"Tumbleweed" wrote in message ...
"Warwick Michael Dumas" wrote in message
om...
Mike wrote in message
...
In article , Tumbleweed fromnews@myso
ckstumbleweed.freeserve.co.uk writes

He would set up a task force to find out which bunch of international
terrorists were causing global warming.
--

Well, that'll be anyone who uses fossil fuel, directky or indirectly.
Which
will be you and me typing these messages in, for example.

Not me though. Unless I count as using fossil fuels by using up
calories which I got by eating food which was delivered to a
supermarket by a lorry ...

Of course it counts. I also presume you use electricity and or gas? And
manufactured products?

I think I'd get a bit chilly if I said I'm only going to use heating
when I'm typing a message!

'anyone who uses fossil fuels'.

It is being said time and time again that anyone who uses fossil fuels
add to Global Warming. Right?

Well that depends whether you think it's their fault they used fossil
fuels. An awful lot of people could decide to use an awful lot less,
but the fact remains that many things are quite hard for an individual
to avoid if s/he wishes to have a "normal" economic and home life.

Indeed. We could go back to the middle ages and possibly avoid GW (I say
possibly as that is by no means certain) but that would seem to be worse
than the potential consequences of GW.

But as long as we rely on individuals acting by themselves, it looks
very like that is the kind of choice we are facing. I think it's clear
that none of the options is good enough - so what we need is
coordination, responsible action by governments.

I'm not saying there aren't plenty of practical steps which an
individual can take to reduce their impact on the environment, and
should. It doesn't really cost that much to use only renewable energy
at home - maybe 100 pounds a year, less than 0.1% of a typical
household income. Short air journeys are pretty unnecessary and iirc,
each flight is about as pollutive as a year of car use by all the
passengers - I don't think anyone's got an excuse for that.

I like going on holiday. Thats one excuse.

I'm talking about the kind of journey people can make perfectly well
by train or ferry, sometimes at the cost of less than a day.
Edinburgh, Paris, Madrid, Berlin(?), Rome(?). And sadly enough, some
people apparently actually do London-Birmingham.

So certainly there is scope for some improvement by individual
responsibility - I didn't want to make the former statement without
this caveat.

As it happens I don't think that because you happen to feel like it is
much excuse for an Atlantic air crossing either, but that wasn't the
point.


Warwick Dumas

www.members.tripod.com/ecuqe

"If Adolf Hitler were here today, they'd send a limousine anyway."
- the late Joe Strummer