Green Road to Ruin

 

The government said it would cut carbon emissions by 78 per cent from their 1990 level by 2035, instead of 2050 as previously intended. I wonder whether the PM has been inspired by Princess Nut Nuts and her coterie? Anyway, it’s a great idea, and who could possibly object to a policy of saving the planet except for one important detail: who pays?  I am sure our Government will get round to telling us what it will cost, not just the impact on our outgoings but on our future way of life. Perhaps we shall be treated to a solemn announcement from the spanking new, and now, apparently, unnecessary Downing Street media centre?  When we are let into the secret and the political machine has measured the reaction, I suspect an element of electoral pragmatism will be injected into further climate virtue gestures.  Meantime, they may care to start with a scan of Roger Scruton’s superb Green Philosophy subtitled, how to think seriously about the planet.  Scruton argues, convincingly, that top-down solutions to climate problems are destined to fail.  It is public spirit that will carry us forward:

“But whence comes public spirit? It comes from patriotism, from love of country, from a sense of belonging and of a shared and inherited home. It comes from believing that this problem is our problem, and therefore my problem, as a member of the group. That belief disappears when anonymous bureaucracies confiscate our risks, and pretend that they can regulate them to extinction.”

But telling people what is good for them seems fashionable these days, just look at the incessant diatribe from the Archewell Foundation, “uplifting communities.”  Come to think of it, whoever is driving the headlong rush to green virtue may already be finding the Downing Street policy straitjacket too constraining and might and feel, like Megan and Harry, that they should strike out on their own.  How about “The Greenswill Foundation” as a megaphone?

 

 

HRH The Duke of Edinburgh

 

I only met him by accident, in the early years of this century at the Royal Aeronautical Society in Hamilton Place.  I had attended an early evening lecture and, afterwards, the corporate sponsor had extended generous hospitality to the participants.  A big crowd lingered after the event, wine flowed freely and the noise level rose accordingly.  During conversation with some colleagues, I caught sight of an old friend at a distance and, after due interval, shouted my excuses to my colleagues and made my way through the throng towards my old friend.  Arriving at my friend’s circle I was immediately conscious that the company was trying to tell me something, but nobody said anything.  Glancing round for a clue, the person on my right who had a decent space on his left into which I had just inserted myself, became strikingly familiar.  I remember beginning to blurt out an apology for my impertinence but HRH would have none of it – he called upon my friend to introduce me and then continued the joyful banter as though nothing had happened.  What a charming man he was!