Global Warming

 Global Warming.

So here we are!

Fifteen years or so ago, enjoying a meal in Pizza Express in Canary Wharf, with my wife and friends, the conversation got around to Global Warming and the recent announcement by the Government, that by the next fifty years, they will have reduced carbon emissions to almost nil, keeping the rising world temperature down to a safe level. At this point, I said that we did not have that long before the world reached a point where we as a human race no longer exist.

It was one of those throw away comments that are designed to shock and invite deeper discussion and eyebrows were understandably raised. The pizzas at this point were thankfully served and we moved on to lighter matters and much laughter.

Those friends have become more distant, due to circumstances and we sadly don’t see them so often, but the threat of Global warming and annihilation of the human race has moved much nearer and almost at a point if not at a point where there is no return.

So the question is what will the powers that be, do as we head inexorably towards the cliff and the plunge into oblivion?

During the great war of 1914 – 18 the great and the good sat behind enemy lines, deciding, on the eve of the first battle of the Somme on the 1st of July 1916, what would be an acceptable level of loss of life; a level with which they could claim victory and satisfaction at a job well done. Could it be 30,000 men, 40,000 men? As it was over 57,000 British troops lost their life during those few days, during which my own father fought and survived.

Only recently our own Prime Minister is said to have considered the sacrifice of the over eighties among us, to Covid 19, so as to lesson the pressure on the NHS!

So what now? It is perfectly conceivable that the rich and powerful will find some way of surviving while the rest of us will, like those young lads of 1916, walk into the mists of time.

It may have been one of those throw away comments that I made all those years ago but I did suspect that as the temperatures grew hotter, the whole process of rising sea levels and destruction of forests and the environment would escalate to a speed that the experts had either not calculated or refused to recognise.

How could it be that someone like myself with little or no scientific education could be proved correct in that assumption and the people with power, who should have been well aware of the possibility, have done very little to turn back the tide? I have no doubt that there were thousands who thought the same as myself but their voices were drowned by the materialism and greed of a society that has become more and more inward looking and selfish as the years have passed.

The Pizzas were delicious and we passed them around tasting each other’s choice. We were all in our seventies. Fifty year’s time we would not be around. Somebody surely will sort it out before then, won’t they?