As chairman of the Environment Agency, his job is to persuade a sceptical public that, despite the recession, climate change remains the greatest threat to Britain.
Er… No.
Speaking at his office overlooking the Thames before his organisation’s conference next week, he insists that bullying does not work, and instead wants to face down the growing band of climate-change agnostics: “The number of people claiming climate change isn’t happening is minuscule, and they have no authority among the scientific community,” he says. “They are mavericks, not backed up by the evidence.”
And Lord Smith has what qualifications in climatology, atmospheric physics or anything to the porpoise? Way Hey! I just saw a tumbleweed roll through the room followed by a coyote howling.
Mavericks hey! Like Newton, Darwin or Einstein? Can you even integrate by parts Lord Smith? Figured not. Now go sit in the naughty corner and shut the bastarding fuck up whilst real people chew the fat.
It is irrelevant, he says, that the world has recently been getting cooler. “You have to look at the trend over 20 years, and that clearly shows global warming. There are alarming new phenomena — the floods here two years ago, the glaciers melting. The evidence is all around us.”
Oh, that is priceless! Global cooling is irrelevent to global warming. Look at the twenty-year trend or the fifty-year trend or the thousand-year trend… Whatever. Utter bollocks. I could trot-out stuff about sunspot cycles and all that malarkey or even El Nino and the Atlantic oscillation but fuck it! If Chris Smith isn’t prepared to play with the big boys and just set his time-scales according to what suits him then I shall not bother to step-up to the plate.
Managing change is not enough, he argues; Britain has to counteract it. “We are facing an average rise of two degrees over the next 50 years.
I will wager the tenner in my pocket that that is nonsense. Oddly enough that tenner has the portrait of Charles Darwin on it. One of those terrible scientific mavericks. And what precisely is the Noble Lord Smith suggesting? Is he going to sit on the tide-line and command the seas? The utter Cnut that he clearly is.
The problems are real, he says, but that does not mean that “climate change deniers” should be outcast: “They are dangerous, but it’s not like racism or sexism or homophobia.” This week, an employee successfully sued a company for not taking his environmental concerns seriously. “People should be allowed to believe passionately in environmental change — for them it can be like a religion.”
Absolutely. They can believe and believe and bring Tinkerbell back to life all they want. Just not on my ticket. Mind though that, “They are dangerous, but it’s not like racism or sexism or homophobia.” is beyond human comprehension. Beyond mine anyway which bases my climate change scepticism on science and not prejudice but as far as that terrible white, male, sausage jockey Smith is concerned… Nah, it ain’t prejudice. He’s just a twat. Simple as. And one who is making a vague threat to boot.
The devil, in his view, is Jeremy Clarkson, presenter of the motoring show Top Gear: “He would not be my favourite TV viewing, but there will be more rejoicing in Heaven for one sinner who repents. I would like him to be up there saying what we need is to develop an electric car that can beat the world. I want the thrill of speed but from electricity not fossil fuel.”
Oh, fuck! This isn’t parody Nick. This is reality from a senior politician. I do not believe in Gods or Devils but I would suspect if I did that His Satanic Majesty wouldn’t be as badly dressed as Jeremy Clarkson. I shall skip over the patently religious tone of the rest (it is noted though) and point out the simple fact that electricity doesn’t make itself and is generally produced by burning fossil fuel. Unhless of course Lord Smith wants a uranium pile up his end (God knows what he wants there). Nah, reckoned not.
Lord Smith is disappointed that Gordon Brown’s moral compass points more to Africa than to the environment. “The Government hasn’t done enough on developing a national energy efficiency programme on energy efficiency in people’s homes. It is the low-hanging fruit. You get amazing benefits and cheaper bills, and create a lot of jobs. It’s win-win, but there is nothing co-ordinated.”
Leaving aside the point that Africa does indeed have an environment how the fuck does Lord Smith square cheaper bills with more jobs? My understanding is that wages are the primary expense of pretty much any business.
Individuals rather than governments hold the key to preventing global meltdown, he says. “I try and eat more fish and less meat. I don’t have a windmill on my house — there’s some evidence that the carbon generated by making a windmill for a house outweighs the benefit — but I want to put solar panels on the roof.
Knock yerself out Chris. You utter tosspot. You did though state a truth about playing Windy Miller and for that you get credit. My credit, not Al Gore’s carbon one.
“I try and be sensible about how often I flush the loo, I usually have showers although occasionally I’ll permit myself the guilty luxury of a bath. I don’t fly a huge amount, I turn lights off religiously, I recycle everything I can.”
