Category Archives: Extinction Rebellion

What if politicians didn’t make the decisions?

I keep thinking about something. Please don’t groan, I can hear you.

Why are politicians constantly trying to work out what they need to do to get people to vote for them?

We have focus groups, opinion polls, electoral strategies, carefully tested messages and policies designed to appeal to particular groups of voters. Governments worry about what something will do to their polling. Opposition parties worry about whether saying what they actually think will cost them seats. Lobbyists, corporations, wealthy donors and organised interests all compete for access and influence, far beyond the ken of the ordinary public.

Then politicians go out and try to convince us that the resulting policies are the right thing to do.

It seems completely backwards.

Why don’t we start by asking what the right thing to do actually is, based on the best evidence we have, and then explain honestly and straightforwardly why we need to do it? No lies, misdirection, half truths or bullshit.

Some of the answers will be unpopular. Almost certainly. Dealing seriously with climate breakdown, inequality, defence, housing, taxation, migration, social care or the collapse of nature isn’t going to produce answers which everybody likes.

But perhaps that is what politics is supposed to be for.

I’ve increasingly started wondering whether I’m asking the wrong question. Perhaps the problem isn’t that we need politicians who are courageous enough to make better decisions.

Perhaps politicians shouldn’t be making most of these decisions in the first place. Given the current state of affairs, that seems like, perhaps, a no-brainer.

What if we did politics differently?

I’ve been reading more about anarchism recently, including Rebel City’s excellent little book For a Future Made by Us All. Anarchism isn’t the chaos and disorder that the word usually conjures up. My Mum often used to say something along the lines of “If we don’t fix this now, we’re going to slide into total anarchy.” I don’t think she really understood the principles of anarchism. At its heart are some quite simple ideas about freedom, equality, solidarity and mutual aid, and a profound suspicion of unnecessary hierarchy.

One idea particularly interests me: decisions flowing from the bottom upwards, rather than power flowing from the top downwards. Rebel City describes assemblies as a basic unit of non-hierarchical organisation, with people collectively participating in decisions affecting them.

That raises some interesting questions.

Why do we elect a few hundred people, many of whom change every few years, and then give them enormous power to make decisions for tens of millions of us?

What if we separated political decision-making from political administration?

Imagine that we identified a major issue and convened a Citizens’ Assembly: a randomly selected, demographically representative group of ordinary people. Not people who have spent their lives climbing through political parties, and not done a lot else. Not people who can afford £50,000 dinners with ministers. People like us.

Give them time. Give them access to information. Pay them properly for participating. Let them hear from scientists, economists, engineers, public servants, charities, religious/community leaders, businesses, campaigners and, importantly, people directly affected by whatever they are considering.

Let them question those people. Let them demand more evidence. Let them hear opposing arguments.

And then let them decide.

The process might look something like this:

Issue
↓
Independent evidence gathering
↓
Citizens’ Assembly
↓
Recommendation or decision
↓
Government publishes an implementation plan
↓
Politicians explain the decision and the reasoning behind it
↓
Civil service implements it
↓
Outcomes independently measured
↓
Results return to citizens

Then, if it doesn’t work, we change it.

That last bit seems important.

Our existing political system makes admitting failure incredibly difficult. If a government admits that one of its flagship policies hasn’t worked, the opposition attacks it. The media calls it a U-turn. Ministers become frightened of admitting mistakes, so enormous effort goes into proving that whatever they previously decided was right all along.

That’s a terrible way to learn. A terrible waste of time, money, resources and public faith.

Who chooses the experts?

There is an obvious problem with my imagined system. Who decides what evidence the assembly hears?

If the government chooses the experts, we have simply moved political control one step further away. If corporations can dominate the evidence because they have vastly greater resources than everyone else, we’ve recreated lobbying. If campaign groups can pack the process with people who agree with them, we’ve created another problem.

The evidence process would have to be genuinely independent, transparent and accountable. Assembly members themselves should be able to request additional witnesses, challenge evidence and ask to hear from somebody who disagrees.

And there should be a simple, key rule:

No privileged access for vested interests or lobbyists.

That doesn’t mean excluding them.

A renewable energy company will know something important about renewable energy. A trade union knows things about its members’ working conditions. An environmental organisation may have decades of specialist knowledge. Businesses, charities, campaigners and community organisations should all be able to contribute.

But they contribute in the room, transparently, alongside everybody else.

Nobody gets greater access because they donated £500,000 to a political party. Nobody gets a private dinner with the decision-maker. Nobody gets heard because they employ a former minister. Nobody gets to quietly wander around Westminster whispering into the right ears whilst offering free drinks.

Money shouldn’t buy political access.

Experts shouldn’t rule either

There is another distinction I think matters. Albeit, it’s tricky.

Experts provide knowledge. They don’t provide moral authority.

A climate scientist can explain what increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide is likely to do. An economist can model the economic consequences of different choices. An engineer can tell us what is technically possible. But none of them can tell us what kind of society we want to live in. Those are value judgements. They belong to all of us. And Citizens’ Assemblies will sometimes get those judgements wrong. Of course they will. Ordinary people aren’t infallible.

Neither experts nor Citizens’ Assemblies are infallible. Neither are politicians.

I’m increasingly baffled by the assumption that selecting somebody because they were good at winning an election somehow makes them particularly qualified to make enormously complicated decisions about energy systems, artificial intelligence, healthcare, agriculture, economics or climate breakdown.

A small real-world example: as a councillor I sit on a planning committee, and sometimes we are called upon to make decisions on Tree Preservation Orders. Hardly anyone there, aside from the Arborist, is an expert, yet I see subjective conclusions, and thus decisions, being made about trees that could be incorrect. Scale that up to decisions about the economy, climate, welfare, defence, the NHS and all sorts of other things.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be looking for infallibility. Perhaps we should be designing a system that produces decisions that are informed, representative, transparent, difficult to corrupt and capable of correcting themselves.

So what are politicians for?

We’d still need them. Probably. But their job would be very different.

Politicians would become managers, coordinators, facilitators, communicators and scrutineers. They would make sure decisions were implemented properly, coordinate institutions, allocate resources and hold the machinery of government to account.

Their job might be to tell us:

We asked citizens to consider this problem. They spent time understanding it. They heard the evidence, challenged it and deliberated together. This is what they decided. This is why they decided it. This is how we’re going to make it happen. And this is how we’ll find out whether it worked.

And power shouldn’t all sit in Westminster.

If something can sensibly be decided by a community, let the community decide it. If it needs coordination across a region, move it up a level. Some things inevitably require national coordination, and some problems cross national borders.

But power should move upwards only when it needs to.

That feels much closer to the bottom-up organisation described by anarchist thinkers than our extraordinary concentration of political power at the centre.

There are, obviously, enormous unanswered questions. How do we protect minority rights? Who decides which questions go to assemblies? What happens in an emergency? What constitutional safeguards do we need? What happens when different assemblies reach contradictory decisions? How do we prevent somebody capturing the supposedly independent evidence system?

I don’t know. But I don’t think what we have is working. And I keep going back to the criticism of democracy attributed to Socrates, particularly through Plato: that political decisions can end up being made by people who have won popular support but don’t necessarily understand the things they are deciding. The argument is more complicated than that, but perhaps one answer to it is a properly constituted Citizens’ Assembly; ordinary people given the time, evidence and access to expertise needed to make informed decisions.

This isn’t a constitutional blueprint. It’s a question. Because perhaps we’ve been trying to solve the wrong problem.

I keep hoping that better people will become politicians. That somehow the next collection of people entering Westminster will resist the machinery of parties, elections, donors, lobbyists, opinion polls, newspapers, social media and the relentless need to win the next election.

They almost certainly won’t.

Perhaps instead of endlessly trying to find better people to give enormous amounts of political power, we should build a society in which politicians have much less power to exercise.

Democracy shouldn’t just mean choosing, every four or five years, which small group of people gets to make decisions for everybody else. Maybe it could mean ordinary people, given the information and time necessary to understand difficult questions, making those decisions together.

From the bottom up.

With politicians working for us, rather than ruling over us.

Or we could go for a dictatorship. All hail our Lord and Master Gideon, who will make decisions based on tribute, warm spots and head scratches. Actually, I’m not convinced that isn’t what is happening at the moment. But Gideon recommends we give him a shot anyway.

Gideon, urr, yeah, sorry, your Lord and Master

Mad World

3 Replies

All around me are familiar faces
Worn-out places, worn-out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere

Their tears are fillin’ up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head, I wanna drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow

….the Gary Jules version

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about risks. Actually, that’s a lie, I’ve been thinking about these sorts of risks for years. It’s quite tiring. Regard that last sentence as British reservedness.

As a project manager, I’m trained to identify what could go wrong, how likely it is, how serious the consequences would be, how risks interact, and what you can do to mitigate, resolve, or in some cases review if we should accept them.

I’ve been wondering what a global risk register would look like, and what the consequences are when you pull them all together.

I’ve stared at this a lot since finishing it. Wondering if I missed anything, or if I’ve exaggerated any of the risks or consequences. If anything it’s probably conservative, as I’ve tried to stick to peer-reviewed science and analysis. One could argue that matters are, in fact, a lot worse. Talk to climate scientists away from the careful language of papers and reports and, in my experience at least, some will tell you just how frightened they really are.

I’ve not put a particular timeline against this, other than some of the boxes are already happening. Personally, I find it increasingly difficult to see how we avoid the systemic breakdown box on our current trajectory. I don’t know when, and I still think we have options. Options are important.

