The End is Nigh. Yes, really. Climate change activists waste energy on a daily basis letting us know. Unless we listen to them, our self-appointed Saviours, and immediately give up fossil fuels, the world is headed for calamity and will end soon. Never mind the pollution caused by Russia’s war-mongering and that of the 21 wars and 108 other armed conflicts (what’s the difference?) in the world today. It’s the way you heat your home that is going to bring about the end.
Not with the same focus as today’s climate fanatics but with the same religious fervour, the Jews of two and a half millennia ago waited expectantly for their very human Mashiach (anointed one) to appear. He was to deliver them from their oppressors and make them oppressors instead. He failed to arrive.
Years later, in the first century CE, a small enclave of Jews became convinced their Messiah was on his way. He had by this time transmogrified into a heavenly being but would soon be arriving to set the world aright and deliver his little band of followers from evil and, they decided, from death too. He didn’t make it, but such irrational wishful thinking is how all religions get going and Christianity was no exception.
Muslims, meanwhile, believe that the Day of Judgement is not far off. Everyone will then be judged according to their service to Allah, the faithful rewarded with eternal life, the rest sent to Jahannam (hell).
So here’s a question for you: what do these years have in common? 66-70CE, 365, 370-400, 500, 793, 800, 847, 1000, 1033, 1200, 1284, 1504, 1585, 1600, 1705, 1792, 1833, 1836, 1874, 1901, 1918, 1936, 1967, 1977, 1982, 1994, 1997, 2000, 2007, 2011 and 2021.
They are, of course, a few of the innumerable predictions that the end isn’t far off, after which there will be a great reset. As I suspect you already know, none of these predictions came to pass.
Neither will any of the numerous predictions of future apocalypses– lots of them here – either. It’s not that we’re incapable of wiping ourselves out; it’s possible we will one day, but there won’t be a Mashiach, Christ or God who will step in at the last minute to rescue a favoured few so that everything can start again. There’s no simplistic fix of the sort climate zealots, Islamist terrorists and bumptious politicians insist. Like their apocalyptic predecessors they’re only deluding themselves and lying to the rest of us.
We are, it seems, obsessed with End Times scenarios, and always have been. Our only saviours, however, will be ourselves, if we’ve the will to be. I’m not sure we have, but a first step might be recognising that there’s no Starman (Starmer?) waiting in the sky, or anywhere else, eager to save us. There’s no magic panacea that will rescue us and reset the world.
rejectingjesus, 
Facing Truth is far too difficult for many …
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Did I get this right? You would clump up religions waiting for a divine deliverance and climate activists? Why?
No climate activists, I know of, expect to be delivered from apocalyptic events, suffering, or death by joining in their cause. Quite the opposite. They do not claim to be part of some chosen crowd to be saved by supernatural intervention. They ask us all to act now to mitigate the effects of pollution. They do not only agree with some politicians and media outlets, that our carbon emission are speeding up the process that produces more extreme weather, that in turn is increasingly hindering our food production, but also with the bulk of the scientific community, that has been warning us about it for decades.
The only thing similar in climate activism by and large to the Abrahamic religions of deliverance is the point about us becoming better individuals by our own willingness to give up our priviledges to help others. Yet, that is by no means a religious, nor a superstitious conclusion. It is sane and rational thinking in light of any objective meaning to the concept of the word better.
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No, not disputing climate change – it’s happening as it constantly does – not disputing we are accelerating it, but a) critiquing the hysteria with which, in the UK, we are addressing it and b) pointing how much like an end-time religion we are making of it. Neither, it seems to me, are conducive to slowing down that change, decelerating being all we can achieve.
Incidentally, the UK contributes 0.8% of greenhouse gases yet its government is compelling its citizens to pay extortionate taxes to achieve net zero by 2050. These taxes go to multi-billion pound energy companies whose scientists and technologists, while still taking the money, suggest the target is probably unachievable. Even if not, what difference will eliminating a 0.8% contribution make globally when the greatest offenders are doing so little? The US, where I am at the moment, is an 11% contributor and has recently scrapped its 2050 target. China, a 35% contributor has set a ‘poor’ 2060 target (Climate Action Tracker). If these countries and so many other high emitters are, at best, apathetic about deceleration, all that’s left is the hysteria.
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Well, I see not much hysteria looking at the climate change here in Finland. The most upset people appear to be people who think their moral capacity is under question, just because they feel they are being asked to give up on lifestyle choises, they did not understand to be questionable when they made them. In effect, those who get upset about climate activism seem to get so upset about it, perhaps because they feel not only their lifestyle, but entire identity threatened, that they float the story in media and social media much greater extent than to wich a few activists could ever have. Of course in a smaller nation any comotion over any issue is likely going to be less. There are always going to be overreactions when a world changing threat such as the climate change is considered. Is it justified to claim activism on this subject is as bogus as religions? I think not.
