Most mainstream media is guilty of such weak interviewing, or perhaps it's in the editing where the incisive stuff gets cut.
I generally watch the BBC news but lately I've been switching it off. I find it pathetic as a source of decent quality news reporting yet with endless supply of twee, mawkish subject matter which could hardly be classified as news.

Posted By: JontiWith our carbon footprint if everybody was to decide to ditch their combustion engine cars today and buy an electric one the economy would collapse.

It's funny (well, not really) that ditching combustion engine cars and NOT buying an electric one doesn't seem to figure much on the table, especially when you look at investment in public transport.

I teach a small number of professors of engineering in some classes I run. One day we had a discussion about individual responsibility and action and fell on the question of carbon footprint of apples. Interestingly, if you look at the total production and distribution chain, it is almost impossible for an individual to find this information, which means you can end up in a total spin about even the simplest of shopping decisions. One of the profs looked into it and surprisingly found that the carbon footprint of one local organic apple was greater than another grown in Italy and imported into the UK to the supermarket. It's not unlike the farsical situation where raspberries grown in Scotland are flown to Poland to be washed and cleaned and then flown to Lithuania to be packaged before being flown back to a national depot and trucked again to a distribution centre. And lets not even get into the same systems for trainers and cars, for example.

There are of course some small things we can do in our own little way, but the major problem is indeed the systems within which we live.

Posted By: JontiI am afraid our politicians are on the whole hopelessly out of their depth.

I recently wrote elsewhere:
________________

New Centuries often feel like this one – old complacencies collapsing, existential consequences becoming clear.

Back in 1911, doom felt impending. The Liberals’ Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George were the ‘dangerous’ radicals who rose to the moment. Their party of business and commerce finally politicked an end to the English aristocracy’s Tory stranglehold via the House of Lords, and as pitchfork revolution threatened all over Europe, working class plight got their fullest attention.

The Edwardian mutual admiration, kinship even, between the English and German educated classes was extraordinary - and tragic, as colonial rivalry could only come to war. The Prussian militaristic ethos also created the world’s most generous public insurance against age, sickness and unemployment. Lloyd George spent his holiday on a study trip, resulting in Churchill and Lloyd George’s 1911 National Insurance Act. The rest is history, of intermittent progress and present decay.

Fast forward to 2021 - new doom feels impending. Where are our radical political giants? Across the Pond – maybe. Churchill would despair at the present vacuity of the Tory party that he later re-joined and led, not to mention the nostalgic stuckness of Labour, the once-great adversary. The only voices that speak clarity and uncompromised truth, that galvanise and give hope, are children:

I called my congressman
And he said, quote:
"I'd like to help ya son
But yer too young to vote"
Eddie Cochrane, ‘Summertime Blues’, 1958

Not just Greta’s international Skolstrejkers, but the young in general (and young-at-heart), courageous, disciplined and non-violent in successive waves of protest - Extinction Rebellion and now Insulate Britain - show no sign of ceasing to generate headlines that embarass their anaesthetised elders, who hope to die before it all gets too bad.

Elder expectation that before it becomes a voting force, today’s overwhelming youthful environmental ’idealism’ will give way to comfortable compromise (because that’s what their own generations did) is in for a shock. For a start, it’s clear that no such ’comfort’ awaits to seduce today’s young – quite the reverse. And ever more personally impactful climate disasters are sure to reinforce environmental urgency, even in so-far benign England. Their ’idealism’ is driven by anxiety
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/oct/06/eco-anxiety-fear-of-environmental-doom-weighs-on-young-people
just as heavy as the nuclear-war doom felt in the 1950s, and their protest more sophisticated than the dreary CND marches of that era, not so easily dismissable as lefty looniness.

Currently, even the Guardian editorial has mild doubts about Insulate Britain’s tactics of traffic disruption. Minister Kit Malthouse says “While we obviously all value the right to protest, there is a difference between causing disruption and causing damage” (regardless of Insulate Britain carefully causing no damage – except to drivers’ tempers). When Ghandi led his March to the Sea to illegally collect salt, he obstructed road traffic for 24 days, but its special rhetorical impact in India really launched eventual independence. In court Ghandi, like Mandela, trained lawyers both, demanded the maximum penalty of the law, but the judges both avoided the trap of creating martyrs.

