Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Ed Miliband, who served an unremarkable two years as secretary of state for energy and climate change under Prime Minister Gordon Brown, has just demanded real climate action.
Our biggest enemy is no longer climate denial but climate delay
Ed Miliband
Sat 31 Jul 2021 01.30 AESTNothing is more dangerous than the illusion of action – which is all that the British government is offering
Future generations will look back on the climate events of 2021 and say: “That was the year they ran out of excuses.”
Heatwaves and flooding here in the UK, temperatures topping 50C in Pakistan, hundreds killed by a heatwave in British Columbia, deadly floods in Germany and China. All within a single month. Add to that the recent dire warning from the Met Office that the age of extreme weather has just begun.
The wake-up call that this offers is not just the obvious one: that climate breakdown is already here. It also illustrates that we, in this generation, are in a unique position in the history of this crisis. Climate breakdown can no longer be plausibly denied as a threat etched only in the future. And all too soon, avoiding it may be a luxury lost to the past. The window to avoid catastrophe is closing with every passing day. We’re in the decisive decade in this fight, and we must treat the climate crisis as an issue that stands alone in the combination of its urgency and the shadow it casts over future generations.
…
The accompanying truth is that our biggest enemy is no longer climate denial but climate delay. The most dangerous opponents of change are no longer the shrinking minority who deny the need for action, but the supposed supporters of change who refuse to act at the pace the science demands. As Bill McKibben, environmentalist and climate scholar, says on climate: “Winning slowly is the same as losing.”
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/30/climate-denial-delay-inaction-british-government
If you look at a graph of UK CO2 emissions, it looks like UK has successfully decoupled CO2 emissions from GDP growth. But this is an illusion.
The reality is, emissions from inside the UK are only half the story. According to the Britain’s own Government Office of National Statistics, Britain is not reducing emissions, they are outsourcing emissions to other countries. The CO2 emissions required to power the UK economy still occur, they just largely occur in other places.
Britain now G7’s biggest net importer of CO2 emissions per capita, says ONS
Fall in UK-produced emissions has been offset by those from increase in imported products
Richard Partington
Economics correspondent @RJPartington
Tue 22 Oct 2019 02.27 AEDTBritain has contributed to the global climate emergency by outsourcing its carbon emissions to developing nations, according to official figures, despite managing to weaken the domestic link between fossil fuels and economic growth.
The Office for National Statistics said the UK had become the biggest net importer of carbon dioxide emissions per capita in the G7 group of wealthy nations – outstripping the US and Japan – as a result of buying goods manufactured abroad.
The ONS warned that Britain had increased its net imports of CO2 emissions per capita from 1.7 tonnes in 1992 to 5.1 tonnes in 2007, offsetting domestic progress on shifting the UK economy away from fossil fuels.
According to the ONS study, China was the biggest single source of Britain’s imported emissions, as the UK ramped up purchases of goods such as mobile phones made in the Asian country, where labour costs are lower and pollution regulations less stringent. The second biggest contributor to imported emissions was the EU, followed by the US.
The ONS warned that environmental damage could not be stopped by nation’s simply relocating the production of goods from advanced to developing nations.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/21/britain-is-g7s-biggest-net-importer-of-co2-emissions-per-capita-says-ons
Sorry Ed, but your call to action seems just as fake and lightweight as all the others.
Until Britain addresses their gross CO2 emissions outsourcing hypocrisy, by freezing imports from high carbon economies, until Britain makes a genuine attempt to onshore and power energy intensive manufacturing from their own renewable energy fleet, nobody should take Britain’s noisy two faced holier than thou climate grandstanding seriously.
Nothing in Miliband’s statements indicate what type of urgent action he expects!It’s always the same with these zealots who don’t understand the big picture.
They think they can see in the pattern of weather events a problem with climate.
He and his type should wake up to the scientific facts:
There is no climate emergency, no climate problem and CO2 is not a pollutant.
They don’t care what actions are taken.
So long as it cost lots of money.
Looking back it will probably be seen thar Milliband’s Climate Change Act will have caused more damage to the economy and well-being of the UK than any other action including two world wars.
Along with Covid, as a result we will be buried under a mountain of debt and no means of producing anything to sell in order to pay it off.
Current low interest rates might make it seem bearable to the Bank of England, but even a small rise would cause considerable problems.
Add to that, negative interest rates for savers and introducing digital currency it all makes one wonder where we are heading.
