“I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the global south,” said a South African scientist, who chose not to be named. “The world’s response to date is reprehensible – we live in an age of fools.”
Maybe I am just naïve, but I think part of why the Greens are growing (slowly) is because it is clear that the current consensus is not going to provide a safely habitable planet in the near or long term future. We have seen more fossil fuel usage since 2008 then prior to it. It is not a byproduct of the current system we live under that the environment is being destroyed - it is the only outcome. There is a saying in engineering "the purpose of a system is what it does". Well, if that's the case, the purpose of modern states is to destroy the world.
As for Sian Berry - this hardly seems to rank in the cynical moves of politicians, in my view. The entire point of a list system is that you aren't voting for individuals - you're voting for a party and, sure, you know who you're likely to get based on the vote, but at the end of the day you also know who will replace people in the event they drop out. Is it a good look? Of course not. But I wouldn't call it antidemocratic, nor would I compare it to the cynical actions of politicians who do material harm to people to progress their own careers. In two weeks no one will care; yet we will still have a government trying to put human beings seeking refuge in ships or on planes to Rwanda in the hope they can up their vote share by 2-3%.
If you want to sort global warming, take on Beijing, not Brighton or Bristol.
Given Chinese emissions now, and into the foreseeable future, our best bet in Britain is (1) strategic independence, or at least, co-dependence with Europe, on energy and security, and (2) mitigation of the inevitable effects that will result from large regimes that have no interest in cutting emissions and can't be pressured into it. Reducing our reliance on carbon is sensible on that count - and helpfully plays a part on global heating too - but Britain's contribution either way is pretty minimal and while setting an example is useful, more important is anticipating and reacting to the hostile actions of others.
As an island nation, the UK ultimately has more than most to lose from a failure to curb global greenhouse gas emissions. If humanity goes ahead and burns all the fossil fuels that can be exploited, then the resulting rise in global temperature will eventually melt almost all of the surface ice and raise the sea level by around 60 m. This will take a long time - hundreds of years - but once started is very difficult to stop, even if the global will can be found to do so. We need to do everything in our power to persuade the big emitters to wind down their emissions, and I doubt that backtracking on our own commitments is going to do much to bolster our arguments.
Considering that the UK has cut emissions more than any G20 member, I think we're in a pretty decent place from which to make the case.
But the reality of it is that the big emitters - and China especially: by *far* the biggest emitter - isn't interested in listening. Nor India. Nor the US, particularly, Nor Russia. Nor the Middle East. Electing Greens or anyone else in the UK isn't going to make a difference to that. What we can do is prepare for a hotter, wetter, stormier climate and higher sea levels (though not by 60m - Antarctica isn't going to melt to that extent).
“I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the global south,” said a South African scientist, who chose not to be named. “The world’s response to date is reprehensible – we live in an age of fools.”
Maybe I am just naïve, but I think part of why the Greens are growing (slowly) is because it is clear that the current consensus is not going to provide a safely habitable planet in the near or long term future. We have seen more fossil fuel usage since 2008 then prior to it. It is not a byproduct of the current system we live under that the environment is being destroyed - it is the only outcome. There is a saying in engineering "the purpose of a system is what it does". Well, if that's the case, the purpose of modern states is to destroy the world.
As for Sian Berry - this hardly seems to rank in the cynical moves of politicians, in my view. The entire point of a list system is that you aren't voting for individuals - you're voting for a party and, sure, you know who you're likely to get based on the vote, but at the end of the day you also know who will replace people in the event they drop out. Is it a good look? Of course not. But I wouldn't call it antidemocratic, nor would I compare it to the cynical actions of politicians who do material harm to people to progress their own careers. In two weeks no one will care; yet we will still have a government trying to put human beings seeking refuge in ships or on planes to Rwanda in the hope they can up their vote share by 2-3%.
If you want to sort global warming, take on Beijing, not Brighton or Bristol.