No such wisdom in Pritti the dominatrix Witch of Suburbia, who just sees an opportunity to shore up the Tories’ Reactionary Pensioner core vote, even as it demographically dies off. Previously Civil matters will now be Criminalised, with six months prison for ‘interfering with key national infrastructure’ – the same as for manufacture or sale of flick knives. Suspected individuals will get travel bans.

This is all to avoid any concession to Insulate Britain’s eminently reasonable, mainstream science-backed demands www.insulatebritain.com . Would it be so hard to agree:

1 that the UK government immediately promises to fully fund and take responsibility for the insulation of all social housing in Britain by 2025

2 that the UK government immediately promises to produce within four months a legally binding national plan to fully fund and take responsibility for the full low-energy and low-carbon whole-house retrofit , with no externalised costs, of all homes in Britain by 2030 as part of a just transition to full decarbonisation of all parts of society and the economy

Insulate Britain’s protests would then cease. They would probably settle for a compromise, particularly on the deadlines, but the principles must surely be beyond argument? If the government is not already intending to do all of that, then how can UK possibly comply with the 2015 CoP21 Paris Agreement to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees?

What, if anything, can the UK Cabinet be thinking, to support hard-working Alok Sharma, President of the 2021 CoP26 Climate Emergency Conference (the world’s last hope to commit to actually doing what it takes) in Glasgow in November?

Posted By: fostertom

Posted By: SimonDthe carbon footprint of one local organic apple was greater than another grown in Italy and imported into the UK to the supermarket.

Whatt? Is that because s/he was looking at a supermarket organic apple, which was also

Posted By: SimonDflown to Poland to be washed and cleaned and then flown to Lithuania to be packaged before being flown back to a national depot and trucked again to a distribution centre

? If so, it's the 'supermarket' not the 'organic' that was being quantified.

Yes, the "organic" was not specifically what was being quantified but the whole system delivering the apple, from cradle to consumer, through a supermarket chain. Just to highlight the difficulties faced by a regular consumer. Clearly if you could wonder down to your local orchard and pick some organic apples off the tree, it would be a better scenario all round!

Posted By: owlmanI generally watch the BBC news but lately I've been switching it off. I find it pathetic as a source of decent quality news reporting yet with endless supply of twee, mawkish subject matter which could hardly be classified as news.

We've got to the point of always recording news programs now rather than watching them live. Mostly so we can skip the bits that aren't news (repeats of yesterday's interviews with people who witnessed some event or other being a prime example) and all sport except the F1 results and any sailing, and most of the human-interest but not news stuff. Also lets us watch any important bits twice. But I generally get an idea of the day's news from the web first.

WillInAberdeen suggested: "tomatoes from the Med not from Kent"

How about tomatoes from just up the road from us :
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8217227/Giant-greenhouses-use-sewage-farm-heat-produce-vegetables.html

https://www.lowcarbonfarming.co.uk/

and WillInAberdeen added: "organic apples are in season for three months of the year, finishing now. If you buy one outside that period, it's been cold-stored."

Very true. But cold storage doesn't cost much or release much carbon for the next several months or so, if it's done in the traditional way. The problem is large mechanical cold stores.

fostertom,

I agree with most of what you say though 'Insulate Britain' seem to be more grandad than school kid to me I also agree with your improving homes theme but that would require the trades people in sufficient quantity to carry out the work.

Where I do disagree is the tone. I have very little time for the home secretary but don't believe name calling is the way to show that. It has always struck me as odd how those politicians and political parties who claim to be open minded and inclusive are also the ones labelling those who disagree with them as scum or the nasty party. Is that not the behaviour of the playground bully?

SimonD,

I agree that public transport should be the main player in reducing the carbon footprint of transport but there has be NO investment on the scale needed outside of London. Where I live if you are dependent on public transport then you will struggle.

WiA,

I think clear labelling of the journey of products would be a good way of informing individuals of what their personal footprint is.

Good plan Jonti.

