Phew, what a scorcher!!!

We are enjoying good weather, and despite all the warnings it is still pretty pleasant. Much hotter than this however and you soon realise that British homes, transport, schools, public building and cities were not designed to cope with temperatures much over 30 degrees.

And if it is warm here than it is getting warmer in other places too, places that are designed for hotter weather but not that hot. This cascading effect of climate change is going to be a disaster yet I was depressed to see this week that coal use has yet to peak.

The West has not given up on it totally but India, China and others are using it to industrialise, just like we did in the 19th century.

This is worrying for several reasons.

First the chance of stopping global warming is a lost cause, we have done nothing like enough and the environment is spiralling out of control much faster than predicted.

It also means that some of the areas which are going to be hit the hardest are making the least effort, India, China and now America. Where interestingly vast areas will soon be uninsurable, as will the property built there, try getting a mortgage in a flood zone or somewhere at risk of forest fires. Much of America especially the SW was and is not suitable for large urban areas, it is desert, but that is where the cities increasingly are.

Finally we can stop patting ourselves on the back about how green we are. We have exported polluting, high energy using industries to the East, where all the consumer goods we increasingly demand are built using coal.

We have made the situation worse not better.

And still we have the climate change deniers blaming everything on green targets, claiming we are not the polluters so why do we have the change? Fighting every change to bin collections, slagging off heat pumps and recycling targets.

Let us hope that the live to see the consequences but then the real costs and damage won’t be here, they will happen to foreigners, so they probably don’t care.

Jonty’s Jottings

From Jonty Bloom Media Ltd

Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.