Category: Climate & Sustainability

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Letter XVI: The Development Deception

Stylised tree with yellow and green leaves on an African tricolour background of red, yellow, and green, symbolising independent growth and harmony.

On the UN’s SDGs, Western Paternalism, and the Commodification of Virtue

By Martyn Walker
Published in Letters from a Nation in Decline

Dear Reader,

There was a time when the phrase international development conjured images of progress: clean water flowing from a new pump, a smiling child with a textbook, solar panels glinting on a school roof. Today, it increasingly conjures something else: a Western official in a tailored linen suit, lecturing villagers about climate obligations while their nation’s lithium is quietly sold to Tesla and their diesel generators are shut off.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals—17 of them, each with bullet points and colourful infographics—were meant to herald a new global era. Eradicating poverty. Ending hunger. Empowering women. Who could object?

But slogans are easy. It is the method of implementation, and the selective blindness, that reveal the deeper truth.

The Good

Let us not be unfair. In isolation, many SDG-aligned initiatives have brought tangible benefits. Literacy has risen. Infant mortality has dropped. Boreholes and mobile money have transformed some communities. Life expectancy in many African nations has improved dramatically since the 1990s. We’ve seen school feeding programmes that allowed girls to attend school for the first time. We’ve seen solar panels providing basic electricity where the grid never reached.

But we cannot mistake these successes—often born of local grit and ingenuity—for the triumph of global strategy. The SDGs were not the cause of progress. They became its branding.

The Bad

A closer look reveals a dismal pattern: Western governments, corporations, and NGOs deploy the SDGs not as a framework for empowerment but as an operating licence—a pretext for influence and control.

  • African nations are told they cannot use their own fossil fuel reserves, lest they “violate SDG 13,” while Europe quietly returns to coal.
  • Development banks, citing SDG “clean energy targets,” refuse to fund gas power plants in Nigeria or Mozambique—countries rich in natural gas and desperate for reliable electricity.
  • In the name of SDG 12 (responsible consumption), African textile industries are wiped out by bales of cast-off clothes from Britain, Germany, and the US.
  • SDG 5 (gender equality) becomes an excuse to impose Western cultural standards with zero regard for local context, alienating both men and women.

Even the roads, ports, and railways built under SDG 9 are often financed by foreign loans, constructed by foreign firms, and designed to facilitate resource extraction, not local resilience.

The Ugly

Worse still is the moral posturing. The SDGs have become an ethical fig leaf for what is, at heart, a continuation of imperial economics by other means. The tools have changed—no more Maxim guns and map lines—but the outcomes are familiar:

  • Raw materials flow out.
  • Debt, directives, and donor strings flow in.
  • Lectures are delivered about “transparency” by those who launder African wealth into London property.

A friend in Kenya recently sent me a photograph—a cardboard sign arguing that fossil fuels are essential to achieving the SDGs, not an obstacle. He is not alone. In Ghana, Senegal, Uganda, there is growing anger that while Western nations enriched themselves through coal, oil, and gas, Africans are now told to leapfrog into solar-powered sewing machines and skip the very industries that built Britain, Germany, and the United States.

They are told they must save the planet. A planet they did not ruin.

And if they object? If their leaders push for resource nationalism or challenge the green dogma? They are punished with bad credit ratings, NGO campaigns, and trade restrictions dressed up as ethics.

“We were told to dream with the SDGs, but woke up in a minefield. They promised us progress, gave us guidelines, then took our resources and told us to be grateful.”

A Personal Turning Point

I was turned against the UN quite a few years ago when I read the transcript of a debate revealing the UN’s outrage that Google did not give UN-backed reports extra weight over non-UN ones—particularly on climate. The irony? Even their own climate scientists had expressed doubts about the overblown rhetoric spewing from the political wing. Shortly thereafter, those inconvenient internal criticisms all but vanished from search results. That was the moment many of us, curious about the truth, heard the alarm bells.

