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Climate Propaganda and Car Wars | Jerm Warfare Weekly Banter · UK Column Radio

0:30
Speaker 1: My name is Jim. This is Germ Warfare, the Battle
0:33
Speaker 1: of Ideas. It's still a winter here, but we have
0:38
Speaker 1: had thirty degree days over the last few days, and
0:44
Speaker 1: apparently according to Angus, who I spoke to a few
0:47
Speaker 1: days ago, we've had low rainfall this July. Conversely, what's
0:52
Speaker 1: it like on your side?
0:59
Speaker 2: Well, Mike and I are in different places, so we
1:02
Speaker 2: are having different different things going on. But it's been
1:08
Speaker 2: in the South England is hot and dry. But I
1:12
Speaker 2: think that's what's meant to happen in summer. I can
1:14
Speaker 2: certainly remember happening before and it does, you know, which
1:19
Speaker 2: is not. Yeah, that's what I'm getting it. Yes, I
1:25
Speaker 2: mean you know straight away. For me, what it does
1:28
Speaker 2: is to ask the question what do people expect? And
1:34
Speaker 2: when I say what do they expect? I mean what
1:37
Speaker 2: do they expect in so far as food is concerned.
1:41
Speaker 2: Because we are constantly told that this is a problem
1:46
Speaker 2: for farmers. I accept that. I absolutely accept it's a
1:49
Speaker 2: problem for farmers. It is a problem for farmers because
1:54
Speaker 2: they are farming in such a way that means that
1:58
Speaker 2: they are needed particular, sorry extra syllable particular conditions to
2:05
Speaker 2: be able to suit not so much the quality of
2:10
Speaker 2: whatever it is they're producing, but the industrial requirements to
2:14
Speaker 2: produce something at a certain time to a certain volume,
2:19
Speaker 2: certain weight. I mean, the quality does come into it,
2:22
Speaker 2: but not the right targe quality and not quality concerning
2:26
Speaker 2: nutrient density, which is something I'm sure Angus will have mentioned.
2:30
Speaker 2: I haven't actually listened to all of that into yet,
2:32
Speaker 2: but I really look forward to it. So this is
2:36
Speaker 2: the drama. The thing is that that is unfair to
2:38
Speaker 2: an extent because if you're not trying to sort of
2:44
Speaker 2: coerce nature into doing something it wasn't planning on doing,
2:49
Speaker 2: in that you might be grazing livestock, then it can
2:53
Speaker 2: absolutely put you in a very very difficult position because
2:56
Speaker 2: you have to manage what's going to happen over the winter,
2:59
Speaker 2: and that is a significant problem. And as an indication
3:04
Speaker 2: last year, which was also very dry, but dry from
3:08
Speaker 2: a much earlier period in the UK, so it basically
3:10
Speaker 2: stopped raining in about February twenty twenty five, that meant
3:13
Speaker 2: that there was no spring grass growth, and that meant
3:16
Speaker 2: that in a lot of parts of the country, the
3:18
Speaker 2: hay cut or any kind of halage or signage cut
3:21
Speaker 2: for winter feed for livestock was nil and the bit
3:27
Speaker 2: of ground that I was cutting hay from yielded only
3:30
Speaker 2: ten percent of the previous year's crop. That does put
3:34
Speaker 2: you in a very very difficult position. But as to
3:37
Speaker 2: the rest of it, look at what we waste. I
3:40
Speaker 2: know I bang on about this, but I feel it
3:43
Speaker 2: is one of the things that people really do have
3:45
Speaker 2: to bang to sort of listen about and just think about.
3:51
Speaker 2: You know, do we really need this much stuff everywhere,
3:54
Speaker 2: especially especially food and the same thing all the time? Anyway,
4:00
Speaker 2: I could go on.
4:01
Speaker 1: The reason why actually I was bringing up is I
4:04
Speaker 1: was kind of pushing towards a bit of a climate discussion.
4:10
Speaker 1: You're right, it's localized. And that's my point. Only here
4:12
Speaker 1: in Cape Town, as our rainfall being lowish last year,
4:16
Speaker 1: it was fine. In Jannersburg, it's perfect. It's very very
4:22
Speaker 1: wet as usual, rains just about every single day as expected.
4:27
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the point that I'm trying to make.
4:28
Speaker 1: But what happens now is any any kind of change
4:34
Speaker 1: that seems slightly out of what people might expect, is
4:41
Speaker 1: now suddenly man made. And this is what we find
4:45
Speaker 1: now becoming. It's a strange discussion. El Nino is supposedly
4:50
Speaker 1: coming our way later this year. I don't know if
4:52
Speaker 1: it's heading your way, but we were going to supposedly
4:55
Speaker 1: have a very very hot summer, very dry summer for
4:59
Speaker 1: an extent of time. And now what happens is if
5:02
Speaker 1: you got online there all men made stuff and it's
5:04
Speaker 1: because of we're driving ice cars and and you know,
5:07
Speaker 1: and it's back to that old narrative again from fifteen
5:10
Speaker 1: years ago. Yeah, but then I had to deal with it.
5:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, this is it's a gigantic propaganda and brainwashing exercise,
5:20
Speaker 2: because that's exactly why I asked the question, what do
5:22
Speaker 2: people expect? And people have been led to expect the
5:25
Speaker 2: same thing every time. Well, that's totally ludicrous. And forever
5:30
Speaker 2: and ever since anyone's been keeping any records of anything,
5:34
Speaker 2: there have been those standout years, you know, the little
5:37
Speaker 2: ice age, all the stories from markets on the Thames
5:42
Speaker 2: when it froze over in London, the incredible snowfalls that
5:46
Speaker 2: happened in the nineteen sixties. I think it was it
5:50
Speaker 2: sixty seven. I think it was fifty two and nineteen
5:54
Speaker 2: sixty seven. Obviously I absolutely stand to be corrected if
5:57
Speaker 2: I've got those dates wrong, but I can remember seeing
5:59
Speaker 2: photograph from where I was living sort of fifteen years
6:04
Speaker 2: ago from that big snowfall in the seventies, and there
6:08
Speaker 2: was an incredible picture of drifting snow with just probably
6:13
Speaker 2: eighteen inches of a telegraph pole sticking out from the
6:17
Speaker 2: top of it. You know, I mean that is a
6:20
Speaker 2: wooden't telegraph pole in this in the UK is what
6:24
Speaker 2: I don't know, fifty foot high. And that was all
6:28
Speaker 2: that was visible. So that that does not happen every year,
6:32
Speaker 2: that had never happened every year. Sometimes it does, sometimes
6:35
Speaker 2: it doesn't. We don't really know exactly why. But to
6:40
Speaker 2: constantly point towards one thing that is apparently controlling everything else,
6:47
Speaker 2: and by that I mean human activity, is I just
6:52
Speaker 2: there's this complete deficiency of logic to my mind.
6:57
Speaker 3: Sorry, the I think I'm going to be controversy here
7:03
Speaker 3: and say the English in particular are are are absolute
7:09
Speaker 3: snowflakes When it comes to the weather, it has to
7:12
Speaker 3: be said. They can plain if it rains in the summer,
7:17
Speaker 3: they can plain if it's sunny in the summer, they
7:21
Speaker 3: can plain if it's cold in the winter, and if
7:23
Speaker 3: it's warm in the winter. I mean, it's just it's
7:25
Speaker 3: the weather is without question, one of the biggest talking
7:28
Speaker 3: points that the average English person has, and they're never
7:34
Speaker 3: happy with it. And you know at the same time
7:37
Speaker 3: that there's one of the reasons that they would have
7:39
Speaker 3: justification not being happy with this year is quite a
7:42
Speaker 3: number of people who probably spent thousands of pounds on
7:45
Speaker 3: foreign holidays to get exactly the kind of weather that
7:47
Speaker 3: we're getting here at the moment. Right. So, but the
7:53
Speaker 3: media is pardon that is a very big part of
7:55
Speaker 3: this because what does the media do. It makes the
7:59
Speaker 3: normal seem abnormal. So for two examples, water shortages. Why
8:06
Speaker 3: do we have water shortages in this country? Is it
8:08
Speaker 3: because the average temperature has gone up or the rainfall
8:12
Speaker 3: on average over a period of years has gone down. Well, no,
8:16
Speaker 3: the reason we have water shortages in this country is
8:18
Speaker 3: because we've increased the population by whatever, twenty thirty percent,
8:22
Speaker 3: whatever it is, and not built a single reservoir in
8:25
Speaker 3: the last forty years. Right, So that's one reason that
8:28
Speaker 3: we've got water shortages. Really yeah, really yeah. Another reason
8:33
Speaker 3: that we Another issue is is wildfires, because obviously we're
8:40
Speaker 3: getting big headlines this year about wildfires kicking off everywhere.