It’s not a very pleasant diagram. Not because every risk shown here will materialise at its worst. They won’t, probably. But some already have. Others are becoming more likely or more severe. And, crucially, they are not independent. Heat affects food. Floods affect infrastructure. Infrastructure affects supply chains. Disasters affect insurance and public finances. Food and housing costs affect poverty and inequality. Those stresses affect societies’ ability to cope with the next crisis.

I added a box on the right hand side too. Other major systemic risks. Because we are facing a multitude of potential catastrophes – I am sure I’ve missed some, feel free to add to the list – we also face war, nuclear escalation, pandemics, antimicrobial resistance and rapidly developing artificial intelligence. I felt like I should add patriarchy, but that’s more a cause than a symptom.

This is the worst risk register I’ve ever looked at. I don’t know how we can start to manage it. If this were any other project, would we really look at it and conclude that business as usual was the safe option? But that’s often the funny thing about risk registers, project managers wave them in front of their sponsors, and they often don’t really look at them, don’t really register or feel what they could mean in terms of successful outcomes. Then, unsurprisingly, projects are often delayed, collapse, or change far beyond their initial remit – I am sure many project managers can empathise.

I should add – I’ve seen many excellently run and delivered projects, at least a couple of them by my good self. They work really well when stakeholders and the project team are engaged and understand what is happening, what the risks and issues are, and what they need to do to help ensure delivery is a success. I maintain that project management, really, is about making lists, effective communication, and nagging.

Back to the diagram. I can create a risk register. Put it in colourful boxes. Draw arrows between the boxes. Find sources for every claim. Make sure every arrow can be defended.

But I can’t put on the diagram what knowing all this makes me feel.

That is, perhaps, the most important bit. People can be good at reading stuff, analysis, reaching conclusions, and they can also be rubbish at it. They can also forget facts and stuff they’ve read quite quickly. I do it all the time as a project manager – I move from one delivery to another, and once one is done I file it in my mind, find myself remembering the high level bits, but the detail is gone after around 3 months because I’ve had to move on something else.

Facts are capricious. Easily forgotten or laid aside in favour of something more current. Like Harry and Meghan. Or Farage. Or Eastenders. We are a wonderfully distractable species and our media and politicians know it.

What aren’t so forgettable, or deletable, are feelings, emotions. A diagram doesn’t necessarily invoke feelings, although this one did for me. A song, a smell, a picture, can all invoke powerful memories that are retained for a lifetime. A diagram doesn’t do that. Strong emotions, felt at a particular event, tied to sensory inputs, have, I think, a far greater chance of being retained.

I think people need to feel these risks. Sadly, many already have as they materialise into regional issues – smoke from fires, hunger in the belly, a parched throat, being engulfed by flood waters, mud, or rockslides, grief at a lake or river dying, a forest or a glacier disappearing, or another animal going extinct.

Feeling is so important. I think only when we really feel what is happening are we motivated to change course. I am talking about when things really matter – health, survival, future generations, survival – food, shelter, warmth.

It makes me frightened. It makes me angry. Often it makes me despair. Because we know what is happening. We know what we need to do. And still we carry on. We let our elected leaders, corporation bosses, billionaires, carry on. ‘Keep calm and carry on’ …screw that.

Can you feel the rage, the grief? Born out of love, but also just, fucking, rage, that we are and have been led to this place. A place where nature is dying – I saw thousands of dead fish floating in the Wensum the other day but it’s alright as Anglian Water shareholders are doing okay – people are dying, especially in the Global South – see Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Zambia, Libya, Zimbabwe, even the USA, although it is better endowed to cope with such events. Is this alright? I guess it is if you just see it on TV or in a newspaper, but what if you actually feel it, and what it could mean for you and people you care about?

I feel it. Every single day. My activist friends – and I hate calling them activist friends, they’re people that just deeply care and can’t stand by – they feel it. Every. Single. Day.

Actually, a lot of religious leaders feel it and have called out that we need to do something, urgently, including the Pope I think. I am sure a lot of charities feel it, as demands on their dwindling resources grow. And some political leaders do, including António Guterres, and a few others. Not many, sadly.

One can present a table of risks, or consequences. One can publish such a thing in countless scientific journals, newspapers, books. But unless people emotionally connect with what is happening, and aren’t anaesthetised by the drugs of social media and TV, we aren’t going to have the revolution – preferably non-violent and accountable – that is needed.

I take action because action gives me hope. XR and Just Stop Oil gave me hope. Defend Our Juries gives me hope. Seeing people sitting in a road with other ordinary people and refusing to cooperate with something profoundly wrong gives me hope. But increasingly I find myself asking whether actions involving tens, hundreds, even thousands of us can possibly force change on the scale now required.

Perhaps we need millions. Not just in the UK. Globally.

It is, after all, a minority of the super rich and powerful, and the vested interests they benefit from and protect, that are disproportionately driving so much of this – climate breakdown, biodiversity collapse, grotesque inequality, hunger, thirst, the sixth mass extinction…I could go on.

Perhaps we need to stop.

Actually stop.

Not a march on a Saturday afternoon. Not another pointless petition. Not another consultation. Not another promise that if we vote differently in four years’ time things might get better.

Workers stop working. Offices empty. Trains stop. Deliveries stop. Shops close. Production stops. The machinery of business as usual stops. Just Stop.

Hospitals keep caring for people. Carers keep caring. Firefighters respond to fires. Essential services necessary to protect life continue.

But everything else?

A general strike, on a scale that cannot be ignored.

Because political and economic power ultimately depends upon millions of ordinary people continuing to cooperate with it. We work. We produce. We buy. We move things. We keep institutions functioning. We make other people rich.

What happens if, together, we withdraw that cooperation? Perhaps it could start in the UK. Perhaps elsewhere. Perhaps everywhere. Because ordinary people across the world mostly want the same basic things: safety, food, shelter, family, friendship, love, a future.

And yes, this will likely mean lifestyle changes. It will mean accepting that we can’t have all the things we wanted, and that our futures are going to be quite different from what we anticipated. But at least we’ll be alive, and our children will have a chance of a future.

We could even be happier and healthier, with better communities and greater connection.

Surely survival is the priority? Not war. Not greed. Not GDP. Not AI. Not the space race.

What happens if we say: not again until you deal with this?

No more HARM.

Options are important. We still have them. We can stop making things worse. We can prepare for what is already coming. We can protect each other. Restore nature. Build stronger communities. Stop cooperating with systems that are causing so much harm.

None of that guarantees everything will be okay. It won’t be. That’s not how risk works.

But business as usual is an option too.

It’s the high-risk option.

Just. Fucking. Stop.

And sorry, project manager mode, here’s the table I pulled together to inform the risk diagram that people will forget, but hopefully they’ll remember the rage, grief, and love.

