I was in London today and passed by Marble Arch where there's a large protest going on about climate change, the intersection there is completely blocked and there are loads of police around. Fortunately the underground is unaffected (could be due to there being uniformed police on the platforms) and so my journey (I was on foot & tube) was unaffected, however, plenty of cars, vans and lorries were backing up down the Bayswater road.
As a nation and as people there is no doubt that we should be taking climate change much more seriously than we are, but I understand the difficulties when politicians and media outlets play it down, lie and spread falsehoods about the science because of their vested interests. Global politicians like
Donald Trump and local (ex) ones like
Nigel Lawson who have their noses in the trough of big-oil and hedge funds that benefit from fossil fuel production and various kinds of speculation. A climate of uncertainty exists around the "facts" of climate change and it shouldn't, the science is pretty clear-cut! Humans are causing all kinds of mayhem to our planet, from sea warming through to polar ice melting and plastic pollution; the data is clear, we can't continue down the path that we're on for too much longer before we start to see some really serious climate events happening, probably on a "Biblical scale" and it won't be pretty for anyone..
Slagging off politicians and leaders is one thing but as individuals too we should be trying to make a difference (i.e. bottom-up) I've done a couple of things so far, these include, cutting out red-meat consumption to once a week (max), stopped taking short unnecessary car journeys, cut out plastic carrier bags, purchase local produce (especially staples like bread, eggs and veg) whenever I can, recycle as much as possible, reduce food-waste and so on. I know all this is small fry in the big scheme of things but if all of us did it then a noticeable difference would accrue. Market forces are pretty good at implementing change, unfortunately changing habits at the scale of the population is very difficult without suitably strong and courageous leadership.
So, I can sympathize with the aims of this protest, I agree wholeheartedly with most of it's predictions and conclusions but I'm not sure that this kind of mass disruption is the best way to raise consciousness on the issue with the general public. What is clear, is that there's a lot of pissed-off people in London today, I have to question if that will that really help the cause? And, I'm pretty sure our politicians won't budge one inch on anything because of it (plus the timing, with Brexit etc., is lousy).
All of these things require a different political approach, I agree, but there needs to be more flesh on the bones of potential action and that needs to be very clearly communicated so that people understand what their in for. For example, I'd like to see much more aggressive tax regimes on pollutants, unsustainable industries and polluting companies, better education and less even-handedness in the media (at least the state-broadcaster) for climate-change deniers or at least a lot more ridicule of them. Also, more Government funding of the science around climate change and around potential remedial technologies that may help alleviate the worst impacts of it. There are two ways to look at this in my view, either you see it as a massive opportunity to mislead people, lie and exploit the inevitable chaos or you look at it as a massive opportunity to innovate and prosper from finding real solutions; the more lucrative we can arrange things to reward the latter rather than the former, the better. At the moment, the people making money are mostly in the first group and by ignoring it our leaders are driving the bus over the edge of a cliff, if it were only a few billionaires in the bus then I wouldn't much care, but unfortunately, even though some of us are sitting in the air-conditioned seats at the front, none of us can get off..
