Throwing Out the Climate Change Narrative Would Be the Best Thing to Happen for All of Us

By Harry Hopkins

I’m a great believer in climate change. I remember walking across Derwentwater in the Lake District during the severe winter of 1963/64 whilst engaged on my Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme. The whole of the region was blanketed with snow and everywhere looked beautiful. What fun it was.

We don’t get severe winters these days, so the pattern of weather has changed in my short life span. But is climate change anything new? And is mankind directly responsible for these changes? In my opinion, no and no. The earth has always changed, not only in its land profiles, but also in its climate.

The climate change zealots who fervently believe that mankind is a walking disaster and that by simply existing, we are killing the planet are really something, aren’t they? It’s the whole ‘carbon footprint’, ‘carbon emission’ ‘net zero’ thing that makes me think I live in a world where many have lost their reason.

My niece, to all outward appearances a young, intelligent, professional in a responsible job, informed me not long ago that she was thinking of becoming a vegan. I respect vegans who have made that decision because they empathise with animals, but when I asked my niece why she was contemplating this drastic change from eating meat to veganism she responded by saying that, ‘I want to do my bit to save the planet’. Where do you go from there? Needless to say this dear relation of mine is fully jabbed, took pride in wearing her floral mask during the ‘pandemic’ and definitely enjoyed the salaried furloughs when given the opportunity.

Speaking of saving the planet, I had two young gentlemen knock on my door only a couple of weeks ago asking if I would like my telephone system upgraded. They were in my area and were trying to get people to have their paths dug up to install a line that would be entirely dependent on a router and the internet. Using the latest technology (fibre optics) they would render my copper wired system redundant and that, ‘This change is going to happen anyway’. When I asked why I should welcome the inconvenience of having my life disrupted and this change foisted on me when my existing copper system was working fine, one of them replied, ‘It’s to save the planet’. He looked none too convinced by his own answer. I asked him to explain further. He couldn’t. ‘It’s what we’re told to say’ came his reply. I politely declined their offer and my path remains intact and will be for as long as I am able to defend it.

Occasionally I make a point to ask for an explanation of what they mean by ‘zero carbon’. Shops, insurance companies, banks and many more are constantly claiming to be working to become carbon-neutral, so I query this in a non-argumentative way, as if I’m an interested citizen who wants to do the right thing. I have yet to receive a single solitary answer from a manager, a shop assistant, director or whoever who has any inkling as to what it’s all about, let alone explain it to a bemused customer.

Approaching Christmas, we are now being hectored by none other than Mike Berners-Lee, Professor at Lancaster University (with a string of letters after his name and one major league pusher of man-made climate change), that by eating tomatoes out of season we could hasten the arrival of Armageddon. This line appeared in a recent Yorkshire Live article:

‘An expert is warning people not to eat lettuce or tomatoes this December and January – because it could accelerate the end of the world.’

Why do I laugh out loud when I read stuff like this? Aside from the ridiculousness of the statement, I’m always amused by the word ‘could’. It’s always used when writers want to publish any old rubbish when their content contains nonsense. That other erstwhile harbinger of intellectual common sense, The Mirror, also published the same garbage.

The nub of these scare tactics is that during the winter months short-lived fruit is flown here from foreign climes, as opposed to long-lived fruit being transported by sea and that the aviation traffic is adding to climate change. There’s no doubt that most soft fruit is imported during the winter months, but this is exacerbated by the high cost of electricity which has led to domestic growers cutting back on their winter operations. It was reported last winter:

The answer it seems to me is simple. On an island standing on coal and surrounded by oil and gas and having a history of developing nuclear power, we could (my use of the word in a positive sense) become totally self-sufficient in generating cheap and plentiful energy. We could heat our homes and businesses and save many old folk the indignity and discomfort of freezing during the winter. And of course our fruit and vegetable growers could heat their greenhouses till the cows come home (if the climate nutters have left us with any of course) and reduce the air traffic that Berners-Lee so abhors.

This doesn’t look like it will happen any time soon, although you never know it could, but that would mean throwing out the climate change narrative altogether, which would be the best thing to happen for all of us. However, I’ve got no fancy letters after my name, I grow my own fruit and earned a living making stuff out of wood, so what do I know? Well, one thing without a doubt. If we get rid of all the Great Resetters and the climate change zealots, we will, without doubt, save countless lives as well as take an enormous step towards saving this beautiful planet of ours.

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