We have found out we are making more single use plastic than ever before.
We have found out oil companies are making more money than ever before.
If you are a realist, as opposed to an idealist, none of this will have come as a surprise.
What drives most of us is convenience. It's why you should never trust polls on matters where the question involves any form of fanciful theory.
What we say and what we do are two different things, not always, but generally.
It's why the public transport fans have failed so miserably. On a whiteboard it sounds plausible but on any given busy day it's not real, it never has been real and it never will be.
The reason the oil accompanies are making so much money is twofold.
1) We need more of it and, 2) the war has pushed the price up.
The theory was we would use EV's and batteries and solar and wind and sunflower seeds. But the reality is none of those things are reliable enough or available enough.
As they currently stand, they aren't actual answers. They are alternatives of a temporary nature and, given that, there is no point in getting all angsty about profits and wanting to put a windfall tax on them that is talked about.
That gesture is driven by our own anger and frustration at being wrong about the future and wrong about our overall intent.
It's not BP‘s fault the war started and it’s not BP's fault we all want to use more and more oil. They are only doing what they have always done, which is supply a demand.
That is why the whole model hasn’t worked - we keep demanding more.
We gave up plastic straws so we could use those new ones that disintegrate in 15 seconds in your glass, convincing ourselves it made a difference.
It didn’t.
The zealots are asking us to do something we won't do, which is go backwards.
Farmers know this. The way to reduce emissions is reduce cows, make less money, eat less meat and do less farming.
The oil zealots want us to catch buses that don’t go where we want to go, even if they turn up in the first place.
We will not do it and we are not doing it.
Our reality, and its smooth operation, will trump ideology every time.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings.
1 comment:
The big problem is that those who are in power do not believe in reality and those who believe in reality would never vote for ideological air heads. Once the air heads are hit with the reality of their loopy ideology and the consequences we will already be in deep do do. Even the evidence from Europe and Sri Lanka can not get through to those who are brain dead.
Maybe if someone was to explain how much of the taxpayers' money was spent on these non-existent problems the voters would be woken from their dreams, but how to get the information to the public with an already corrupt media.
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