Alex Phillips: We need to talk about climate change

Groan. If that’s your reaction whenever someone mentions climate change or the name Greta I rather suspect you are not alone. I certainly find it all a bit of a bore.

Certainly the rabble of screwballs dressed for socialist rag week blocking major thoroughfares In London with interpretative dance while lobbing red paint over the city’s resplendent architecture is hardly ingratiating me to their cause.

The Government’s climate spokesperson’s advice to not rinse plates before putting them in the dishwasher in order to save the planet was met with equal disdain after half an hour of trying to scrub baked-on gubbins from my once sparkling wine glasses.

My car has been sent back to the vehicle-friendly wilds of the West Country instead of trying to negotiate the litany of fines, fees and permits in London only to find myself sitting in 5 mile tailbacks staring at an empty cycle highway for the one eco-commuter that dared leave Hackney. Meanwhile I find myself drooling over long haul holidays and bemoan the fact that the hybrid turbo engine now used in F1 just doesn’t have the same spluttering growl.

On the surface, I am not a Homo sapien well adapted for our green future. But do I care if the planet turns into a blazing inferno? That Gloucestershire will become part of the new Atlantis by 2050? That carcasses of elephants will be picked over by emaciated vultures when it stops raining in the Serengeti? That Australia is set to become one giant koala crematorium?

Yes.

Very much so.

I’m sure like you, given the choice, I really do want the planet tomorrow to be green, populated and pleasant.The big question facing all of us today is - how?

And with ambitious targets in place to become carbon neutral in what will be most of our lifetimes, this subject will radically change all of our lives, perhaps more so than anything else since the industrial revolution. We will bid farewell to petrol powered vehicles, gas boilers, unsustainable food production and affordable foreign holidays, all things that we have become dependent on, day in day out, and form the basis of enjoying our existences.

These policies also come at a massive cost. Who will pay for a fleet of battery powered cars and charging points? For hydrogen boilers and heat pumps? For new nuclear power stations and offshore wind farms? The answer, dear viewer, is you.

There is no such thing as Government and Big Business in the end. The bottom line stops with the taxpayer and the consumer. We could all devolve back to primitive living, but if China and India continue to chug out over a third of the planet’s total emissions, what’s the point? Anyone who has ever experienced the choking air pollution in Delhi or Shanghai knows that it makes the Great Smog Of London look like the crisp air of Greenland on a bright day.

With COP26, the world’s biggest climate change summit, hosted next month by the UK as current President of the UN offshoot, expect to hear a lot about our country’s plans to reach net zero by 2050, the first major economy to put that target into legislation.

And it will affect us all, whether we are ready, or not.So how much are you prepared to do to save the planet?

We’ll be looking at all the strategies and ideas being put forward to cut the carbon, and ask, are you ready to do what’s necessary?

Today, we really need to talk about Climate Change.