But it didn’t stop there.

What sealed my opinion was not some subtle drift into ideological territory, but the sheer absurdity of its pronouncements. Perhaps the most comical—and simultaneously tragic—example was the moment the UN Secretary-General stood in front of a global audience, announcing with a sanctimonious glare that:
“The oceans are boiling.”
He said it with the air of a pope issuing doctrine—daring anyone to challenge such claptrap. That was the day they lost even the illusion of dignity. That was the day they started believing their own lies.

At the time, I didn’t think much more of it. Like most citizens, I didn’t really know what the UN was, how it was funded, or why it existed in its current form. But since then, I’ve read more. And while I still wholeheartedly approve of the idea of the UN—born from the wreckage of world war, with noble intent—I now wholeheartedly disapprove of its continued existence in this form.

It needs to be dismantled, and rebuilt for the modern age. And crucially, it must come with a known expiry date.

There needs to be a regular renaissance in such powerful institutions. It must be written into their articles of association that they do not exist in perpetuity. That every few generations, they are dissolved, reviewed, restructured, or replaced—by those who live with the consequences of their actions, not those who fund their inertia.

Only then can future generations repair the damage of the past.

Britain’s Role in the Decline

Britain once led the world in infrastructure, finance, and engineering. Today, we lead in hypocrisy.

  • We pressure African governments to abandon hydrocarbons while issuing new oil licences in the North Sea.
  • We demand their “transparency” while our banks hold the stolen proceeds of their corruption.
  • We celebrate our aid budget, yet make it near impossible for African students, scientists, or entrepreneurs to obtain a visa.

We mouth platitudes about “shared prosperity” while making damn sure the terms are written in our favour.

Even our charities—once a source of soft power—now act like minor UN agencies, full of slogans and interns and not much else. Oxfam lectures on social justice from offices built with funds extracted from taxpayer-backed contracts in countries they claim to help.

What Comes Next?

If the SDGs were sincere, they would prioritise energy sovereignty, industrialisation, and fair terms of trade. They would acknowledge that wealth must be created, not merely redistributed. They would empower Africans to determine their own path, even if that path includes diesel trucks, natural gas, and industrial-scale fertiliser.

Instead, they’ve become a system of moral accounting where Western nations get to “offset” their consumption by dictating how others should live. Carbon credits replace common sense. ESG ratings trump economic growth. And development becomes something done to Africa, not with it.

Final Words

The tragedy of the SDGs is not just that they fail. It is that they pretend to succeed, while preserving the very inequalities they claim to abolish. They are the smiling mask of a system that would rather fund a water kiosk than allow Africa to build its own water companies.

So let us end the deceit.

The real goal is not sustainable development.
It is sustainable dependence.

And unless we say so clearly, unapologetically, and publicly, we will continue to be complicit in dressing up domination as partnership—while another generation of Africans is told they must wait, suffer, and obey for the good of the planet.

Let the record show: it wasn’t just the empire that failed Africa.
It was the ideology that replaced it.

Beneath the Halo: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the 17 SDGs

They came dressed as salvation, wrapped in coloured icons and global applause. But beneath the graphics lies a mess of contradictions, compromises, and collateral damage. Here we unpack each goal—not as it was dreamed up in Geneva, but as it has landed on the ground.

A circular graphic of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with each segment melting like wax, rendered in a surreal Salvador Dalí-inspired style.

SDG 1: No Poverty

The Good: Billions in aid and NGO projects have lifted individuals out of extreme poverty zones temporarily; mobile banking and microcredit schemes have shown promise.
The Bad: Aid dependence fosters inertia, bypasses national institutions, and undermines local agency. Most African nations are still net exporters of capital due to debt servicing.
The Ugly: Western corporations extract billions in raw materials while pontificating about “inclusive growth.” Poverty statistics improve, but wealth inequality worsens. The SDG becomes a photo-op for billionaires with private jets.

SDG 2: Zero Hunger

The Good: Targeted food programmes, agricultural support, and school meal initiatives have helped reduce childhood hunger in some regions.
The Bad: African farmers often sidelined by subsidised Western food imports, distorting markets. GMO push disguised as philanthropy.
The Ugly: Western companies extract palm oil, cocoa, and coffee from African soil while Africa imports wheat and rice from abroad. The hunger remains—homegrown solutions are discouraged or sabotaged.

SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being

The Good: Vaccination campaigns and anti-malaria nets have saved lives. International coordination during outbreaks like Ebola did have positive effects.
The Bad: Health systems remain donor-dependent and brittle. Drug patents and pharmaceutical monopolies keep treatments unaffordable.
The Ugly: The West lectures on population control while funding sterilisation clinics, not hospitals. During COVID, African nations were last in line for vaccines—after being blamed for variants they didn’t cause.

SDG 4: Quality Education

The Good: Literacy rates have risen. Girls’ access to education has improved in measurable ways. Donor-led digital education pilots show promise.
The Bad: Much curriculum remains colonial, prioritising Western languages and values. Local history, trades, and culture are neglected.
The Ugly: Elites send their children abroad while rural schools lack desks. The promise of education is often betrayed by a total lack of post-education opportunity—thus fuelling migration.

SDG 5: Gender Equality

The Good: Gender-based violence laws have improved; access to reproductive healthcare and rights is more prominent in policy.
The Bad: Western ideologies about gender are imposed wholesale, clashing with cultural contexts and often backfiring. Tokenism abounds.
The Ugly: Gender NGOs become tools for regime manipulation—undermining families and traditional structures without offering durable alternatives. Men are alienated and women overburdened.

SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation

The Good: Boreholes, sanitation drives, and community projects have improved access. Urban water utilities have seen improvements in some cities.
The Bad: Infrastructure aid often bypasses local contractors, leaving no skills behind. Many projects fall apart when donor support ends.
The Ugly: The West donates filtration kits while Coca-Cola and Nestlé extract billions of litres of water from African aquifers tax-free.

SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy

The Good: Solar microgrids and off-grid solutions have brought lighting and phone charging to rural communities.
The Bad: Energy poverty still affects over 600 million Africans. Fossil fuel investment is blocked by Western ESG policy, even while Europe reopens coal plants.
The Ugly: Africans are told to skip fossil fuels and use wind and solar, while the minerals to build those systems are mined from Africa under exploitative conditions.

SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

The Good: Youth employment schemes, support for entrepreneurship, and digital microbusiness infrastructure (e.g. mobile money) have opened doors.
The Bad: Most “growth” is in extractive sectors or the informal economy—precarious, low-paid, and unsustainable. Western firms set the wages.
The Ugly: Africa exports raw materials, imports finished goods, and is then scolded for not being productive. “Decent work” rarely applies to cobalt miners, plantation labourers, or garment workers sewing for Western brands.

SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

The Good: Roads, ports, and telecoms have expanded. Some African nations are incubating home-grown tech hubs.
The Bad: Most large infrastructure is debt-financed, often by China, and subject to foreign engineering, foreign profit, and foreign interests.
The Ugly: The West blocks industrial policy under free-market ideology, then tells Africa to “innovate” without fossil fuels, railways, or steelworks. Sovereign development banks are discouraged; dependency is institutionalised.

SDG 10: Reduced Inequality

The Good: Domestic reforms and global awareness of inequality have gained traction; some inclusive finance models have shown local promise.
The Bad: Inequality between nations is widening, not shrinking. Aid is given with one hand and taken back with interest payments.
The Ugly: The richest 1% are mostly Western, and mostly preaching equity to the poorest 10%—while African minerals fund their electric vehicles. The hypocrisy is baked in.

SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

The Good: Investment in resilient urban planning, public transport systems, and affordable housing is theoretically rising.
The Bad: Urban sprawl without services defines most African megacities. Informal settlements are bulldozed in the name of sustainability.
The Ugly: Climate finance is used to displace communities in favour of eco-projects no one asked for. Slums grow, while the reports boast of “smart city frameworks” and pilot zones built for Western investors.

SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

The Good: Some shifts toward circular economy practices, especially in agriculture and local craft industries.
The Bad: African consumption is already low—this SDG is effectively aimed at the West, but enforced in the South.
The Ugly: Africa is treated as a dump for used clothing, e-waste, and plastic, while also being blamed for overpopulation and told to “consume responsibly.”

SDG 13: Climate Action

The Good: Regional climate strategies, afforestation, and improved resilience to floods and droughts are active in some nations.
The Bad: Africa contributes only 3% to global CO₂ emissions but is expected to meet the same net zero standards that Germany and the UK now flout.
The Ugly: Fossil fuel exploration is blocked in Africa, but promoted in Norway, the US, and even post-Brexit Britain. Africans are urged to “go solar” by those flying in private jets to climate summits.

SDG 14: Life Below Water

The Good: Marine protected areas and anti-poaching drives are increasing. Some success against illegal fishing.
The Bad: Foreign vessels still overfish African waters under EU licences. Local fishers are criminalised for feeding their families.
The Ugly: Climate treaties now threaten African coastal economies with Western carbon offset schemes. Seaweed farms and “blue carbon” projects are imposed as substitutes for actual fisheries.

SDG 15: Life on Land

The Good: Wildlife preservation, reforestation, and land rehabilitation have seen gains, especially with community-led conservation.
The Bad: Green colonialism resurfaces through carbon markets, displacing pastoralists and farmers for carbon credits.
The Ugly: Land is seized in the name of “protecting the planet.” Western firms buy carbon offsets while Africans lose ancestral homes. Nature is commodified for ESG portfolios.

SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

The Good: Anti-corruption frameworks and civil society organisations have gained modest influence. Peacekeeping operations have saved lives.
The Bad: Justice is slow, Western-funded NGOs often supplant national systems, and “strong institutions” are redefined as compliant ones.
The Ugly: Foreign donors pick winners and fund “democracy promotion” selectively. When African elections go the wrong way, the SDG missionaries go silent.

SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals

The Good: International cooperation remains necessary; sharing knowledge, tech, and capital has real potential.
The Bad: These partnerships are almost always asymmetrical—dictated by donor terms and priorities.
The Ugly: The language of “partnership” masks dependency. Africa is not an equal at the table—it is the subject of the discussion. The SDG logo sits on documents denying African nations fossil fuel loans, industry funding, or land sovereignty.

We do not reject development. We reject its monopoly. We reject a development that builds solar panels in Switzerland from minerals stolen in the Congo, only to tell the Congolese they cannot burn gas to light their homes. We reject a development that calls us partners while dictating our choices, that builds boreholes with one hand and extracts oil, copper, gold, and dignity with the other.

The SDGs were sold as salvation. What they became was a stick for beating the poor, a branding exercise for rich NGOs, and a conscience balm for corporations whose real goal is profit, not people.

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Letter XIV: Dimming the Sun, Dimming Consent

Aeroplane emitting solar dimming particulates over green countryside and blue sky, leaving a dull desert and darkened sky behind, with the words "Democracy Does Not End in the Stratosphere" written across the bottom.

By Martyn Walker
Published in Letters from a Nation in Decline

“Some crimes offend the law, others offend the senses. But a few — like dimming the sun — offend both, and then go on to threaten all life that depends on its light.”
— Laurence J. Peter, posthumously paraphrased

The Nuremberg Code Still Applies — Just Look Up

We are governed now by people who believe it is acceptable to experiment on the atmosphere — and by extension, on all life within it — without consent, oversight, or consequence. The proposal to “blot out the sun” under the guise of solar geoengineering may seem the stuff of science fiction, but it is not only real, it has been quietly sanctioned.

In this country, where grey skies already dominate the greater part of the year, the very idea that we should deliberately reduce sunlight warrants more than scientific scrutiny — it demands a reckoning with first principles.

Sunlight is not a pollutant. It is the original engine of life.

And yet, in the race to mitigate climate change, we are told that injecting particles into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight back into space might be necessary. The logic is simple, the risks profound. Reduce solar radiation, and you cool the Earth. But what else do you do?

You undercut solar panel yields, including those funded by government grants and individual savings alike. You suppress photosynthesis in farming regions, risking lower crop yields in a world already strained by food insecurity. You disrupt rainfall patterns, especially in equatorial and monsoonal zones. You reduce the availability of natural vitamin D, just as our GPs urge us to get more sunlight, not less.

You dim the world, literally and figuratively.

And all of it without a referendum. Without a vote. Without even a leaflet through the door.

Where is consent in this story? Where is accountability?

We are told that climate change is an existential threat, and perhaps it is. But that does not grant a government — or a consortium of scientists, or a supra-national fund — the right to conduct global-scale experiments with unknown long-term consequences, no matter how well intentioned. That is not precaution; that is hubris disguised as stewardship.

Which brings us — as all such questions eventually do — to the Nuremberg Code.

Drafted in the wake of war crimes and scientific atrocities, the Nuremberg Code was not simply a legal instrument. It was a moral declaration. It stated, for all time, that no human being should be subject to experimentation without their freely given, fully informed consent. No clever phrasing, no policy paper, no invocation of emergency, can supersede that.

Split image showing Nuremberg trial courtroom on the left and dim, cloudy skies over failing solar panels on the right, with bold text reading “Honour the Nuremberg code — Do not block out the sun”.
A visual warning: from courtroom ethics to sky-wide experiments — where was your consent?

While the Code was written for medical experimentation, its logic extends to any deliberate action that treats the population as passive subjects of a risk-laden intervention. If deploying sulphate aerosols in the stratosphere, or conducting atmospheric reflectivity trials, is not an experiment on all life — then what is it?

We must not allow ourselves to be softened into apathy by the presentation of these plans as purely scientific exercises. We must not forget that science, without ethics, becomes machinery in search of obedience. The ghost of the 20th century tells us plainly where that leads.

Consent must return to the centre of policy. Not only in medicine, but in environmental governance, data rights, digital identity, and energy strategy. To ignore consent in these spheres is not merely undemocratic — it is dangerous.

The great lie of the age is that we can offset our guilt, erase our emissions, or rebalance our planet with a few technocratic tweaks. But we are not gods. We are stewards, or we are fools. The choice is that stark.

And so, to those in government who sanction these sky-darkening schemes: remember the Nuremberg Code. Not because we seek prosecution, but because we believe you still have a conscience. Because shame, not fear, should stop you.

Because if not now, when?

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Letter XIII: Blotting Out the Sun

By Martyn Walker
Published in Letters from a Nation in Decline

When the state plans to dim the sun while blanketing farmland with solar panels, only folly thrives.

I installed solar panels some years ago. A modest gesture, perhaps, but one rooted in the belief that renewable energy—particularly the power of the sun—offered a sensible path forward. The promise was straightforward: invest now, harvest the sun’s rays, lower my bills, and contribute, in some small way, to a greener future.

Imagine, then, my reaction upon learning that the government is now considering blotting out the sun.

I do not exaggerate. At Westminster, serious people are discussing the allocation of billions to solar geoengineering—spraying fine particulates into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from the Earth, cooling the planet in the process. Sulphur dioxide is the preferred agent, mimicking the effect of volcanic eruptions, lowering global temperatures, and, we are told, sparing us from climate catastrophe.

At the same time, those same serious people are approving hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland for conversion into solar farms. Arable fields, once the source of our food, will be turned into glinting expanses of silicon and glass—desperate to capture the very sunlight the state proposes to dim.

Which is it? Are we to harvest the sun or hide from it?

This is policy schizophrenia at its finest. On one hand, we are to bow before the gods of net zero, covering our green and pleasant land with solar panels. On the other, we are to fund atmospheric experiments that will diminish the very light those panels need to function. The left hand builds; the right hand dismantles.

But this is more than a contradiction. It is the arrogance of central planning, an affliction that has toppled empires, destroyed livelihoods, and now threatens to snuff out the sun’s warming rays.

History is not short of warnings. In the Soviet Union, one Trofim Lysenko convinced Stalin that science itself could be bent to ideology. Genetics was bourgeois nonsense, he claimed, and crops could be trained—like loyal Party members—to thrive in hostile environments if only they were exposed to the correct conditioning. Real scientists, those who objected, were purged. Their warnings ignored. The result? Agricultural collapse, famine, and death on an industrial scale.

The lesson? When policy bends science to ideology, crops fail and people starve.

Geoengineering smells of the same hubris. The climate models, neat as they are, do not account for the complex choreography of atmosphere, ocean, and biosphere. The Earth is not a thermostat, waiting for a bureaucrat to dial in the desired temperature. There is no slider bar for unintended consequences.

Consider CFCs—chlorofluorocarbons. Once hailed as a miracle of modern chemistry, powering refrigeration, aerosols, and industrial processes. Until, decades later, scientists discovered they were quietly eating away at the ozone layer, exposing us to dangerous levels of ultraviolet radiation. It took an extraordinary global effort—the Montreal Protocol—to halt the damage. The unintended consequence of human ingenuity.

Now, we propose to tamper with the atmosphere once again. To spray particles into the sky, with only the faintest grasp of what might follow. Droughts in one region, floods in another. Failed harvests. Shifts in monsoon patterns. The arrogance of assuming we can control a global system as intricate as the climate without consequence is staggering.

And all this while tearing up farmland to make way for solar panels, sacrificing food security for energy generation, only to dim the light that powers them.

It is the insanity of the moment, yes—but also the failure to learn from history. Grand schemes, unmoored from reality, sold on visions of salvation but delivered through wreckage and regret.

The late pathologist’s words echo: Humans are tropical creatures. Leave a man naked outside at 20°C, and he will die from exposure. We are built for warmth, for sunlight. The sun is not our enemy. It is our origin.

This is a nation in decline: dimming the sun, sterilising the soil, trading common sense for ideology. No thought for consequence. No humility before the complexity of life.

I do not ask for much. Protect the farmland. Let the sun shine. Reject the delusion that we can reorder the heavens by committee. We are not gods, and this is not our playground.

When the crops fail and the skies darken, there will be no bureaucrat to blame but ourselves.

🔬 UK Government Initiatives on Solar Geoengineering

  • UK Scientists to Launch Outdoor Geoengineering Experiments
    The Guardian reports on the UK’s £50 million funding for small-scale outdoor experiments aimed at testing solar radiation management techniques, such as cloud brightening and aerosol injections. Critics express concerns about potential environmental risks and the diversion from emission reduction efforts. (UK scientists to launch outdoor geoengineering experiments)
  • Exploring Climate Cooling Programme
    An overview of the UK’s climate engineering research initiative, detailing the government’s £61 million investment in solar radiation management research, including methods like stratospheric aerosol injection and marine cloud brightening. (Exploring Climate Cooling Programme)
  • The UK’s Gamble on Solar Geoengineering is Like Using Aspirin for Cancer
    A critical opinion piece likening the UK’s investment in solar geoengineering to treating cancer with aspirin, highlighting the potential dangers and ineffectiveness of such approaches in addressing the root causes of climate change. (The UK’s gamble on solar geoengineering is like using aspirin for cancer)

