The corona virus has changed so many things in this world and in my opinion will continue to do so for months, if not years.
This government has decided that to protect people and the way our society functions, it is necessary to increase borrowing to unprecedented levels with figures of 250 billion being bandied about. Now before people think I am about to start an attack on the government, let me stress here and now that I believe that this is the correct thing to do and I fully support them in this decision to combat the threat of Covid-19 and the potential that it has to destroy both lives and livelihoods.
But here is my question. Over the longer term, Climate Change has the potential to kill far more people and destroy far more livelihoods than Covid-19. So do people think that the government would be justified in similar levels of borrowing, lets say over the next 10 years, to combat global warming and to convert the UK into a Carbon neutral (or even negative) country, particularly if it could persuade other major governments across the world to follow suit ?
-- Edited by Bob in Spain on Thursday 23rd of April 2020 02:38:03 PM
This pandemic will undoubtedly have a massive impact on policy & how we live the next decade of our lives. Out sourcing all manufacturing to China has had enormous implications in terms of our capacity to be able to flex indigenous resources in a crisis. We will have to consider more carefully what to our source & there may be an opportunity to manufacture in the UK being as environmental friendly as possible
Undoubtedly the utilisation of technology to join people up to do business & for pleasure has been an environmental positive, the reality is there wont be any change in the near future as social distancing is our only strategy to manage COVID so likely to become embedded It is fabulous not to see vapour trails in the sky over London there will also be long term implications for the airline industry.
The real issue is managing outsourced manufacturing world wide. I cant see developing countries playing ball from a green manufacturing prospective unless something is done to relieve the hand to mouth existence of their populations. The US unless things change politically will do the same
