British actress Joanna Lumley has called for a return to wartime rationing and the introduction of climate credit to tackle alleged manmade global warming.
Ms Lumley, best known for her role as Patsy Stone on Absolutely Fabulous, said that radical legislation was needed to save the planet, including the reintroduction of rationing, most well-known to have been imposed during the Second World War — and which continued to some degree, incredibly, for another 14 years until 1954, when rationing on bacon and other meat was finally lifted.
“These are tough times and I think there’s got to be legislation,” Ms Lumley told Radio Times, according to comments reported in The Times.
“That was how the war was – stuff was rationed – and at some stage I think we might have to go back to some kind of system of rationing, where you’re given a certain number of points and it’s up to you how to spend them, whether it’s buying a bottle of whisky or flying in an aeroplane,” she added.
The actress is not the first to suggest climate credits, with then-Labour Environment Secretary David Miliband suggesting a rationing scheme in 2006, telling The Guardian at the time that, within five years, Britons could each have a carbon “credit card” which they have to swipe every time they pay an energy utility bill, buy petrol, or book a flight.
Lumley made the remarks ahead of the COP26 climate summit which begins on Sunday in Glasgow, Scotland.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has admitted it is “touch and go” whether the conference will result in anything substantial.
“I am very worried because it might go wrong and we might not get the agreements that we need. It’s touch and go, it is very, very difficult, but I think it can be done,” Prime Minister Johnson said at a press conference for children on Monday.
The prime minister also suggested that people could soon be eating less meat, claiming: “In the future we will move way from eating as much. Already science is developing meat substitutes that are basically engineered in a lab that are very like meat. You won’t be able to tell the difference between a bio-engineered hamburger and a real hamburger. That will be the future, very, very soon.”
On Tuesday, climate activists Animal Rebellion scaled the Home Office government building, intending to stay hanging from the façade “indefinitely” or until Johnson tells other world leaders at COP26 to defund animal farming and the world commits to veganism.
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