Fossil fuels companies are spending billions on distraction and disruption of politics

This video is worth watching for the 1989 footage of Thatcher issuing her warning about climate change. She was a chemistry graduate. That was 37 years ago.

The Tory’s and Reform have both received multi-million pound donations from fossil fuel interests. The reason wealthy individuals and companies make these donations is it works. They get favourable policies, in this case the Tory’s and Reform pledging to scrap net zero policies. They are in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry. We need to get wealth and corporate funding out of politics.

We are far too late to avert the worst impacts of climate change. It is accelerating while our politics is business as usual, employing magical and nonsense arguments to say that rapid cooling can take place at some undefined future time.

We can deal with the climate crisis and the cost of living crisis at the same time. It just requires a reversal of the fast rising wealth inequality and a fair redistribution of wealth and resources.

The environment is at odds with neoliberal capitalism. That is the problem that politicians don't want to address.

What upsets me is how ugly climate change makes the world. Corals die from the heat, forests burn and habitats become very homogeneous, grey and ugly as the ecosystems supporting life there collapse.

it's not permanent, nature will always recover, but it may not recover for centuries or millennia, long after we're dead. I want to see the great barrier reef, I want to see healthy rainforests, I want to see biodiversity and all the fauna and flora the world has to offer and I want future generations to see it all too, but that doesn't look like it's going to be the case because ecosystems are rapidly dying and a lot of species are going extinct. We're making the world ugly and future generations are the ones who are going to pay for that loss. Heck, most britons don't even know the UK was ever covered in temperate rainforests, because of just how decimated and rare those gorgeous forests have become. Amazing natural beauty lost from public memory. What else will be lost from public memory?

Excellent piece. Thank you.

The Royal Society recommend the UK should have 100,000GWh of energy storage by 2050 (it's currently 39.3 GWh from 4 pumped storage facilities). That's over a 2,500 fold increase. That means building 10,000 storage facilities or 400 every year. A typical pumped storage facility has a 300 to 400m dam built to hold back 10 million cubic metres of water, with a fall to the turbines below of about 400 metres.
That's at the same time as increasing wind power generation from 75TWh (in 2020) to 665TWh (in 2050 - these are UK National Grid figures). That's around 100,000 giant wind turbines (manufactured in China using dirty coal power). And by the time you get to 2050, the 4,000 wind turbines you needed to install in 2025 would have reached the end of their working lives and will need to be buried in landfill, and replaced with another 4,000, each and every subsequent year forever. It's all impossible and absurd.
The cabling and additional structures to connect all this together will essentially require the UK consuming huge amounts of  copper and other rare metals for the next 25 years.
1.5 billion tonnes of concrete
42 million tonnes of steel (which is going to need 27 million tonnes of coking coal)
1.9 million tonnes of copper
1.3 million tonnes of zinc
184,000 tonnes of manganese
122,000 tonnes of chromium
56,000 tonnes of nickel
54,000 tonnes of other critical minerals.
No doubt all of these materials will be ethically sourced using low carbon processes.
Nuclear power would require less than ½ of these resources and Coal power around ¹/10th.
The cost will be unaffordable and the skilled manpower levels unattainable. And that is just to eliminate the less than 1% of the global CO2 emissions that the UK is responsible for. So times that by 100 for the whole Earth going Net Zero. Good luck with that.

I might sound insane to most people reading this, but as someone with a somewhat decent grasp on the severity and scale of the problem, I'm pretty much convinced at this point that civilization has a high likelihood of collapsing from CC related stresses by the 2050s, if not (at least) ~800 million people make it their life's work to combat climate change by the 2030s.

In other words, no, I don't believe politics can solve it.

..     BUT THE ANSWER IS  "NO",  POLITICS CAN SOLVE NOTHING.

This is a good review of climate change policies but ignores the fact that 'growth' itself is responsible for numerous other environmental afflictions at the global scale. You are correct in asserting that international cooperation & coordination are necessary to have a chance, but no world leader has called for an end to hostilities for the sake of addressing climate change.
What's missing from the mix is agreed governance over new demand & that's where Trump, 5% GDP to defence & big tech come in. Only insanity could fuel such a massive rise in demand for 24/7 energy, water & mineral resources at this time. Net zero will not work for the simple fact that we cannot contain our desires.

The way to reduce energy bills is to cut your energy use. You don't need to heat your house to 21°C. I only heat mine to 12°C, and I'm 74. And you don't need a car. Get an electric bike instead. And you definitely don't need to fly on holiday. Holiday in Britain and save our beleagered tourist industry

Politics is built to deliver it, the problem is the lobbying of big business, politicians being more accountable to media and money than the people. It's simple corruption and Neoliberalism. Profit over everything else is killing us. We're the frog in the pan not realising it's heating up.

It's about  Far more than the climate.  Depleted fish stocks,   Deforestation..   poisoned groundwater.   Micro plastics.  Every new person on the planet means another 3 acres cleared,  for their lifetime footprint.  Every year the world population grows by  69 million mouths.

V good reporting. This promises to be an excellent channel.

Can anyone tell me just what the wars in Ukraine Palestine, Iran, and Yemen are generating in terms of CO², or GHGs? There's surely a major issue with ALL military generation? And, of course, the Corporatocracy which includes Big Oil, have demonstrably 'bought' politicians - who if I remember correctly ARE part of 'politics'.
Why are we - well, our politicians (!) - continuing to subsidise North sea oil, or Alberta bitumen extraction, or pipelines for example?
This issue is by far the biggest threat to humankind. Aren't politicians elected (albeit by a faulty electoral system here and in the USA and Canada) to represent ”the people”?

There's a company in Squamish British Columbia that is taking CO2 out of the air at the rate of 40 million trees
-- And then it either reuses the carbon as fuel, or stores it in tiny pellets
-- And their machines are fuelled by the carbon they've extracted from the air
-- Couldn't we just build more of these all over the world?

People say carbon can be stored in cement too, and these machines can be powered by renewable energy or maybe even nuclear energy

Please look into all of this - what if this could slow down climate change, or even reverse it??

--

There's companies that store the collected CO2 deep in the ground, but people say this isn't worth it
They might not reuse the extracted CO2, and might not use renewable energy to run their machines

When you look into this, it might be called carbon capture, but the most well known carbon capture that most people refer to is the one where they store the gas underground, but this is the method that people say is less worth it
So please consider the other types of carbon capture that I listed at the start! :)

...     YOU DO NOT KNOW WHY WE ARE AT THIS POINT.
POLITICS IT IS NOT FOR SAVING THE WORLD.

Also the US military is the biggest  user of oil and pollution compared to general citizens