From my blog at: [link]

‘Climate Change’, the world will tell you, is the fault of you and me. It doesn’t matter if you live in poverty or jet around the world every week, we all have a ‘Carbon-Footprint.’ Those who object against the global warming madness are almost as bad as holocaust deniers in the eyes of the environmentalists, but are they missing the point?

They will tell you that driving a car to work is as bad as clubbing baby seals, and that taking a flight across the Atlantic is akin to having sex with the Devils wife. Three times. I however would like to cast your mind back around a decade ago, before this entire Global Warming propaganda begun. The key environmental issue at that time was deforestation. Deforestation has been pushed to back of the media attention in the last few years at least, but it is not only more important, it is intrinsically linked with ‘global warming.’

Lets just think a second here. Cars, planes and power-stations create CO2. Trees however use and store CO2. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the more trees you cut down, the more CO2 will be present in the atmosphere.

In the last five months of 2007 in Brazil alone, there were 1,250 square miles of rainforest cut down. That is, to put into perspective, almost the size of Cornwall (1300 square miles.) A lot of this land is cut down to make way for cattle farms in the developing world. Cattle emit approximately 18% of all ‘green house gas’ emissions. All transport be it planes, cars, trains etc emit approximately 14%.

To add even more madness to this ‘Climate change’ insanity, many believe that we should grow bio-fuels. This is when we use farmland to grow plants to be turned into oil. This idea not only increases food prices, making world hunger even more dire, but adds more to the worrying deforestation. Bio-fuels, such as the much loved, allergy inducing rape seed in Europe were said to produce up to 70% more pollutants than standard diesel according to a nobel prize winning scientist Paul Crutzen.

You have to ask yourself where the logic has gone. I will not engage in making statements about how global warming does not exist because those who argue on the contrary will simply label me a heretic of science – and not consider a word I say, but even if it does exist the world is doing everything tits-up. If global warming doesn’t exist, then we still have other more pressing environmental concerns, one of the most urgent being deforestation, along with other concerns such as the excessive fishing in many oceans.

Livestock and meat consumption then is probably the biggest factor of environmental concern on this planet. I’m not going to try and convert people over to becoming vegan because I’m not one myself and would only be hypocritical. However it is obvious to all that in the western world a large percentage of food on supermarket shelves is wasted. Approximately 4.1 million tonnes of food in the UK alone is said to be wasted each year. This is all intrinsically linked with the environment. One of the largest factors of this waste, particularly meat, is sell-by dates. Years ago they never existed, so why do we allow ourselves to take these dates as gospel, given that for both commercial gain, and to avoid any legal proceedings, the dates are always going to be earlier than they should be.

Being a self proclaimed car enthusiast I get rather annoyed by those who tell me I should stop driving to save the planet. It is clearly obvious that taking a bus instead of a car is akin to pissing into the wind – it makes absolutely no difference at all. Not even long term either. In the next 100 years oil will most likely run out, and prices before it runs out will be so exorbitant that it will not be a feasible fuel. This will mean that alternative and new technologies are developed that are sustainable and clean. It is already happening now, within twenty years it would not be surprising for us to be using sustainable energy everywhere. Technological advancement then is a much better way out of this situation then simply returning to the Stone Age like so many environmentalists would like to see.

The real concern in my opinion is over-population. Religious officials and politicians have for too long refused to comment on overpopulation. It is perhaps time to advocate free contraception en-masse for everyone. Perhaps we should even give tax incentives to those families who refrain from having more than one or two children, much like China. Of course then it comes down to ethics. Having children is of course one of our fundamental rights as any animal on this earth, and we need to make a collective decision on whether we want to carry on the way we are all rights preserved, or change our ways for the sake of all on this planet and this is coming from someone who does not believe in global warming in the slightest.

So I shall continue to use my car. I will continue to go on holiday if I’m lucky enough to afford it. I will even deliberately leave all the lights on wherever I go because contrary to popular belief it does not matter. (Do you really think a few light bulbs will make a coal power station burn any more or any less coal?) I will however for mainly personal financial reasons stop buying and wasting so much food which is the real cause for the environmental destruction.