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Well, what a week: great drama at the end of the COP 28 UN climate talks in Dubai. Would they or would they not be able to hammer out a joint statement showing unanimity and serious intent among all of the parties?
Well, by Jove, they did it! To the accompaniment of a substantial hoo-ha, what was described as ‘the very first global stocktake’ of how countries can accelerate action towards meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, included the fact that ‘nearly every country in the world’ agreed to transition away from fossil fuels.
Whoa! Hold the fire tongs! Squeeze out the sandbags! Bottle the hurricanes! Hadn’t this commitment been made ages ago?
Truth is, as someone who questions what I consider to be the extremism and zealotry of the climate change absolutists, I was somewhat surprised and, even, pleased at the relative modesty of the news.
Surely, one has only to look at current energy usage to conclude that we need to move rather carefully and thoughtfully when reducing fossil fuel usage.
Just scan the above chart (copyright Our World in Data) and two facts above all others surely are clear:
Energy consumption has continued to increase year on year throughout the past half century and more (with two minor exceptions for a financial crisis and the COVID 19 pandemic). That is, it hasn’t just ‘continued’, it has ‘continued to increase’.
Fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas) still account for 80 per cent of the usage.
I suggest this leads to three further conclusions:
On current projections, there is not a snowflake’s chance in hell that so-called renewables will achieve anything near the volume required to keep the lights on, let alone keep everything else running.
With China bringing ever more coal-fired power stations on line, and with India embarking on its own period of industrial growth, those totals will keep on climbing for some years yet. Our own boasts, here in the UK and other parts of the West, that we have dramatically reduced our emissions are self-delusions: we have just outsourced them.
The minimization - demonization, even - of nuclear power is just plain stupid. It is, in fact, the safest form of energy of all of ‘em.
Apropos all of this, I hope you won’t mind my finishing with an anecdote from my own experience. This was prompted by both the COP 28 news and specific news about China’s record-breaking June 2023 heatwave when the temperature in Beijing reached 41 degrees C.
This is from late-July 1978 when I worked in marketing and advertising consultancy. One of our clients was a hotel development in Sousse Nord in Tunisia - a management contract deal that Trusthouse Forte Hotels had with a Saudi owning company.
The hotel manager was a tremendous, ebullient Italian called Marcello and he and I were due to attend a meeting with the hotel’s owners in Tunis. It was his idea: “Let’s do the British stiff upper lip - we should go to this meeting in full business attire.” So we did.
An early train took us from Sousse to Tunis, where, upon leaving the railway station we got a taxi to the hotel company’s office. It was approaching noon, the temperature was high and the traffic was jammed. Trouble was, our VW Beetle taxi was old, small and very basic - no aircon. Nonetheless, we arrived at the meeting with our ties neatly knotted, our suit jackets properly buttoned, and calm expressions that we hoped belied the heat discomfort we actually felt.
When we arrived back in Sousse that evening Marcello’s wife told us that she had heard on the radio that the temperature in central Tunis at noon had topped 50 degrees C (122 degrees F).
Thanks for reading.