By Chris Davey
Some climate-related thoughts that I’ve had while sitting, maybe looking at the sea, or indeed watching TV news on the days when I reckon I can bear it. In no particular order…
Wildfires are once again, at the time of writing, raging in southern Europe. News reports are beginning to join the dots and mention “climate change”, aka “climate breakdown”, when covering these appalling fires, with shots of people talking about how they had to abandon their homes, and then we switch to helicopters and high-winged planes that scoop water out of the sea or a lake and drop it on the blaze. That reminds me of a holiday we had in southern France years ago, when we saw such planes practising. It didn’t occur to me then that we’d be watching them in action for real. Also as I write, flash floods have killed forty people in Pakistan. Extreme weather events are becoming the new normal.
Road tax. Since buying my Nissan Leaf I’ve not had to pay any. I kind of got used to that. So it was something of a shock to fork out £195 to enable me to continue electric driving for the coming year. Let’s be clear, I’m not grumbling about paying taxes; I know that in Scandinavian countries where taxes are high, people report high levels of happiness, as their money pays for good public services. But it should be a priority to hasten the transition to electric transport, so I think it was wrong to cancel the incentive of zero road tax for EVs, and let market forces take over. Once again, it’s an indication that we are not truly serious about tackling the emissions problem.
Holidays to which we fly are a particular problem for me. I risk being branded as “that nutter in Cornwall” when I write to media outlets telling them not to advertise flying holidays, or at least let people know there is an alternative for short-haul destinations, with masses of info on rail travel at seat61.com. I’m planning a trip to France this autumn, and I can honestly say that the rail journey will be an important part of the whole experience. It’s important to remember that 88% (*) of flights are taken for leisure purposes, not business, and that this will be predominantly by the wealthier people in society – who are generally the high emitters. Time to question this normalisation of a destructive climate habit.
Biomass is currently classed by various authorities as “renewable”. Biomass may be wood, plant material, animal or food waste – basically as long as it was living. I’m in the process of looking into this — stay tuned for, maybe, an article dedicated to the subject. But at present I remain sceptical about how renewable it is… take Drax for example. Preferably, take it right away. Drax is the large power station in Yorkshire which has been converted from coal to biomass, wood pellets in fact. It now emits more carbon than when it was burning coal. It keeps going only because UK bill-payers subsidise it to the tune of nearly £2m a day, according to biofuelwatch.org.uk., and because it buys huge quantities of “waste” wood from overseas – some of which is, ahem, dubious. Then there is hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO), that is used cooking oil (UCO), like from your local chippy, which has been chemically treated to make it usable in place of fossil fuel oil. The claim is that it’s renewable because somewhere sometime the vegetable material used to make it has drawn down carbon from the air, so burning it simply releases that carbon back into the air. That’s also dubious. But why let that carbon escape? Clearly we mustn’t let the UCO go to landfill and decompose releasing methane; but why not make it into soap? And as for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), you often see the qualifier “so-called” before it, and rightly so. I talked about this in December 2024 and intend to return to it in due course.
Finally, as the flooding continues in Pakistan and Kashmir, farmers here are fearing a poor harvest because of the dry weather. Climate breakdown is here with us today, and since we are currently at a bit below 1.50C above pre-industrial levels, it’s just getting started. It really is high time we cut, drastically, those greenhouse gas emissions.
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Sources include:
SGR, Scientists for Global Responsibility
BBC News website (EU sends wildfire help to Spain as death toll rises)
One of the primary pathways, toxic substances from their surroundings.
Since writing the August piece I have become aware of the new subsidy scheme for (some) electric vehicles. I do try to keep up with developments, honest! But this one passed me by. Details are at https://www.gov.uk/plug-in-vehicle-grants.