Wednesday, 20 October 2021
Is the Glasgow climate-change summit going to be all blah blah blah?
Poor Boris. The Glasgow climate-change mega summit looks more and more doomed to be an anti-climax, if not a disastrous flop. Xi Zinping, ruler of the most coal-polluting nation on the planet, isn't coming, so that means zilch interest from Beijing. Putin isn't coming either, something about concerns over Covid in UK. The Australian prime minister Scott Morrison is only coming after changing his mind (ie someone twisted his arm - Biden/Boris?), and John Kerry super-envoy for climate-change and former US secretary of state, has read the runes and has lowered expectations of any major breakthrough. Meanwhile Boris has announced a fancy £5,000 gift for any householder who switches from gas boilers to heat pump boilers which sounds fine but is realistically pie-in-the-sky. These environment-loving boilers are fabulously expensive to install, involve major disruption to property and/or garden and need to be housed in their own special little building. No way are people going to rush to throw away their gas boilers. If the £5,000 Boris gift is going to mean anything, the price of heat pumps will have to come down drastically and clever people will have to think of ways of installing them without knocking the whole bloody house down. Meanwhile Prince William and Kate have sponsored this scheme to award £1 million prizes for exceptionally brilliant ideas to help save the planet. It could have been another PR show but the winners are absolutely amazing and inspiring. Much more of that and maybe the planet will survive after all. But the Glasgow summit is going to be all blah blah blah.
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