8:44
Speaker 3: As if wildfires have never happened before. Now, let's just
8:47
Speaker 3: set aside the possibilities some of these wildfires have been
8:51
Speaker 3: intentionally started. What's never discussed is the change in land
8:57
Speaker 3: management practices that have happened in the last Well, Charles
9:02
Speaker 3: can tell me better than I can. But let's say
9:04
Speaker 3: forty years, and as we move towards this netzerial driven
9:10
Speaker 3: rewilding of everything, and we don't manage our forest land
9:15
Speaker 3: in the way that we have in the past, or
9:17
Speaker 3: our scrub land or whatever it happens to be, and
9:19
Speaker 3: we allow more scrub to just be there, then of
9:24
Speaker 3: course if a far begins, it absolutely becomes a bigger
9:29
Speaker 3: issue than it may have done in the past. So
9:33
Speaker 3: none of this context has ever given, either the reservoirs
9:37
Speaker 3: context or the land management practice context, and instead everything
9:44
Speaker 3: that's going on is framed within anthropogenic climate change, and
9:51
Speaker 3: you know it's it's the other aspect of it as well.
9:55
Speaker 3: Is of course they talk about they talk about changes
9:59
Speaker 3: in climate in periods of decades, when climate is something
10:04
Speaker 3: changes in climate is something that happens over periods of centuries,
10:07
Speaker 3: if not millennia. So you know, it's completely ridiculous to
10:13
Speaker 3: suggest that because in living memory, we can't remember having
10:18
Speaker 3: in fact, for a significant proportion of the British population,
10:21
Speaker 3: we can remember a summer like this before nineteen seventy
10:23
Speaker 3: six being the obvious choice. But nonetheless they talk about,
10:29
Speaker 3: you know, seasonal changes happening within living memory, when at
10:36
Speaker 3: the same time they're talking about climate when climate cycles
10:38
Speaker 3: are much broader than that, again completely misrepresenting the situation
10:43
Speaker 3: and leading people to a conclusion which is not valid.
10:47
Speaker 3: So you know, a number of issues there, but we
10:50
Speaker 3: need to recognize when we again are being played.
10:55
Speaker 1: So I continue with absolute certainty that they will be
10:58
Speaker 1: pushed back to what you're saying there, because ultimately our
11:02
Speaker 1: discussion is, okay, it's much ado about nothing. This is
11:08
Speaker 1: typically how the weather works. Now you know that there
11:11
Speaker 1: will be those who will say, but hold on a second,
11:15
Speaker 1: all these aeroplane let's not go down that road. But
11:18
Speaker 1: all these trails they dissipate and they make the sky
11:21
Speaker 1: more gray. And I think that is true. There's no
11:24
Speaker 1: doubt that that causes all sorts of other issues. But
11:27
Speaker 1: that is localized. And this is the big thing that
11:30
Speaker 1: people seem to think what happens where you live doesn't
11:33
Speaker 1: affect me. It's too far away. And what happens again
11:39
Speaker 1: is that they see the world as an incredibly small place.
11:44
Speaker 1: The fires that are happening in California or in Europe, yeah,
11:48
Speaker 1: that could be man made fires, and that it could
11:51
Speaker 1: be arson or whatever, and it could be legitimately dangerous
11:55
Speaker 1: and very very catastrophic, but it doesn't have any effect
11:59
Speaker 1: on me, almost negligible effect, because the world is actually
12:03
Speaker 1: so big, and so therefore the conversation around localization becomes
12:07
Speaker 1: very very important, and and it's it's it's a matter
12:10
Speaker 1: of perspective, isn't it. Yeah, Yeah, but.
12:15
Speaker 3: Sorry, Charles, So, I was just going to say that,
12:16
Speaker 3: you know, okay, I take your point, jarm, But the
12:19
Speaker 3: fact of the matter is, come your summer in South Africa,
12:24
Speaker 3: I guarantee you're going to get exactly the same types
12:26
Speaker 3: of headlines that we've been getting in the UK this
12:28
Speaker 3: summer and in Europe this summer. So so again, just
12:31
Speaker 3: hotest summer ever, right, that that kind of thing. And
12:36
Speaker 3: and so in a sense, you know, everything that happens
12:41
Speaker 3: in Europe, you say it doesn't affect you, but actually
12:44
Speaker 3: it does affect you because what that all all those
12:47
Speaker 3: headlines that we're seeing in Europe at the moment will
12:49
Speaker 3: feed into the headlines that you get in your summer,
12:52
Speaker 3: and you're going to get well. As we saw in
12:55
Speaker 3: France or as we saw in the UK, the same
12:57
Speaker 3: things happening here and and again.
13:00
Speaker 1: About any of the context, yes, yeah, it's the propaganda
13:03
Speaker 1: or not the actual weather.
13:05
Speaker 2: Yes, although I mean there are just two issues I do.
13:09
Speaker 2: I totally agree with you about the effects that have
13:11
Speaker 2: felt in particular places and not so much in others.
13:14
Speaker 2: Although actually I would say that I think we can
13:17
Speaker 2: be a little bit blast about that. I don't know
13:20
Speaker 2: a huge amount about how that works in the sky,
13:24
Speaker 2: but one does have the feeling that above the atmosphere
13:29
Speaker 2: stuff does stay in situ for norty long time, and
13:33
Speaker 2: so therefore, in fact there will be a cumulative effects
13:35
Speaker 2: even in places that it's not yet visible, which I
13:38
Speaker 2: think is I think that is absolutely reason for concern.
13:44
Speaker 2: I think also the oceans are another area in which
13:50
Speaker 2: I think it's very easy to assume that just because
13:52
Speaker 2: you might be somewhere where there isn't a great deal
13:54
Speaker 2: of shipping traffic or local pollution or whatever, that the
13:57
Speaker 2: situation is is okay, and in actual fact, it's okay
14:03
Speaker 2: the science, but I think this is not such a
14:07
Speaker 2: contentious area. Examining fish stocks and the build up of
14:12
Speaker 2: microplastics in fish and that kind of thing, in actual fact,
14:15
Speaker 2: does suggest that this is a much bigger problem, or
14:18
Speaker 2: at least that it does it does travel, So I
14:24
Speaker 2: know what you mean, but I think that that does
14:28
Speaker 2: rather obscure the point about pollution. But you see, this
14:32
Speaker 2: again is a totally ridiculous issue. Because people have been
14:36
Speaker 2: conditioned and instructed that there must only focus on combon dockside,
14:40
Speaker 2: which of course is a giver of life. It means
14:42
Speaker 2: that everything else just get to free pass actual pollution.
14:47
Speaker 2: No one really cares about anymore, actual degradat degradation of
14:51
Speaker 2: the environment. That doesn't really get a look in. And
14:54
Speaker 2: what I would say is that whilst the idea of
14:57
Speaker 2: anthropogenic climate change on a grand scale doesn't stack up,
15:04
Speaker 2: the micro climate change absolutely does. And if you think
15:09
Speaker 2: of the places that this sort of stuff is reported from,
15:13
Speaker 2: well how many of those cities in particular have had
15:17
Speaker 2: swathes of their parks and trees destroyed in the last
15:23
Speaker 2: I don't know, fifty years. Because anywhere that does have
15:27
Speaker 2: a well established ecosystem of in particular trees, but soil
15:33
Speaker 2: that sort of behaving itself will be able to regulate
15:36
Speaker 2: its climate. It's its own micro climate, not just in
15:41
Speaker 2: summer but also in winter. And I think that's something
15:43
Speaker 2: that's forgotten about completely, and that exists also in the countryside.