Risk / issue	Status	Direction	Potential severity	What it can lead to / amplify	Evidence and current assessment
Greenhouse-gas emissions / fossil-fuel dependence	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Further heating; ocean warming; sea-level rise; extremes; tipping risks	UNEP’s 2025 assessment puts current-policy warming at about 2.8°C this century, with full implementation of current Nationally Determined Contributions at about 2.3–2.5°C. (UNEP – UN Environment Programme)
Global heating	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Heat; drought; heavy rainfall; fire; ecosystem damage; food/water stress	WMO reports 2015–2025 were the hottest 11 years observed and 2025 was about 1.43°C above 1850–1900. (World Meteorological Organization)
Extreme heat	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Mortality; illness; labour losses; crop stress; infrastructure/energy pressure	WHO says exposure is growing in every region; mortality among over-65s increased about 85% between 2000–04 and 2017–21, with studies estimating about 489,000 heat-related deaths annually during 2000–19. (World Health Organization)
Drought & water stress	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Crop loss; ecosystem damage; water insecurity; livelihood losses; displacement	IPCC finds concurrent heat and drought already causing crop-production losses and tree mortality, with compound risks increasing as warming rises. (IPCC)
Floods & extreme rainfall	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Mortality; displacement; infrastructure/property damage; supply disruption	IPCC finds concurrent and repeated hazards are already increasing impacts on infrastructure, health, livelihoods and food, with risks cascading across sectors. (IPCC)
Wildfire / dangerous fire weather	HAPPENING NOW	↑	High–very high	Mortality; smoke exposure; ecosystem loss; property loss; carbon release	IPCC assesses wildfire and other extremes as part of increasingly interacting and compound climate risks. (IPCC)
Ocean warming & marine heatwaves	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Coral mortality; marine ecosystem disruption; fishery impacts	WMO reports continuing ocean warming and a growing planetary energy imbalance; the ocean also continues absorbing carbon dioxide. (World Meteorological Organization)
Ocean acidification	HAPPENING NOW	↑	High–very high	Coral/shell-former damage; food-web disruption; fisheries risk	Ocean acidification is a direct consequence of additional atmospheric carbon dioxide absorbed by the ocean, and interacts with warming and other marine pressures. WMO continues to track it as a major global climate indicator. (World Meteorological Organization)
Glacier & ice loss	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Sea-level rise; freshwater/hydrological changes; long-term irreversible losses	IPCC finds continuing substantial glacier loss; Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass and long-term loss increases strongly with sustained warming. (IPCC)
Sea-level rise	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Coastal flooding; erosion; salinisation; displacement; infrastructure/property loss	IPCC assesses sea-level rise as effectively irreversible on centennial timescales, with ice-sheet behaviour creating additional long-term risk. (IPCC)
Biodiversity & ecosystem decline	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Loss of pollination, fisheries, carbon storage, water regulation and ecosystem resilience	IPBES’s Nexus Assessment explicitly treats biodiversity, water, food and health as interconnected systems rather than isolated environmental issues. (IPBES ICT)
Earth-system / ecological tipping points	WORSENING / EMERGING RISK	↑	Potentially catastrophic	Abrupt or irreversible ecosystem/climate change; additional warming; long-term sea-level rise; regional climate shifts	IPCC defines tipping points as critical thresholds beyond which systems reorganise, often abruptly and/or irreversibly, and finds their likelihood and impacts increase with warming. Large-scale singular risks move into high risk around 1.5–2.5°C in AR6. (IPCC)
Warm-water coral reef collapse	HAPPENING NOW / possible tipping transition	↑	Very high	Biodiversity loss; fisheries impacts; coastal vulnerability; livelihood losses	The 2025 Global Tipping Points assessment, involving 160+ researchers, concluded widespread warm-water coral mortality is underway and characterised this as the first Earth-system tipping point reached. This is a post-AR6 expert assessment, not an IPCC finding, so I would retain that qualification. (National Oceanography Centre)
Crop & fishery production impacts	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Food insecurity; livelihood losses; price shocks; malnutrition	FAO’s 2025 assessment finds disasters increasingly disrupting crops, livestock, fisheries and aquaculture, with $3.26 trillion in agricultural losses estimated over 1991–2023. (FAOHome)
Simultaneous major crop failures / multi-breadbasket shock	WORSENING / EMERGING RISK	↑	Potentially catastrophic	Major price shocks; shortages; export restrictions; severe food insecurity	IPCC specifically finds that above 1.5°C, increasing concurrent extremes raise the risk of simultaneous maize losses in major producing regions, with risk rising further with warming. This supports an increasing risk, not a prediction of imminent global crop failure. (IPCC)
Food & water insecurity	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Malnutrition; disease; poverty; displacement; reduced resilience	FAO reports climate extremes are already major drivers of agrifood crises; conflict and economic shocks remain major independent drivers. Acute hunger affected more than 295 million people in 53 countries/territories in 2024. (FAOHome)
Health impacts	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Mortality; morbidity; health-system pressure; lost productivity	Heat already causes substantial mortality and illness, while climate-related food, water and livelihood impacts create secondary health burdens. (World Health Organization)
Homes & infrastructure damage / failure	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Power, water, transport and communications disruption; connected service failures	IPCC finds infrastructure impacts can propagate into economic activity and essential services; compound hazards make these risks increasingly difficult to manage. (IPCC)
Supply-chain disruption	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Shortages; price shocks; manufacturing interruption; economic losses	IPCC finds climate impacts already cross borders through supply chains, markets and resource flows, making climate risk transboundary as well as local. (IPCC)
Insurance & property risk / uninsurability	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Falling asset values; affordability problems; mortgage/lender losses; financial stress	UNDRR identifies an emerging disaster–uninsurability spiral. The Bank of England says physical climate losses can reduce property values, increase insurer/lender losses and reduce insurance availability and affordability. (UNDRR)
Price & livelihood shocks	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Poverty; food insecurity; inequality; reduced household resilience	Agricultural losses, disrupted supply chains and disaster impacts transmit through markets and livelihoods. FAO explicitly describes cascading effects through markets, finance and infrastructure. (FAOHome)
Inequality & vulnerability	HAPPENING NOW / AMPLIFIER	?	Very high amplifier	Greater mortality; food insecurity; livelihood loss; displacement; reduced recovery capacity	Exposure and adaptive capacity strongly mediate disaster outcomes. The same hazard can therefore create radically different consequences depending on poverty, institutions and access to resources. (IPCC)
Displacement & involuntary mobility	HAPPENING NOW	↑	High–very high	Loss of homes/livelihoods; pressure on receiving communities; additional vulnerability	IPCC finds high confidence that anthropogenic climate forcing has affected internal displacement through weather extremes, while stressing that migration is multi-causal. It specifically says climate-driven mobility generally does not increase risks to peace. (IPCC)
Economic, fiscal & financial stress	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Debt; reduced investment; weaker recovery; financial instability	UNDRR estimates direct disaster losses at roughly $202bn annually but over $2.3tn annually when indirect, cascading and ecosystem costs are included, describing debt, uninsurability and humanitarian-need spirals. (UNDRR)
Response / institutional capacity under pressure	MATERIALISING LOCALLY	?	Very high	Reduced preparedness; service failure; slower recovery; greater losses from subsequent shocks	UNDRR describes a reinforcing process in which disasters destroy assets and income, reduce tax revenues, increase borrowing costs and consume resources required for recovery and resilience. (UNDRR)
Political & social instability risk	CONTEXT-DEPENDENT RISK	?	Very high	Weakened cooperation/institutions; unrest; violence; reduced crisis-response capacity	Evidence requires care. IPCC finds climate variability can influence conflict dynamics, but its historical effect is small relative to dominant socioeconomic and political drivers and there is insufficient evidence to attribute armed conflict directly to climate change. (IPCC)
Compound & cascading crises	HAPPENING NOW / WORSENING	↑	Potentially catastrophic	Simultaneous failures; cross-sector impacts; overwhelmed coping capacity	IPCC gives high confidence that climatic and non-climatic risks increasingly interact, compound and cascade across sectors and regions. This is one of the strongest foundations for the whole register. (IPCC)
Risk of systemic breakdown	CATASTROPHIC POSSIBILITY	?	Potentially catastrophic	Multiple essential systems failing faster than societies can compensate or recover	This is a systems inference, not an IPCC prediction. UNDRR nevertheless explicitly describes interacting disaster spirals that can deepen crises into systemic collapse, providing evidence for treating this as a legitimate aggregate risk. (UNDRR)
Extreme outcome: societal collapse	CATASTROPHIC POSSIBILITY	?	Potentially catastrophic	Sustained inability of institutions and essential systems to meet basic needs	Retain only as an extreme aggregate risk, not a predicted climate outcome. Evidence supports systemic crisis pathways, but there is no authoritative basis for assigning a reliable probability to global societal collapse. (UNDRR)
Pandemic / emerging disease	PERSISTENT SYSTEMIC RISK	?	Potentially catastrophic	Mortality; health-system overload; supply-chain and economic disruption	WHO says preparedness has improved since COVID-19 but remains fragile and uneven. The 2025 Pandemic Agreement exists specifically to strengthen prevention and response to future pandemic threats. (World Health Organization)
Antimicrobial resistance	HAPPENING NOW	↑	Very high	Treatment failure; mortality; pressure on health systems and economies	WHO reports about one in six laboratory-confirmed common bacterial infections worldwide in 2023 were antibiotic-resistant; resistance increased in more than 40% of monitored pathogen-antibiotic combinations during 2018–23. (World Health Organization)
War & geopolitical conflict	HAPPENING NOW	?	Potentially catastrophic	Mortality; displacement; food/energy shocks; infrastructure destruction; reduced cooperation	Treat as an independent systemic risk and amplifier. Climate can interact with existing vulnerabilities, but IPCC does not support a simple climate → war causal relationship. (IPCC)
Nuclear escalation	PERSISTENT / HEIGHTENED SYSTEMIC RISK	↑	Potentially catastrophic	Mass destruction; radioactive contamination; global economic/food/systemic consequences	SIPRI’s 2026 assessment says all nine nuclear-armed states continued modernisation in 2025 and that reliance on nuclear weapons is increasing while risks of miscalculation and escalation are rising. (SIPRI)
Artificial intelligence / technological risk	SOME HARMS HAPPENING; LARGER RISKS UNCERTAIN	↑	High–potentially catastrophic	Fraud; cyberattack; manipulation; labour/economic disruption; critical-system malfunction	The 2026 International AI Safety Report documents real harms while emphasising substantial uncertainty about severe future risks. It separates misuse, malfunction and systemic risks. (International AI Safety Report)
Misinformation & manipulation	HAPPENING NOW / AMPLIFIER	↑	High amplifier	Reduced trust; polarisation; impaired collective decision-making and crisis response	AI-enabled deception and manipulation are documented, but reliable evidence about prevalence and aggregate societal severity remains limited. I would therefore retain this as an amplifier, not a route directly to systemic breakdown. (International AI Safety Report)

Mad world.

We did this

1 Reply

I seem to have fallen into a pattern, that repeats.
Wake up. Feel alright.
Get on with work. The day.
Check the news. Catch up on messages.
Work meeting.
Activist meeting.
Cognitive dissonance EXPLOSION.

Try again. To engage with people.
At work – they don’t get it.
Grief builds. Rage builds.
Go for a walk.
Sit in the church yard.
Wonder when the fields.
Will burn. Or flood.
Or freeze.

A blackbird brings temporary reprieve.
Temporary solace in nature.
The trees. Birds. Insects. Deer.
Then more grief. For them.
For the dog walker.
For kids. In the playground.
For us.

Back to work.
More meetings. More dissonance.
Try again. Mostly silence.
Or embarrassment.
No realisation of what their kids.
Are facing.
What they.
Are facing.
The game. Is up.

They admit. It’s bad.
Then back to holidays. Flights.
AI. TV shows. Shoes.
Buying stuff they want.
But don’t need.
Maybe they can’t connect. Emotionally.
Maybe to do so.
Would crumple something.
Their raison d’etre.
Their fragile purpose.
Their faith in systems. Order. Continuity.
In the future.
All fucked. Collapsed.

