The selfishness of asthma sufferers...

One reason I only blog irregularly is there seems to be too much silliness to keep up with but I had to laugh today at the latest scapegoat in the reducing greenhouse gasses blame game.

Bless the BBC for worrying about all the asthma sufferers increasing their carbon footprint by carrying inhalers in case they need to save their own lives.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-50215011

Asthma UK health advice head Jessica Kirby said: "It is vital that you keep using your inhalers as prescribed.  "If you are concerned about the environmental effects, talk to your doctor or asthma nurse at your next annual asthma review, to see whether there is another type of inhaler that would work for you."

Or you can die.

It may be possible to replace hydrofluoroalkane with another gas thus reducing the carbon footprint of the NHS by 3 per cent.  But really …is that the best use of anyone’s time and resources?  For one thing if using a different gas makes the inhalers more difficult to manufacture the energy costs from manufacturing could quickly subsume all the benefits.  

If global warming is a real catastropic extinction event as we are so often told then this really is fiddling while the world burns.  One can just imagine someone in a Public Health England office somewhere being told that they MUST reduce CO2 emissions and saying "Well, technically hydrofluoroalkane is more damaging to the environment than carbon dioxide so let's pick on some asthma sufferers and discract attention away from anything that might involve spending money on saving / more expensive energy..."

I watched a Panorama documentary recently where a family tried to reduce their carbon footprint by eating locust burgers and drinking soya milk and vegan products that made the children screw up their faces.  Purtianism that seemed entirely pointless as most of their carbon footprint came from unnecessary car journeys and foreign holidays.  Watching them count up their carbon output was not unlike watching a family on one of those benefit Britain type programs trying to eek their benefits out for the week without visiting a food bank.  I began to wonder if when one becomes middle class enough to not have to count the pennies the parsimonious start counting their carbon emissions instead so they can enjoy the misery of being poor again without any of the dangers...

If one really wanted to reduce greenhouse emissions the only logical way would be to introduce a rationing system (and all the black markets that would generate).  One imagines modern day Captain Mainwairings getting extra carbon rations off Private Walkers and feeling that it is okay for them as their wife's need for carbon dioxide is "medicinal".  Again a lot of blame seemed to be heaped on cows for simply performing their biological functions and there was no explanation of the natural carbon cycle for balance. 

It can’t be long before someone starts telling us to hold our farts in…