We Can't Afford Another COPout...

Listening to this week's Prime Minister oh, so calmly issuing forth on the need to secure our future generations', well, future, I felt, once again, the almost daily déjà vu of the pontifications of ideologues and politicians who seem so blinded to reality by their politics, ideology and ambition, to the absolute, crushing urgency of the gargantuan problems facing us.

These people seem somehow inured from the insanely pressing nature of the issue, by a complex and collective personality disorder that can only be the result of wealth, privilege and a blind faith that the ills of this world are the fault of everyone but themselves, and which will only impinge on the lives of the hoi polloi and the developing world, and not themselves. Their laggardly and ideological response to the crisis suggests only that they see themselves as Übermenschen destined for what they perceive as their well-earned place in Valhalla, whilst the Proles and others, outwith the pale, fry, drown and freeze in whatever order or combination the Gods have determined as their fate for being, well, not of the right sort.

The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, has stated blankly and unequivocally, that if this year's COP does not perform, we are all, in his words, 'doomed'; and it is accepted in scientific and climatological circles that we are already two years into the last-chance-saloon decade, beyond which our impact on the global climate will be irreversible: the tipping point, sword of Damocles moment, when it will be kiss-our-collective-butts-goodbye in the slowest and most painful way imaginable. This is still just - and only just - mitigable, but the word urgent doesn't come even remotely close to expressing how precipitously near we are to the edge here, and twenty, thirty, fifty year plans really are just politics and ideology. To quote, or at least paraphrase, Churchill: "...action this day..."

All the empty rhetoric, the ludicrous plans to factor future nuclear power into the climate mitigation argument, simply won't bring anything like a speedy enough solution to, or mediation of, our impending species extinction [it really is that urgent]. We need immediate and radical solutions to this, the ultimate problem, facing us. So, here's a suggestion, and it will need political consensus, not on just national levels, but a global, supra-national effort, that will require the suspension of political, ideological and economic norms across the globe: tall order, but the climatological Armageddon we face will pitch us all into extinction anyway, so sucking it up for a generation or two couldn't be viewed as an imposition by even the thickest of the thick, could it? [I am the eternal optimist].

We could start to reduce our Carbon footprint so easily by simply legislating for and subsidizing some very simple, distributed, decentralized power-generation systems to every home. For the cost of a fancy new carbon-fibre bicycle, you can install enough solar electricity-generating kit to power an average home in the UK, and take it practically off-grid. Really. And anyone who says that we don't get enough sunshine in these islands really doesn't understand either the technology, the climate, or the problem. It's do-able and that's only one of many renewable technologies that can be distributed likewise, to individual homes, not just here, but everywhere. And remember, if you're generating your own power, your heat and light is free outside of maintenance costs: and best-case scenario, you will be a net-generator of power and making money out of selling it back into the grid: this could begin tomorrow, and by God, does it need to. Start lobbying everyone, now, and if you can afford the few grand to equip your own home immediately, do it...