Telescopic environmentalism*

El Porko

Christopher Booker writes that:

...the accepted measures of global temperatures show that their trend has been downwards since 2002, declining at a rate that averages to about 0.25 degree per decade. Yet such a fall was predicted by none of those 25 computer models on which the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change..... the prospects for a new treaty in December, which according to an estimate by the International Energy Agency would cost us all $45 trillion, are not looking too hot. The Chinese and the Indians insist that, since all this global warming is the fault of the developed world, they will only sign the treaty if we agree to pay them $300 billion a year. The Africans and South Americans make similar demands.

We have already passed the Climate Change Act, committing us to restrict our CO2 emissions within 40 years to a level only 20 per cent of where they were in 1990. President Obama has committed the US to the same. Since these targets could only be met by closing down our economies, it is hard to know where we will find the money to pay the rest of the world what it is demanding.

In the real world we have an enormous rubbish tip twice the size of the United States in the Pacific ocean estimated to contain about 100 million tons of flotsam. This amazing fact seems to have been avoided by our climate change activists.

We have Smithfield hog farms taking over the world, quite possibly responsible for swine flu but definitely responsible for breathing difficulties and environmental disaster in the areas where they exist.

Scientific American tells us such large operations keep the animals in close confinement, dope them with antibiotics to keep them alive in the crowded conditions and create vast pools and piles of waste—all good ways to promote the spread of any disease.
environmental disaster already here
Other health threats, such as antibiotic-resistant strains of staphylococcus aureus, have emerged from pig farms as well. But what is clear thanks to the hard work of virologists is that this particular strain of flu got its genetic start on U.S. hog farms back in the 1990s. That's according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. How the virus jumped from pigs to humans may have nothing to do with factory farms, but confined animal feeding operations helped to breed the disease.

This is not to mention the inhumanity of such types of farming. Couldn't we do the possible and clear up rubbish and have humane and environmentally sustainable farming methods.

* Mrs Jellyby the 'telescopic philanthropist' in Bleak House was a devotes every waking hour to the “Borrioboola-Gha venture” in far off Africa whilst totally almost ignoring her own children.