The feat required thought: it required a faith so childlike as to verge on the imbecile.
E. F. Benson - Miss Mapp (1922)
Merely a casual Sunday evening observation this one, but there is something grimly childish about Net Zero. It’s the familiar cry of the child who wants something so desperately but horrible adults say no.
In this case, some of the more horrible adults are physics, chemistry, engineering, economics and the most horrible of all, common sense. But still the call goes on – why not now?
And still they don’t see it.
In this case, some of the more horrible adults are physics, chemistry, engineering, economics and the most horrible of all, common sense. But still the call goes on – why not now?
And still they don’t see it.
4 comments:
There was a bloke I met in India who said that he never corrected his daughter, always allowing her to experiment for herself and learn from her mistakes as to what was painful or would lead her into difficulties. We asked him if he would allow her, as a toddler, to run into a busy road or jump into deep water. No, he said, but he had allowed her to touch the stove, so that she could learn for herself that hot things were painful. She never repeated it.
I think he had a point. It would be great if a TV company would put these people in a simulated setting of subsistence agriculture with no electricity, and show us how they fared. But of course, they would argue that they needed some wholesale revolution of the entire economy to make it work.
On a related issue, a little factoid which has just popped up on my energy supplier's app. I don't know if it's true, but they said that all the batteries currently existing in the world could supply our power needs for 10 minutes. Who knows? But I think you'd need a lot of Duracells to smelt steel.
"you'd need a lot of Duracells to smelt steel" Or a very small piece of steel.
"...put these people in a simulated setting of subsistence agriculture with no electricity..."
These people have no intention of living on subsistence agriculture with no electricity. It's everyone else - which naturally includes you and I - who will have to do that.
Sam - your chap in India did have a point, many of our problems do stem for never having been burned by real life, especially by the results of what too many of the unburned advocate politically. It isn't easy to see why some people seem to need the experience of being burned by real life while others don't.
Cut a strip of kitchen foil with a very thin section in the middle, connect both ends of the strip to the poles of a little Duracell battery and you can start a fire as the aluminium melts or burns - I'm not sure which it's doing.
dearieme - you can also do it with aluminium kitchen foil as described above.
Peter - I agree, and the useful idiots seem to think they will somehow escape the consequences of their own useful idiocy.
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