Given Chinese emissions now, and into the foreseeable future, our best bet in Britain is (1) strategic independence, or at least, co-dependence with Europe, on energy and security, and (2) mitigation of the inevitable effects that will result from large regimes that have no interest in cutting emissions and can't be pressured into it. Reducing our reliance on carbon is sensible on that count - and helpfully plays a part on global heating too - but Britain's contribution either way is pretty minimal and while setting an example is useful, more important is anticipating and reacting to the hostile actions of others.
As an island nation, the UK ultimately has more than most to lose from a failure to curb global greenhouse gas emissions. If humanity goes ahead and burns all the fossil fuels that can be exploited, then the resulting rise in global temperature will eventually melt almost all of the surface ice and raise the sea level by around 60 m. This will take a long time - hundreds of years - but once started is very difficult to stop, even if the global will can be found to do so. We need to do everything in our power to persuade the big emitters to wind down their emissions, and I doubt that backtracking on our own commitments is going to do much to bolster our arguments.
Considering that the UK has cut emissions more than any G20 member, I think we're in a pretty decent place from which to make the case.
But the reality of it is that the big emitters - and China especially: by *far* the biggest emitter - isn't interested in listening. Nor India. Nor the US, particularly, Nor Russia. Nor the Middle East. Electing Greens or anyone else in the UK isn't going to make a difference to that. What we can do is prepare for a hotter, wetter, stormier climate and higher sea levels (though not by 60m - Antarctica isn't going to melt to that extent).
Oh the US get it, and so do China. The US is spending upwards of a trillion dollars on tax incentives for green energy investment under the inflation reduction act and China is flooding the European market with cheap green tech. Unlike us and our European neighbours they actually understand the economic opportunities available from net zero.
As for the Middle East and Russia, the sooner we all get free from energy dependency on that lot (and we've already largely managed with Russia), the better.
Parts of the US gets it; others resolutely refuse to. China is a mixed bag but is on a mercantalist mission to leverage trade dependencies into political influence. But it emits more CO2 per head than all but 3 members of the EU (Lux, Poland, Czech) and close to twice as much as the UK - for a far lower GDP per capita.
Those coal fired power stations are powering the crucibles which create the silicon ingots for nearly 90% of the world's solar panel production. It's far from the ideal way to get where we need to be, but until Biden got into the White House, the U.S. had pretty well abandoned the industry.
At some point that coal will be replaced by renewable power, and the virtuous circle will have extraordinary momentum.
The US could be doing that in Texas now, had the political will been there. (Note that the oil state is already building renewables faster than any of the other 49 - because it makes economic sense even in the short term.)
In related news it's the best day of the year so far for solar generation. Over 8gw currently in GB, the largest single source. Not often that happens.
Nuclear is doing OK at the moment too (5.3gw) and has been for a month or two. Presumably a favourable phase in their maintenance schedule.
In just three years, battery backup has completely transformed the California electricity supply market. In 2021 they were irrelevant. Now batteries are supplying around 20% of evening demand.
There's a similar story in Texas, where batteries are working to smooth out the wind supply (and completely without subsidy or even government encouragement.) There, they are pumping out 2GW of electrical power - on average - at 8pm every evening when demand peaks.
As battery production capacity continues to grow worldwide, they're coming to the UK. And that's a disaster for gas peaking plants.
California's batteries will charge from solar all year round though with their 3348 hours of sunlight per year (Nicely distributed) to get through the night. The UK has ~ 1400 or so and it's much more seasonal than LA.
Unsure of the wind battery situation though. Perhaps that's more favourable ?
The article addresses wind too, because while California's renewable energy mix is largely about solar, Texas is all about wind.
And there the Republican government has been very hands off: there's been very little economic support for solar or wind. And none at all for batteries.
But it turns out that economics trumps all. In Texas, batteries charge most of the day and night, and then discharge in the evenings. It's a more spread out chart than the California one, but they are definitely playing their role. (Fwiw, that peak 2GW of battery production at 8pm on Thursday 28th is equivalent to half of all the nuclear production in the UK.)