Keep on. Keeping on.
Try to conform. To work hard.
To deliver.
To help colleagues. Friends.
Work is, after all, a community.
We lack community.
We need community.
We have destroyed. Community.
Lockdown. The Internet. Nuclear families.
Social Media. The Media. Politicians.
Billionaires. Marketing. Us.
They have destroyed. Community.
We let them.

Finish work.
Although it still goes on.
In my head. The list.
The to do’s. I’ve not done.
Next up. Planning meeting. Action.
People that get it.
That are awake.
The tired eyes. The Grief.
The Rage. The Hope.
That we can still make a difference.
But even if we can’t.
We’ll try.
Because that’s all that’s left.
Trying. In that we find.
Sanity.

More plans. Ideas. Analysis.
Sizzling vibes.
Maybe this could work.
Make a difference.
Wake them up.
Make them see. Connect.
With all their being.
Make them feel. What we feel.
Break the pattern. The mould.
Maybe. They are ready now.
After the heat. The drought.
The fires. The floods.
The harvest gone bad. The deaths.
After. Nepal. The flash flood. The carnage.

Again. I underestimate.
The establishment. The vested. Interests.
Fossil fuel. Lobbyists.
The media, the billionaires.
The politicians, drunk in Westminster.
The corporations. The money. The power.
Corruption. Greed. Hate.
Lady Justice.
Has been blinded.
Gagged.
Violated.

A council meeting.
I go along. Hopeful.
Maybe they’ll listen. This time.
I tried the system. Elected. Councillor.
Tried. To make a difference.
Barriers. Bureaucracy. Semantics. POLITICS.
Pettiness. Sniping. Divisiveness.
Nothing the public.
Would care about.
But stopping anything. Radical.
Anything. Not normal.
Anything needed.
That would rock. The boat.
Which is sinking.

Home. My cat. Unconditional.
Unless I withhold. Treats.
They see, in the dark.
But. Can stand on your face.
While you sleep.
Sofa. Wine. TV.
Anaesthetic. To a failing world.
To the grief. The anger.
The ignorance. The arrogance.
The patriarchy. The old men.
Who greedily grasp power.
Whilst we burn. Suffocate. Starve.

I am hungry. For unity.
For love. For nature. For water.
For soil. For plants. For people.
For community. For care.
For change that means something.
For action that does something.
For systems that work.
For people.
Not power.
For a future. For children.
And.
For me. For us. For all life.

Sleep comes.
Sometimes in bed.
Sometimes the sofa.
Broken dreams. Conflict.
Anxiety expressed.
Lost. Burdened by luggage.
Whilst fleeing.
Mountain passes. Fields.
Tents. Many people I know.
Fighting. I evade. But have nothing.
No weapon. No strength left.
In my legs.
I just exist. Hide. Try to help.
Whilst it all.
Dies.
Guilt.

I awake. A new day.
The pattern repeats.
More grief. More rage.
More sparks. Of hope.
More news. More lies.
Corruption. Greed. Fallacies.
More worship.
Of false idols.
We sacrifice. Ourselves.
Our children.
The future.
On the altar of capitalism.
Of unfettered growth.
Of Trump. Putin. Netanyahu. Modi. Farage. Musk. Zuckerberg. Bezos.
Murdoch. Thiel. Altman. bin Salman.
Oh. Look. All men.

More news. More floods.
More drought. More fire.
More war. More death.
More atrocity. More genocide.
In Gaza.
In Sudan. In Myanmar.
In China – Xinjiang.
In Ukraine.

More. More More.
We push back. We try.
More solar. More wind.
More tidal. More clean.
Grid upgrades. Storage.
But. No.
Self interest. Privilege. Status quo.
They stop us. Surviving.
Stop us. Changing.
It will be too late. Too soon.
Then. Their fields. Will be burnt. Frozen. Flooded.
We will be.
Climate refugees.
With no refuge.

Somehow. Still.
I. And many others.
Carry on. With the burden.
Of grief. Of guilt. Of rage.
Of knowing.
Of being awake.
Of connecting.
With where we are.
And where we will be.

Some things. Locked in.
Others. Still preventable.
If we try.
If we Rebel. For Life.
If we say. No more.
No more patriarchy.
No more media platforms for billionaires.
No more Oil. Gas. Fossil fuels.
No more profit.
Whilst Earth burns.
No more drunk MPs. In Westminster.
No more lies.

Tell the Truth.
Rewild. Restore.
Ungag Lady Justice. Let her see. Act.
Build communities.
Grow connections, not wealth.
Live within. Our limits.
Not taking. From others.
Food. Water. Shelter.
Warmth. Companionship. Happiness.
Joy. Health.
A future.

NOT A BURNING PLANET.
Wracked by storms. Fires. Floods. War.
And collapse.
Extinction.

We can do this.
We can wake up.
We can change our path.
We can save ourselves. Future generations.
The living world we belong to.
If we act. If we step up. If we take risks. If we connect.
HOPE IS ACTIVE

RESIST

Don’t Look Up: When the Government Finally Admits the Planet Is Breaking

3 Replies

The Government has finally published a report it previously suppressed, calmly explaining that biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse pose a direct threat to national security. Which is nice of them. Always good to know when the house is on fire, even if the alarm only goes off after the roof has already collapsed.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nature-security-assessment-on-global-biodiversity-loss-ecosystem-collapse-and-national-security

The report itself is actually quite readable. That’s part of what makes it so disturbing. It doesn’t scream. It doesn’t rant. It doesn’t glue itself to the road or throw soup at a painting. It just politely lays out, in civil-service prose, how the life-support systems of the planet are failing, and how that might be a bit of a problem for economies, borders, food supplies, public health, and, you know, civilisation.

Critical ecosystems are at risk of collapsing

If anything, it feels conservative, which is fairly typical of government or scientific reports on the climate and nature crises. Multiple critical ecosystems – coral reefs, boreal forests, major mountain systems like the Himalayas – are expected to collapse soon. Not in 2100. Not for our grandchildren to worry about. Soon soon. Others, including the Amazon rainforest, the Congo Basin and mangrove systems, are likely to follow. Dominoes, but with forests and oceans instead of plastic rectangles.

Meanwhile, atmospheric CO₂ has reached 428 parts per million, and the line on the graph is still curving upward. That single number underpins a whole cascade of consequences: climate breakdown, ecosystem collapse, floods, fires, crop failures, water stress, resource conflicts, mass migration, disease outbreaks, and increasing parts of the planet becoming uninhabitable. From there, social instability and collapse aren’t radical ideas — they’re logical outcomes.

Much of this is already happening, of course, especially in poorer countries that did the least to cause the problem and are least able to adapt. But don’t worry – I’m sure the market will fix it. Any day now.

What’s particularly maddening is that this isn’t some unsolvable mystery. There is no missing equation. No magical technology yet to be invented by a mega-corporation keen to make an even more obscene profit. We already know what to do.

We could fly less. Eat less meat. Scale up renewable energy at speed — the way China is doing while we argue about whether onshore wind or solar is “a bit unsightly”. We could rewild vast areas of land instead of treating nature like a decorative afterthought. We could protect rivers, lakes and oceans – which might help if water companies weren’t allowed to behave like extraction businesses with a sewage fetish. Public ownership, anyone?

We could grow more food locally. Insulate our homes properly. Use public transport that actually works. Stop pouring obscene amounts of energy into data centres and AI so that a chatbot can write slightly worse emails than a human already can. None of this is revolutionary. It’s just unfashionable — and it directly contradicts the Government’s growth mantra.

There will be no growth, of money or nature, on a planet stricken by floods, fires and water shortages, or on one with finite resources that will inevitably run out, despite billionaires’ protestations to the contrary. It’s all a bit King Cnut — in fact, with a little rearrangement, that surname could apply to many world leaders and tech bros.

History remembers King Cnut kindly; he was making a point — today’s leaders genuinely expect the tide to obey.

What really blocks progress isn’t technology — it’s power. Decisions about the future of the planet are still overwhelmingly made by a small group of ageing men, many of them white, some of them inexplicably orange, who will be comfortably dead before the worst consequences arrive. They continue to gamble everyone else’s future while telling us to be realistic. At times, I genuinely wonder whether Trump’s plan is simply to burn everything down, unable to tolerate the idea of a world continuing without him.

And here’s the thing: if we fail to act, the consequences won’t land on some distant, hypothetical generation. They’re already landing. They will fall hardest on our children – many of whom may never grow old enough to reach our age, let alone retire.

But don’t worry. The plan still seems to be: carry on, extract more, emit more, suppress awkward reports, and hope no one joins the dots.

Don’t look up.

Time, unfortunately, is.

Take Back Power – join the Resistance.

Why Aren’t They Listening?

1 Reply

Salt, Sea Devil ambassador: “These are the words of a politician, vetted and craven and hollow. You would answer.”

Barclay, Ambassador for human-kind: “Because we were stupid. That’s the truth of it. And the whole planet is going to hell right now because we didn’t understand the consequences.”

Salt, Sea Devil ambassador: “But now, you do?”

Barclay, Ambassador for human-kind: “Yeah, now we do. Still every day water companies are pumping poison and sewage into our rivers and oceans, all the while dishing out bonuses to their bosses. And the thing is, we are letting them get away with it! We’re just sat at home, flicking through our phones, making tea, thinking it’s someone else’s problem! But it’s not. This is my fault. We all played our part. Now we have to help fix it. And the thing is, our kids know this! Our kids. They’re way ahead of us! Why aren’t we listening? Well, today’s the day we start.”

