What would conservative environmental action look like? I disagree that it would involve an increasingly interfering government dominating the decisions on our behalf. Surely a ‘conservative’ policy wouldn’t wish to hoover up more authority in order to dictate what we ought to do. For a while now I – though admittedly still only 23 years old – have operated under the assumption that part of conservative governance is handing personal responsibility back to ordinary members of the public, rather than snatching it away.
Therefore, when I hear discussions of climate action involving governmental intervention or perhaps some sort of universal council, unaccountable to people of my standing, I begin to hesitate. What sort of action can they introduce to counter the, apparently, deadly threat of climate change – an elusive and, at this point, completely political concept.
For example, why must my taxes be, more than they already are, sent to poorer nations to combat climate change across the globe? Why precisely? I mean: precisely. Rishi Sunak argued in his speech at the superfluous and undeniably supercilious parade ground of COP27 that poorer nations have been “unfairly burdened with the carbon debt of richer nations.” Is that true? If so, should we reverse the remarkable improvement of living standards across the third-world heretofore unseen in such a short space of time? According to the World Bank Group President Jim Young King, “[o]ver the last 25 years, more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of poverty, and the global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history.”
Should we, therefore, drive those billion people back into poverty? Or, worse still, impoverish ourselves in order to tackle the invisible dragon? At COP27, Sunak also announced that Britain will send £11.6 billion to Pakistan as climate reparations to the poorest countries, allegedly, suffering from the most severe forms of Mother Nature’s wrath. Do the British not need that themselves? Do Pakistanis in Britain not need that support? Great Britain is teetering on the edge of complete economic collapse, the finger nails with which we hold ourselves above the precipice are screeching dangerously towards the last embers of the ledge and we decide to send more money away? I thought we had an ongoing cost of living crisis?
I haven’t even began to discuss major problems concerning international cooperation yet we’ve reached an impasse. The truth is that climate change was, is and is becoming even more of a chaotic mess of phoney will and dubious political intentions; and the more we attempt to do to counter the invisible demon, sent from the depths of pandemonium, the more we begin to corrode or even ruin.
But, that does not mean that we haven’t an obligation to protect the environment as best we can. It has to begin on an individual level because government action inevitably exacerbates problems. For example, for the past two years the government has dictated our lives by imposing mask mandates as well as committing itself to impossible climate targets. Yet, as was even admitted by the BBC recently, masks are being pumped into the ocean, in 2020 alone, more than 1.6 billion made their way to the beach. causing vast damage to fragile ecosystems: all because the government thought it knew best.
Therefore, returning to the question: what would conservative environmental action look like? It would require everyone participating yet not as a result of arbitrary compulsion; on the contrary, there would have to be an incentive.
One system to which I was introduced was what the Germans call ‘Pfand,’ meaning ‘deposit’. Pfand is a system of returning bottles to wherever one bought them. When you buy a bottle of Coca-Cola in Germany, for example, you put the usual price and then twenty-five cent on top. The bottle itself costs twenty-five cents and, if you want to have that money given back, you return the bottle. Quite simple, indeed. What this means societally is that the amount of plastic waste, either on the streets or being dumped into landfill or finding its way to the ocean is severely diminished. Almost every bottle you buy has a small deposit fee. Beer bottles are worth eight cents, plastic bottles are worth fifteen and large plastic bottles are twenty-five. And, as a result of the price, you are incentivised to return them, with almost every supermarket having machines which allow you to return your bottles. There is, therefore, no excuse not to participate.
Having encountered this system, it is far more difficult to dispose of plastic without thought. One major problem I have in Britain is how dirty it is, with litter lining the gutters of almost every street. This doesn’t exist in Germany – or at least to anywhere near the same level as in Britain. In fact, according to official statistics, a mere 3% of recyclable Pfand bottles are not returned. In a country of over 80 million people, it beggar’s belief.
It’s hardly new or something that has existed in Britain before. Until around the 1950s, a similar system was in place in Britain, where children, such as my grandparents, would carry glass bottles down to their local shop and get enough to buy some sweets. The loss of such a practice seems unwise considering the harm that plastic bottles inflict upon the environment as a whole – especially when they’re launched out of a car window.
Would it not make more sense to begin making manageable changes, which do not drastically alter the economy or risk societal collapse, so as to improve our impact on the environment. Most agree that seeing the oceans so polluted is alarming; perhaps even more alarming than the alleged ‘end of the world’ narrative that is so commonly prognosticated in the media and politics. So why wouldn’t an English Pfand system be introduced? It enables everyone to play an active role in protecting the environment as an individual. Not as a grand orchestra, conducted by God knows who.
“For example, why must my taxes be, more than they already are, sent to poorer nations to combat climate change across the globe?”
— Because they want to centralize power, and they’re using climate change for a few reasons:
1. To bypass consent, and mandate under the pretext of emergency.
2. To use fear, so that you and others relinquish your individuality and liberty for the common good. (just take a look at lancet)
3. To justify mass migration and immigration, leading to cultural conflicts, social strife, collapse, and then use this chaos to convince the population that government is the answer to all of their problems, and that government must own the means of production, at which point they will move to a regional bloc based feudalist order in which people are left with a universal basic income — essentially the scraps of distribution.
4. To siphon power from communities — even national sovereignty — and consolidate that power into the hands of global actors who, for all intents and purposes, are on a new religious crusade under the banner of “human rights” which are no longer a derivation of the state of nature, as they were during the enlightenment, but are now predicated upon subjective notions of morality.
5. Kickbacks.
Re. article: I suggest using fewer commas, because your work is quite difficult to read.
Cheers.
This is a sane considered response to global warming. We humans love to frighten ourselves with apocalyptic fears of the future. I can remember past warnings: from acid rain with most trees destroyed, to ‘peak’ oil having been reached, both in the 1970’s.
Once a person has achieved prime ministerial status then the opportunity to preen on the world stage such as COP27 and arbitrarily impoverish this country by offering very generous sums of taxpayers money is almost impossible to resist.
The pfand system, and others is for the individual to respond to, not the dead, unwieldy usually blundering governments hand, of whatever hue.
Personal responsibility needs qualification. For example, someone who takes addictive brain poisons like skunk does not harm only himself when driving dangerously. Someone who fails to deal with a rat infestation in his home is a threat to others than himself. There should be penalties or preventions for people who dump toxic waste in water that others use. Even J S Mill was ambiguous about drunken behaviour.
I am for maximum free speech, except for personal defamation and incitement to crime, which cannot be rationally justified. Likewise, the corruption of children by sadistic imagery which is not “speech”.
The problem with “government regulation” of filth, and of climate change reduction, is that it is influenced by interest-groups and short-term fashion, instead of impartial science.