China is actually building solar and wind power in a rapid pace. The political difference however means it is the central government ordering this as a response to growing need to energy consumption and the climate change rather than as to public demands by scientists, activists and citizenry, like here in the West. So, they are doing less proclamations of goals and prefer to exeed their plans, rather than to fall short of some ambitious declarations, that a democratically elected government tends to leave for the next government to deal with.
I do not agree with the we don’t have to because others are not doing their part notion. Why would Finland, or the UK help Ukraine, if Brazil, Indonesia and India are not contributing? Perhaps just because it is the right thing to do? Certainly the problem is not going away and often someone has to set an example. Right?
Why did the Brits fight on during the Bliz? They were not locked in an existential fight to the degree of the Slavic nations, but they chose to sacrifice instead of just becoming a part of the Reich. During the Winter War the Finns could have decided not to resist and engage in a seemingly futile fight against the overwhelmingly stronger Soviets – 3 million against 200 million!!! Not much help came from others, but the Finns fought. Why? The Finns lost, but the fight was, and still is, considered worth the sacrifice because it served to mitigate the invasion from full scale annexation to just some lost territories. During early stage of WWII the Brits could have sat at home growing power and saving a mint when the Nazies invaded, but chose to help France, despite the experience from the previous war, of having sacrificed almost an entire generation of young men and quite a bundle of taxpayer money. The situation was different, but the same principle stands. Does it not?
Taxes? Oh, I am affraid we are going to have to sacrifice a bit more than that to salvage what is savable of our lifestyle, but it is, of course, a choise. The change is coming, as it always does, wether we want it, or not. We live in the current, where the choises are made for the future for what direction the future takes.
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A nation’s response to climate change has to be proportionate to their contribution. The UK government says it wants to be a world leader in the measures that need to be taken. Why? Does it really think China, the USA, Russia and India (the biggest offenders) are going to look to what the UK is doing in setting their policies? Of course not.
Meanwhile the extremity of the UK’s response is pushing the country towards bankruptcy and creating greater poverty.
We pretend too we’re reducing our carbon footprint by declining to produce our own energy from fossil fuels while importing it at higher cost from other countries. No-one is fooled by this.
As my post suggests, the UK’s approach to net-zero is irrational, disingenuous and completely out of proportion to the pollution we actually create.
No sarcasm today.
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How do you measure what is proportionate? Proportionate in contrast to what? To the miniscule measures taken by the biggest polluters? By that standard not enough will be done, surely. That is like saying beating people up should be legal because in proportion to what a murderer does it is next to nothing.
If you want to go down the comparative lane how about the amount a single citizen causes carbon emissions during a lifetime? Suddenly the single Chinese person emits less than the awerage Brittish person. Especially, since much of the emissions in China are done to produce stuff to the use of the Brittish individual.
Historically the economic rise of Britain was based on robbing resources from around the globe and burning fossil fuels. Do not tell me you owe nothing to the world.
The goal needs to be as close to zero for all of us as possible. Economy does not grow or die with the fossil fuels alone and as the need for alternatives becomes more imminent by the hour, so will the transition to green energies. Countries, that are forerunners in this new line of energyproduction industry, will benefit from their know how advantage just like countries that assumed diesel engines over the steam engines before others, or nuclear power over the diesels.
The war in Ukraine finally has had to have revealed, what should have been fairly obvious all along, even to the dimmest, that the energy production by fossil fuels is ridiculously vulnerable. UK may seem less so, but there is no endless storage of oil under the North Sea, and frankly, it is quite obvious that the Norvegians have used theirs by far more wisely than the Brits. Norway has been preparing for the day when it ends and built better living for the citizenry today and in the future.
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A lot of conjecture here.
The average person in China uses less energy than your average Brit? In fact the carbon emissions of an average Brit is half that of the average Chinese person. Finland’s per capita usage too is about 1% greater than the UK’s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita)
Chinese emissions are as high as they are because China produces so much for the UK? The amount it exports to the UK is small in comparison with numerous other countries.
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_China)
The UK has ‘robbed’ the world of resources? And here I thought we made trade deals.
My suggestion of proportionality is nothing ‘like’ your ludicrous beating/murder analogy. You’re bordering on the very hysteria I object to in my post.
Tell you what, come back once the UK has achieved net zero and we can celebrate together how it has single-handedly reversed climate change. That is if the UK hasn’t bankrupted itself by then.
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