know they are mistaken, or they don’t care because they are making money from it.”
I think most are just plain stupid. I’ve talked to many politicians here in Wokeachusetts. None impressed me with their intelligence.
The American voters over the past 50 years or longer have been programmed with a 12 second attention span. Hence a politician only need say, “We need change. Trust me.” and that attention span is used up.
They certainly have a 12 second attention span- but the question is, why? I don’t think anyone programmed them. It’s a combination of cultural developments/failures. That would be an interesting discussion, but probably not relevant here.
Television. Actually, that’s the how. The why is, because an ignorant population is much easier to control.
Prime directive: get elected/re-elected. If it polls well or focus groups are positive, they’re for it. Weasels most.
Interesting view on a subject I’ve followed for many years. There was/is a use for
high nutrient load waste water but it hasn’t gotten much traction. It’s called Green
Crude. It’s a genetically modified algae that’s grown in waste water. We have toxic
algae blooms here in the Northern Rockies from the high nutrient load being dumped
into the rivers. In the SW area of the US many crops are grown using waste water.
This is a big deal that the public is not fully aware of. But the observation about
climate change getting all the attention and waste water being ignored is accurate IMO.
The city I live in has been treating sewage/waste water and pumping it back into the aquifer and irrigating city vegetation for decades. The leftover solid waste is sold/used for agriculture. We still have occasional raw sewage accidents that close our beaches for days.
This ties in with the somewhat supported hypothesis that the real intent is to cull the population.
“Recent findings suggest that since 2020, Thames Water—the U.K.’s largest water and wastewater services company—has discharged a minimum of 72 billion liters of sewage into the river Thames, equivalent to approximately 29,000 Olympic swimming pools of water.”
Meaningless without context. Since 2020 is 3 years. How much per year? How much per discharge? 72 billion liters. How does that compare with the volume of the Thames? 29,000 Olympic swimming pools? Now that’s a real stretch. Will anyone be swimming in those pools of sewage?
Montreal had a similar problem when the sewage system was being overhauled. The actual amount of sewage flowing into the St.Lawrence River was tiny… compared to the river flow rate past the city…
Vijay is correct, there are many many other places for us to spend our money rather than wasting it on CAGW.
As for polluting the Thames there was reference to spillage during heavy rains and to releases. They are different.
Why would heavy rains cause spillage into the Thames? There has to be a reason, figure it out and fix it.
The second issue is releases, why is the company releasing raw sewage into the river? There has to be a reason. Is it because of poor maintenance, or lack of upgrades, or not enough capacity? Surely the sewage treatment is a regulated business. Assuming it is regulated and knowing we have a history of spillage and releases we must also assume the regulations are not sufficient, the regulators are not doing their job or both. I am not letting the owners off the hook, if they are thumbing their noses at the regulations that is the regulators fault for allowing it.
The third issue is what is the 3.3 million pound fine going to be used for? Not one pence should go for anything but improving, upgrading or expanding the sewage treatment system. You can’t say the government bailed them out because it is the company”s money. All that can be said is that the government has finally done it’s job and insisted that the company does the right thing.
What a mess.
It should be considered a criminal offense in any developed country to allow collected raw sewage into any waterways. Considerable jail time, as well as huge fines.
Historically I believe most cities installed combined sewage and stormwater drainage pipes.
Mass deportations from the UK will fix the problem.
Since the UK imported so many foreigners, did they increase the diameter of the sewer lines? Did they build more treatment plants?
Reminds me of California where they added 20 MM people and didn’t expand their water supply, and now cry about Climate Change.
“has discharged a minimum of 72 billion liters of sewage into the river Thames, equivalent to approximately 29,000 Olympic swimming pools of water.”
Sorry, can you convert that to Hiroshimas? I don’t understand how much is in a swimming pool.