Fiddling Whilst London Burns?

Bill McGuire (Emeritus Professor at University College London) suggests future UK folk will 'yearn for temperatures as cool' as the 40+ degrees Centigrade predicted for the country in the next few days (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/18/britain-hothouse-extreme-weather). McGuire opines that 'The brutal truth is that dodging dangerous, all-pervasive, climate breakdown is now practically impossible'. Climate breakdown will, of course, impact on all parts of our globe not just the UK (but we do tend to be a bit insular). Planetary heating will increase sea-levels (reducing habitable land); storms; flooding (torrential rain generally fails to soak into parched ground); food shortages; conflict over declining resources etc; etc. As McGuire says, if all the promises and 'pledges' made at the Cop26 meeting in Glasgow are kept (and there is no sign of that!), 'we will be lucky to stay below a 2 degree Centigrade rise' (above pre-Industrial levels). So, how are the good people of the UK focusing on the challenge? The government has had a COBRA meeting to consider short-term mitigation of the impacts on the health service and transport (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/16/londoners-urged-not-to-travel-on-monday-and-tuesday-because-of-high-temperatures). The current PM was not available for this meeting (as was the case for COBRA meeting in the early days of the Covid19 pandemic). Government had been warned about the impending problems of climate change for decades but improvements to buildings and infra-structure were not been carried out. Some contenders for the position of UK PM ,even argue that reducing 'greenhouse gas' emissions and 'carbon zero' pledges must be deferred, whilst the 'cost of living crisis' is ameliorated by tax cuts (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2022/jul/17/tory-leadership-debate-rishi-sunak-penny-mordaunt-liz-truss-conservatives-next-pm). The International Air Transport Association appears hell bent on getting back to 2019 levels of passenger flights by 2024. They complain about the current obstruction posed by Chinese Covid restrictions (https://www.moodiedavittreport.com/global-air-travel-to-return-to-2019-levels-by-2024-says-iata/). This is in spite of the fact that air travel should be reduced, at least in the short to medium term. Meanwhile, delegates at the Farnborough Airshow pontificate about the job 'opportunities' offered by 'greener' air travel (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/18/farnborough-airshow-cleaner-fly-planes). These 'solutions' actually appear to be largely cosmetic and not due anytime soon. We humans have an infinite capacity for sticking our fingers in our ears, when we don't want to hear things! McGuire's warning may, sadly, be a waste of his time.