Rod eco rant made me chuckle (sorry )

Were you invited to Google’s climate camp, in Sicily? Ah, I see, you’re a nobody. Sorry. Wonderful occasion, costing £16.5m, with 300 rich and famous people, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Orlando Bloom, Katy Perry — and maybe that Swedish girl, who knows? — all attending a conference on climate change.

Prince Harry was there and addressed the throng barefoot, because he’s a totally chilled dude. Google sent a private jet to pick him up and the last leg of the journey was done by helicopter.

In fact, an estimated 114 private jets brought in the guests. I don’t have all the figures about what that sort of carbon footprint extravagance does to the environment and thus to climate change. It may have, by itself, increased the temperature of the world by a degree or two. It’s something like the equivalent of personally strangling 6,290 polar bears to death. But the happier news is that they all felt much better about themselves for having attended, and that’s the important thing. Not only filthy rich, but dead “woke” too.


I wonder if, while they were there, they talked about one of the fastest-growing contributions to climate change — the internet? I suspect not, because it’s something about which Google declines to talk and for which it has refused to release figures. It is estimated that a single Google search could power a low-energy light bulb for an hour. There are 2 trillion Google searches per year, 63,000 per second. Close down Google and you’d save half of Antarctica, but I don’t suppose that was on the agenda.

As the German newspaper Der Spiegel described the computer companies: “It is a world built on real-world data processing factories that, when it comes to power consumption, are reminiscent of the early days of industrialisation. Computing with electrons is just as physical as the melting of steel or rolling of sheet metal. In both cases, no one cared much about resource consumption in the early phases.”


Being lectured to about woke stuff by Harry, Leonardo and lots of other exceptionally privileged people who know four-fifths of sod all is, of course, irritating. But not half so infuriating as when the big companies do it. We live with welfare capitalism because it is probably the best system available, but we are still aware that the big multinational companies are venal, grasping, amoral bastards who would flog their own grannies twice over for a penny share dividend. Fine, we get that, it’s how the mercantile world works. But corporate wokeness rubs our noses in it and it has become terribly au courant.

It is partly the staggering hypocrisy that rankles and partly the knowledge that these smug, gilded monkeys are doing it solely to improve their brand image with deeply gullible young people. They really care no more about the environment, racism or gender issues than does a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

So, with this in mind, let me introduce you to Alan Jope, the chief executive of the Anglo-Dutch mega-conglomerate Unilever. Jope has said this company will sell off, or cease to make, products that do not “contribute meaningfully to the world or society”. Products such as Marmite, Pot Noodles and Magnum ice cream: no matter how successful, they could be binned if they do not meet Jope’s criteria.

Such pious cant. These products contribute meaningfully because we enjoy eating them (except maybe for Magnum, which is losing out these days to much nicer choc ice lollies, such as that Häagen-Dazs one with almonds).

Rod Liddle of The Times, that is.

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Originally Posted by Taunton Blue Genie

Rod Liddle of The Times, that is.

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Indeed, I know he is well disliked ,still made me chuckle though.