15:49
Speaker 2: And I know I've talked about this before. You know,
15:50
Speaker 2: the ability of soil to look after itself, to regulate
15:53
Speaker 2: its own temperature according to its condition, is basically lost,
15:57
Speaker 2: totally lost by the industrialization of farming. It strips out
16:00
Speaker 2: all the all those micro organisms that are able to
16:06
Speaker 2: do that. So there is there absolutely is a uh
16:11
Speaker 2: you know, an effect that can be demonstrated where it
16:14
Speaker 2: does appear to be hotter than before, and there are
16:18
Speaker 2: reasons for that. And I think the problem is that
16:21
Speaker 2: this debate, if one can call it, that, has become
16:25
Speaker 2: so absurdly binary, that that the the really important points
16:30
Speaker 2: are totally lost and no one really has any idea
16:33
Speaker 2: what's going on, apart from knowing that they should feel
16:36
Speaker 2: very passionately one thing or the other thing, and of
16:40
Speaker 2: course the other. The other absurdity that's never really pointed
16:44
Speaker 2: to is that you know, any graph that you put
16:46
Speaker 2: out of the United Kingdom Government statistics draw will tell
16:50
Speaker 2: you how how brilliantly we've done. You know, we've reduced
16:53
Speaker 2: our carbon emissions by this, that and the other. Okay, well,
16:56
Speaker 2: well what's the difference then? What what change has that made?
16:59
Speaker 2: If you're if you're going to say, on the one
17:01
Speaker 2: hand that you can make your graft from eighteen eighty
17:04
Speaker 2: go up like that, then if we've dropped like that
17:08
Speaker 2: since nineteen ninety, then what's the change? So why are
17:13
Speaker 2: we pursuing this If you're saying there is a short
17:16
Speaker 2: term effect to man's activities and then in the same breath,
17:20
Speaker 2: in effect saying there isn't, Well, how does that help
17:24
Speaker 2: anyone's argument?
17:26
Speaker 3: Do you think.
17:29
Speaker 1: People around us actually believe the stuff?
17:31
Speaker 3: Though?
17:32
Speaker 1: Because I've often wondered if we are being fed a
17:37
Speaker 1: perception that isn't actually real. I don't know anybody in
17:41
Speaker 1: my circles, and maybe it's just my circles, but whenever
17:44
Speaker 1: I speak about any of the stuff, nobody actually buys
17:49
Speaker 1: into the mainstream narrative. I'm fine, is sorry?
17:56
Speaker 3: Go on? No, I was going to say, I think
17:58
Speaker 3: that's I think that's up right. There are many, many
18:02
Speaker 3: fewer people actually accept the argument that is implied by
18:09
Speaker 3: the fact. For example, I mean, if there was a
18:12
Speaker 3: if there was a majority of people that actually bought
18:17
Speaker 3: the argument, we wouldn't see things like the BBC taking
18:22
Speaker 3: a decision that when it comes to climate change discussions
18:29
Speaker 3: that actually there's no requirement to have a balanced discussion
18:33
Speaker 3: about it, and that they should not. You know, they
18:35
Speaker 3: have taken the decision, the active decision never to give
18:39
Speaker 3: anyone a platform on the BBC that has any kind
18:42
Speaker 3: of what they would call denialist motivation or narratives. So
18:52
Speaker 3: they clearly, they clearly don't want to have a debate.
18:54
Speaker 3: Now why would they not want to have a debit,
18:56
Speaker 3: because if the if the argument was being made, was
19:01
Speaker 3: being accepted by people on a broad scale, and they
19:04
Speaker 3: wouldn't be afraid of anybody challenging that in any way.
19:10
Speaker 3: But they clearly are afraid of that because they won't
19:12
Speaker 3: they because they simply won't give those people a voice.
19:18
Speaker 3: But you know, and so as a result, but I mean,
19:22
Speaker 3: we see in people's behaviors that they're not buying it
19:26
Speaker 3: because they're not you know, Okay, some people buy evs
19:30
Speaker 3: for because they think that by buying an EV either's
19:33
Speaker 3: somehow helping the planet. They generally think that without having
19:36
Speaker 3: done any research to see what effect you know, according
19:41
Speaker 3: to the the pro you know, according to the climate
19:45
Speaker 3: change narrative, what what effect does the building of an
19:49
Speaker 3: EV have on that? You know, how much carbon dioxide
19:53
Speaker 3: is released through the building of how much how many
19:57
Speaker 3: other chemical reactions are there that cause various kinds of
20:02
Speaker 3: climate related issues when you when you've bought that final product.
20:09
Speaker 3: Because the manufacturing of of evs, manufacturing of of solar panels,
20:15
Speaker 3: in the manufacturing of when turbines is generally ignored in
20:20
Speaker 3: the discussion. So I mean, I don't think you will
20:25
Speaker 3: always believe the proportion of people that are buying those
20:27
Speaker 3: those kinds of products. But the vast, vast majority of
20:30
Speaker 3: people just want to continue driving their internal combustion engines.
20:36
Speaker 1: Or if they do buy evs, and this is from
20:38
Speaker 1: the circles that I found myself in, if they do
20:42
Speaker 1: buy EV's, it's because they can save on petrol because
20:45
Speaker 1: they just plug their coin at home, which is fine,
20:49
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with that. And also because evs are
20:52
Speaker 1: very fast, and some of them like a bit of speed.
20:56
Speaker 1: But the conversations are never really about saving Earth.
21:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's it. I mean, I think people
21:03
Speaker 2: just need to be honest about stuff. And today, I mean,
21:09
Speaker 2: I can't substantiate this is anything other than conversations that
21:12
Speaker 2: I've had personally and and sort of anecdotally. But oh yeah,
21:18
Speaker 2: the climate change thing just seems like one one gigantic
21:22
Speaker 2: virtue signal, and it is because it's been propagandized to
21:26
Speaker 2: such an extent. It is pretty heavy weather. If you're
21:29
Speaker 2: going to make a take a public stance of considering
21:35
Speaker 2: that you think it's rubbish, so far easier to just
21:39
Speaker 2: make out that you go along with it. And I
21:43
Speaker 2: mean there will be a few people, I suppose who've
21:46
Speaker 2: bought electronic vehicles that do genuinely believe that they're making
21:53
Speaker 2: a difference, and that that that overweys or sorry outweighs
21:58
Speaker 2: the cost implications, because I'm still not quite sure what
22:03
Speaker 2: the market's like. But my understanding of it is that
22:07
Speaker 2: to buy one, to buy an EV is extraordinarily expensive,
22:12
Speaker 2: especially since you don't really know how much life you're
22:16
Speaker 2: going to get out of it or what sort of
22:18
Speaker 2: a value is going to be placed on it when
22:21
Speaker 2: it's coming up.
22:23
Speaker 1: For if you want to sell it on. Yes, the
22:27
Speaker 1: battery issue, yeah, go one. Sorry, but just I mean,
22:31
Speaker 1: I've had this conversation now over and over because when
22:33
Speaker 1: I bought my car recently, I did test drive a
22:36
Speaker 1: few evs simply because you know, if I'm not going
22:40
Speaker 1: to be doing a lot of far driving, it does
22:44
Speaker 1: make a lot of sense to plug it in in
22:46
Speaker 1: the garage. But they don't tell you about the expenses
22:50
Speaker 1: of setting that up. If you want to set up
22:53
Speaker 1: their charging station in your garage, you can use a
22:56
Speaker 1: normal plug, which is quite slow, or you can use
22:59
Speaker 1: what they say apply. But then you have to install
23:02
Speaker 1: three phase electricity we don't have. I don't know if
23:04
Speaker 1: that's normal in the UK, but it's not really normal here.
