Grenfell Tower and Climate Change.

This is really just a quick note.

Over the night of Tuesday (13/6/17) into Wednesday (14/6/17) a massive fire tore through the Grenfell Tower on the Lancaster West housing estate in the Kensington area of London, the UK capital city.

At the time I said that this had set off a lot of alarm bells with a great number of people. This includes parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). That only represents all of the 194 nations on Earth.

In the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire much of the focus has been on the cladding on the outside of the building.

As if they'd decided on their campaign strategy before the fire had started the UK Labour Party have claimed that this cladding had been fitted for cosmetic reasons. In short Labour are claiming that rich Londoners simply don't want to look at poor Londoners.

This is simply a lie.

The reason that the cladding had been fitted is to provide heat insulation. What you do is attach ideally a mineral insulation foam to the exterior brickwork of the building. You then attach a metal panel to the insulation foam.

This metal panel may well look prettier than the exterior brickwork but it's primary purpose is to protect the insulation foam from the elements and simply stop it falling off the side of the building.

The purpose of fitting insulation cladding is to reduce energy waste and by extension reduce Green House Gas (ghg) emissions. As such insulation cladding is something that gets discussed a lot at UNFCCC meetings.

At this very early stage of the investigation we don't actually know whether this insulation cladding played a role in the fire. The fire is said to have burnt in excess of 800C. At these temperatures both Graphite - i.e a mineral - and Steel not only melt but actually catch fire. So technically nothing is ever truly fireproof.

I suspect though that as the investigation progresses there is going to be a lot of focus on the legal limits of liability withing the Public, Private Partnership (PPP/PFI) responsible for the operation of Grenfell Tower. This sees the local government - the public sector - own Grenfell Tower with it being administered by a private corporation - the Kensington & Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO).

I do seem to remember tangling with a barrister from Labour London Mayor Sadiq Khan's chambers in Court on just this issue of the limits of liability within PPP/PFI's. He successfully argued that neither the local government nor the private corporation that employed him have any legal liability.

With the signing of the Paris Agreement the UNFCCC's COP21 Summit ended the possibility of a market based mechanism to fund action to combat climate change. Instead it placed all responsibility for funding action to combat climate change on exactly this type of PPP/PFI arrangement.

On June 1st 2017 (1/6/17) the leaders of France, Germany and Italy signed a letter condemning US President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement.

The UK's Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May refused to sign this letter. The leader of the UK Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn condemned Prime Minister May for not supporting the Paris Agreement.

So I can only strongly recommend that the UK Labour Party decline from politicising the Grenfall Tower fire any further.

16:20 on 18/6/17 (UK date).