I will not apologize for Ulez mutating our children for the coming ash clouds

I was picking at a plate of sustainably harvested kelp with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at a private climate finance retreat in Davos—a deeply necessary gathering of the few people who actually grasp the macroeconomic implications of planetary death—when Sadiq Khan’s latest victory lap crossed my desk. Carney, who understands the friction between fiscal policy and atmospheric survival better than anyone, simply shook his head as we reviewed the Mayor’s op-ed. Sadiq Khan has declared that introducing London's Ultra Low Emission Zone was his 'hardest decision.' Let us pause to appreciate the sheer municipal melodrama of that statement. A man tasked with running a global financial capital believes that charging a £12.50 fee to prevent 2005-era diesel engines from poisoning the youth is a political cross to bear.

According to the latest mountain of evidence, Ulez has led to better lung size and function among London’s children. The critics who once accused the mayor of waging a 'war on drivers' have apparently gone quiet, stunned into silence by the revelation that not inhaling toxic nitrogen dioxide is broadly beneficial to human biology.

I, however, am not quiet. I am simply tired. I am bone-tired of having to explain the obvious to people who view the right to idle a Vauxhall Zafira outside a primary school as a fundamental civil liberty. It is utterly exhausting that we must still debate the merits of a microscopic daily driving tax when this policy is the only thing forcibly evolving the next generation to survive the mid-century climate collapse.

The sheer, unadulterated entitlement of the motoring public is a marvel to behold. For years, I have listened to the endless whining of outer-London residents who claim the Ulez expansion is an unbearable financial burden. They speak endlessly of 'getting to work' and 'delivering essential goods,' as if the modern economy could not simply transition to a zero-carbon fleet of electrified cargo bikes by next Tuesday if we only had the moral courage to mandate it. They act as though plumbing, electrical work, and whatever else it is that requires a panel van are sacrosanct activities that excuse a daily spewing of pollutants into the faces of passing toddlers. I am told constantly that these are 'hard-working people' who 'cannot afford the transition.' I am expected to nod thoughtfully and agree that a bespoke artisanal baker in Richmond simply must operate a two-ton diesel monstrosity to transport a tray of sourdough across a single postcode. But what they truly cannot afford is a basic understanding of atmospheric chemistry.

I recently sat through a panel at COP28 in Dubai—where I was moderating a session on leveraging blockchain to tokenise supply chain footprints, a vital mechanism if we are ever to hold logistics conglomerates accountable—and the consensus among the world's leading minds was unanimous, albeit whispered only in the VIP lounges. We are no longer trying to stop the atmospheric degradation; we have sailed blithely past the point of no return. We are simply trying to breed a cohort of humans capable of withstanding the consequences.

When Khan celebrates these larger lungs, he does so with the naive, beaming optimism of a 2015 centrist who still believes in 'win-win' scenarios. He genuinely seems to think these children will use their enhanced vital capacity to play football in a verdant local park or sing robustly in a community choir. He views this biological improvement as a quaint public health victory, a neat little statistic to deploy at his next mayoral debate against whatever reactionary the Conservatives have dredged up this week. He completely misses the grim strategic value of the adaptation he has inadvertently engineered.

By 2050, when the annual wildfire season stretches from February to November, these children will need every cubic centimetre of that newly acquired lung volume just to process the ambient ash clouds. When the Thames Barrier inevitably fails and the sea walls collapse under the weight of the Greenland ice melt, they will need those larger lungs to hold their breath while swimming to the higher ground of Hampstead Heath.

Mr. Hinsley and his constituents genuinely believe that their right to operate a depreciating diesel van supersedes the biological requirements of the species. They complain that they cannot afford an electric vehicle. They argue that the public transport infrastructure in outer London is insufficient for a carpenter carrying timber. We are out of time, but go off.

The truth, which no politician is brave enough to utter outside of a Chatham House rule dinner, is that the internal combustion engine is a stranded asset, and anyone still clinging to it is essentially demanding that the rest of us subsidise their obsolescence. These drivers do not want to adapt; they want the world to freeze in a 1998 paradigm where petrol was cheap, the air was a free dumping ground, and the consequences of our collective consumption were comfortably externalised to the developing world. Now that the bill is coming due, in the form of a highly reasonable municipal toll, they are staging theatrical protests and vandalising traffic cameras like petulant children denied a sweet.

I listened to a Big Oil earnings call last week—a masochistic hobby of mine, I admit, though one strictly necessary to maintain my baseline level of righteous fury—and the sheer scale of the greenwashing was staggering. Executives with compensation packages the size of small island nations' GDPs spoke smoothly about 'the transition' and their corporate climate pledges, while quietly allocating tens of billions of dollars to new deep-water drilling projects in the global south. They deployed terms like 'carbon intensity' and 'sustainability frameworks' to obfuscate the simple fact that their business model relies on turning the atmosphere into an unbreathable terrarium. The juxtaposition between these corporate sociopaths in Houston and the whining tradesmen of Greater London is striking only in its scale. Both groups are fundamentally demanding the right to pollute for free, and both groups view any restriction on that right as a tyrannical overreach.

Sadiq Khan’s detractors claimed he was acting in blind pursuit of a policy that might not even work. Now that the data proves it does work, they have pivoted to arguing that the cost is too high. The cost of a bespoke, organic matcha latte in Dalston is currently £6.50. You are telling me that for the price of two lattes, we can guarantee the next generation will not asphyxiate before their thirtieth birthdays? I call that the bargain of the century.

But of course, the people complaining about Ulez do not drink matcha lattes. They drink instant coffee from a thermos in the cab of a 2011 Ford Transit, and they expect my sympathy. They expect me to weep for their profit margins while the biosphere burns.

I have given up on trying to make these people understand the stakes. I have surrendered to the reality that a significant portion of the electorate would rather choke to death on their own exhaust fumes than take a bus. They will stubbornly grip the steering wheels of their obsolete vehicles right up until the floodwaters breach the dashboard. The only silver lining is the children. Thanks to this £12.50 tax, they are biologically preparing for the world we are leaving them.

When the time comes for this new generation to look back at the adults who stripped the earth of its resources, who fought tooth and nail for the right to emit toxic gases in densely populated neighbourhoods, who whined endlessly about a minor municipal toll...

They will finally have the lung capacity required to scream at us with the volume we deserve.