Ed Miliband represents the elite metropolitan left, not the UK population and certainly not the working man. The Tories will soon realise that the net-zero agenda is political suicide as the actual costs and drop in living standards to achieve it finally sink in. Labour is even more out of touch with reality.
Joe Public isn’t as stupid as politicians — and hard-left environmentalists — believe. They can see that climate changes naturally. We’ve had one week of hot weather in an otherwise typical British summer, which is nothing remotely unusual. Flash flooding in our part of the world has far more to do with councils failing to clear drains — ironically because they were told “climate change would mean less rain” — and people paving their gardens. People here simply don’t buy the climate change argument.
Meanwhile in cities like London the massive increase in structural density — an enormous amount of building has taken place over the past 30 years — has led to a much higher urban heat island effect. The inevitable result is dramatically more warm moist air directly above the centre, with more downpours causing flooding that people like Miliband then attribute to “climate change”. It’s completely bonkers.
The UK is sleepwalking towards an energy crisis as demand and costs soar while reliable supplies fall. When the lights start going out, which they will if the Government continues with its crazy green agenda, people will make their feelings known at the ballot box.
But who on earth do we vote for, they are all as bad as each other.
You have to make sure that the wrong lizard doesn’t get in!
H/T Douglas Adams
Hi father was some communist political theorist. Ed was a twerp when he was a UK politician. he has not got smarter.
Dare I say that Milliband’s antics do not reflect on other Eds?
Dopey old Ed mentions the Met Office.
I checked out the Met Office’s current forecast for where I live here in Wales. According to the Met, I should be more than likely stood in the rain, with more to come. I went outside and took a picture of my street. As you can see, it’s not raining and hasn’t rained all morning or any of last night.
The Met Office can’t even get the weather correct right now, yet Dave wants us to pay attention to their predictions of future “extreme weather”? Laughable.
Dave? Who’s Dave?
I’m confusing Ed with his much more evil brother David.
I’m not doing well with my posts today. First I post without the picture and now I can’t get his name right.
Well it was a bit of a confusing time with politicians and their screwups – Dave Miliband had ‘Ed-gate’, Ed Miliband had ‘Bacon-gate’ and Dave Cameron had ‘Pigs head-gate’ and ‘Panama-gate’. If you’d chucked a stone at that lot, you’d likely have hit a Dave.
“If you’d chucked a stone at that lot, you’d likely have hit a Dave.”
Brilliant – made me chuckle!
Over here in the UK, Ed’s always been seen as a figure of fun. A lot of us refer to him as Beaker, as you can see from pictures people have posted on the net. Here’s one I googled:
A face only a mother could love. 🙂
“…from the Met Office that the age of extreme weather has just begun.”
This type of bombastic statement designed to get headline writers the world over salivating onto their keyboards, reminds me of a similar one that was made back on July 9th 1971.
“The world could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age“- a leading atmospheric scientist predicts. Dr. S. I. Rasool of NASA and Columbia University.
or this one made back in 2013
Climate Catastrophe Will Hit Tropics Around 2020
“Nature, Science and PNAS share the distinction of being tied as the world’s three most prestigious scientific journals, and an article is not published in these journals unless it has undergone extremely rigorous scientific peer-revue; so, climate-change deniers will have no professional credibility in attacking this study…”
Lol!
My god those poor people in Hawaii, the climate catastrophe is upon them and they don’t even know it…
If you can materialize the irrational you can do anything. (at least in your own mind)
Alternatively known as ‘mental gymnastics’.
Mental masturbation is more descriptive of the process.
There is nothing exceptional about 50C in Pakistan. The deaths in Germany and China were due to govt. incompetence, not “climate breakdown”.
The usual ploy of exploiting weather events to pretend it’s “climate change”.
Ed is Jewish. Conflating CAGW scepticism with holocaust denial puts him on very dodgy ground.
A typical champagne marxist of the Hampstead/Islington variety – he once had the soubriquet of Ed ‘2 kitchens’ Miliband. (One is simply never enough)
Ed Miliband: I have two kitchens but only use the small one
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/11469913/Ed-Miliband-I-have-two-kitchens-but-only-use-the-small-one.html
And he doesn’t use it to make bacon butties. But his biggest achievement was the ‘Edstone’.