The UK's power mix will look more like Texas's. And - fwiw - the cost of new wind turbines, while it is falling, is coming down nowhere near as quickly as solar.
But the thing is the price of declines. Solar was wildly uneconomic in the UK when it was $1 watt for panel prices - perhaps 10x the cost of alternative generation. But we're now at $0.16. We're now only at 60% more than alternative generation sources. The price will go to $0.10. And then $0.05.
But lower panel prices are the inexorable consequence of technological progress. Solar will, eventually, be the cheapest form of electricity generation in the UK. And it will (eventually) make economic sense to have panels everywhere, and batteries to store the reserve overnight.
Sea temperatures set record levels every single day in the last year.
It is highly depressing. Seriously starting to find it difficult to look at the children in my family and not feel heartbroken about what the future holds for them.
What do you think it holds for them? Serious question. We have challenges around climate change, but we are also good at solving them. Crop yields continue to increase. Population growth (the biggest contributor to climate change is too many humans) is going into reverse across the developed world. We are learning how to do without fossil fuels. Someone asked what the government(s) of the UK had done since 2010 - well look at how much renewable power we have now.
Its not enough yet, but there is a path. 2.5 degrees is a challenge, but the challenge is more about how we deal with human society.
2.5 degrees isn't a 'challenge', it's a disaster.
Show your working for that. What is the disaster? Step back from the rhetoric and look at the science.
2.5 degrees dooms the Greenland Ice Sheet. You lose a lot of valuable river deltas and agricultural land as a result, plus almost all existing coastal infrastructure.
The consequences for rainfall patterns are much harder to predict, but what indications there are, are not good, particularly for Southern Europe and China. In many respects China is one of the countries whose agriculture is most vulnerable to global warming.
The numbers of climate refugees from, for example, Bangladesh, Egypt, etc, would be astronomical.
It would have been a lot cheaper to stop using fossil fuels earlier.
Time scale for the Greenland Ice sheet? Decades? Centuries? Millenia? The issue is how we handle the effects. Some have argued we are already seeing climate refugees, although I think that was disputed. We certainly see a lot around wars. I'm certainly not claiming climate change is not a huge, huge challenge - it is, but we are already taking huge strides. More will be needed. I think I am just a more optimistic person than some.
Greenland Ice Sheet relatively slow, because it will melt in situ. Possibly a couple of thousand years to completely melt. But the Nile Delta becomes useless for agriculture because of salt long before it melts completely.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is a much bigger potential threat, because it could slip into the ocean very quickly. I don't think anyone has put a lower bound on the timescale, but it's much more uncertain.
There are now tentative signs in the data that the rate of warming and sea level rise have started to accelerate. And, globally, we haven't yet peaked carbon dioxide emissions.
I'm more optimistic than I was ten years ago. I think technology has made some huge strides forward. But the impacts on agriculture are very concerning. You just have to look at the disruption Russia's temporary blockade on Ukrainian grain exports created to see how vulnerable the global food market is. Even in the best case scenario it's going to be a damned close run thing.
A dispassionate look at crop yields suggests we are getting higher yields than ever. And though I will be mocked for this, increased CO2 in the atmosphere can be beneficial for plant growth. We will I am sure see shifting weather patterns, issues with low lying land. Nothing that cannot be solved, if the will is there. The harder point is we all (i.e. everyone on the planet) wants the western lifestyle - and why shouldn't they aspire to it? We love it, after all. How you do that for the global south whilst getting to net zero and dealing with potential climate refugees is the challenge.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the data you've shown - but can't that be true at the same time as what I've shared above because your data is about tonnes per hectare? It's possible that we are more efficient at growing crops but crops are still reducing. As in - we can grow more tonnage of crops per hectare but we are losing hectares of land to grow because of adverse weather effects?
Possibly yes - tbh I was looking for overall yield, rather than per hectare. Point is we are getting better at getting more crops from our land.
Its easy to succumb to climate doom. The papers and media love a good doom story - its what sells papers, gets them noticed. The good news stories don't get out there so much. And so its easy to get sucked into the the planet will be destroyed narratives.