Salt, Sea Devil ambassador: “I think you are my favourite human.”

_____________________________________________________________________________

This exchange from the new BBC/Disney+ series The War Between the Land and the Sea stayed with me long after the episode finished. The sets, costumes and visuals are impressive — but it was Barclay, the unlikely ambassador thrust into responsibility, who delivers the most piercing truth:

“And the thing is, we are letting them get away with it!”

“Why aren’t we listening?”

Two lines that feel painfully relevant.

Water companies, oil and gas giants, the media, the banks, and the politicians who prop them up have been getting away with it for decades — and we’ve let them.

Where am I going with this?

This post is about why we must accelerate the transition to renewable energy, whilst also bringing essential services like water back into public ownership. For decades, executives have prioritised profit, bonuses and shareholders over public good. Since privatisation in 1989, it’s been yet another “victory” for neoliberal capitalism — one that has spectacularly screwed us over.

We’ve Been Betrayed

The science on greenhouse gases has been clear for almost two centuries.

In 1824, Joseph Fourier described the greenhouse effect.
In 1861, John Tyndall identified the gases responsible. The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research — named after Tyndall — is just down the road from me in Norwich.
In 1900, Knut Angstrom, discovers CO2 strongly absorbs parts of the infrared spectrum.
In 1938, Guy Callendar showed that temperatures rose over the previous century. He demonstrated that CO2 concentrations had increased over the same period, and suggested this caused the warming. His claims were dismissed.
In 1968, US President’s Advisory Committee panel warned that the greenhouse effect is a matter of “real concern”.
In 1975, scientist Wallace Broecker put the term “global warming” into the public domain.

The above has been followed by countless IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) assessments, and COPs (Conference of the Parties) to try to solve the challenge of climate breakdown. Some progress has been made, but not nearly enough.

We’ve known the facts. We’ve proven them. And yet oil and gas companies hid their own research, just as tobacco companies once hid the link between smoking and cancer. Billionaire-owned media outlets are defending them. Politicians were and are being lobbied into paralysis – just look at COP30. And so we are being lied to, misdirected and exploited whilst the planet is burning.

We have been failed time and time again by successive Governments who have put the interests of mega-corporations, profit and power, ahead of ordinary people. They have betrayed us to the altar of profit, lied, misdirected, and in some cases filled their pockets with blood money.

We didn’t “fail to understand” — we are being denied the truth.

We’re Not Stupid

Barclay says, “Because we were stupid.”

But we weren’t. We were and are being deliberately misled.

Instead of honesty, we got greenwashing, smokescreens, and faux responsibility — like BP inventing the personal carbon footprint calculator to shift the blame from corporations onto individuals.

Imagine if the public could be given the same clarity scientists shared recently at the National Emergency Briefing. The shift in understanding — and action — might come rapidly and radically.

National Emergency Briefing – https://www.nebriefing.org/

You can find recordings of the various segments of the National Emergency Briefing on YouTube.

How Fast Can We Decarbonise?

In the UK, we’ve reduced emissions — but we still emit far more per person than many countries with less wealth and fewer resources. And we should have made the major cuts twenty years ago. We’re now out of time for a gentle transition. We must act rapidly, even if it’s uncomfortable.

This will upset people, especially in a country used to convenience and abundance. But climate physics does not negotiate. Deaths, harm, migration, are all being caused right now by our carbon emissions.

Our Obligations

We are privileged — often without realising it. Given our historic emissions, the UK has a moral obligation to move first and fast.

The alternative? Pull up the drawbridge, protect ourselves for a few extra years, and ignore suffering elsewhere. But our food imports, supply chains and future mass migration make that fantasy laughable.

Billions will be on the move. The question is whether we meet that future prepared — or panicked.

Tell the Truth

People are not being told the truth by politicians or the media. If they were, they’d understand what we are facing:

As laid out at the National Emergency Briefing, the collapse of AMOC (the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – a crucial system of Atlantic Ocean currents acting as a giant conveyor belt) could mean:

–30°C winters
extreme summer heat
chronic water shortages
the UK unable to grow food
the British becoming climate refugees

The irony isn’t lost on me; one wonders whether we’ll have enough small boats.

Extinction Rebellion warned we needed major emissions cuts in 2018. Oil and gas companies and wealthy governments around the world denied it, buried it, or have since waved around Carbon Capture and Storage — a technology unproven at meaningful scale, and one that conveniently ignores the huge emissions from extraction and transport of natural gas in the first place. Profit over life, again.

So, What Can We Do?

We need rapid, large-scale deployment of renewables:

Wind
Solar
Tidal
Geothermal – there’s some exciting stuff going on with old coal mines

Fusion power would be ideal, but remains underfunded and decades away. We also need to upgrade the grid and to build massive battery storage facilities. This is all doable and exciting, and will create huge potential in terms of sustainable economic growth, jobs and wellbeing, we just need the politicians in power to stop dragging their heels.

But there are obstacles. Solar is a prime example.

Solar Energy: What’s The Problem?
Rooftop solar is brilliant — low impact, popular, and efficient. But we no longer have the luxury of time. Large solar farms are faster to deliver and much cheaper per megawatt.

Using ChatGPT for initial comparisons (yes, with a pinch of salt but it saves me hours of trawling through websites and research papers), I asked, when looking at the electricity 4,000 acres solar panels could generate, what is cheaper and quicker to build – a large solar farm or rooftop mounted solar:

Large Solar Farms

400MW: ~£400–600m plus land/grid costs
800MW: ~£800m–1.2bn
Build time: 12–24 months after permitting

Distributed Rooftop Solar

400MW: ~£600–800m (likely more)
800MW: ~£1.2bn–1.6bn+
Rollout time: 5–10+ years

Planning times for solar farms could be slashed if government finally treated the climate emergency like an emergency.

And then there’s capitalism: energy companies don’t want millions of small producers cutting into profits. Legislation could fix this — but it requires political will. We already know neoliberal capitalism needs serious reform.

As for the criticism that solar farms use agricultural land:

They would occupy only 0.45%–0.82% of agricultural land, some of which is fallow at the moment anyway.
We already face food insecurity. Solar barely dents agriculture.
Meanwhile, golf courses consume five times more land than solar would — and I know which I’d rather repurpose.

You can’t tee off on a golf course that’s underwater.

Unfortunately, there is significant opposition to solar farms, largely from people living near proposed sites — which is understandable

Grid Upgrades: The Unavoidable Backbone

We need new pylons, underground cables, or subsea routes — plus battery storage. None of this is optional, and the arguments are similar to the above. All options have ecological impacts, but we’re out of time for perfect solutions.

Pylons may be ugly, but they’re cheaper, faster, and even capable of creating wildlife corridors. France has even turned some into public art. If only imagination were a UK policy priority.

Large Scale Renewables Are the Clear Winner

Solar farms and other renewable energy sources are the clear winner if our priority is rapid decarbonisation. They are cheaper, quicker to build, will create new jobs and provide clean energy. They are our future proofing.

We face a choice: continue failing, continue betraying younger generations, retreat into selfishness and isolation—or respond to the climate and ecological emergencies with the urgency they demand, adopting something akin to a wartime mobilisation.

It may already be too late to avoid severe impacts. But every fraction of a degree of avoided warming saves lives, ecosystems and stability.

CO₂ rises → temperature rises → runaway climate impacts:

floods, fires, drought, famine, harvest failure, extreme weather, mass migration, ocean collapse, extinction events… and then societal collapse.

The stakes could not be higher.

The Path Ahead

We change — or we face the consequences.

The graph below shows how CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have changed over the millennia, using data from ice core samples.

Carbon dioxide levels are higher than any time in the last 800,000 years

Renewables give us a fighting chance of reducing emissions and avoiding societal collapse. Oil, gas and nuclear leave only waste and devastation. Renewables can coexist with nature and even help restore it when designed well.

It comes down to communicating honestly, successive governments, oil and gas companies, supported and controlled by billionaire media magnates, have denied people that honesty: change now, or our children will not live to the same age we do.

We don’t have to let them make us stupid, but they won’t change on their own.
We have to force it.

Let’s Take Back Power

From billionaires. From fossil fuel companies. From media moguls. From corrupted politicians who may not even realise how compromised they are. Let’s stop them getting away with it.

They’ve been getting away with it for decades. They are “craven and hollow.”
We can stop them.

And yes — I’m going to say it:

Vote Green. Let’s make hope normal again

Promoted by James Harvey on behalf of Broadland Green Party, a constituent party of the Green Party of England & Wales PO Box 78066, London, SE16 9GQ

What does it mean?

5 Replies

A friend said to me today that it’s still really hard to compute what it could mean, after I sent them a link to this article.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/15/we-should-have-better-answers-by-now-climate-scientists-baffled-by-unexpected-pace-of-heating?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

What’s published in the media on climate collapse isn’t usually the full view of scientists, not as bad as they think the situation really is. If you talk to climate scientists you’ll largely find them depressed, sick of not being heard, of being ignored by politicians. They have to ensure the information they publish is backed by facts, by peer reviews, but in private they’ll tell you it’s probably a lot worse than that, we just can’t prove it yet.

It is hard to compute. Our brains don’t want to think about it. We are averse to thinking about our own demise. It has got me thinking about it all again this evening.