I try and be sensible about how often I flush the loo”. Beyond parody but note the religious tone entering from stage-left…
He regards himself as a civil libertarian — he wants to nudge rather than bludgeon travellers away from air travel. “We can’t ban all travel. We need to find better ways of getting around. Instead of taking planes in Europe, we have to develop high-speed rail.” He was appalled by the announcement this week of Britain’s first £1,000 rail fare. “It costs more to travel by train than plane . . . I think ultimately you need more subsidy to make rail travel more attractive.”
Er… Well, oh fuckity-fuck… Thing is I actually am a libertarian and Chris Smith is a twat. Now, Chris, please explain to me how I can get to Prague and back by rail for 80 quid because I managed that on an aeroplane. Please explain why I ought to get on the train to Manchester and do Manchester-London, London-Paris, Paris-Prague and how that works better than simply going to the airport and flying there? Also please explain why I ought to endure a grim ordeal rather than a two hour flight? It costs more to travel by train than by plane for a very simple reason. Aircraft are more efficienct over long distances and that is the reason they were invented. Unless you are promising a continent-wide Maglev system (aka the grandparents of all white elephants) run at massive subsidy then you are talking a complete non-starter.
His big idea is to give everyone a personal carbon allowance, which would limit their use of air travel, heating and fast cars. “People could choose what they wanted to do, but life would become more expensive if they went over their carbon limit. They could sell on anything they didn’t use.”
Fuck. Off.
He thinks that it would be fairer to allow travellers to take a small number of cheap flights every year, rather than taxing budget airlines out of existence. “People on limited means need holidays too,” he says. But does he agree with the environmentalist and writer Jonathon Porritt, that people who have more than two children are behaving irresponsibly? “Population is a big issue but you can’t have a quota,” he says.
Apart from the fact that I personally find being lectured by a self-confessed chutney ferret of the first water on having children offensive and apart from the fact that I shall take as many cheap flights as I care to or can afford to he can supremely cunt-off with cuntitudinous maximus. “People on limited means need holidays too,” - I think we have a winner for most patronising comment of the decade.
“I want wind power all over the countryside. There are only a few locations in the most precious and beautiful bits of landscape that would not be appropriate. As a general principle we need more wind farms.”
Didn’t he earlier say these things didn’t work?
Politicians. They want what is worst for all of us.
Apart from themselves, obviously.
Agreed.
Just as bad is his idea that local councils overpay to acquire houses threatened by cliff erosion.
http://markwadsworth.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-underlying-warming-trend.html
“A personal carbon credit[...]” One wonders what portion of that credit is alloted to respiration? Can you assume someone else’s credit by, shall we say, terminally reducing their impact on the environment, ala’ a bounty? I can see the appeal to the atavist in assuming someone’s life essence (ie. carbon credit) by recycling them forthwith into whatever soylent green factory is approved by the Gorian carbon burghers, and I can personally name a few who would best serve their fellow man by no longer exhaling poisonous carbon dioxide gasses…
Pardon - “a personal carbon allowance[...]“. Precision is all!
Nick,
Just a thought: suppose we all did stop flying and eating meat. Would they then have to increase our taxes (still) further to provide subsidies to keep Airbus and the beef farmers in business.
Well it has been an interesting few weeks for those like myself who are massively sceptical about AGW, and who are soon to be denounced as more dangerous to his fellow man than international terrorism, for lighting a bonfire to get rid of the crap the Council wont, driving a car and getting on an airplane about 3 times a year.
Let’s see what the nice “sane” the science is settled, hairshirt and bracers brigade have been telling me lately.
I have been told to eat my dog by a couple of NZ architects (ah experts!) because she is more threat to the planet than an SUV.
Ordered to become vegetarian, because cattle, sheep and pigs are nothing but mini nuclear bombs stuffed full of deadly methane, and so by logical projection the extermination of those three species.
To hire my underpants and shoes etc instead of owning them on account of us all having too much “stuff” and the cost of manufacture is destroying poor beleagered Gaia.
To feel guilty if I take a bath rather than a 15 second shower. I had one this morning without a twinge of guilt. I could have had one in asses milk I suppose (are asses still ok?) Pour me a bath of asses milk my dear, I said to the wife.
Do you want it pasturised she said?
No, I will be happy if it comes up to my chin (boom boom!)
So I put it to you M’lud, who are the barking bonkers threat to the wellbeing of the people of this world, little ‘ol me?
Or the very sane, very knowledgable Warm-Mongers?
The Defence rests (for a fag break)
Think you covered that pretty well.
I try and be sensible about how often I flush the loo,
I’m going to guess that he doesn’t get invited into other people’s homes all that often.
