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Global warming is not to blame for all our current ills. It is a convenient scapegoat. Greed and selfishness are the real problems. 'Global warming' lets governments and corporates off the hook because they can transform themselves into the good guys by claiming to be committed to sustainability and green issues and doing something about it, when in reality (global warming aside, as it is not proven) they are the culprits for most of our ills.
As someone else has already remarked global weather patterns are cyclical and operate over timescales that are way beyond our lifespan. Last Tuesday, I visited somewhere I hadn't been for over 20 years and it bore little resemblance to the place I remembered. All the changes were due to human intervention; natural environmental change was not so readily evident. Would I have recognised the place at all if I had returned after 100, 1,000 or 10,000 years?
Carbon neutrality is a myth and amounts to little more than cynical marketing. My company has a turnover of £90 million and we could buy a carbon neutral status for less than £10K. This is an insignificant amount to us but a substantial figure to the promoter. We will not be pursuing this.
I regularly come across competitor companies who make unsustainable 'sustainability' claims. Recently, we came across a rival who indicated they had certification for using timber only from renewable resources and used a reference number and logo on a tender submission to substantiate this. The logo and reference number turned out to be for the paper the document was written on!
Mutinational companies use certificates for their American facilities to validate their environmental credentials when their standards are lower than European requirements. (Who was it that did not sign up to the Kyoto protocols?) Recently, one of our major competitors (an American company) had the audacity to ask us to undertake some of their environmental commitments after beating us on a large contract with an existing customer of ours!! The clients reaction was interesting when we pointed this out!
My apologies if all that was rather heavy, but at least it wasn't gleaned from a TV programme!
To end on a lighter note. We had a meeting recently to discuss what we could legitimately do on the environmental front that was a worthwhile contribution to the future of the planet. Given the impact that cows and methane emissions allegedly have, I suggested that for every 100 chairs we sold, we should shoot a cow!
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