“I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the global south,” said a South African scientist, who chose not to be named. “The world’s response to date is reprehensible – we live in an age of fools.”
Maybe I am just naïve, but I think part of why the Greens are growing (slowly) is because it is clear that the current consensus is not going to provide a safely habitable planet in the near or long term future. We have seen more fossil fuel usage since 2008 then prior to it. It is not a byproduct of the current system we live under that the environment is being destroyed - it is the only outcome. There is a saying in engineering "the purpose of a system is what it does". Well, if that's the case, the purpose of modern states is to destroy the world.
As for Sian Berry - this hardly seems to rank in the cynical moves of politicians, in my view. The entire point of a list system is that you aren't voting for individuals - you're voting for a party and, sure, you know who you're likely to get based on the vote, but at the end of the day you also know who will replace people in the event they drop out. Is it a good look? Of course not. But I wouldn't call it antidemocratic, nor would I compare it to the cynical actions of politicians who do material harm to people to progress their own careers. In two weeks no one will care; yet we will still have a government trying to put human beings seeking refuge in ships or on planes to Rwanda in the hope they can up their vote share by 2-3%.
If you want to sort global warming, take on Beijing, not Brighton or Bristol.
Given Chinese emissions now, and into the foreseeable future, our best bet in Britain is (1) strategic independence, or at least, co-dependence with Europe, on energy and security, and (2) mitigation of the inevitable effects that will result from large regimes that have no interest in cutting emissions and can't be pressured into it. Reducing our reliance on carbon is sensible on that count - and helpfully plays a part on global heating too - but Britain's contribution either way is pretty minimal and while setting an example is useful, more important is anticipating and reacting to the hostile actions of others.
As an island nation, the UK ultimately has more than most to lose from a failure to curb global greenhouse gas emissions. If humanity goes ahead and burns all the fossil fuels that can be exploited, then the resulting rise in global temperature will eventually melt almost all of the surface ice and raise the sea level by around 60 m. This will take a long time - hundreds of years - but once started is very difficult to stop, even if the global will can be found to do so. We need to do everything in our power to persuade the big emitters to wind down their emissions, and I doubt that backtracking on our own commitments is going to do much to bolster our arguments.
Considering that the UK has cut emissions more than any G20 member, I think we're in a pretty decent place from which to make the case.
But the reality of it is that the big emitters - and China especially: by *far* the biggest emitter - isn't interested in listening. Nor India. Nor the US, particularly, Nor Russia. Nor the Middle East. Electing Greens or anyone else in the UK isn't going to make a difference to that. What we can do is prepare for a hotter, wetter, stormier climate and higher sea levels (though not by 60m - Antarctica isn't going to melt to that extent).
“I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the global south,” said a South African scientist, who chose not to be named. “The world’s response to date is reprehensible – we live in an age of fools.”
Maybe I am just naïve, but I think part of why the Greens are growing (slowly) is because it is clear that the current consensus is not going to provide a safely habitable planet in the near or long term future. We have seen more fossil fuel usage since 2008 then prior to it. It is not a byproduct of the current system we live under that the environment is being destroyed - it is the only outcome. There is a saying in engineering "the purpose of a system is what it does". Well, if that's the case, the purpose of modern states is to destroy the world.
As for Sian Berry - this hardly seems to rank in the cynical moves of politicians, in my view. The entire point of a list system is that you aren't voting for individuals - you're voting for a party and, sure, you know who you're likely to get based on the vote, but at the end of the day you also know who will replace people in the event they drop out. Is it a good look? Of course not. But I wouldn't call it antidemocratic, nor would I compare it to the cynical actions of politicians who do material harm to people to progress their own careers. In two weeks no one will care; yet we will still have a government trying to put human beings seeking refuge in ships or on planes to Rwanda in the hope they can up their vote share by 2-3%.
If you want to sort global warming, take on Beijing, not Brighton or Bristol.