23:07
Speaker 1: So it's it's a very specific kind of wiring that
23:11
Speaker 1: that that costs a lot of money. And then ultimately
23:13
Speaker 1: how long does that battery last and how many charges
23:16
Speaker 1: can you actually do and nobody really actually knows the
23:19
Speaker 1: cost benefit of these things and how many how many
23:24
Speaker 1: mechanics now I work on these on these vehicles either,
23:26
Speaker 1: So I just go back to, you know, internal combustion,
23:29
Speaker 1: and it's been around for long enough and I don't
23:33
Speaker 1: really care too much about the CO two style, because
23:35
Speaker 1: I don't I don't buy into that narrative.
23:38
Speaker 3: Well, look, I've got to say, Jerem. You know the
23:41
Speaker 3: couple of visits to China that I've done that absolutely
23:47
Speaker 3: converted me. If you're living in a city, there is
23:51
Speaker 3: no question that that everybody driving electric vehicles is a
23:55
Speaker 3: much more pleasant experience all round, just from the nos
24:00
Speaker 3: aspect alone.
24:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, in Shanghai.
24:03
Speaker 3: But but as you say, if you're if you're having
24:06
Speaker 3: to do some some distance driving, then you know that
24:10
Speaker 3: that's not going to work the the But the the
24:16
Speaker 3: other thing that hasn't been really addressed yet it is
24:21
Speaker 3: the cost of disposal. And and what I suspect is
24:24
Speaker 3: that the companies that are producing electric vehicles at the
24:28
Speaker 3: moment are going to do everything that they can to
24:32
Speaker 3: avoid the cost of disposal because none of the none
24:37
Speaker 3: of the batteries as far as I know, are in
24:40
Speaker 3: any way recyclable. So it's going to be pretty expensive
24:45
Speaker 3: to deal with that. Who's going to deal with it?
24:47
Speaker 3: I suspect it's going to be the taxpayer at the
24:49
Speaker 3: end of the day.
24:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting one. The other
24:54
Speaker 2: issues is well, loads of other issues. Insurance, premiums because
24:58
Speaker 2: even the slightest damage, and I think I might be
25:03
Speaker 2: right and saying not even to the battery itself, but
25:05
Speaker 2: to the housing, to anything near the battery, means that
25:10
Speaker 2: the as far as the insurance are concerned, that's a
25:12
Speaker 2: rite off. So obviously you could therefore buy a battery,
25:17
Speaker 2: a new one yourself, but the cost of doing so
25:20
Speaker 2: would be prohibitive. So I think there are massive issues there.
25:24
Speaker 2: But of course the other sort of the mega issue
25:28
Speaker 2: is the is well, yeah, okay, so what if everybody
25:31
Speaker 2: goes and buys one, then we have no electricity left.
25:34
Speaker 2: So it's this idea of constantly sort of chasing the rainbow,
25:40
Speaker 2: and it's just it is absolutely dark. It doesn't make
25:43
Speaker 2: any sense. But the other thing what I was going
25:45
Speaker 2: to say was that here, I think, having been convinced
25:49
Speaker 2: by peer pressure and then incentivized by certain government schemes,
25:54
Speaker 2: let's say, people, the conditions were made a bit more favorable.
25:58
Speaker 2: But also that was done at a time where the
26:00
Speaker 2: price of electricity per unit was considerably lower, say per mile,
26:08
Speaker 2: than it would have been to buy petrol or diesel. Now,
26:11
Speaker 2: obviously petrol and diesel have gone up in the United
26:14
Speaker 2: Kingdom significantly since the end of February with the well,
26:19
Speaker 2: let's say Israel situation. I was going to say Ran,
26:21
Speaker 2: but that's rather unfair on Iran, so that's happened. But
26:26
Speaker 2: also there's been enormous increases in the price of electricity,
26:29
Speaker 2: so I'm not sure how it does stack up now.
26:33
Speaker 2: The last time I did a calculation, which was fag
26:36
Speaker 2: pack it admittedly, but in fact there was very little difference,
26:40
Speaker 2: and I think even per mile it might have been
26:42
Speaker 2: more expensive at that particular moment to be bashing out
26:46
Speaker 2: electric miles than combustion engine ones. So there are very
26:50
Speaker 2: few reasons to go for it, but I do I
26:54
Speaker 2: would absolutely agree with you. I've only driven a handful
26:57
Speaker 2: of them, but they're very good. Although I do have
27:00
Speaker 2: to say to the manufacturers of the whatever the Nissan
27:04
Speaker 2: car is, the little Nissan one, I mean leaf, that's it.
27:10
Speaker 2: It's just it's amazing. It has a little where you
27:14
Speaker 2: would expect to have a gear stick. It has a
27:16
Speaker 2: little sort of nubbin which only does you can only
27:21
Speaker 2: go forward or backwards, and if you push the thing forward,
27:28
Speaker 2: the car goes backwards, and if you push the thing backwards.
27:32
Speaker 1: The car goes forwards.
27:34
Speaker 2: I would love to have been in the meeting where
27:38
Speaker 2: they decided which way to make the cargo. When you
27:41
Speaker 2: push the thing one way, I mean, that is a
27:45
Speaker 2: massive stitch up for the driver. But but but yeah,
27:48
Speaker 2: they're very you know, they're very zippy. I can see
27:52
Speaker 2: if you lived in a if you lived in an
27:55
Speaker 2: urban area, there's a whole load of this and if
27:57
Speaker 2: you had access to it. I don't know if they
28:00
Speaker 2: require three phase here, whatever it is they charge off.
28:04
Speaker 2: If all those conditions were set and you didn't have
28:07
Speaker 2: cables going all the way across the street and it
28:08
Speaker 2: was sort of practically usable, then yeah, of course I
28:12
Speaker 2: can see the appeal. But don't pretend that that's going
28:16
Speaker 2: to stop us from having hot summers because.
28:20
Speaker 1: Not Yeah, but sorry, just on the actual pragmatism of
28:26
Speaker 1: the evs, Mike, I agree with you. I mean, I've
28:29
Speaker 1: said this before a few times. In the center of Shanghai,
28:34
Speaker 1: where it's a hustle and bustle kind of city and
28:38
Speaker 1: it's very quiet, you can hear the bicycles and the
28:41
Speaker 1: birds because there are so many electric vehicles, that is
28:45
Speaker 1: an anomaly. It's very, very different. And also China by
28:48
Speaker 1: the way as a whole as an anomaly how they
28:50
Speaker 1: get their ride because they don't have electricity problems. However,
28:56
Speaker 1: we do, and I can't see us doing terribly well
29:01
Speaker 1: with with charging, particularly with our history of roting black cauths.
29:05
Speaker 1: I will say that the last year has been quite
29:08
Speaker 1: good in terms of electricity reliability, but we are notoriously
29:13
Speaker 1: unreliable because, like you were saying, Mike, the UK hasn't
29:17
Speaker 1: built any reservoirs. Well, we haven't really built any powerstations.
29:21
Speaker 1: We kind of have, but it's been a lot of
29:22
Speaker 1: corruption and they're not already working properly, and it hasn't
29:25
Speaker 1: been a it hasn't been a flowing process, that's for sure.
29:28
Speaker 1: So we are constantly overburdened with electrical demand and now
29:34
Speaker 1: they they expect us to plug in vehicles everywhere just
29:39
Speaker 1: it's it's not yeah.
29:40
Speaker 3: But but the other reason that you know that this
29:44
Speaker 3: becomes an even bigger issue. Okay, you have South Africa
29:48
Speaker 3: has its own power supply issues. In the UK, we
29:53
Speaker 3: don't today, but tomorrow after the next fifty data centers
29:59
Speaker 3: have had their planning permission approved and they've been built,
30:03
Speaker 3: we're going to have because we're also not building. Okay,
30:06
Speaker 3: we're building. We're building solar farms, and we're building you know,
30:11
Speaker 3: wind turbine farms, but those are being used to replace
30:18
Speaker 3: you know, gas turbine power stations. And well, I think
30:24
Speaker 3: they've pretty much decided to extend the life of the
30:26
Speaker 3: current nuclear fleet in the UK at the moment. But nonetheless,
30:30
Speaker 3: we're not expanding our energy production in this country, but
30:35
Speaker 3: we are destroying our planning processes in order to make
30:41
Speaker 3: room for more and more data centers across the country
30:44
Speaker 3: because AI is the next big thing. So where's there's
30:49
Speaker 3: demands on the electricity supply coming going to come from
30:53
Speaker 3: the AI companies and they are going to get priority.