The Mediterranean Sea is apparently 28^oC in some places. It’s like walking into a hot bath. This is incredibly bad for habitats and wildlife.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/08/07/the-mediterranean-is-on-fire-experts-sound-warnings-about-why-marine-heatwaves-are-so-dang

Temperatures records are being broken year on year, month on month, and sometimes day on day. We’ve just seen the wettest 18 months on record. Wildfires have burnt down half of Jasper in Canada and threaten Athens, California ablaze, similar in parts of Russia and South America: Patagonia, the Patanal in Brazil which is the world’s largest wetland, Venezuela and Chile. And in Australia, South Africa, Turkey, Cyprus, the list goes on, hardly anywhere is left untouched. We have field fires in Norfolk too, where I live.

Norfolk straw fire 15 August (source EDP)

Norfolk field fire 15 August — Norfolk straw fire 15 August (source EDP)

Heatwaves in India approaching wet bulb mass mortality range. Tasmanian and Boreal (northern) forests dying. Harvests failing; Norfolk farmers had a hell of a time of it earlier this year, due to flooding, when they couldn’t plant crops or graze livestock. Italian and Swiss villages destroyed by floods, similar in Germany. 20,000 washed out to sea in Libya. 2022 floods in Pakistan impacting 33 million people. Sea level rise threatening low lying island states already. Amazon not absorbing carbon dioxide anymore and at risk of turning into desert. Bats and birds dropping out of the sky due to heat stroke. Caribbean islands being hit by record hurricanes which have destroyed all the buildings in some places, leaving women to give birth in the dirt. Devastating famine and water shortages in Africa. Water is now monetised, it’s being bought and sold to the highest bidders, traded on the stock market.

We’re on track for +2.7^oC global heating, above pre-industrial averages, by end of century. It’ll probably be more than that due to the acceleration we’re seeing and tipping points being crossed such as the loss of albedo, meaning less of the sun’s radiation is reflected back into space, and methane being released from the permafrost. And the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is still going up.

What does this mean? It equals food shortages, the mass migration of 1 billion people by 2050, if not earlier as it’s happening now, more wars for remaining resources which means more emissions, pollution and death. More holidays to places that are too hot to live in, or on fire, or flooding, or where the native populations are being made homeless or starving. It means economies will crash, people will lose their jobs, their pensions, their savings, their houses. There will be more civil unrest as people feel failed by the system. It means the rise of the far right, again already happening, which occurs when people are scared and need someone to blame; we know this from history. The breakdown of law and order follows, disease, pandemics and health service failure. Then, eventual societal collapse and the death of billions.

It’s not me saying this, it’s not my cause, it’s not Just Stop Oil or Extinction Rebellion’s cause either. It’s what climate scientists are stating, 99.9% of whom say we’re in big trouble due to global heating caused by our carbon emissions.

It’s what the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, who is advised by climate scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) is saying; “we’re on the highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator“. The IPCC itself has said “the world is facing a “rapidly closing window of opportunity” to secure a sustainable future.” This window of opportunity is only a few years long, perhaps by the end of this decade, if not sooner.

And if you don’t believe them, or the International Energy Agency, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth or the Red Cross, maybe you’ll believe Sir David Attenborough who said, amongst many other powerful things:

“Climate change is also really important. You can wreck one rainforest then move, drain one area of resources and move onto another, but climate change is global. If my grandchildren were to look at me and say, ‘You were aware species were disappearing and you did nothing, you said nothing’, that I think is culpable.“

Small communities might survive by the end of the century, in Northern territories, but they could all be screwed too if AMOC (Atlantic Meridian Overturning Circlation) stops. If that stops all bets are off, people could be squeezed into a very narrow habitation zone, where they’ll no doubt fight to survive. Here’s what Laura Jackson, a scientist from the MET office had to say on it. Her view is perhaps a moderate one, with other scientists saying the collapse of AMOC could come a lot quicker. We just don’t know for sure.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation in a changing climate

Some, if not all of this, is locked in. But we can still try to stop making it worse. We can come together, stop emissions that are causing global heating, stop burning oil and gas for energy, change the way we live (recycling just doesn’t cut it), grow food locally, stop eating so much meat, build resilient and well connected communities, reject consumerism and infinite growth, adopt doughnut economics. We can accelerate the transition to renewable energy, equitably across the globe, stick solar panels on every roof, paint stuff white to reflect solar radiation back into the atmosphere. We can stop building new roads, stop building houses in areas at risk of flooding or which include important wildlife habitats, preserve and restore nature, reuse and yes, recycle.

We could tax the super rich and use funds to build renewables and for adaptation. Tax the fossil fuel companies and put their execs on trial for genocide by oblique intent (see Rome statutes). Prosecute the media for spreading lies and half truths which have led so many astray. Prosecute corrupt politicians and business persons who have done the same and profited from it. Set up legally binding Citizens’ Assemblies to decide what we need to do. Change the whole system. If we do all this we might stand a fraction of a chance. We might not die.

At the moment though governments, the oil and gas industry, some banks and a lot of the media seem intent on waging war on humanity. We are being led astray by people we are told we should trust. I find it devastating when I hear people planning for 10, 20, 30 years in the future, for their kids futures, when the world is already on fire or flooding. What do you think our children are going to face in 10 years time, let alone by the time they are 50?

I’m not doom-mongering, I refuse to be complicit, even though we’re all trapped by the system we’re in and hypocrites to one degree or another. I refuse to stick my head in the sand and wait for someone else to sort it out. I refuse to be a bystander whilst millions die; that’s happening right now. I’m not being self righteous, or virtue signally, I’m panicking, I’m scared, I’m raging at a system which thinks we can just carry on as normal, and spends billions of dollars trying to convince everyone we can. More recently I’m massively saddened to see rampant racism and hate out on the UK streets, with young kids being swept up by it, I’m anxious due to receiving telephone threats from far right thugs after I attended counter protests. But I have to carry on, taking action is the only thing that gives me hope when I lie awake thinking how the lives of my niece and nephew, my godchildren, all children can and are being cut short. And that’s hard to write.

I will no doubt perish far sooner than my Mum. She lived to 83. I won’t.

But, I, along with thousands of other ordinary people will try to make a difference by taking non-violent direct action. I hope you do too.

Couldn’t leave without a picture of Gideon, he is judging you, are you culpable?

Feel free to message me if you would like further information on how to take action with Just Stop Oil or Extinction Rebellion, or with local ’causes’ in Norwich and Norfolk. I am growing to hate that word…’causes’.

Difficult Decisions

Checking-in

Not an April Fools, just Fools

3 Replies

I know I post about the the Climate Crisis a lot. I know that it might bore some people. But this week has seen complete madness from our Government. And now this, and it’s not an April Fools.

France has banned short-haul domestic flights to cut emissions, we on the other hand appear to be encouraging them, rather than investing in trains, buses and active transport. Apparently flight bookings have surged since this announcement

This week the Government were originally going to have a ‘Green Day’, instead it turned out to be a day of investing further in fossil fuels; an ‘Energy Security Day’. They want to open over 100 new oil and gas fields in the North Sea, a new coal mine, and claim that unproven carbon capture technology will make it alright; would you bet your future on a three legged horse? They won’t even end routine oil and gas flaring by 2025, a key recommendation.

The carbon capture thing just isn’t proven at scale, and is motivated by politicians and companies like BP, Shell and Exxon (climate criminals) wanting to make as much profit out of oil and gas, whilst the world burns. I strongly suspect carbon sequestration is also an attempt to not make loads of oil and gas infrastructure redundant, which would leave a massive stranded asset. They probably think they can make loads of cash off Europe by trying to store carbon under the North Sea, but it’s just gambling with our future. Money Money Money, Growth Growth Growth = Death Death Death.

People are already dying in their thousands from the Climate Crisis. One person every 36 seconds in East Africa due to climate induced drought/famine. Island nations such as Vanuatu and the Marshall Islands will cease to exist soon, and the Maldives where people love to fly to, ironically, on their holidays.

And the Government are worried about refugees and migrants. Well, we’re going to have billions of climate refugees soon, which will make the ‘small boat crisis’ seem like child’s-play. Millions will be displaced from Africa alone by 2050 – estimates range from 86 million upwards.

Our Government are failing to invest sufficiently in renewables, they won’t back onshore wind, they won’t make solar panels mandatory on new builds, they won’t prioritise improvements to the power grid to make renewable energy work better, they won’t prioritise insulating people’s homes sufficiently. Instead they subsidise the fossil fuel industry to the tune of £236m a week (£11bn a year), oh, and they do this whilst accepting donations from oil and gas companies and climate sceptics, but I’m sure there’s no connection. They’re homicidal maniacs.

The latest IPCC report says ‘There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.’ They’re talking a few years. Government policy is a death sentence for future generations.

We’re not going to meet our emissions targets; 68% cut by 2030 and net zero by 2050. The UN say we need to bring the net zero target forward by 10 years anyway. The target to keep temperature increases to 1.5C above pre-industrial averages is blown; we’re on target for +2.7C by 2100, which will be disastrous. Chris Skidmore MP, Chair of the Net Zero Review, has told the Government that any investment in new oil and gas means we won’t hit targets. The UN, IPCC, International Energy Association, thousands of climate scientists, all say no new oil and gas.

