The Cost of Climate Change Protest

Last year the Metropolitan Police in London had to spend £27 million in policing protests by the extinction rebellion supporters. It is significantly more, it seems, than the police spend in London on its violent crime task force. The policing of extinction rebellion is not at all effective. Protesters are allowed to block major intersections and bridges. Recently they have dig up lawns in London and Cambridge causing criminal damage and dumped the soil elsewhere which is illegal fly tipping. These criminal activities are carried out under the watchful eye of the police who do not restrain these crimes committed by perpetrators that the police observe and could stop, if they were minded to carry out their duties.

But the £27 million was not the only cost. Tens of thousands of Londoners lost wages and leisure time due to the disruption caused. Many tens of thousands of carbon dioxide emissions and particulates were pumped into the atmosphere by cars blocked in traffic brought to a halt by extinction rebellion protests. The atmospheric pollution caused by the protesters and the environmental damage is substantial. It cannot be justified by their actions because their demands are nonsensical as we shall see.

Extinction Rebellion have three demands:

1. Tell the Truth: truth in matters of such scientific complexity as climate change is not straightforward. Who is to “tell the truth” and who is telling the truth? Governments, scientists or the extinction protesters?
2. Act now reduce emissions to net zero by 2025 is the demand but there is no solution offered as to how this can be achieved.
3. Beyond Politics: government to be led by citizens’ assemblies. This is the most chilling demand of all as it seeks to subvert the democratic will of the people.

Now, the right to peaceful protest is an important right. In major cities there are laws about such protests which enable them to take place with the minimum of disruption. It is the job of the police to enforce these laws, made by democratically elected politicians; the police must not stand by while they observe serious crimes being committed. It brings to doubt the competence of the Commissioner, Cressida Dick and her judgment as well as the sincerity and true motivation of the leaders of extinction rebellion protesters.

Quite An Achievement

In the Western hemisphere, and now in the Eastern hemisphere each new generation has lived a more prosperous, safer and better life than the preceding generation. But that trend of improvement in life expectation has reversed, and now in many if not most, nations the younger generation will be less prosperous than the generation that begat them, and what challenges will future generations face as a result of climate change, today barely considered and kicked firmly off the back burner into the long grass?

Migration: we broke it and therefore we bought it

If the environment where people live is destroyed or degraded then the people who live there will move elsewhere. The most important factor in destruction or degradation of the environment is humanity. By greed humanity destroys the environment in particular places; it cuts down forests, it creates vast quantities of carbon dioxide as a by-product of the things it does to satisfy its greed and it makes war for reasons of fear and greed.

Silence – the electric car is coming

 

I am not a great fan of electric vehicles. They are still in the development stage, mostly requiring frequent re-charges of electricity in order to be useful over long distances unless you can afford to buy a super expensive model. In cities electric cars simply move the pollution to the power stations, although they do improve city air quality because their use is emission free, although their recharging is very emission intensive. 

Too Much and Too Little

Many people have died recently as a result of exceptionally heavy monsoon rains in Burma, Vietnam and south eastern India. The rains have caused landslides, polluted water courses and even though there is water everywhere it is undrinkable. 

A Big Battery

There are very few genuinely innovative energy products. The problem with energy is that the laws of physics limit what can be done and when it can be done. In the case of electrical energy we have the means of generating electricity from non fuel sources, – wind and light – but until now no really easy means of storing the electricity that we can generate. Attempts to feed solar and wind generated power into a grid fail to be effective in large emission reductions; because of the intermittency of the source of energy we need to have large power stations running on standby by, wasting fuel and creating emissions, to cover the times when the wind does not blow and the sun produces no light.

Don’t Tell Mr Barroso That!

All the big oil companies claim to be aware of global warming and all claim to be fighting it in their own ways. It is good publicity for them. The truth, of course, is that all oil companies want to see their businesses prosper and unfortunately if we were to do anything to reduce emissions their businesses would fail, or else reduce in size quite considerably. It should therefore come as no surprise that Shell have been lobbying the European Union very aggressively and it seems persuasively to reduce renewable energy targets. This was part of the negotiations which led to an EU wide climate agreement in October 2014 which the then European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, said was “real progress” in the fight against climate change.

Cold Comfort

The International Energy Agency has calculated that annual global carbon dioxide emissions in 2014 were 32 giga tonnes. This figure is significant because if the figure is right it shows that the growth is emissions has remained stable for the first time when there is no global economic crisis.

The Tipping Point and Recent Global Warming

The monthly average measured atmospheric carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa for January 2014 is 397.8 parts per million compared with 395.54 parts per million in January 2013. According to the Earth Systems Research Laboratory at Mona Loa the monthly average measured atmospheric carbon dioxide globally averaged over marine surface sites in December 2013 was 397.21 parts per million.

That Rubbish Tip at the Back of the Garden

China is a large country where many people live. For the past few decades it has opened factories while the developed nations have closed factories because things can be made cheaply in China. As a result the productivity in China has increased, along with economic growth and as surely as night follows day when rapid economic growth occurs so emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases rise inexorably to increasingly dangerous levels.