30:56
Speaker 3: Perhaps hospitals are going to get some maintained, some priority
31:00
Speaker 3: that they have at the moment for guaranteed supply, which
31:04
Speaker 3: means that since we're not building anything, it's going to
31:06
Speaker 3: be the householder that experiences the the outages. And I
31:12
Speaker 3: think that's the direction of travel, is that that's inevitability.
31:17
Speaker 3: And so you know, again, your electric car is probably
31:21
Speaker 3: going to be if you have one, it's going to
31:23
Speaker 3: be one of the main problems there.
31:28
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, yeah, also, Charles, you'll know because you've
31:32
Speaker 1: been onto the different continent. But having a normal car
31:37
Speaker 1: that s it's low on the road and all that
31:39
Speaker 1: kind of thing generally doesn't work well with our kind
31:42
Speaker 1: of terrain. We have a lot of gravel roads and
31:44
Speaker 1: a lot of potholes and all that kind of stuff.
31:46
Speaker 1: So having a bigger vehicle also makes more sense. And
31:50
Speaker 1: if you drive further, and we have long distances that
31:52
Speaker 1: we drive, and so eb just doesn't really cut it
31:55
Speaker 1: if you don't have charging stations everywhere either. So I
31:58
Speaker 1: just don't see the long term benefit other than if
32:02
Speaker 1: it's as you said earlier, Charles, you know in the
32:04
Speaker 1: city center and it's it's nippy and you want to
32:06
Speaker 1: get around. But they do. They do have a lot
32:08
Speaker 1: of power. There's no doubt about damy ar tistrove. One
32:12
Speaker 1: Chinese Chinese ev here and did like not two one
32:15
Speaker 1: hundred kilometers and I think like four seconds. It's very
32:18
Speaker 1: very quick.
32:19
Speaker 2: M Yeah, I mean I think this is it. The
32:23
Speaker 2: practical delivery of this as a mass mass product, must
32:28
Speaker 2: consume product is miles off. It's ridiculous. I mean, let's
32:33
Speaker 2: face it. The thing is, you know, the great push
32:35
Speaker 2: to sort of go green. One thing, the United Kingdom
32:38
Speaker 2: has still not sorted out. Is the bicycle, which has
32:41
Speaker 2: been pretty green for a long time. You know, you
32:45
Speaker 2: do puff a bit when you're riding one, But it
32:49
Speaker 2: was at first, well there we go, but it was
32:52
Speaker 2: it was a very very straightforward proposition, which was that
32:57
Speaker 2: people who were either in or near towns, were basically
33:01
Speaker 2: near any kind of transport hub, would ride a bicycle
33:04
Speaker 2: and then take public transport. But instead public transport has
33:08
Speaker 2: been made absolutely made to not work, as in bus
33:14
Speaker 2: and train trains slightly less so, but bus connections seem
33:19
Speaker 2: intentionally designed in order that you cannot get from A
33:24
Speaker 2: to C because your point, your time of rival at
33:30
Speaker 2: B will be just after the transport from B to
33:34
Speaker 2: C has has left. So that's that's dead in the water.
33:38
Speaker 2: There are no real provisions for bicycles in terms of
33:45
Speaker 2: actually parking a bike anywhere. Okay, there are a few
33:47
Speaker 2: exceptions to this, but not very many, so I mean,
33:50
Speaker 2: it is is completely pathetic, and that is something you think.
33:54
Speaker 2: Think of the number of birds that could have been
33:56
Speaker 2: killed with that particular stone. If people had genuinely got
34:00
Speaker 2: onto bicycles, you could have completely regenerated and overhauled the
34:05
Speaker 2: public transport system. You could have got people fit, you
34:08
Speaker 2: could have got people out, you could have got cars
34:09
Speaker 2: off the road. There's so many things that as well
34:14
Speaker 2: as you know, rejuvenating the bicycle industry. But Insteade, the
34:19
Speaker 2: only thing they've really done with sort of the push
34:23
Speaker 2: for British Olympic cycling, it's just get more people in
34:26
Speaker 2: lecra not actually going anywhere, and that's that. So that
34:31
Speaker 2: there are I think a lot of really really open goals,
34:35
Speaker 2: but that's to assume good intent on those who in
34:40
Speaker 2: effect hold some of the levers, and I don't think
34:42
Speaker 2: we can assume.
34:44
Speaker 1: Holand Charles, what is the general terrain like in the UK?
34:50
Speaker 1: Is quite mountainous and he really flat.
34:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no general I mean that's the you know,
34:56
Speaker 2: as perverse as it sounds. Obviously it's a small land mass.
35:00
Speaker 2: Mike's quite right to point out that the English do
35:03
Speaker 2: talk an awful lot about the weather, especially to complain
35:07
Speaker 2: about the weather, and and really just I mean, I
35:12
Speaker 2: don't know why people cannot deal with Sorry, it's only
35:18
Speaker 2: a jump in and just rephrase what I was asking.
35:20
Speaker 2: So if you go to the Netherlands, it's very flat.
35:24
Speaker 2: She's riding a bicycle.
35:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, but but you know, it's all part
35:27
Speaker 1: of the fun. Yeah.
35:29
Speaker 2: The parts of eastern England, East Anglia, the sort of
35:33
Speaker 2: bulge that pokes out northeast of London, is flat by
35:38
Speaker 2: noge flat. There are other parts of the country that
35:41
Speaker 2: are flatish, but no, I mean much of it is
35:44
Speaker 2: either gently undulating or hilly. It's a great biking country,
35:49
Speaker 2: so it's not I mean, yeah, there are some places
35:52
Speaker 2: where it would be quite difficult to ride a bike.
35:57
Speaker 2: But the problem is now, I think the imbalance because
36:01
Speaker 2: car ownership and the population and all that sort of thing.
36:04
Speaker 2: Biking along some roads now is not nearly so much
36:08
Speaker 2: fun as it would have been because there are not
36:13
Speaker 2: just more cars, but also this obsession with a car
36:16
Speaker 2: being massive or at least massive on the outside, complete
36:20
Speaker 2: waste of space because it's all just it's all padding
36:23
Speaker 2: and poor design as far as I can work out,
36:26
Speaker 2: you know, get a car that's sort of thirty or
36:29
Speaker 2: forty years old, it will almost always have more space
36:32
Speaker 2: in it than its current version, even though the current
36:35
Speaker 2: version is much bigger on the outside, which is partly stylistic,
36:39
Speaker 2: partly supposedly to do with safety.
36:42
Speaker 1: So that's a good point, actually, Charles, I've never thought
36:44
Speaker 1: about that. The older cars are having more space inside.
36:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, now we go, especially for the driver who is
36:54
Speaker 2: assumed by some weird quirk of I don't know what,
36:57
Speaker 2: to have got shorter over the years. So trying to
37:00
Speaker 2: sit up in a modern car if you're the driver
37:04
Speaker 2: and you're over a certain height is again quite challenging.
37:07
Speaker 2: I just why why has that happened?
37:11
Speaker 1: It's so interesting. I've never I wonder if this is
37:15
Speaker 1: an interesting talking point, the size of cars. If I
37:20
Speaker 1: think about it, that makes sense. And when when my
37:22
Speaker 1: dad was young, I mean obviously I wasn't around, but
37:25
Speaker 1: from the from the conversations and the photographs, he had
37:28
Speaker 1: a huge car. And it wasn't exactly it wasn't a
37:31
Speaker 1: big car. It was just a car, but it was huge.
37:35
Speaker 1: It didn't make sense, like a cad lock or something. Yep. Yeah,
37:41
Speaker 1: well I don't know.