We have enough reserves to last us 7+ years whilst we transition to renewables, which incidentally are 9 times cheaper than fossil fuels, and far quicker to come online (months not years). What the hell are the Government doing aside from lining their own pockets, and supporting the billionaires running the fossil fuel industry and right wing press? It’s all short term profit for a few, over people and planet, and during a cost of living crisis.

They are breaking their own laws on meeting targets. This was demonstrated last year when Friends of the Earth took them to the High Court, who deemed the Government’s Net Zero Strategy unlawful on the grounds that they didn’t forecast the emissions impact of its policies, and that third-party forecasts put the impact far short of what would be needed for the UK to meet its legally binding climate targets.

They lie, misdirect, and cheat. If I hear one more claim that we’re ‘world leading’ I might just explode. Do they really think we’re that stupid? The stats might have shown a reduction in emissions but that’s because we’ve outsourced the production of so much we consume to places like China and India, which those stats don’t include, not to mention the transportation of those goods (aviation or shipping).

Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, says ‘We’re on the highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.’

The Conservative Government are criminals, they are knowingly committing murder. They are killing people in the Global South now with their policies, and wiping out our children’s futures. This is a strong word, but really it’s an act of genocide being committed by our Government and Governments around the world, especially in the Global North, for failing to act decisively on the climate crisis whilst actively investing in the root causes. All the science says we shouldn’t invest in new oil and gas. What else would you call it? They know what will happen but are choosing to ignore it in favour of profit.

Who do you trust? It’s time to pick a side. I am incensed, grieving, sickened. All the solutions are there but the Government are choosing to do the opposite of what’s needed. We can’t go on like this, but we can come together, work together, and force the changes needed. We have to unite to survive.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. It was meant to be a short blog on the short haul flight thing, but there’s so much idiocy from our Government it turned into something far longer.

I, and thousands of other ordinary people, are in rebellion against our criminal Government. We’re aiming to get 100,000 people outside Parliament from 21 to 24 April, to send a message they can’t ignore to those in power. The Big One is being organised by Extinction Rebellion, with supporters such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Earthday, Global Justice Now and many others.

If you can’t do anything else, then please join us for ‘The Big One’. And drop me a message if you want some ideas on how you can get involved by joining 1000’s of others in taking action on the climate and ecological crisis.

https://extinctionrebellion.uk/the-big-one/https://extinctionrebellion.uk/the-big-one/

I’ve not even mentioned new road building, HS2, that we’re the most nature denuded country in Europe, the indigenous climate protestors being killed for taking action, that water companies are making massive profits whilst polluting our rivers and on and on and on. I think I’d better go outside and take some deep breaths.

One other bit of news this week. Gideon has been quite poorly. I had to take him to the vets for an emergency procedure on Tuesday for a blocked urethra. Apparently this isn’t uncommon in male cats, especially when the seasons change. The procedure was successful, and he had a very long wee afterwards. There is a risk it will block again so he’s got to take medicine for a while, which he hates, and has to have special urinary cat food now. Fingers crossed he’ll be alright but I’m having to keep a close eye to make sure he can wee, poor thing. Here he is, convalescing.

Gideon convalescing — He needs lots of attention

As we say when we sign off in Extinction Rebellion, Love and Rage.

Stop the Western Link – more MP correspondence

2 Replies

I thought I’d share the response from my MP, Jerome Mayhew, to the email I sent him last Friday off the back of his newsletter. It was a little bit infuriating, and didn’t really address a lot of the points from my email, but credit where credit’s due to responding in a timely fashion.

If you are able to contribute to the most excellent Legal challenge to the Western Link and other new roads in Norfolk, please check out Dr Andrew Boswell’s page here. Andrew has worked very hard on this, and any donations are greatly appreciated: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/stop-road-building-wrecking-climate-nature/

I’ve also included my response to Mr Mayhew’s response, further down this post, as I felt I had to challenge his claim that the Norwich Western Link will reduce carbon emissions. Firstly, here are some daffodils from my lunchtime walk, just to ease us in. There are a couple of ‘quiz’ photos later on.

Daffodils - a sunny disposition — Daffodils – a sunny disposition

Mr Mayhew’s email from 06 March 2023:

Dear Mr Harvey,

Thank you for your email.

Voter ID:

Voter ID is a policy that has been implemented by many countries across the world. It is pretty standard, including in parts of the European Union. In 2010, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe carried out a review of the elections in the United Kingdom at that point and it was clear that there was a weakness in our system around ensuring that identification was provided.

You ask about oyster cards and over 60 passes. It is extremely simple to answer that question. I would encourage you to go and look at the eligibility for 18-year-old Oyster cards and at the eligibility for 60+ Oyster cards. They are different. The eligibility for the 60+ card involves significantly more requirements, including a passport or a driving licence.

Having sat on the Bill Committee during the Election Bill’s Committee Stage I followed the progress of the Elections Act 2022 closely, so do please forgive me for the length of my reply. The Elections Act 2022 was introduced to the House of Commons in July 2021 and received Royal Assent on 28 April 2022.

Voter ID is not new. Northern Ireland has required paper ID at polling stations since 1985, and photo ID since 2003. It has proved to be effective at tackling fraud and has not curtailed election turnout. Identification to vote has been backed by the Electoral Commission and international election watchdogs. At present, it is harder to take out a library book or collect a parcel at a post office than it is to vote in someone else’s name. As in Northern Ireland, where electoral participation has not been curtailed, a free Voter Card will be available, for those voters who do not hold one of the approved forms of photo identification, when the scheme is rolled out across Great Britain. Under the Government’s proposals, anyone without an ID will be able to apply for a new free one – meaning that not a single voter will be disenfranchised.

In pilot schemes in 2019 and 2018, the overwhelming majority of people cast their vote without a problem and the success of the pilots proves that this is a reasonable and proportionate measure to take, and there was no notable adverse effect on turnout. Under the Government’s proposals, anyone without an ID will be able to apply for a new free one – meaning that not a single voter will be disenfranchised

Research has found that 98 per cent of the population as a whole and 99 per cent of those from ethnic minorities have some form of photo identification. Again anyone without an ID will be able to apply for a new free one – meaning that not a single voter will be disenfranchised.

The Act sets out a wide range of photo ID which can be used to vote at the polling station. This includes a UK passport or a passport issued by an EEA state or a Commonwealth country. A driving licence or provisional driving licence granted in Great Britain or Northern Ireland will also be accepted. Expired forms of identification will also be accepted as long as the photograph is a good enough likeness.

You can find a full list of the accepted identification documents here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/voter-identification-at-polling-stations-and-the-new-voter-card/protecting-the-integrity-of-our-elections-voter-identification-at-polling-stations-and-the-new-voter-card#annex-a-list-of-identity-documents-that-will-be-accepted.

Again, anyone who does not possess one of these forms of photo ID will be able to apply for free for a Voter Authority Certificate from their local authority – either online, by post or in person. Both our local district councils, North Norfolk and Broadland, have already put information up on their websites advising how to apply for a free ID card: https://www.north-norfolk.gov.uk/tasks/electoral-services/elections-act-2022/ andhttps://www.southnorfolkandbroadland.gov.uk/news/article/277/residents-need-photo-id-to-vote-at-elections-in-may.

Sir Eric, now Lord, Pickles’ independent review into electoral fraud raised a number of concerns and made recommendations on the role of the Electoral Commission and the current system of its oversight. The Pickles report also drew attention to the corruption that took place in the Tower Hamlets elections in 2014. It is for these reasons that the Government is placing a greater emphasis on the need to tackle and prevent electoral fraud. Additionally, the Pickles report criticised that the Electoral Commission gave Tower Hamlets a gold-star rating for electoral integrity in its inspection reports before the 2014 elections. It also noted that after the 2015 election court case, the Electoral Commission’s corporate plan and annual report both made no substantive reference to this major case or learning the lessons from it. Only last year the Electoral Commission was criticised for failing to provide any clear guidance on so-called ‘family voting’ – the unacceptable practice of men directing women how to vote inside polling stations in Tower Hamlets.

Norwich Western Link:

When you take into account the emissions associated with the construction of the Norwich Western Link, together with the reduction in emissions from vehicles that will use the route once built, modelling shows that there is likely to be an overall reduction in carbon emissions. A climate resilience assessment will also be prepared to look at current and future climatic factors, such as temperature, storms, wind, and rainfall and how that might impact the Norwich Western Link. The carbon assessment based on the proposals that will be put forward in the planning application will be included in the planning application documents.

We also need physical access to markets. I disagree with the CPRE about the NWL. We have created, essentially, an orbital route around Norwich, but rather like the situation with the M25 and the Thames, we have decided not to build the bridge. It is very damaging to connectivity, particularly for the north-east of the county getting access to the physical markets in the rest of the country. A consultation was undertaken and, taking that into account, the best route was reached. It deals with a huge amount of rat-running and links north Norfolk to the rest of the country.

As for the number of people contacting me to oppose the NWL, so far this year you are the only constituent to write to be to object. Whereas when I am out on the doorstep knocking on people’s doors the support is overwhelming,

I am afraid we are going to have to agree to disagree as I strongly support the NWL and will not be with drawing my support.

Ambulances:

When we look at queues in A&E we all generally think it is the front door of the hospital that is the problem i.e. getting people into A&E—but when I spoke to the Chief Executive of the Norfolk and Norwich, he told me that it is overwhelmingly the back door that is the problem, by which I mean people leaving the hospital. Consequently, this means ambulances are left waiting at hospitals for a bed to become available for their patient in the back. This is a point I have raised in Parliament, which you can see here: https://www.jeromemayhew.org.uk/news/contribution-debate-ambulance-waiting-times.

