Four seasons in one week

Preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known

Climate change. It’s been a subject of conversation and comment particularly in the last week or so – the events in California and the weather here and in other parts of the States have highlighted our changing pattens.

Certain parts of the UK might still have snow, but there in the South-east, we’ve gone from barely registering above freezing last week, and de-icing the car, to a damp and dismal 8deg C this morning, via two days of cloudless azure skies at the weekend.

In the meantime, my friend’s colleagues in the American Midwest are battling 10ft snowdrifts, while the ones n California are watching the wind direction very carefully.

There’s lots of nonsense being spouted on social media (why do  I still bother with it?) about how the California fires were all started deliberately as part of a global conspiracy (yawn) to destabilise economies. Huh? There’s a lot of nonsense being spouted about how they were the result of California’s diversity policies and ‘woke’ agenda. Again huh?

There may be something to be said for accusations that the rescue and firefighting efforts may have been hampered by budget cuts, but the simple science is that sparks, plus dry conditions, plus months of little or no rainfall, plus changing wind directions equal fire spreading.

There are all sorts of ideas bandied around about how we can act upon climate change, and  limit the long- term global average surface temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the push to net zero via reducing fossil fuel reliance is just one of them.

It’s important. It’s vital, but are the things we are doing here just moving the problem elsewhere? For example, do newer, more environmentally-friendly materials  actually require more fossil fuels to extract and refine them? According to Ed Conway the Sky News journalist who talked at the NBG Conference, the answer is yes. His book, Material World by the way, is well worth diving into. One of those where you learn just how little you really do know about the world around us.

The push to change the way we heat our homes is all well and good on paper. But the ‘boiler tax’ caused havoc last time when it was introduced and then shelved by the Tory government. Only to be brought down off the shelf by Energy Minister Ed Miliband who’s putting £30m aside to act as bribes, sorry, incentives, for people t install a heat pump.

Heat pumps are great. If you live in a house that is suitable for a heat pump. If you don’t, they aren’t. In any case, how much more earth-friendly would it be to encourage people to stick with their existing heating systems (assuming they don’t actively need replacing) and just be more efficient in the way they use them? More insulation, draught excluders, extra jumpers?

If we really are serious about net zero, or as-near-to-zero-as-is-reasonably-feasible, it’s hearts and minds that need to change. It’s attitudes and actions. Everyday actions.

Put all the heat pumps in you like, if we all still jump in our cars to head down to the Co-Op for a pint of milk, or to run the kids to school because you bought a house that’s no longer on a  bus route, or the hill back up from the train station is too long and too steep to want to do at the end of the day (guilty as charged), then nothing will change. Except the global temperature. And the climate.