I propose a law to ban anyone from:
1) building artificially heated/lit glasshouses
2) calling them "green" houses
3) heating them with waste (literally) heat that could be useful in real houses
4) marketing them as being lower-carbon than gas-heated glasshouses, while conspicuously not comparing them against growing the produce in naturally warm-enough countries, or growing it in the UK during only the naturally warm-enough growing seasons.

Watch out for the British Bananas crop, doubtless coming soon...

Yeah, that was cheap about Priti Patel.

Posted By: djhI've already paid out a bunch of my money to do this for my house. Why should I pay again in taxes to do it for everybody else?

Did you not foresee that? Wasn't to 'create the facts' your public spirited way to make it happen eventually nationwide on a grand scale? Would that ever happen without massive public subsidy, at least as pump-priming, FiTs-style?

Anyway, nations that have their own sovereign currency don't have to finance such things by taxation - not even by borrowing from the private sector at interest or by issuing term bonds
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deficit-Myth-Modern-Monetary-Economy/dp/1529352568/ref=sr_1_1?crid=17X4I6RB1NW9P&keywords=deficit+myth&qid=1637618344&sprefix=deficit%2Caps%2C605&sr=8-1

Posted By: SimonDUK wine makers use parafin burners in the fields to protect the grapes from frost. No roof, no tunnel, just burning it all out in the open.

That happens in virtually every vineyard across Europe... though maybe not the south of Spain or Italy.

Time to plant an apple tree and brew your own cider :)

Posted By: fostertomDid you not foresee that? Wasn't to 'create the facts' your public spirited way to make it happen eventually nationwide on a grand scale? Would that ever happen without massive public subsidy, at least as pump-priming, FiTs-style?

Anyway, nations that have their own sovereign currency don't have to finance such things by taxation - not even by borrowing from the private sector at interest or by issuing term bonds

No Tom, I built my house with the intention that we might have a relatively low-cost and comfortable old age given the likely possible scenarios. If it helps somehow in 'encouraging the others' then all well and good. But I'd rather see the government promise a slow and steady increase in energy costs, with a large proportion remitted back to the needy, and then keep that promise. That seems more likely to encourage people to take sensible actions than handing out wodges of made-up cash to all and sundry.

And sorry, but I don't believe in your MagicMoneyTree theory. We'll just have to wait and see how it all works out in the next few years.

Posted By: Mike1

Posted By: SimonDUK wine makers use parafin burners in the fields to protect the grapes from frost. No roof, no tunnel, just burning it all out in the open.

That happens in virtually every vineyard across Europe... though maybe not the south of Spain or Italy.

I've not seen paraffin burners but I have seen straw bails burnt at each end of the rows to ward off frost. Straw is usually a waste product that is difficult = expensive to dispose of but I guess paraffin might be easier to use.

Posted By: djhyour MagicMoneyTree theory

Obvs, Tom is perfectly capable of defending what he writes, but still think it's useful to call out unhelpful, unnecessary casual political slurs re "your MagicMoneyTree theory". Firstly, as you no doubt well know Dave, Modern Monetary theory isn't Tom's theory. In fact it's so widely thought of there's even a campaign in universities to update the economics curriculum to include MMT. Second, as you no doubt also know Dave, using the term "MagicMoneyTree" is a political statement, one usually used by the right to attack the left. When, in fact, MMT in action by the current Tory government currently goes by the euphemism of 'quantitative easing'. Happy to discuss the political choices, where to spend the money the BoE simply, routinely creates out of thin air but can we do that without resorting to political slurs?

Tom and John. I'm not getting into discussions about the political or other aspects of monetary theory. Nor am I going to apologize for calling it what I think it is. As I say, we'll just have to wait for the future to become the past and then we'll know the truth.

Posted By: fostertomso there's a 'labour shortage'?

There is, and as one of the most cyclical sectors construction isn't very attractive to start with, quite apart from loosing people to other sectors whenever there is a downturn.

Now ff there was to be a 30-year programme of upgrading the national housing stock to achieve climate goals, supported with more than words by all political parties, then maybe the sector would have a chance. Though it would still be tough as there aren't enough people being born to supply all sectors of the economy.