Given Chinese emissions now, and into the foreseeable future, our best bet in Britain is (1) strategic independence, or at least, co-dependence with Europe, on energy and security, and (2) mitigation of the inevitable effects that will result from large regimes that have no interest in cutting emissions and can't be pressured into it. Reducing our reliance on carbon is sensible on that count - and helpfully plays a part on global heating too - but Britain's contribution either way is pretty minimal and while setting an example is useful, more important is anticipating and reacting to the hostile actions of others.
As an island nation, the UK ultimately has more than most to lose from a failure to curb global greenhouse gas emissions. If humanity goes ahead and burns all the fossil fuels that can be exploited, then the resulting rise in global temperature will eventually melt almost all of the surface ice and raise the sea level by around 60 m. This will take a long time - hundreds of years - but once started is very difficult to stop, even if the global will can be found to do so. We need to do everything in our power to persuade the big emitters to wind down their emissions, and I doubt that backtracking on our own commitments is going to do much to bolster our arguments.
Considering that the UK has cut emissions more than any G20 member, I think we're in a pretty decent place from which to make the case.
But the reality of it is that the big emitters - and China especially: by *far* the biggest emitter - isn't interested in listening. Nor India. Nor the US, particularly, Nor Russia. Nor the Middle East. Electing Greens or anyone else in the UK isn't going to make a difference to that. What we can do is prepare for a hotter, wetter, stormier climate and higher sea levels (though not by 60m - Antarctica isn't going to melt to that extent).
Oh the US get it, and so do China. The US is spending upwards of a trillion dollars on tax incentives for green energy investment under the inflation reduction act and China is flooding the European market with cheap green tech. Unlike us and our European neighbours they actually understand the economic opportunities available from net zero.
As for the Middle East and Russia, the sooner we all get free from energy dependency on that lot (and we've already largely managed with Russia), the better.
Parts of the US gets it; others resolutely refuse to. China is a mixed bag but is on a mercantalist mission to leverage trade dependencies into political influence. But it emits more CO2 per head than all but 3 members of the EU (Lux, Poland, Czech) and close to twice as much as the UK - for a far lower GDP per capita.
Those coal fired power stations are powering the crucibles which create the silicon ingots for nearly 90% of the world's solar panel production. It's far from the ideal way to get where we need to be, but until Biden got into the White House, the U.S. had pretty well abandoned the industry.
At some point that coal will be replaced by renewable power, and the virtuous circle will have extraordinary momentum.
The US could be doing that in Texas now, had the political will been there. (Note that the oil state is already building renewables faster than any of the other 49 - because it makes economic sense even in the short term.)
In related news it's the best day of the year so far for solar generation. Over 8gw currently in GB, the largest single source. Not often that happens.
Nuclear is doing OK at the moment too (5.3gw) and has been for a month or two. Presumably a favourable phase in their maintenance schedule.
In just three years, battery backup has completely transformed the California electricity supply market. In 2021 they were irrelevant. Now batteries are supplying around 20% of evening demand.
There's a similar story in Texas, where batteries are working to smooth out the wind supply (and completely without subsidy or even government encouragement.) There, they are pumping out 2GW of electrical power - on average - at 8pm every evening when demand peaks.
As battery production capacity continues to grow worldwide, they're coming to the UK. And that's a disaster for gas peaking plants.
California's batteries will charge from solar all year round though with their 3348 hours of sunlight per year (Nicely distributed) to get through the night. The UK has ~ 1400 or so and it's much more seasonal than LA.
Unsure of the wind battery situation though. Perhaps that's more favourable ?
Solar is awesome when your demand peak is for air conditioning in the summer.
Less so, when it’s for heating on that calm and cold day in January.
That said, as the price of solar keeps coming down, the idea of a British solar farm in Morocco, with a massive cable connecting it to the UK Grid, doesn’t seem quite as totally bonkers as it did a few years ago.
Peak demand for energy in California does not match peak insolation:
Peak demand is at c. 8pm in California in April, after the sun has set. That chart shows that batteries are starting to have a massive impact on extending the usage of solar. And - by the way - that increase in battery usage in California has happened in just three years:
The key thing here is cost.