“Labour leader Ed Miliband unveiled the 8ft 6in, two-tonne slab of limestone, with Labour’s six key election pledges carved into its surface, five days before polling day. The stone was designed to persuade the public that Miliband was serious about delivering on his promises in government. “They’re carved in stone because they won’t be abandoned after the general election,” said Miliband, standing in front of the stone in a car park in Hastings.” – The Grauniad.
Ed lost the election and the hunt for the stone was on…
“‘Ed Stone’ was destroyed shortly after general election
Labour party officials tell Bloomberg News two-tonne limestone slab carved with Miliband election pledges was broken up”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/21/ed-stone-destroyed-after-general-election
Miliband is the consummate loser with an empty head.
Befuddled Looks Matter?
“The wake-up call that this offers is not just the obvious one: that climate breakdown is already here. It also illustrates that we, in this generation, are in a unique position in the history of this crisis. Climate breakdown can no longer be plausibly denied as a threat etched only in the future. And all too soon, avoiding it may be a luxury lost to the past. The window to avoid catastrophe is closing with every passing day. We’re in the decisive decade in this fight, and we must treat the climate crisis as an issue that stands alone in the combination of its urgency and the shadow it casts over future generations.”
What a melodrama! Does he need therapy? or a lie detector?
So a fast solar coronal hole stream caused a heatwave early last August, and it’s been that hot in August in England before:
Climate models predict drier summers for western Europe with rising CO2 forcing, but of course they know that the summers have on average become wetter since 1995. They will attribute this to the warm phase of the AMO, but what caused the AMO to shift warm from 1995?
climate breakdown is already here.
Yes it is, it’s cold grey and wet, not the [hotter] drier summers David King et al have been pushing.
Every time they make a pronouncement they jinx a good summer.
Right now (July) floods are the ‘in’ disaster
UK summers have become on average wetter since 1995. That’s the Sun in control.
For anyone unfamiliar with this particular gentleman, firstly lucky you!
Secondly, he really has been one of the biggest goofy-faced buffoons in UK politics these last 20-odd years.
His lunatic 2008 Climate Change Act is costing and causing untold billions worth of economic and social damage to our country, yet neither he, it nor our current crop of off-the-charts political weapons are finished yet.
The only good thing he did was arrogantly stand for election against his far more able elder brother David, whom he undeservedly defeated with help from the UK’s hard Left unions. That saved the UK from another 5 years of the Labour party. (Though given how the Conservatives have turned out, it’s hard to say if they’d have been any worse.)
In short, he’s a textbook example of the truly grim Left-wing barnpots running the UK.
Barmpot.
Demands? GFY, Ed.
So phase-out of all fuel cars by 2035 is not real climate action?
Phase-out of gas boilers by 2030 is not real either?
Nor covering half the North Sea with wind turbines?
So what would real look like Ed?
A step back 1500 years to an early Saxon lifestyle?
For the peons, yes.
For important people like him, never.
This character was responsible for the mad Climate Chnage Act 2008 and the creation of a Climate Commitee which is still with us to this day and it is dictating that we should spend £1 Trillion. He was Labour Party leader for a while and changed the membership application process for his party. This allowed in a large number of left-wing extremists into it.
This character was responsible for the mad Climate Change Act 2008 and the creation of a Climate Commitee which is still with us to this day and it is dictating that we should spend £1 Trillion. He was Labour Party leader for a while and changed the membership application process for his party. This allowed in a large number of left-wing extremists into it.
So what is Millibrand asking and raving about? That Brits should make even more sacrifices and pay even higher taxes to make up for all the carbon China is producing?
Real climate action is to do nothing, since nothing much is happening. That’s the real world data, not the feverish fantasy of the ensemble climate models.
Most of the current weather events have been due to sinuous Rossby waves which tend to occur more often during the 11 year solar cycle minimum, which we’re now in. Maybe Ed can remember back to 2010 Great Moscow Heatwave? That was at the previous solar minimum.
Miliband is very wealthy, he won’t be affected by any of the increases to the cost of living they want to impose to “fix the climate”.
Yeah and the voters demanded politicians with an IQ but look what got put up … exhibit A.
Hey Ed, put a plastic bag over your head and eliminate “your” carbon footprint.
I would never call Ed Miliband’s period as energy minister unremarkable. He shepherded through the infamous Climate Change Act in 2008, and his 2010 Energy Act in the dying days of the Labour government that put green interests ahead of consumer interests in energy.
I would call it remarkably disastrous.
Why stop at chlorinated chicken protectionism when you can add import tariffs on all goods and flights for the benefit of budget needs for special interests?