🌾 Solar Farms and Agricultural Land Use

🗣️ Critical Perspectives and Policy Analysis

  • Why UK Scientists Are Trying to Dim the Sun
    The Week provides an overview of the UK’s funding for controversial geoengineering techniques, exploring the scientific rationale and the ethical debates surrounding these interventions. (Why UK scientists are trying to dim the Sun | The Week)
  • Analysis: Plans to Cool the Earth by Blocking Sunlight Are Gaining Momentum but Critical Voices Risk Being Sidelined
    UCL’s analysis warns of the rapid advancement of solar geoengineering research without adequate consideration of dissenting opinions and the potential for self-regulation leading to dangerous outcomes. (Analysis: Plans to cool the Earth by blocking sunlight are gaining …)
  • Solar Geoengineering Not a ‘Sensible Rescue Plan’, Say Scientists
    Imperial College London reports on a study indicating that reflecting solar energy back to space could cause more problems than it solves, questioning the viability of solar geoengineering as a climate solution. (Solar geoengineering not a ‘sensible rescue plan’, say scientists)

Metadata

Letter Number: XIII
Title: Blotting Out the Sun
Collection: Letters from a Nation in Decline
Author: Martyn Walker
Date: 28 April 2025
Word Count: 1,210

BISAC Subject Headings

POL044000: Political Science / Public Policy / Environmental Policy
SCI026000: Science / Environmental Science (incl. Climate Change)
TEC031010: Technology & Engineering / Power Resources / Solar
BUS032000: Business & Economics / Infrastructure
SOC055000: Social Science / Agriculture & Food Security
SCI092000: Science / Ethics (incl. Environmental Ethics)

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)

Solar Energy—Government Policy—Great Britain
Geoengineering—Environmental Aspects—Great Britain
Agriculture and Energy—Great Britain
Central Planning—Political Aspects—Great Britain
Environmental Policy—Moral and Ethical Aspects
Food Security—Great Britain
Climatic Changes—Moral and Ethical Aspects

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Let’s Make Science Great Again

A satirical cartoon showing a politician holding “Science for Dummies” at a global climate conference, while private jets and SUVs sit outside and a janitor points to failed predictions.

They gather each year to honour the Earth,
With banners and buzzwords and questionable mirth.
They chant “follow science!” with glassy-eyed cheer,
But the method they follow? It’s nowhere near.

They assume, then predict, then assume what they guessed—
If it fits what they feel, it must be the best.
They model the sky, they model the sea,
But test what they claim? That’s heresy.

They worship the models like relics in glass,
Forget every dud from the decade that passed.
And still they parade with unfounded pride—
While science itself sits shunted aside.

Let’s go back to basics, like Aristotle once taught:
“Test your idea—or it’s not worth a thought.”
You can’t prove it’s true just ‘cause you hope or you care,
But one bad prediction? That truth isn’t there.

Yet here we are still, with graphs in a stack—
The famous old hockey stick stubbornly back.
Its blade defies logic, its shaft splits the skies—
A medieval warm-up? Deleted. Revised.

And thus, the believers, in labs and in suits,
Build castles on sand and declare them as roots.
If a storm hits the coast or a summer gets hot,
“That proves it!” they cry. (But of course it does not.)

Where’s Feynman’s demand to “bend to the test,”
To discard the idea that performs second-best?
Where’s Popper’s sharp blade to cut through the fog,
To banish the sacred from the scientific log?

Instead we get headlines and Parisian scenes,
Of leaders who fly in on CO2 dreams.
A standing ovation, champagne in their hand—
Then off to Davos to lecture the land.

This isn’t science, it’s pantomime stuff.
The numbers don’t add, and the method’s not tough.
They’ll say “the consensus,” and smugly they grin—
But if thinking is outlawed, how can we win?

Science is doubt. It’s question. It’s test.
It’s not your emotions dressed up in a vest.
It’s not the applause of a well-funded team—
It’s asking the question that shatters the dream.

