I have never seen the like. Buses reaching Lanchester from as far away as Newcastle, but into and out of Durham impregnable. Thank heavens for bacon sandwiches, nice cups of tea, and Radio Four. Saint Bede's is closed; gone are the days when it stayed open even throughout a month-long bus strike, on the grounds that Lanchester people could still come in (and we did). So much for global warming, eh?
I know, I know. As far as I can tell, any weather whatever is somehow attributable to it. But I still refuse to allow climate change to be used as an excuse to destroy or prevent secure employment, to drive down wages or working conditions, to arrest economic development around the world, to forbid the working classes and non-white people from having children, to inflate the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, or to restrict either travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich.
Reducing CO2 emissions to those effects has been a solution in search of a problem for decades: 35 or 40 years ago, it was supposed to have been the answer to global cooling. Lo and behold, that was supposed to mean no more proper jobs, no more proper wages or working conditions, no more economic development in the poor world, no more breeding by the proles and darkies, no more cheap fuel, no more mass travel, and no more meat-eating by the common people. Hell, what could you do?
But in those days there were still proper unions, close ties between European countries and their former colonies, and mass parties of the real Left. Still, it has only taken these people 40 years and a complete U-turn as to the nature of the problem. It doesn't matter what the question is: this will be always be their answer to it, for reasons that are only too obvious.
I am told that the global cooling theory was "far from mainstream". If so, then that was only because there were then still the political forces to stop it. The global warming lot have managed to create an entire academic field to which one can only belong by sharing their presuppositions; an old trick, but not one ordinarily associated so much with science. What does that tell you?
If anyone ever tells you that the answer to an environmental problem is no more proper jobs, no more proper wages or working conditions, no more economic development in the poor world (with India and China certain to pay no attention these days, anyway), no more breeding by the proles and darkies, no more cheap fuel, no more mass travel, or no more meat-eating by the common people, then write them off as politicised cranks. They said that about global cooling, they say it about global warming, and much else besides.
Unless they can come up with a solution which does not destroy or prevent secure employment, does not drive down wages or working conditions, does not arrest economic development around the world, does not forbid the working classes and non-white people from having children, does not inflate the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, and does not restrict either travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich, then they are not really interested in the presenting issue, and cannot complain too much if the people whom they propose to beggar, sterilise, freeze, confine and starve become distinctly sceptical about the very existence of any question to which that fate is supposed to be the answer.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
As a member of one of the early classes at St Bede's when it opened as a Grammar Technical school in the dim and distant past, I can testify both to the weather conditons of the area (always heavy snow, the roads down the hills from Annfield Plain in one direction and Consett in another always slippery but made passable) and to the fact that not once were we ever let off school. It remained opened, the buses remained running and the roads were made to be passable.
ReplyDeleteThe one road that always seemed to be clear, ironically, in view of what you say, was the road from Durham, which was somewhat flatter than the other three roads leading into Lanchester. Happy days!