Environment

Q. Global Warming? Climate Change? A Co-ordinated Approach Tell us your thoughts.

There are two schools of thought, either global warming is going to destroy the world or there is no such and what’s going on is merely nature flexing its muscles and everything that’s happening has happened before and the earth survived.

The second point might be perfectly valid but if the naysayers are wrong then the world is doomed.

On that basis it seems sensible to adopt measures that will guarantee the earth’s survival regardless of what happens.

As usual our beloved government attacks the problem in a piecemeal fashion, so instead of co-ordinated nation-wide policy we have local and county councils running around like headless chicken hell-bent on imposing policies on their constituents regardless of the consequences and the cost.

Why don’t we start at the beginning and ask the question, what do we need to survive? Three things, first and most important is water, second is energy and third is food. All are inter-linked.

Let’s start with water, in the UK Scotland and the north of England have gallons of it, whereas in the south water is becoming more and more scarce. It would seem that piping water from the north to the south is neither viable financially nor, if you include Scotland in the north, politically acceptable to this government. So here’s an idea, if global warming is a reality then the sea levels are going to rise then why don’t we build desalination plants every 100 miles along the coast from say Hull to Swansea. We would need to build reservoirs to accommodate the fresh water produced but that is surely possible to achieve.

Apparently there is an argument that goes along the lines that so much power would be used in building and maintaining these plants that carbon footprint saving would be negligible. However the counter-argument is that technology is improving all the time, just look at electric cars, and that by the time these plants were built then there would be a much smaller carbon footprint and much more important, we would have water in abundance.

In the meantime, the water companies must be penalised into completely ensuring that there is absolutely no leakage at all. Incidentally is everyone out there comfortable that the majority of our water is owned by the French.

Let’s look at energy, although scientists are forever finding ways of extracting more oil from more and more previously inaccessible places, and large discoveries of accessible oil continue to be found, it is probable that fossil fuel will run out at some time in the future.

Again the government offer a piecemeal solution, two months ago it was nuclear, last month it was wind power, next month it will probably be turning cow dung into reusable energy. A measured view has to be taken of what is required and how do we cover all possibilities.

Any solution is going to need a mixture of using various sources of energy. Wind power could possibly provide 10% of the requirement; however it is unsightly and not very efficient. The turbines only work when the wind blows and it is difficult to pump into the national grid. Nuclear power is vital and we should be raising our commitment to ensuring that at least 50% of our energy is provided by nuclear by 2020. The new efficient power stations should be built on the existing sites. No need to go through lengthy public meetings.

We need to reduce dramatically our use of electricity. A number of County Councils have recently announced that motorway lights are going to be switched off during the night between the hours of midnight and five am. It will be interesting to see whether the accident rates go up. A much better solution would be to gradually change all street lights to LED lights. Using LED’s will save about 75% on current prices. They also need virtually no maintenance. Every building, which is either government owned or used by government, whether national or local, should be fitted with LED lights. The financial saving would be immense and the reduction in the carbon footprint would likewise be huge.

Now food.

For many years Britain was self-sufficient in respect of food production. The government needs to ensure that the required basic food supply can be provided by British farms. This would mean creating an environment where, if necessary, financial incentives were put in place to ensure that enough basic crops were produced to feed the country. People have more and more exotic tastes and diets and many of the products needed to satisfy those needs can only be imported, fine, but let’s create an environment where all our basic production comes from British farms. The NDP realises that creating that sort of subsidy would be contrary to European law. Tough.

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