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Opinion : Surely ‘going green’ is more than just changing energy sources?

| October 22, 2021

It seems a ‘green’ revolution is about to sweep across the country.

Plans are afoot to consign gas boilers to history and replace them with heat pumps as well as replacing traditional fossil fuel powered vehicles with electrical vehicles.

Apparently the changes are needed to tackle the climate crisis the world is facing. Indeed it seems that Buckinghamshire has also jumped on the ‘climate crisis’ bandwagon according to the article that appeared in the news section of this website a few days ago headlined ‘Plan for tackling the climate crisis in Buckinghamshire unveiled‘.

Could the sudden urge to ‘go green’ be anything to do with the COP26 climate conference that is taking place in Glasgow from Sunday 31st October until Friday 12th November 2021?

It seems that most of the plans put forward to make the UK go green are based around swapping one energy source for another. But surely more needs to be done and in my view it’s society that needs to change and not just the energy source that powers society?

For example, to cut down on energy usage society could be re-engineered so people work closer to home rather than travelling miles to work every day?

It may be greener to travel to work in an electrically powered car but if the journey was eliminated (by working closer to home or even at home) there wouldn’t be the need to ruin the climate by generating the electricity for the journey in the first place?

To facilitate change my good self feels that workers could be coaxed into moving closer to their place of work through a ‘travel to work tax’ which would be simple to implement by calculating the distance between the workers home address and the address of their place of work then charging a tax based on the distance travelled. This would surely be very simple to implement and would perhaps generate some much needed revenues for the Exchequer following all the spending during the recent pandemic?

Of course those who worked from home would not pay any tax while those who travelled long distances would pay their share to make up for the environmental damage their daily commute makes. However this idea is unlikely to be implemented because 1) it could be done now and 2) it might actually help to reduce emissions and save the climate.

Sadly my good self fears the talk of ‘going green’ is merely to placate the climate crew ahead of the forthcoming climate conference.

In my opinion once the climate conference is over the talk of banning gas boilers and fossil fuel powered cars will quietly be sidelined and forgotten.

What do you think?

My blogs are published regularly here on the WycombeToday.com website.

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