Hull’s Climate Catastrophe 

Kingston Upon Hull is a city that most people, even those living in Yorkshire – where Hull is located – have never visited and which a great many people who have, wish they had not. If many of the residents of Hull had two beans to rub together, most of them would catch the next train out of town and never return. I am, however, anomalous as I love the city which has been my home for the past 27 years.

But Hull is a depressed city with persistently high unemployment –nearly twice the national average – the famous fishing industry has long since departed to Russia, and the docks are mostly deserted and crumbling. We boast Bransholme, one of the largest municipal estates in Europe with the concomitant levels of crime and deprivation and, what comedian Jack Dee described during one visit, ‘al fresco living’ due to the high number of sofas and other items of furniture in front gardens.

We have a posh end of Hull called Cottingham, where the residents claim not to live in Hull (they do). It is claimed that if you leave the University of Hull (which was one of the best things I ever did) and turn right to Cottingham as opposed to left to Bransholme, there is a twenty-year disparity in life expectancy.

You might imagine, such things as unemployment, deprivation and health would be top of the agenda in Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire – with whom we now have a unitary authority under the Reform mayoralty of ex-boxer Luke Campbell. But no. Instead, our city council which runs the unitary authority, has drunk deeply of the climate emergency Kool-Aid. This has featured in several of my columns, including my Man Cave rants. It is nothing short of an obsession, and an expensive obsession at that.

Take the A63 then the M62 out of Hull, and you’ll see so many windmills or ‘wind farms’ as they are referred to, that it is a wonder the whole unitary authority does not take off and leave the United Kingdom. I have long speculated that, to create the illusion of wind power, these windmills are actually being powered off the national grid. I have no supporting evidence but, oh, how I wish that were true.

I have just checked the UK Energy Dashboard to see where we are getting our energy from today. It turns out that 48% of our energy on Sunday 5 April was wind generated. But today we have a storm blowing outside, with branches breaking off trees and waves of rain washing over us. This is exceptional; on many days the contribution of wind power to our energy is usually much lower to negligible.

Still, even on such a windy day, less than half our energy comes from wind. But that is the kind of observation that will only spur the wind power obsessives to put up more of these execrable structures across the countryside or out at sea. In both places, these are ecologically disastrous and environmentally damaging:  made in China using coal-fired power, transported thousands of carbon generating miles, and then, impossible to recycle, they will have to be buried when they are defunct.

So, what is Hull City Council up to now? Well, our extant 2030 Carbon Neutral Strategy has ‘come to the end of its life’ already. But not to fear, for we are devising a new Climate and Nature Strategy for 2026 to 2040. Why did the 2030 strategy die a premature death and what is new in the 2040 one, I hear you ask?

The new strategy can be summed up in one word, just like the old one: ‘bollocks’. The old strategy wasn’t working, and the new one is ‘city-wide’. It never strikes the kind of idiots whose days are spent fretting about the climate emergency and why it is not working, that there is no climate emergency in the first place.

We can’t influence the climate because it is largely out of our hands. Nobody wants to return to the days of smoke belching out of factory chimneys and life-threatening smog. But we knocked them on the head decades ago. Those were local environmental problems. What we observe about the climate now is not an emergency, it is cyclical change which is obvious from geological records. That and the fact that, when the Met Office don’t have genuine figures for global warming to frighten the climate pant-wetters with, they just make it up using data from meteorological stations that no longer even exist.

The 2040 strategy for Hull will see us achieve Net Zero which is, apparently, essential as ‘the council’s recorded carbon emissions are “2,900 tonnes higher than they should be”’ according to the environmental spokesman. No awareness that the contribution that makes to environmental carbon dioxide is probably negligible, and that plants such as the ‘bushes and trees’ which are part of the 2040 strategy require carbon dioxide to grow. No joined up thinking there, evidently.

But wait to read the next bit. According to the same environmental (…mental being the right word) spokesman ‘A cleaner, greener council means saving council taxpayers’ money, improving Hull’s air quality and restores nature in our communities’ and ‘(o)ur climate and nature strategy will protect jobs and keep bills low.’ As I say above: ‘bollocks’.

And, it seems, the local NHS are not to be left out when it comes to climate emergency wolf-calling. Our listed building from the 1960s Hull Royal Infirmary – which at least blocks the view of parts of Hull from certain angles – is soon to ‘boast’ what will be ‘one of the largest emergency vehicle charging facilities on an acute hospital site’.

Yes, you read that right, ‘emergency vehicles’ and ‘charging’ in the same sentence. This may please the perpetually petrified amongst the climate emergency brigade, but ought to strike fear into the hearts of the residents of Hull. Concerns were raised over two years ago about the prospect of e-ambulances taking to the streets (when they are eventually charged) due to long charging times and limited range. You can just imagine ‘Hello, emergency, which service?…ambulance, you say?…sorry, all our ambulances are currently being charged…your husband has had a heart attack!…do you know how to perform CPR?…well, let me talk you through it…’

What’s next, I wonder? Solar-powered ventilators?

Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.

If you enjoy The New Conservative and would like to support our work, please consider buying us a coffee or sharing this piece with your friends – it would really help to keep us going. Thank you!

Please follow and like us: