Great Britain has adopted an ambitious climate and energy policy. By 2050 all CO2 emissions are to be eliminated from the British Isles and Prime Minister Johnson wants to make Great Britain a model country for the energy transition. As early as 2019, the British climate targets were formulated in a comprehensive report entitled “Absolute Zero”.
The report is updated at irregular intervals. This time the tone of the authors has changed. They are now pointing out that the ambitious goals can only be achieved through drastic adjustments and changes in behavior.
The report offers a formidable refutation of the case that a solution to the climate emergency exists in the form of breakthrough technologies. The report’s lead author, Julian Allwood, Professor of Engineering and the Environment at the University of Cambridge, stressed that no new technologies were available to replace our current energy needs.
“In the age of climate emergency, one of the central myths that breeds complacency is that breakthrough technologies will gallop to the rescue, when instead we require radical action,” Allwood said.
Specifically, in order to meet its Absolute Zero commitments, the UK government has no choice but to phase out all air travel by 2050 and then impose a total ban – until a way is found to produce aircraft that do not generate greenhouse gases at any time during manufacture or use.
The authors further specify their forecast to the effect that “all airports except Heathrow, Glasgow and Belfast should be closed between 2020 and 2029” and “all other remaining airports should be closed by 2050”.
But that’s not all. If the current legislation remains in force, further drastic changes in daily life would have to be made, since they would be illegal in 2050: no longer use airplanes; cease all shipping traffic; use the train instead of the car; use carpooling; use an electric vehicle; reduce energy consumption, including heating; reduce the use of fertilizers; reducing the use of cement and steel, imports etc. It will also be imperative to limit or ban the consumption of red meat as lamb and beef will be banned in the UK in the future.
“Additionally, to comply with the Climate Change Act, we must refrain from anything that causes emissions, regardless of the energy source. This requires that we refrain from eating beef and lamb,” the report states.
German-speaking public kept in the dark
It’s also worth taking a look at “Absolute Zero” for Germans, because the German climate protection requirements are very similar to the British ones. The only thing is that the inevitable consequences of a draconian climate policy are being hidden from voters.
In Austria, skyrocketing fuel prices and a decidedly car-hostile traffic policy are paralyzing car traffic. But those who switch to the train and prefer public transport are often left out in the rain these days in the truest sense of the word.
Since the introduction of the climate ticket, there are no longer enough seats on the trains. Hundreds of people traveling and commuting have already been expelled from the train because there is no space for them. Instead of purchasing new train sets and expanding the offer with foresight, it was simply made cheaper in accordance with the green doctrine and on behalf of Black-Green coalition, in order to celebrate this catastrophe with higher utilization figures as a “success” in the end.
Parking space brawls
In Vienna, this policy has led to even further extremes. The shortage of parking spaces there recently led to a mass brawl among Ukrainians.
The problem is home-made: For years it has been observed how the previous city administrations kept reducing parking spaces. This happened in part through opting for “bicycle parking spaces” or art installations that are not used by anyone and are only noticed by drivers looking for a parking space.
With the Ukraine crisis, the move was made to allow refugees to park for free, wherever they wanted, until May.
They were then deprived of this luxury and Range Rovers, Porsches and other expensive wheels now vie for the already scarce parking spaces. In line with the “sustainability” of Agenda 2030, people are first deprived of their freedom and self-determination of individual transport, in order to then banish them to train stations from which they cannot be transported to any destination due to a lack of capacity.
Fly-shaming
In Sweden, a movement was formed in 2018 to have a hundred thousand people sign up and pledge not to fly for a year. That led to ‘flight-shaming’ [flygskam]. As a result, if one looks at national statistics on take-offs in Sweden, the domestic ones have fallen and the government has responded by promising to invest more in rail as an alternative to aviation. Except that trains do not cross oceans.
Led by a small group of celebrities, including Olympic winter gold medallist Bjorn Ferry and the musician Malena Ernman, who also happens to be climate activist Greta Thunberg’s mother, their “commitment” to give up flying forced Swedes to comply.
The Facebook group’s Jag flyger inte – för klimatets skull [I’m not flying – for the sake of the climate] campaign managed to lower the number of international flights at Swedish airports by 4 percent within a year.