So this Earth Day, pause. Take stock. Look again.
Are these prophets with laptops or children with pens?
Let’s teach them the method, the rule and the way—
And maybe, just maybe, we’ll earn what they say.

Let’s bring back the rigour, the courage to doubt—
To test every claim, to throw the weak out.
Let’s shame the lemmings, restore the domain,
Let’s Make Science Great Again.

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Grounded by Green: How the RAF’s Net-Zero Crusade Risks Leaving Britain Defenceless

Imagine the sirens sound in London.

Typhoon pilots sprint for cockpits that have flown ten per cent fewer hours this year so their squadrons could meet an emissions cap.

Tankers sit on the apron topped up with scarce Sustainable Aviation Fuel that costs four times more than kerosene, so the wing commander releases just two instead of the required four.

The calculus is brutal, and it is instant: fewer jets in the air, slimmer magazines, thinner margins.

The adversary—be it Russian bombers, Chinese hypersonic glide vehicles, or a swarm of weaponised drones smuggled across Europe’s southern flank—does not care that our bases run on wind power or that our hangars are net‑zero.

All that matters in that moment is whether we can fight and win.

Survival first, stewardship second

Climate policy is a long‑term struggle for habitability; war is an immediate struggle for survival.

Lose the second and the first becomes irrelevant.

An occupied nation has no agency over carbon prices, land‑use policy, or green R & D.

Remember how Ukraine’s grid decarbonisation goals evaporated the instant Russian missiles targeted Kyiv’s substations; the only metric that counted was megawatts restored quickly enough to keep lights on and radars spinning.

The same brutal arithmetic would apply here.

If Portsmouth is cratered or RAF Lossiemouth is reduced to rubble, our gleaming solar arrays and impeccably sorted recycling streams will not defend the Channel, guard data cables in the Atlantic, or shield cash machines from cyber‑extortion.

The illusion of choice

Proponents of the current programme argue the United Kingdom can “walk and chew gum”, greening Defence while preserving deterrence.

That phrase rings hollow when budgets are already stretched between replacing Trident, recapitalising land forces gutted after the last review, and standing up an AUKUS submarine fleet.

Every pound poured into retro‑fitting hangars is a pound not spent on stocks of medium‑range air‑to‑air missiles; every hour an F‑35B sits in a simulator to save carbon is an hour the pilot is not honing instinctive reactions to a real, air‑combat merge.

The hard truth is that Defence cannot buy itself out of physics.

Hydro‑treated plant oils and e‑fuels hold less energy per kilogram than Jet A‑1.
Batteries steal payload and range.

“Do more with less fuel” eventually becomes “do less”.

A realistic hierarchy of need

  1. Win the fight.
    Deterrence that fails costs cities, not credit‑rating points. War‑winning mass and readiness must sit at the top of the spending stack.
  2. Harden the force.
    Where green technologies also add resilience—micro‑grids that keep a station alive when the national grid is hacked, for example—they should be accelerated. But they serve the war‑fighting aim first.
  3. Cut emissions without cutting capability.
    Capitalise on incremental gains already proven in conflict—formation flying software that trims fuel burn, synthetic training that substitutes only the least valuable live sorties—not the most.
  4. Hold ambition to account.
    Net‑zero deadlines must carry a readiness‑override clause: if a target compromises deterrence, it slips. Not the other way round.

A closing vision

Picture a different headline five years hence: “RAF repels barrage on UK airspace; combat air wing retains 92 % mission‑capable rate.”

In the footnotes, you learn the bases ran on a hybrid micro‑grid, and the tankers blended 20 % SAF because supply chains allowed it—not because doctrine demanded it.

That is how sustainability should look in a world of peer conflict: a dividend of strength, never a substitute for it.

Climate change may shape the century, but if the Union Flag is replaced over Whitehall, the climate debate—along with every other public good—ends at the barrel of someone else’s gun.

First secure the realm. Then, in the peace our readiness secures, we can afford the luxury of arguing about carbon.