Solar used to be insanely expensive. In 2008, the price per watt of a panel was about $5. By 2011, it had fallen to $2. It was under $1 by 2014, and $0.50 by 2018. In 2022, it was $0.25. Currently, I can get panels for $0.16-0.18/watt.
Prices have been halving every four years or so.
Now, obviously there are other costs which don't fall (or at least not so quickly): like labour, aluminium and even the cost of inverters. But if you're building a new house today, the incremental cost of adding solar (and cutting your electricity bill in half) is negligible. If you're building an office or a factory or a warehouse or a shop... you might as well spend the extra. And as those costs inexorably and inevitably continue to drop, and as battery capacity continues to get rolled out, and as electric car penetration continues to increase, then fossil fuel usage will die.
The thing people really don't get is that new solar (and to a lesser extent wind) capacity never goes away. You produce a panel, it will generate electricity for decades. By contrast, with fossil fuels, you need to dig the coal up every single year.
This is one of the greatest changes in human history (soon to be followed by an agrictulture wave). And the only way we fuck it up is if we try and demand people wear hair shirts.
We've already fucked it up to some extent. We've known about the effect of greenhouse gases on climate for about half a century now, and our response to the crisis has been woefully inadequate. The global temperature has already risen by over a degree, and our CO2 emissions are still increasing.
Sea temperatures set record levels every single day in the last year.
It is highly depressing. Seriously starting to find it difficult to look at the children in my family and not feel heartbroken about what the future holds for them.
What do you think it holds for them? Serious question. We have challenges around climate change, but we are also good at solving them. Crop yields continue to increase. Population growth (the biggest contributor to climate change is too many humans) is going into reverse across the developed world. We are learning how to do without fossil fuels. Someone asked what the government(s) of the UK had done since 2010 - well look at how much renewable power we have now.
Its not enough yet, but there is a path. 2.5 degrees is a challenge, but the challenge is more about how we deal with human society.
One cousin has a 4 year old and a 7 year old, another cousin is expecting in August. By the time the youngest is my age, so 33 years from now, I would expect food shortages, mass migration, massive increases in severe weather events and general international unrest.
I don't think your assessment that crop yields are increasing is true - the last few years we have seen reduced crop yields due to extreme weather events caused by climate change:
We're already seeing some places hitting wet bulb temperatures for days on end in some countries - once that gets to weeks those places essentially can be designated as uninhabitable during the summer because if people cannot go outside at all, then society is unlikely to function.
And, of course, the response from many governments will be increased border fascism. The migrant crises of the last two decades will pale in comparison to those of the next two decades - and as we have seen from the UK, the US and the EU, our solution is to turn our states into fortresses and let those outside them die. And it won't stop there - as resource scarcity becomes more prominent we will see the arguments of "useless eaters" rear its head again and governments will turn on their own populations, pointing the finger most at the "undesirables".
"seeing some places hitting wet bulb temperatures"
That makes no sense, but I assume you mean a wet bulb temperature above human body temperature.
Where? Dubai? We all know Dubai is unsustainable - it doesn't take climate change to make that true.
I mean, much of the Indian sub continent hit wet bulb temperatures above human body temperature last year - and look set to again this year.
Did it? Can you send a link to the weather records?
Google will get you there within a matter of seconds.
I tried but I found none with a wet bulb that high.
Unreasonably high and not something I'd like to experience, and possibly up to 35C in some areas, yes, but not 37C across "most of the Indian sub continent".
Look, I don't disagree at all that climate change may make some places unsustainably hot, but lets be accurate at least.
The original poster - fair enough, this is a political forum - wasn't precise enough in their definition. 35C+ is the wet bulb temperature at which the human body can no longer cool itself. So if you have that Tw and no other cooling options then you're dead.
Right, so 35C. Yes, that has happened. Yes, it kills a lot of people (although not by drowning, as actual body heat would).
Anywhere that becomes unlivable at +1.5C is pretty borderline already.