Fallacy #1 of the hire thing (there are others). People don’t look after hired things because they aren’t theirs. Ever hired a car. The Suzuki Alto we got on Malta was buggered. Having said that it wasn’t buggered by Maltese standards. They have some appalling 2 and 8s on the road there. And they drive like lunatics. Especially the bus drivers who think they are God himself. Yup, they drive on the correct side of the road and all signage is in English but Maltese roads are like ride of the fucking Valkyries.
Example: Some fucker is going down a steep street in Valleta in a knackered old (30 years) VW and he’s parping the horn all the time because he’s coming through and he ain’t giving way (even when he has to) and that I expereienced shortly after nearly being vanned to death because some twerp parked on the same steep street and didn’t engage the handbrake so it rolls back. Sir Isaac Newton being in the driving seat and all. And the roads… They have some amazing churches which demonstrates the Maltese capacity for civil engineering but if they’d only put one tenth of the effort into road-repairs they put into church-building…
Alas instead a road-trip in Malta requires a new spine. Especially if it’s on one of the 1950s vintage Leyland or Ford buses which are leaf-sprung. The few new ones are worse. The modern suspension and the knackered roads generates a feeling akin to sea-sickness and I don’t get sea-sick. Well only once and that was Santander/Plymouth across the Bay of Biscay where the North Atlantic quarrels over whether to hit France or Spain and everyone else gets unwell.
Talking of toilets and Ferries… I once folded-up a ketchup sachet and stuck it under the bog seat in a cabin on the Harwich-Europoort route and my brother thought he’sd had a full rectal prolapse. Oh, how we (well me) larfed!
Though that wasn’t the roughest crossing. That was from the Dry Tortugas to Key West and the assorted septics on the boat stared daggers at my wife and I as we relaxed with rum and cigars. They’d all turned green. They were probably from Kansas or somewhere and had never seen that big blue wobbly thing before. But we are English and have salt-water in our veins. Rum, sodomy and the lash! And all that. Britannia as I remarked still ruled the waves though obviously we need to get Arthur Batchelor’s iPod back from the sodding Iranians.
Oh, yeah, well, Chris Smith ain’t welcome round my gaff. Not with such habits. “I try and be sensible about how often I flush the loo” - sounds like something from the fucking dark ages when you hung your arse out of a window (if you had a window) and not from the C21st. Bazalgette must be spinning in his grave.
“I try and eat more fish and less meat”
Latency of sexual orientation clearly works in both directions.
““The number of people claiming climate change isn’t happening is minuscule…”
Actually, he’s right there.
But that fails to include the huge number of people who point out that the climate is changing, has always changed, and will always change. Irrespective of man’s actions.
Sheesh, when will you youngsters ever listen!
I told you not to rent a car in Malta didn’t I? The roads look like they have been carpet bombed. And talking of bombs, did you go into the church with the huge dome that a German bomb came through and failed to explode?
The fish thing is just indicative of how stupid Smith is. Does he not know that fishing boats can be at sea for days and catch nothing at all, or if they do they have to throw it back because they are too small under EU directives.
That’s a lot of diesel used for fuck all result. Or maybe he thinks that people row trawlers!
Going to Gozo RAB. To see everything on Gozo we wanted to see and E22 seemed a reasonable price and Gozo is not Malta. Yes, went to that church.
And yes, the fish thing is bollocks. Fishermen are having to through stuff dead back because it ain’t the species they were looking for. The CFP is an abomination and I say that as a fish fanciier and a fish eater. I have snorkeled off coral reefs to see ze fishes of ze sea and then dined upon their mates with the salt still in my hair. Anyway, Chris Smith is a wanker. Did we have a Ministry of Culture when Shakespeare was penning his plays? When York Minster was erected? When Turner knocked out a few watercolours or even when Mick and Keef grabbed guitars? Nah, we just had a culture.
But Trust Julia to steal the thread in a couple of lines.
Remember when the words “Ministry of Culture” almost epitomised foriegn-ness? It was only a decade ago. They were right up there with “Your papers, please”. (Of course, we’ll be hearing those on the streets of Britian before long.)
Anyone who accepts such a post is automatically, ex officio as it were, a twat. Becoming Chairman of the Environment Agency after leaving it propels one far beyond twattishness and right into the very heart of cuntdom.
The CFP’s one of the very best reasons for getting the hell out of the EU as soon as possible.
Well, I would agee Sam. if we still had a Navy…
Thanks for the laugh.
[...] Environment agency chairman Chris Smith advocates rationing: http://www.countingcats.com/?p=4885 Posted on Mon 09 Nov 12:39 retweet 0 votes RT @RobFisher: Environment agency chairman Chris [...]
Here is some evidence from some mavericks. Honestly, a “civil libertarian” in favour of rationing?