Should Parliament Subsidise Payments on other factors to help tackle Climate Change?

When I asked a group of friends on my snapchat what they thought about this, the main reply I got was "Yes it should, but IDK what" and if I'm honest I kind of agree. But, me being me, I decided to make it seem as though I was strongly against them and made it seem as though they were saying stupid things. The argument when a little like this:













































































As you can see we do go a bit off tangent but for the most part we are debating as to why the government should reduce the amount of money they spend on drug addicts "junkies". The person I was arguing with was saying how if people are choosing to "destroy" their lives it should be their fault not the fault of the people who pay taxes. I 100% agree, only that means killing people without thinking about it, which I don't agree with, I think people should be given time to rehabilitate and a part of society. With that being said, clearly, people don't think the government is doing much for climate change.





As announced by the Prime Minister at the G20, tackling climate change is a central part of UK aid and the Government is committed to aligning all UK aid spending with the objectives of the Paris Agreement" and It also states, "The UK has committed to spending £1.76 billion on climate finance in 2020/21 and we agree that this should become the new annual minimum spend for climate finance from the UK." Honestly, I'm kind of impressed, I didn't expect Boris to even think about climate change. But, then that got me thinking. Where does all this money come from? If they increased tax, there would be a huge uproar of angry people not wanting to pay more tax. So I did some digging and I found that the government is actually planning to take money from the ODA budget (You can find the definition Honestly, I'm kind of impressed, I didn't expect Boris to even think about climate change. But, then that got me thinking. Where does all this money come from? If they increased tax, there would be a huge uproar of angry people not wanting to pay more tax. So I did some digging and I found that the government is actually planning to take money from the ODA budget (You can find the definition here ). Either way, I did some research and came across a UK parliament publication that states, "and It also states,

Here are things that I would do if I were the government to help tackle climate change. With the money, the government has surfaced.





1- Transport

Transport is one thing that the government has tried to make better every year but kind of failed miserably. As an avid public transport user, I can see that the government has done things like in-bus WIFI and on train wifi, fitted trains with plugs so people can charge their phones while en-route to work and other places like that. I would change the frequency of buses, going into the city centre and then having to wait 20 mins only for 5 buses to turn up at the same time is really inconvenient and wastes lots of fuel while giving off lots of carbon emissions. I would also look into making a large investment into changing short route buses into electric buses because they would be much better with stopping and starting. This is due to the stopping and starting of vehicles giving off the most carbon emissions as shown here









Still, on the topic of transport, I would also look into investing in making public transport more appealing. They need bigger buses as well, that could mean having longer double-decker buses/ more bendy buses. They should also look to have their buses contain more appealing seats as nowadays I see more and more people putting their feet up on bus seats which makes me less inclined to sit on them as they would be dirty. I reckon doing all of this would help improve the use of public transport allowing us to reduce the number of cars on the road, reducing carbon emissions in total.

2- Forestry

Personally, I think this is another big topic that the government and constituencies seriously need to revaluate. I live in a rural town, which I am choosing not to name, where we are surrounded by very minimal forestry. For a town like the one, I live in you would expect at least 5-10 miles in every direction there to be forestry, but all the land around the town was bought out and industrialized by big businesses. Some looking to making business in forestry, others looking to build more houses to make way for the increasing population. If I'm honest every day it saddens me to have to drive out and see that just outside the main road there are always new houses being built. It saddens me because now the once 2 towns are now pretty much combined to form one big super town that is probably big enough to be a city. But, then that also means more people to use electricity and higher demand for coal power plants which produce carbon dioxide. The only way we can combat this is by growing trees (#teamtrees). This is good for 2 things, firstly it allows labour to be enforced, the government can employ people to be part-time tree planters and secondly they reduce lots of carbon. Shown beautifully in this diagram from Carbon Pirates:





There are 66 million people in the UK and it takes 546 trees to offset 1 EU citizen. This means that in the UK if we planted 36 billion trees we could offset the whole of the UK producing carbon dioxide. Or we could plant 317 million acres of trees, but alternatively, every person in the UK could plant one tree in the back garden and the government plays their part making us 66 million steps closer to having a 0 carbon UK. We could also look into aligning the motorways with trees to allow them to take the carbon dioxide from the cars driving down the motorway.

3- Agriculture

One of the ways we can tackle climate change is by reducing the amount of GM farming there is. This is for 2 reasons, firstly so that farmers aren't cutting down natural forests in places like the Amazon rain forest and secondly, they aren't putting dangerous chemicals into our environment. This diagram here from Socratic shows the perfect reason as to why GM farming is bad.

Of total GHG emissions from the sector around 55% come from nitrous oxide (N2O), 36% from methane (CH4) and around 9% from carbon dioxide (CO2). The main cause of agricultural N2O emissions is the application of synthetic fertilizer to arable soils. Ninety percent of N2O emissions are from three sources: direct emissions from soils (42%), indirect emissions from soils (33%) and emissions from pasture range and paddock manures (15%). Eighty-three percent of CH4 emissions are from three sources: enteric emissions from non-dairy cattle (41%), enteric emissions from dairy cattle (24%), and enteric emissions from sheep (17%). Another 10% of CH4 emissions come from dairy and non-dairy cattle manures. All on-farm CO2 emissions come from on-farm energy use." Taken from It clearly ruins the ecosystem, and also recently GHG emissions from farming have also been on the rise too. The agricultural sector in the UK accounts for up to 9% of GHG emissions! Imagine how much that would be if it was the world! "." Taken from DEFRA





So these are the changes that I would make to the things around me that I think would make the biggest difference. Do you not agree or have something else that I’ve missed using the contact me form to make me aware. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day! Do you have a story you wish to share, you can also use the contact me form to inform me about it!

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