Maybe local mitigation would work in a few cases - more trees etc - although that's more effective against headline temperature than humidity. Certainly there are places where vegetation loss has contributed to the problem, though.
But I'm not sure about society not functioning when nobody can go outside. There's plenty of places where that's already true in the summer, albeit not agrarian.
Watch carefully what happens to Natalie Elphicke next.
She'll almost certainly have been offered something.
Nat’s role is to be poster girl for the Rwanda Scheme being a gimmick and Starmer’s policy being better.
Yes, so what has she been offered for that?
My guess is Starmer has a few more of these lined up for the summer. Will keep disintegration in the headlines for the Tories.
In her statement she says this:
"That’s why I’m honoured to have been asked to work with Keir and the team to help deliver the homes we need."
This sounds very similar to the situation with the other bloke. Dan Poulter. Who is supposedly going to be part of some health reform policy advisory team. So it looks like Labour is creating a bunch of policy-related sinecures for ex-Tory MPs.
There will be more to it than that.
It's cover for something more tangible. No-one defects to be a policy wonk.
Watch carefully what happens to Natalie Elphicke next.
She'll almost certainly have been offered something.
I’m not yet convinced. She was facing the humiliation of defeat, and has found a way out that retains some self respect and settles some scores with her/her husband’s former colleagues. I doubt we’ll hear from her again.
This has a bit of an air of Peter Thurnham about it, if you remember him from the fag end of the Major Government. He was a similar age to Elphicke and held a seat he'd have been doomed to lose had he stood again. He was just rather disaffected with it all and jumped to the Lib Dems - not to further his career but to end it in a way that annoyed a few people who had irritated him. I think he was essentially a nice enough bloke who just decided to stick two fingers up as a final flourish - there was no deal asked for or given, and he disappeared from view (sadly died of cancer a few years ago, not at a young age but without having the retirement he may have hoped for).
I'd not rule out that there was a deal - Quentin Davies and Peter Temple-Morris got peerages, of course, and I certainly don't think Labour is above that sort of thing. I just have a feeling this is an "up yours, I'm off" defection.
Temple-Morris was working on Labour policy even during the early Corbyn years. He was an excellent MP for Leominster, even though I canvassed for Pincham to unseat him in 1989. Spoiler- he didn't!
Comments
And there the Republican government has been very hands off: there's been very little economic support for solar or wind. And none at all for batteries.
But it turns out that economics trumps all. In Texas, batteries charge most of the day and night, and then discharge in the evenings. It's a more spread out chart than the California one, but they are definitely playing their role. (Fwiw, that peak 2GW of battery production at 8pm on Thursday 28th is equivalent to half of all the nuclear production in the UK.)
The UK's power mix will look more like Texas's. And - fwiw - the cost of new wind turbines, while it is falling, is coming down nowhere near as quickly as solar.
But the thing is the price of declines. Solar was wildly uneconomic in the UK when it was $1 watt for panel prices - perhaps 10x the cost of alternative generation. But we're now at $0.16. We're now only at 60% more than alternative generation sources. The price will go to $0.10. And then $0.05.
But lower panel prices are the inexorable consequence of technological progress. Solar will, eventually, be the cheapest form of electricity generation in the UK. And it will (eventually) make economic sense to have panels everywhere, and batteries to store the reserve overnight.
Its easy to succumb to climate doom. The papers and media love a good doom story - its what sells papers, gets them noticed. The good news stories don't get out there so much. And so its easy to get sucked into the the planet will be destroyed narratives.
Anywhere that becomes unlivable at +1.5C is pretty borderline already.
Maybe local mitigation would work in a few cases - more trees etc - although that's more effective against headline temperature than humidity. Certainly there are places where vegetation loss has contributed to the problem, though.
But I'm not sure about society not functioning when nobody can go outside. There's plenty of places where that's already true in the summer, albeit not agrarian.
Rather pointless if you are letting Fascists into PLP on the same day
It's cover for something more tangible. No-one defects to be a policy wonk.