The Chancellor made a number of spending commitments at the Autumn Statement to put the adult social care system in England on a stronger financial footing and improve the quality of and access to care for many of the most vulnerable in our society. The Government will make available up to £2.8 billion in 2023-24 in England and £4.7 billion in 2024-25 to help support adult social care and discharge. This includes £1 billion of new grant funding in 2023-24 and £1.7 billion in 2024-25, further flexibility for local authorities on council tax and, having heard the concerns of local government, delaying the rollout of adult social care charging reform until October 2025.

£600 million will be distributed in 2023-24 and £1 billion in 2024-25 through the Better Care Fund to get people out of hospital on time into care settings, freeing up NHS beds for those that need them. A further £1.3 billion in 2023-24 and £1.9 billion in 2024-25 will be distributed to local authorities through the Social Care Grant for adult and children’s social care. Finally, £400 million in 2023-24 and £680 million in 2024-25 will be distributed through a grant ringfenced for adult social care which will also help to support discharge.

More locally I met the Chief Executive of the East of England Ambulance Service earlier this year and he told me that he is recruiting more clinicians in 999 control rooms so they can better triage patients and make sure they get the right support at the right time to patients in a clinically prioritised manner, particularly for cases which are more difficult to triage such as falls and to pass patients who perhaps do not need an ambulance to alternative services which can better meet their needs. Additionally, our local ambulance service is:

Getting more ambulances on the road through additional recruitment, they now have 10% more ambulances on the road today than they did in October 2022.
Working with NHS community services such as SWIFT to pass over clinically appropriate calls to them, and working with them to increase their capacity so that they can take patients and respond in a timely way to them.
They are also changing they train their call handlers to make sure they can give better support and advice to patients when they call 999.

The East of England Ambulance has also opened a new handover unit at the James Paget Hospital and have taken over some space at the NNUH to help look after patients before they can be transferred into A&E departments.

Yours sincerely,

Jerome Mayhew MP

Photo break – some blossom, but I’m still trying to work out what tree it is; Sycamore? Lime? Please can someone put me out of my misery?

Mysterious blossom, maybe an Acer? Still trying to work it out

Rather than analyse Mr Mayhew’s points, and the way he really didn’t answer my question on ambulance response times. Here’ my reply to him.

Dear Mr Mayhew,

Thank you as always for your prompt and detailed reply. I hope you’ll forgive the length of my response, however there’s a lot to cover.

On voter ID I still think this disadvantages the young, and those not able to afford a passport. Plus I don’t think the changes are necessary given we have very low electoral fraud. I guess we’ll see what the voting demographics look like in May and beyond.

With regards to ambulances, your response is interesting, but that wasn’t my question. I was challenging the claim that the Norwich Western Link (NWL) will cut 20 mins of ambulance response times, as this appears very spurious for the reasons I stated.

I want to provide a more detailed response to your explanation of how the NWL will reduce carbon emissions. I just don’t think this is true, and at a time when we’re facing increased drought, wildfires and harvest failures just in Norfolk, not to mention the impacts of the climate crisis world-wide, we have to start facing up to reality. It simply isn’t fair to be burdening the younger generation with environmental debt, as well as the increased risk of severe impacts from climate change, because we want to build new roads for the benefit and profit of a few.

I believe the modelling you’re referring to has been done by the County Council, to show a drop in emissions. I wonder if this makes an assumption that vehicles will be converting to electric? If so, that really isn’t relevant in terms of emissions reduction from building the road. When we look at the carbon cost from building the road, along with the increased number of cars from induced traffic, emissions can only go up. This coupled with the ecological cost means it’s inexcusable to be considering building new roads at this juncture; a conclusion the Welsh Government recently reached themselves.

We’re in a climate and ecological emergency, our house is literally on fire. Antonio Guterres has told us we’re on the highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator. We have reports from IPCC, the International Energy Association, the Government’s own Climate Change Committee and thousands of climate scientists saying we need to cut emissions now, and preserve nature; we’re the most nature denuded country in Europe and we want to irreparably damage a site of special scientific interest and a conservation area (The Wensum Valley)? Feels like the wrong thing to do to me. The UN says we have to halve emissions in the next decade to meet our obligations from the Paris agreement, and UK/Norfolk targets.

More detail below.

Emissions from Construction

The planned Western Link Road has an estimated carbon cost of 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. When combined with the other carbon costs from road building in Norfolk in 2024 and 2025, we get to a figure of 250,000 tonnes. That’s 7% of the Norfolk Local Transport Plan carbon budget for those years meaning that unless cuts were made elsewhere (very unlikely) Norfolk won’t meet it’s targets, which would also impact the UK’s overall target. This is without taking into account the carbon that would be released from destroying semi-ancient woodland, and soil structure/plants/animals which sequester huge amounts of carbon. All that concrete, steel and tarmac comes at a cost.

Emissions from traffic

As I mentioned in my original email, increasing road capacity increases the number of cars on the roads, as proven by induced traffic effect studies. The Western Link, if built, will do exactly this. This traffic will emit more carbon dioxide until it is all electrified, which probably won’t be until at least 2050. The increased emissions will contribute to taking us beyond Norfolk and UK’s carbon budget. Traffic modelling by the council has shown that carbon emissions in the area from the road won’t reduce in line with Government projections for the Net Zero Strategy, as well as projections in the Local Transport Plan.

Wildlife

The Wensum Valley is the last green corridor into Norwich. I think of it as the lungs of the city. The corridor allows wildlife to move around and nature to thrive. The Government is targeting 2042 to halt the decline in our wildlife populations, in the Environment Act, and NWL isn’t compatible with this. The Wensum Valley is a rare and protected landscape, with many endangered species including the Barbastelle Bat. It really needs to be conserved to meet our targets, and for the sakes of current and future generations.

Net Zero Strategy and the Legal Implications

Finally a note on the Net Zero Strategy. The building of this road will impact the UK’s Net Zero Target, which is already too far into the future to stop many of the severe impacts from climate change. I do not believe the council has properly assessed this impact, or the impact from other road building in Norfolk. I believe there is already a legal challenge about this. The High Court, in 2022, already told us the Net Zero Strategy is at risk. The Climate Change Committee is saying the same thing. We need to be looking at the cumulative impact on emissions, as well as other environmental factors, of building this road, per the Infrastructure Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2017.

There are already lawsuits being brought against Governments and Fossil Fuel Companies across the Globe for inaction on the climate crisis, and for deliberately making things worse; we have a duty to not sell ourselves and future generations down the river. This generation risks being labelled as climate criminals, and facing lawsuits for inaction or culpability in the disruption and deaths of thousands locally, and millions worldwide.

Conclusions

This may sounds dramatic, but the climate crisis is happening now. Millions are being impacted and are dying right now; 1 person every 36 seconds in East Africa due to famine and drought caused by the climate crisis. 33 million people displaced in Pakistan due to flooding. Over 3,000 deaths cause by the heatwave in the UK last year alone.

Inaction on the climate and ecological crisis, as well as greenwashing, false accounting for carbon emissions, putting profit before planet and people is really impacting many people’s, including myself, mental and physical health. It seems completely hopeless when the evidence is ignored and we press ahead with ecocidal road schemes, as well as new oil, gas and now coal projects in the UK. The impacts from the climate and ecological emergency are increasing at an alarming rate, with more wildfires, drought, famine, floods and extreme weather, as well as increased risks in this country from diseases, ocean acidification, and rising ocean levels – if the Thwaites Glacier goes then that’s London and many other coastal cities around the world at risk or submerged, leading to the displacement of millions.

I know you’re likely to say we’re world leading at cutting emissions, and that we have a plan to get to net zero by 2050. 2050 is too late, and we’re not world leading, especially when we’re opening new coal mines, building new roads, and aiming to grant over 100 new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea. Our carbon accounting also doesn’t include emissions from goods we import from overseas, plus the shipping or aviation costs. We need to take into account our historic emissions; we’re world leading on that having started the industrial revolution. We simply don’t have any carbon budget left if we want to give developing countries a chance to catch up, or do we just not care about them? And the argument about China and the US needing to do more, whilst valid, doesn’t really take into account individual carbon footprints; the average UK person’s carbon footprint is massively higher than most people’s in the Global South.

Locally, rather that investing in new roads including the NWL, please can we invest in public and active transport (active transport would help the NHS too by making people healthier), as well as conserving and regenerating nature. Let’s invest in renewables and make Norfolk and East Anglia truly UK leading, and possibly world leading, on renewable energy, sustainability, responsible farming practices and Green technology. That would be something to be very proud of.

I hope some of this has been useful, and as before I would welcome the opportunity to speak to you about this at on of your surgeries.

I look forward to hearing back from you.

Yours sincerely,

James Harvey

I really don’t know if I’ll get a reply to this, we’ll see. In closing here’s a deer track I found in the woods the other day. I’d seen Red Deer, Roe Deer and Muntjac Deer that day. Which do you think made this track? I think Roe Deer as it was in a deer couch.

Deer track - probably Roe — Deer track – probably Roe, but let me know what you think

Self Propelled

Self propelled adventures through life; blogging on cycling, touring, micro-adventures, general shenanigans, and environmental news

Category Archives: Extinction Rebellion

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What does it mean?

Difficult Decisions

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Not an April Fools, just Fools

Stop the Western Link – more MP correspondence