Global warming is real but WE CAN NOT STOP IT.

The United Kingdom has reduced its carbon footprint by an impressive 40% since 1990. As a Western democracy our middle-class guilt is growing over our dirty planet and we are doing green things to feel better about ourselves and the coming catastrophe. But is there really much we can do to stop climate change having a big effect down the line? Is it happening already as we increasingly war and displace over the fight for resources? Is that the real catastrophe? The World Bank and IMF people (who cynically split Sudan in half so both halves immediately started a war over the countries oil ) joined the elite to fly into Davos in Switzerland last week in their private gas guzzling jets to discuss global warming at the World Economic Forum, seem to have little concern over their personal global footprint, or the planets.

So if they don’t want to stop it then who can? Can we, the people, collectively stop all this? The answer is probably not. I 100% agree climate change is happening through Man Made Global industry and the science is there. I’m not a denier. But it’s the reasons causing it that we are not really talking about or doing anything about: over – population. 15% of humans that have ever existed on Earth are alive today. In my lifetime world population has doubled from 3.5 billion to 7 billion. It’s going to double again, I guess. CO2 emissions have risen and the climate change deniers are falling away. But my problem is simple – we managed just one prosecution for Female Genital Mutilation in the United Kingdom in our history and so, due to racial sensitivities, how are we going to tell Indians and Africans to stop having seven kids each? Although China’s reproduction rates have started to slow as their middle-class rises the government lifted the one baby per family ban to counter that population slowing and so a people explosion down-the -line there. No country wants to make the big calls.

I think it’s admirable to recycle and buy electric cars and stuff but that has consequence. We are starting to see job losses in the west as car companies cut diesel production with the move to electric as those carbon cars are deemed polluting. The big car producers, hit by clean energy targets, simply cheated by using gadgets to make the engine appear cleaner. It got to absurd levels when $50,000 Four Wheel drives and VW Coupes were passing those tests. The middle-classes loved it and purchased those cars as it meant they had done their bit for cleaning the air and they were getting road tax break for driving luxury cleaner cars around town. Now that confidence trick has been revealed diesel sales have collapsed.

Is it that middle class guilt of leading tech savvy, intensive farming food consuming lives that is driving Britain’s cuts to our carbon footprint and not so much practical measures? Veganism is on the rise but almost exclusively in those middle classes, and on their terms. Not eating meat lifts the guilt the way buying organic food did in the supermarkets. The affluent shopper goes for the more expensive organic food from the top shelves as the poor scrape away on the bottom shelves buying cheaper unhealthy generic supermarket brands (yep, that why Wal-Mart own brand is down there folks!), a silent pleasure for the middle classes. Is green washing about class superiority we wonder? Is all this green religion really just a marketing exercise as the powers that be know you can’t stop man-made global warming so may as well just enjoy the warmer days and thrilling extreme weather on YouTube? A big yes from me.