37:42
Speaker 2: I mean for me, it's just another thing that's taking
37:43
Speaker 2: a massive nose dive. It's like it's like architecture, car
37:46
Speaker 2: car design inside and out has has gone gone gotten
37:52
Speaker 2: to the dogs. If and it had gone to the dogs,
37:54
Speaker 2: I'm sure they would come up with better designs. But
37:56
Speaker 2: it's yeah, it's terrible. I think it's a real shame
37:58
Speaker 2: because there are there was absolutely a period where you're
38:03
Speaker 2: you know, I accept that performance and fuel economy and
38:07
Speaker 2: all those sort of things might not have satisfied our
38:10
Speaker 2: desires of today. But to look at a car from
38:17
Speaker 2: well up to let's say the nineteen nineties, they were,
38:21
Speaker 2: by and large, I think, objectively, things of beauty. They
38:25
Speaker 2: had They had an esthetic value, which which cars now
38:30
Speaker 2: absolutely do not have. And there is a there is Okay,
38:33
Speaker 2: partly it's to do with companies having subsumed others, but
38:37
Speaker 2: there is a genet you can spot now if you
38:39
Speaker 2: think about it, you can spot i would say, in
38:42
Speaker 2: most cases an ev just by the shape.
38:45
Speaker 1: Of the car.
38:47
Speaker 2: They're you know, they've they've picked this sort of homogenized
38:52
Speaker 2: design that's supposed to suggest I don't know what what
38:55
Speaker 2: is it supposed to suggest, but they are by and
38:58
Speaker 2: large electric, They're just they're all the same. It's very,
39:02
Speaker 2: very boring. I know this is going back to our
39:04
Speaker 2: discussions on creativity, but it's so it's so important, it's
39:08
Speaker 2: so significant, and it just goes to show how how
39:11
Speaker 2: much people have changed in so far as they're able
39:14
Speaker 2: to do anything themselves or think for themselves, because going
39:19
Speaker 2: back some years, the onus was on you. If you
39:22
Speaker 2: got into a car and you wanted to go and drive,
39:25
Speaker 2: you were responsible for making sure that you didn't end
39:28
Speaker 2: up in the ditch and either injure yourself, what's were
39:32
Speaker 2: somebody else? And no, it's getting the car, And it's
39:35
Speaker 2: as though it's the car's job.
39:36
Speaker 1: To do that.
39:37
Speaker 2: And I know I'm hike up for a rant here,
39:40
Speaker 2: but you know, either the car will have stuff that's
39:44
Speaker 2: supposed to protect you or it will tell you what
39:47
Speaker 2: to do and supposedly drive you. So it says a
39:51
Speaker 2: lot about the world we live in. I think one
39:53
Speaker 2: off that.
39:53
Speaker 1: Does make us useless eaters the over what's the word
39:59
Speaker 1: over safety of the vehicles. My car is very, very,
40:04
Speaker 1: very safe and secure, and I hate it enough turned
40:06
Speaker 1: off as many of those features as possible. For example,
40:10
Speaker 1: you know, you can't go anywhere close to the lines
40:13
Speaker 1: because in the calm moans and the steering will pulls
40:16
Speaker 1: you back in and all that kind of stuff. I
40:18
Speaker 1: find it remarkably annoying and it actually makes me exhausted.
40:22
Speaker 1: I just want to turn off all that stuff, which
40:24
Speaker 1: I've done. And my wife actually said she, you know,
40:27
Speaker 1: she wonders if all of these safety features, which are
40:31
Speaker 1: obviously a part of the bureaucratic process, because I don't
40:33
Speaker 1: think the car manufacturers would, you know, voluntarily include all
40:37
Speaker 1: of these things by default. She was wondering if it
40:41
Speaker 1: just if it actually adds to the dumbing down of society.
40:47
Speaker 3: There's no doubt about it. I mean, you sure you
40:48
Speaker 3: want to take the let off this Pandora's box. I
41:00
Speaker 3: mean I have I have very very very little experience
41:03
Speaker 3: of of this, except for for one one particular ex
41:10
Speaker 3: one particular time that having to rent a car that
41:12
Speaker 3: was that was that had all these drivers aids, and
41:16
Speaker 3: and because it was a rental car, I couldn't switch
41:19
Speaker 3: this stuff off easily, and certainly every time he restarted
41:23
Speaker 3: the engine again, it was back to square one. And
41:27
Speaker 3: I find a linuxist. I mean, I kind of understand
41:30
Speaker 3: why they thought that was a good idea, because you know,
41:34
Speaker 3: people do from time to time fall asleep at the
41:37
Speaker 3: wheel and have ended up killing themselves. But you've got
41:42
Speaker 3: to ask, uh, you know, is the is the the
41:45
Speaker 3: level of incidence of that sufficient to require this type
41:49
Speaker 3: of intervention, And so what happens with someone who is
41:56
Speaker 3: used to driving with linusist what happens when they get
42:01
Speaker 3: into a car that doesn't have it. I suspect some
42:05
Speaker 3: bad things happen at that point and so it absolutely contributes,
42:10
Speaker 3: in my opinion, to dumbing people dying and also the
42:14
Speaker 3: idea of removing responsibility. So you know, at what point
42:19
Speaker 3: does at what point does it get to the stage
42:24
Speaker 3: where someone can legitimately go into a court and say,
42:28
Speaker 3: not my fault, Gov, it was the car that did it.
42:32
Speaker 3: You know, if they've killed, if they've killed the pedestrian
42:34
Speaker 3: or something. It's still not clear. And of course a
42:38
Speaker 3: lot of these discussions are being had around the rise
42:43
Speaker 3: of the driverless car, you know, and we're starting to
42:46
Speaker 3: see driverless taxis being ruled out in London and other
42:51
Speaker 3: cities around the world. So you know, at what point
42:57
Speaker 3: do we therefore, whose respon bonsibility?
43:00
Speaker 1: Is?
43:01
Speaker 3: Are certain events going to have? Where is that responsiblegal? Lie? Sorry?
43:06
Speaker 3: But but the other sort of big question is is
43:09
Speaker 3: there any And I'm I don't know anything other than
43:13
Speaker 3: sort of Northern Ireland driving statistics because it's just something
43:16
Speaker 3: that I was aware of as it was growing up.
43:19
Speaker 3: So but I haven't seen any particular evidence to suggest
43:23
Speaker 3: that the number of fatalities on the roads has actually
43:25
Speaker 3: fallen as a result of all these driver heads. And
43:29
Speaker 3: is that because people are you know, as a rule,
43:32
Speaker 3: switching them all off, or is it because they actually
43:35
Speaker 3: make no difference?
43:39
Speaker 2: Will will be told that the reason that hasn't changed
43:43
Speaker 2: is because not enough people have them in their cars,
43:45
Speaker 2: and therefore we have to do away with all the
43:47
Speaker 2: cars that don't have them in order that everybody is
43:51
Speaker 2: stuck into a vehicle that can be monitored and controlled
43:55
Speaker 2: remotely in geo fence and all that stuff. But now,
43:59
Speaker 2: I mean, I agree with you, but it's we're back
44:01
Speaker 2: to We're just straight back to everyone's a terrorist. It's
44:05
Speaker 2: that it's just the the blanket, the blanket cast over everybody.
44:13
Speaker 2: You turn, you know, you turn, turn up to an airport,
44:16
Speaker 2: and of course, of course you could be a terrorist.
44:19
Speaker 2: Get into a car, and of course you could be
44:22
Speaker 2: You could be completely unable to drive it, despite the
44:25
Speaker 2: fact you've passed a driving test which is supposed to
44:30
Speaker 2: certify that you are capable of managing that vehicle. It
44:36
Speaker 2: is completely extraordinary that that's the that's the world we
44:39
Speaker 2: live in where these are not I mean, you know,
44:41
Speaker 2: these should these should have been sold. Imagine the money
44:45
Speaker 2: that the uh, the manufacturers could have made. You know,
44:48
Speaker 2: you could have bought for an additional five hundred pounds
44:51
Speaker 2: you get your your lane assist or your winking wing
44:56
Speaker 2: mirrors or whatever it is. People would have bought that
44:59
Speaker 2: stuff without it being imposed. It should absolutely not be.
