For a long time, I was sceptical about climate change.
What I mean by that is I viewed the climate as something that had always
changed. A simple knowledge of history and fossils tells us that Britain was
once tropical. It then had an ice age. Greenland genuinely was green when Erik
the Red first saw it. A Norse settlement thrived until the Little Ice Age in
the Middle Ages led to its demise. In Shakespeare’s time people skated on the
Thames, but even prior to the industrial revolution this was no longer
possible.
I concluded that climate had always changed, and it
obviously had nothing to do with Erik the Red nor Shakespeare, so why did it
have something to do with me?
An additional reason for my scepticism was that I
perceived climate science as politically biased. It was treated more like a
religion where there were true believers and deniers. There was a huge amount
of propaganda particularly on the BBC and zealots kept making end of the world
is nigh statements that turned out to be false. I can remember being told over
30 years ago that in five years something dreadful would happen, but it didn’t.
I remember being told that if we didn’t change our ways the world would get
hotter, but it equally well might get colder because of the loss of the Gulf Stream.
It sounded like heads I win tails you lose rather more than objective science.
I don’t know what changed me. Perhaps it was the
propaganda. Perhaps it was the sense that winters in Scotland were much milder
than when I was a child and summers much hotter. I became less sceptical.
In the end I decided that burning fossil fuels was a
bad idea whatever I believed about climate change and who was responsible. So,
I began to think about the issue again.
It was obvious to me that whatever the UK did, let alone
Scotland, would make no difference at all if the Chinese and the Indians and
every other developing country continued to burn fossil fuels at the rate they
are doing. Even if every one of us drove an electric car and there were
windmills on every hillside and we recycled everything it would not make any
meaningful contribution to climate change. We were as powerless as Erik the Red
and Shakespeare.
What would make a difference? The development of
alternative power sources which were safe, clean and always available. The ultimate safe clean energy is fusion
power, the power that the sun uses. Recent developments by scientists in
Oxfordshire suggest we might be as close as ten years away.
It is in this context that Scottish Greens/SNP bottle
return scheme is pointless. Even if it worked perfectly, it would save minimal
amounts of energy. But it will work disastrously.
Lorna Slater wants each of us to have to pay 20 p
extra for a bottle or a can of drink. Each bottle or can would have a barcode
and we would have to scan it to get the money back. But it is obvious that a
French bottle of wine will not be sent back to France to be reused. It will
either be recycled, broken up to make new green bottles, or it will go into
landfill. None of the bottles or cans collected by Slater’s scheme will be
reused. The manufacturers of wine and beer and cola are not interested in
reusing the bottles. It is too expensive to clean them and drive them back to
the plant. But then what’s the point?
At the moment most councils already recycle bottles
and cans. How many more will be recycled due to Slater’s scheme? We don’t know.
But even if many more bottles and cans are recycled, they still won’t be
reused, they will just be melted down into their elements and new bottles and cans
will be made. The energy saving is at best marginal.
But how many unnecessary car journeys will be made in
order to get all those deposits back? Remember its’s not going to be just 20 p.
If you buy one of those boxes of beer cans sold in the supermarket, each can
will cost an extra 20 p. It will rapidly mount up. At that point you are going
to have to queue while everyone else scans in their beer cans and bottles.
Worse still not every manufacturer of beer and wine
and soft drinks will want to go to the bother and expense of changing the label
of their product just for Scotland. I don’t know anywhere in Scotland that can
grow grapes, so we are rather reliant on other warmer places to give us wine. Well,
if the wine producers are not interested in doing what Slater tells them we
could end up with only Blue Nun and Black Tower like it was the 1970s.
I don’t see the point of returning bottles unless they
are reused like milk bottles, but if there is to be a scheme why not at least
wait until a UK wide scheme is set up in 2025. But no. Scottish nationalists
always have to be different, no matter the consequences.
Recycling in general is not going to solve the problem
of climate change. Why then must we do it? I think it has nothing whatsoever to
do with saving the planet. Its purpose is propaganda and to make people feel
that they are making a difference even if they are not.
Almost every street in Britain lost its railings
during the Second World War. The vast majority were never used, and rumour has
it they were eventually dumped in the sea. But people felt they were doing
their bit and making a sacrifice. It’s the same point with recycling. You have
to sort your rubbish into different bins. Some zealots do it religiously, the
rest of us do it because we must. But the activity forces us to feel that we
are making a slight difference to the climate it constantly reminds us of the
Green message.
This is why Lorna Slater wants you to go through the
extra expense and hassle of paying 20 p more for each can and bottle. It will
tell you each time about how important it is that you think of the environment
every time you buy wine or beer. After that all these bottles and cans like the
railings can metaphorically be chucked in the sea. Literally most of them will
be sent to a dump in the third world or into landfill. It just isn’t economic
to clean cans and bottles and reuse the materials to make new ones.
I remain sceptical about the Greens, but I look
forward to a time not far off when there will be cheap abundant energy that does
not pollute. It will mean we will no longer be reliant on places like Saudi
Arabia and Russia. When that day arrives, it may well benefit the planet and
help to keep our climate as we would like it to be. But not one bottle returned
and not one Lorna Slater or similar will have contributed anything. Rather
scientists funded by capitalism driving to work in petrol cars and drinking
bottles and cans without deposits will have changed everything.
