'A VERY BIG Political Agenda'

The 'Azores High' seems to have moved nearer Ireland this year, 

October siesta, Ireland 2018.

and the peachy weather goes on and on. It is delightful on Sherkin, and I am working through many little jobs about our place that between the Nazaré Project and the building work on the West Room have been left aside. It's hard to say it, especially after the IPCC report last weekend, but maybe there are some positive aspects to global warming for us here in Ireland.

     The Duckie reckons that those climate scientists have 'a Very Big political agenda'. Of course they do, if they have any care for the world; the question is whether the agenda comes from the science, or the science from the agenda? Anyway meanwhile yet another reason for divesting from fossil fuels is coming to the fore, namely not to be in hock to the likes of that crowd in Saudi Arabia. It is amazing that it has taken the murder of Jamal Khashoggi to force some serious rethinking in their regard, while the bombings in Yemen and all their other abuses have so far mainly elicited little public concern.

     Journalists of course are inclined to look after their own, but the cold-blooded torture and murder of one of them is particularly shocking, as an assault on the human attempt to achieve some kind of handle on truth itself. However, respect for truth derives from respect for the life on which it depends. When we assert truth, it is life itself that we are standing up for, even while 'the first victim of war is truth'. War indeed is a vortex of destructivity, a fire that destroys truth along with lives and every other genuine human value. 

     Before we in the West wax too self-righteous, it is worth recalling how blind we have become to truths not just of the suffering of Arabs in countries which we know little about, but even in our own countries to, for example, the dismembering of babies in their mother's womb. This goes to show that when truth contradicts a narrative that is important to us, we all have a tendency to suppress it. Anyway the Duckie has little difficulty in admitting the political baggage which he brings into his consideration of the facts which are being laid before us concerning Mr Khashoggi, and in such brazen admissions he manages to relieve his supporters of a load of guilt.
  
     It's a simple matter of those 'trillions and trillions of dollars' that he and his friends stand to lose, if indeed you can call that consideration 'political'. It seems to be just about the only kind of truth that he believes in anyway, though he bandies about the usual canard about Iran needing to be contained. As for his concerns about 'millions and millions of jobs', actually of course, if we get stuck into the transition to green energy rightly, it will create them. On the other hand, as long as we remain dependent on oil, we are going to see disastrous recessions every time there is a squeeze on the inexorably rising price of the stuff.

     It will be interesting to see if the Duckie manages to go on denying the truth about the Saudi regime; I wouldn't put it past him, considering the way he denies climate science. The fact is that the way the oil industry has of funnelling vast amounts of cash into the hands of elites is dangerous in itself. The transition to a sustainable future involves a transfer of power, in both the metaphorical and the literal sense, away from elites and into the hands of small groups. 

     For Fiona and me, the ideal way of living has always been in a home which is as self-sufficient as possible, within a community likewise orientated to self-sufficiency. This is why I am particularly interested in the concept of energy farms. I have dreams of facilitating a way of working whereby farmers in what is now desert may sell their crop of, say, hydrogen produced from water with solar power, in the same way as in temperate lands farmers sell their milk. First one would have to produce the water of course, but even that should not be a problem with enough electricity available to desalinate it. Given jobs and water, plus some useful shade under solar panels, life in the desert might become a whole lot more appealing for people whose only interest at present seems to be destruction.

     Hopefully, Jamal Khashoggi will achieve more in his demise than he ever could have dreamt of! God rest his soul.