45:05
Speaker 2: It's something that you cannot disabled, cannot remove from a car.
45:10
Speaker 1: That's why I said it's part of the bureaucratic red tape.
45:13
Speaker 1: I think it's I think that that stuff is but design,
45:15
Speaker 1: and it makes everything more expensive because imagine how much
45:19
Speaker 1: cheaper the vehicle could be if you just removed all
45:22
Speaker 1: of that stuff you know you don't need. You don't
45:26
Speaker 1: need my car. What's so frustrating is is every time
45:30
Speaker 1: I stop the car and open the door, loud through
45:34
Speaker 1: the speakers that says, please take your cell phone with you,
45:40
Speaker 1: and I keep turning it off. But if you leave
45:43
Speaker 1: the car off long enough, then it kind of resets,
45:45
Speaker 1: and and then it turns back on again. And I'm
45:48
Speaker 1: driving one day on the Iway and suddenly it says,
45:50
Speaker 1: please slow down. I hate these things. And everywhere I
45:57
Speaker 1: find in the in the options to turn all these
45:59
Speaker 1: things off. I'm thinking to myself, why go through so much,
46:03
Speaker 1: so much effort to add all these things in. I
46:07
Speaker 1: almost think that these things are more of a hindrance
46:10
Speaker 1: than they are a safety feature.
46:13
Speaker 3: And then they are. But but it's being it's being
46:15
Speaker 3: driven by the European Union. That's where this all began.
46:20
Speaker 1: How many years ago.
46:25
Speaker 3: It's hard to say off the top of my head,
46:26
Speaker 3: because time is, uh, you know, COVID was six years ago.
46:34
Speaker 3: No time has sort of become something that I have
46:38
Speaker 3: no particular relationship with anymore.
46:43
Speaker 1: I think the EU are probably leading in terms of.
46:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, they are, they absolutely are.
46:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, in terms of that sort of bureaucratic mess.
46:54
Speaker 3: And you know, current manufacturers, if if they have to,
46:56
Speaker 3: if they have to, you know, introduce some kind of
47:00
Speaker 3: facility for one major market, they're just going to roll
47:04
Speaker 3: that out. They're just going to you know, they're not
47:05
Speaker 3: going to they don't ever create a version for a
47:09
Speaker 3: particular market. And so you start to see these regulations
47:12
Speaker 3: spread At that point.
47:15
Speaker 1: I wanted to say earlier you were talking about the
47:17
Speaker 1: data centers popping up. We now here in Cape Town
47:22
Speaker 1: have a huge data center that's now bigun development right
47:26
Speaker 1: next to our international airport, and it's a competent other
47:31
Speaker 1: it's a disaster because it's a it's a wetland. The
47:34
Speaker 1: whole areas where the airport was built was not supposed
47:38
Speaker 1: to have stuff being built around it. It's green and
47:40
Speaker 1: has birds and all kinds of beautiful things. Now they're
47:43
Speaker 1: going into that because they need the space, and so
47:46
Speaker 1: it's causing all sorts of controversy.
47:49
Speaker 3: A data center, it's worse than that jam because we
47:52
Speaker 3: talked about data centers and Antriscy earlier, but of course
47:55
Speaker 3: what we didn't talk about was data Sanderson water, yes,
47:59
Speaker 3: and so you know what, what they're already finding in
48:03
Speaker 3: the United States, which which is ahead of the game
48:07
Speaker 3: on the bill, on these new bills, is water is
48:10
Speaker 3: being pulled out of the municipal water supply and then
48:14
Speaker 3: it's being pumped untreated back into the municipal water supply,
48:17
Speaker 3: and it's being left to the municipality to deal with pollution.
48:22
Speaker 3: And and so people are the municipality is not geared
48:27
Speaker 3: up for dealing with the kind of pollution that they
48:29
Speaker 3: are pumping out. So so people are now starting to
48:33
Speaker 3: see health effects as a result of water not being
48:37
Speaker 3: cleaned properly and and ending up back in their taps.
48:43
Speaker 3: So you know, this, this is this is not this
48:48
Speaker 3: is not a good direction to be going in. And
48:50
Speaker 3: data centers are going to be a gift that keeps
48:53
Speaker 3: on giving in the sense that they are going to
48:55
Speaker 3: be facilitating the entire surveillance infrastructure that we all think
48:59
Speaker 3: is not a good idea, and they're also going to
49:01
Speaker 3: be pushing more and more people ultimately into the health system.
49:09
Speaker 1: Wonder now if it's possible to push back. I mean,
49:14
Speaker 1: we sit here and we talk about it, and it
49:17
Speaker 1: just it just goes ahead anyway. I don't know what
49:23
Speaker 1: the answer to that is, but I mean, you can
49:26
Speaker 1: mourn as much as you want, they will still seem
49:29
Speaker 1: to forge ahead with it. What do you do?
49:32
Speaker 3: Do you you.
49:34
Speaker 1: Have to I suppose go to your local council. I
49:36
Speaker 1: guess it starts. But a lot of the stuff is
49:38
Speaker 1: also private company, so they all say, well, it's not us,
49:41
Speaker 1: you know, you've got to go to those companies.
49:42
Speaker 3: Well, no, I don't think that's necessarily right. I mean,
49:45
Speaker 3: the data center that proposed for North Devon already has
49:49
Speaker 3: half a dozen campaign groups established, and so you know,
49:56
Speaker 3: these are getting some major push back. And so long
50:00
Speaker 3: as you know, we've mentioned the increat's anti fracking campaign,
50:07
Speaker 3: you know, in other programs, so long as we see
50:11
Speaker 3: these whatever opposition there is, these things being done at
50:17
Speaker 3: a local level, then I think there's there's a good
50:21
Speaker 3: opportunity for for successfully batting these off. But it's going
50:25
Speaker 3: to require, just as the the fight against the fracking
50:29
Speaker 3: industry in the UK required, It's going to require local
50:34
Speaker 3: people getting up out of their sofas and going and there,
50:38
Speaker 3: or maybe pulling their sofas and their televisions out of
50:41
Speaker 3: their living room and going and sticking them on the
50:44
Speaker 3: on the entrances to the to the to the development
50:47
Speaker 3: site and and blocking the lorries bringing the concrete in.
50:52
Speaker 3: I mean, that's what it's going to require. And uh,
50:55
Speaker 3: but you know it's been done before in this country
50:58
Speaker 3: and I think it could be done again. That was,
51:02
Speaker 3: you know, when was the the fracking campaign at its
51:05
Speaker 3: head was twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen. I guess something like that.
51:10
Speaker 3: Maybe Well we'll see whether people have the ability to
51:15
Speaker 3: have that kind of motivation, but to be very foolisious,
51:18
Speaker 3: they don't. But it's got to be done at a
51:20
Speaker 3: local level. That's that's really you know, the key thing here.
51:24
Speaker 1: I think that's a good point that you make, Mike,
51:26
Speaker 1: now that I think about it. We also had a
51:28
Speaker 1: very successful campaign to stop weird Enough around the same time.
51:33
Speaker 1: The whole fracking thing yet kind of came to a
51:35
Speaker 1: grinding holt. There's a lot of gas I believe under
51:39
Speaker 1: the sort of center of South Africa in the what's
51:42
Speaker 1: known as the carew It's a very dry part of
51:44
Speaker 1: the country and there was huge discussions about fracking there.
51:49
Speaker 1: I think the shell they wanted to build massive fracking infrastructure,
51:55
Speaker 1: and I think the whole thing basically came to complete
51:58
Speaker 1: stop because they can pains against it. So was so effective.
52:03
Speaker 1: I've mentioned before one of our civil rights organizations called
52:07
Speaker 1: aff Reform. They go and fix roads and things like that,
52:10
Speaker 1: and then the invoice the government. They were instrumental in
52:14
Speaker 1: stopping a lot of these fracking attempts. So yeah, I
52:18
Speaker 1: think you're right, that's one point.
52:19
Speaker 3: I think you're right.
52:19
Speaker 1: I think it can be done. There just has to
52:22
Speaker 1: be enough support for it, and I guess and enough
52:25
Speaker 1: interest in it.
52:27
Speaker 3: Well, I mean that's the key thing, as I say,
52:30
Speaker 3: is to keep the campaigns local, because if there's a
52:33
Speaker 3: national campaign gets established, that will you know, will help
52:38
Speaker 3: manage the opposition in my opinion. But you know, if
52:42
Speaker 3: people stick with well this, this situation is happening on
52:46
Speaker 3: my doorstep, I don't want it in my backyard. To
52:49
Speaker 3: use that, that phrase, you know, that is something which
52:56
Speaker 3: can motivate even people that otherwise wouldn't be getting involved
53:01
Speaker 3: in any form of activism.
53:03
Speaker 1: I think that's it.
53:04
Speaker 2: I think, I mean, it's always referred to as Nimbiaism here,
53:08
Speaker 2: and people are rather sneering about nimbiasm. Nimbia is the
53:14
Speaker 2: what's the word nimby? Not in my backyard, nimby. So
53:20
Speaker 2: people are criticized for exhibiting Nimbiaism in that they're supposed
53:26
Speaker 2: to see the greater good, and that is quite an
53:29
Speaker 2: extraordinary thing to do. If there is a proposal to
53:32
Speaker 2: fundamentally destroy the environment that is immediately surrounding anyone, you know,
53:39
Speaker 2: why shouldn't people care about their backyard. Of course, the
53:43
Speaker 2: inference is that that people are saying, oh, just you know,
53:47
Speaker 2: it's fine, do it, but just don't don't do it here,
53:50
Speaker 2: which is again to way oversimplifize, the simplify the issue.
53:55
Speaker 2: I think, going back to where we started with with climate, environment, food,
54:00
Speaker 2: all that kind of thing, this I hope would appeal
54:04
Speaker 2: to a very broad church, because if we're told that
54:09
Speaker 2: climate change is putting pressure on our environment, putting pressure
54:14
Speaker 2: on our food system, and then some bright spark comes
54:17
Speaker 2: up with an idea to take over vast, vast areas
54:23
Speaker 2: of Virgin countryside in order to plunk a building that's
54:30
Speaker 2: going to demand huge quantities of electricity and water, and
54:35
Speaker 2: in order to make that, you're going to have to
54:36
Speaker 2: completely redo the infrastructure system, road network in order to
54:40
Speaker 2: build it, and all this, that and the other.
54:42
Speaker 1: There are very few.
54:43
Speaker 2: People who would live in an environment that's going to
54:47
Speaker 2: have that done to it who would think that overall,
54:50
Speaker 2: in the short term and the long term, that that's
54:54
Speaker 2: a good idea. And I think that the only reason
54:56
Speaker 2: that there hasn't been any con persistent or concerted effort
55:02
Speaker 2: to deal with this is I think that by and large,
55:05
Speaker 2: people have not really been aware of what's been going on.
55:10
Speaker 2: There are so many other issues out there that get
55:13
Speaker 2: pushed to the front of the queue and spoken about,
55:16
Speaker 2: but I think the led is coming off because I
55:19
Speaker 2: think it's that there's been so much talk about artificial intelligence,
55:24
Speaker 2: in particular in the mainstream that people are now starting
55:28
Speaker 2: to do at least some of the arithmetic and think, right, well,
55:32
Speaker 2: you know, how is that happening and where is it
55:36
Speaker 2: going to lead? So I would hope that Mike is
55:40
Speaker 2: absolutely right, and again the local principle, that's what I
55:45
Speaker 2: mean about nimbiasm. I would hope that it just stands
55:49
Speaker 2: to reason that these issues would be fought locally, and
55:52
Speaker 2: I think ultimately it will have to come down in
55:56
Speaker 2: certain situations to direct action, to actually stopping physically stopping
56:03
Speaker 2: work from going ahead, because I think.
56:06
Speaker 3: Another another group of Granny's being class as terrorists.
56:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely they would be. Yeah.
56:12
Speaker 2: But but the thing is that all of this is
56:15
Speaker 2: is precedent setting, and so that's why I think it's
56:19
Speaker 2: it's incredibly powerful. You know, if there if there is
56:21
Speaker 2: a group that successfully fights off the planned build of
56:28
Speaker 2: a data center, that that would absolutely I think have
56:33
Speaker 2: the potential to fundamentally change the situation. And I think
56:36
Speaker 2: that's that that's what people need to be need to
56:39
Speaker 2: be looking at.
56:40
Speaker 1: I like hopes the idea that it's localized though, because
56:43
Speaker 1: that just shows the power of decentralization, which is an
56:47
Speaker 1: ongoing theme and a lot of my discussions. Mike, so
56:51
Speaker 1: I take I take that with with with great joy.
56:54
Speaker 1: But Li isn't of this. I've never heard the word
56:56
Speaker 1: nimbi or nimbiaism before. This was the first time I've
56:58
Speaker 1: ever heard it, so while you were talking, quickly looked
57:00
Speaker 1: it up. Do you know that there is a counter
57:02
Speaker 1: word to it? Also, Charles, I did not go on
57:08
Speaker 1: yymbi or ymbiism, And yimbe stands for yes in my backyard,
57:14
Speaker 1: and it's typically so another it's Ymbies typically advocate for
57:18
Speaker 1: increased density and urban growth to lower costs and improve infrastructure.
57:24
Speaker 1: How many of them are the No, I don't know.
57:27
Speaker 1: I just I just looked it up. Don't believe everything
57:32
Speaker 1: you read, jem.
57:34
Speaker 3: Well.
57:34
Speaker 1: The same as Mensa, there's also the opposite to the
57:37
Speaker 1: MENSA movement called Denser. It's the the ninety eight percent
57:42
Speaker 1: of the dumbest people in the world, which I find
57:45
Speaker 1: myself very proudly a member of. But listen, we're coming
57:53
Speaker 1: in from landing. The moral of the story is that
57:58
Speaker 1: continue buying your ice vehicles and don't worry too much
58:01
Speaker 1: about about saving it. Because because your your your battery
58:06
Speaker 1: is probably going to be more dangerous to the environment anyway.
58:10
Speaker 3: No, No, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna challenge a
58:12
Speaker 3: little bit on that. Don't continue buying your ice vehicles.
58:17
Speaker 3: Keep the ice vehicle you've got. It would be, would
58:20
Speaker 3: be what I would suggest is the best thing to do,
58:23
Speaker 3: because if you buy a new ice vehicle, it still
58:26
Speaker 3: has all the same driver. It's that the electric vehicles do.
58:29
Speaker 3: So you don't want to do that. You want to
58:31
Speaker 3: be you want to be maintaining the one you've got.
58:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, before anyone point wonders if a new technology has
58:37
Speaker 2: been invented ices internal combustion engine, which I don't think
58:42
Speaker 2: ice is really used in this in the UK to
58:45
Speaker 2: describe that, is it, Mike?
58:49
Speaker 1: It's sort of common, but it is used. Isn't it
58:52
Speaker 1: what you are saying? The term ice? You haven't it? No, Well,
58:57
Speaker 1: I'm not not in the circles I'm moving. No, Hmmm,
59:00
Speaker 1: what do they call it? Do they just say a
59:02
Speaker 1: pittrol car?
59:03
Speaker 3: Just call it an internal combustion engine.
59:05
Speaker 1: We just call it a car car. I mean, this
59:07
Speaker 1: is the thing. We've all well played. This is it.
59:15
Speaker 2: We've we've been convinced that something different. You know, it's
59:18
Speaker 2: it's just another reinvention. This this all these same words,
59:22
Speaker 2: you know, whether it's mouse or ram or tablet or
59:26
Speaker 2: you know, everything is just all these words are repurposed
59:30
Speaker 2: that it's it's not right anyway. So yeah, carry on
59:36
Speaker 2: with your car on the same car, guys. I'll catch
59:40
Speaker 2: up with you next week.