Save the planet?

Well the Copenhagen summit is in progress and highly paid politicians and boffins will sit around in not very smoke filled rooms, pontification on the state of the environment. At the end of it I predict that there will be no concensus and the only step towards reducing greenhouse gases will be to increase the costs of energy.

There was a woman on TV last night saying that she had turned vegetarian in order to save the planet! Now while I am aware of the importance of flatulent cattle and their role in climate change, I cannot see how any of us can save the planet! It isn't the planet that is in danger, it is the human race that is, and not just through climate change.

One of the biggest producers of methane, possibly the greater of the greenhouse gases, are the termites and they have been around a lot longer than we have. Nobody talks about extermination of insects in order to save the planet.

It wouldn't surprise me if the whole global warming issue was merely a political tool. People are more easily led by the nose when they are scared. Oil and gas are dwindling resources and unless we cut down on their use there will be unprecedented crises in the future with the rich and powerful riding roughshod over the poorer nations in the fight for the last drops of the stuff. So scare people now, increase the prices to the consumers and people just might travel less and sit in cold houses through the winter. As always it will be the less well off that will suffer, the bankers and their like don't notice the prices of the energy that they use, while those at the base of the pecking order do. Even a small increase in prices makes a big difference to the less well off.

There can be no turning back. We are a world that runs on fuels that produce Carbon Dioxide. Efforts to utilize renewable energy are largely supressed by the oil industry, which in turn is governed by enormously wealthy individuals who wield the real power in the world today. If the fuel runs out then life as we know it Jim, will come to an end. If it doesn't then perhaps the planet will get warmer, maybe even considerably so. The worst that can happen to the planet is that it might just sterilise it's surface and start all over again.