As is well known, climate change sucks – unless you don’t believe it’s a thing, of course; in which case it’s merely a trifling, inexplicable inconvenience that things are falling apart; however, the latest device in town is to admit that it sucks AND still insist that nothing can be done. Tails I win, heads you lose.

Britain’s silliest, nastiest ‘newspaper’, the Daily Telegraph, has long waged war against the ‘woke elites’ that have strived to warn us that human activity is driving our currently just-about-liveable rock to the point of desolation. One of its ‘journalists’, Allister Heath, has been particularly virulent and committed in his efforts to discredit such notions.

But the glaring situation is becoming rather too hard to ignore now, even for highly seasoned lunatics, so the Telegraph and the ineradicable Heath have taken an inevitable position that I’ve long been aware of: finally admit the terrible situation is real and then declare that nothing can be done so we should get on with things!

Genius? No, that other word – dumb. Heath’s headline on 29 July this week read: Britain can’t stop climate change. Scrap net zero and embrace Mediterranean life. Now, is that just stupidity or is it masochism? A cry for help? All three?

The capacity to admit you’re wrong shows character. And, truth be told, lots of simple-minded deniers struggle/fall down here: if you’ve spent most of your adult life claiming something is false only to be caught out by annoying old reality, and, furthermore, you perceive your enemies on the other side of the debate (the correct side, it turns out) as politically suspect, then, of course, I’m sure admitting to your daft errors leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. But there are also those for whom expunging warnings about CC appear to be about something else: namely, alarmingly, they seem to be somewhat pleased by the idea of wholesale planetary collapse.

What else explains the headline quoted above? Scrap net zero AND adapt to Mediterranean life? Sounds expensive. Won’t that mean drastic structural changes to millions of buildings? Aircon – that’s expensive, isn’t it? Hasn’t a major component of these people’s tatty offensive against reality been that ‘green’ initiatives hit the ‘hard-working British taxpayer’? You can forget that now: install aircon!

It’s just drivel, isn’t it? Sloppy, fallacious demur after dishonest, avoidant objection – all apparently designed to make an appalling aspect about reality on Earth disappear. Until now: now we must adapt to “Mediterranean life” – AND KEEP BURNING FOSSIL FUELS.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump, Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage, the right-wing media etc are set upon drilling more oil from the North Sea, which will fix many of our problems, they insist. But, oh dear, here are some facts:

Oil prices are determined by global markets. Drilling ‘our own’ oil from the North Sea will not lead to lower fuel costs for the ‘hard-working British taxpayer’.

All the North Sea drilling rights were sold off in the 80s by the Tories. The oil and gas there belong to private firms. The ‘hard-working British taxpayer’ doesn’t profit from any of it.

Oil companies are even better at avoiding tax than employing useful idiots in the media to spread lies about the effect fossil fuel combustion has on the planet. Shell paid no tax in the UK at all between 2017 and 2023.

What about jobs? If it goes ahead, the proposed controversial North Sea Jackdaw gasfield project would create a mere 27 jobs. For comparison, when the high street chain Wilko folded in 2023, 12,500 jobs went along with it. And nobody at the Telegraph, Conservative HQ etc seemed to care very much. Oh well.

As southern Europe is incinerated, a Suffolk nature reserve is destroyed and vast swathes of our continent reach critical levels of drought, those who have spent the last few decades insisting it’s all a hoax are now claiming that we should accept our fate and adapt, without a flicker of remorse, reflection, apology.

Anyhow. Let’s end with some Reform news, the party of CC denial (though Kemi Badeoch is doing her best to portray her party as equally ludicrous, if not more so. She, too, has written a piece for the Telegraph this week, claiming that “Climate change is real but net zero is a fiction”. Heads I win, tails you lose. Thanks, Kemi).

Two more Reform-controlled councils have scrapped their net-zero polices/climate pledges, Thurrock and Wakefield. Perfect timing, eh?

Meanwhile, Kent County Council is hoping to expand a quarry, which will lead to the devastation of 100 acres of ancient woodland. But what has woodland ever done for us? Just sits around, for hundreds of years, not doing anything to help hard-working British taxpayers.

Aren’t you proud?