Extinction Rebellion, which may soon become Incarceration Rebellion, marches with a banner saying “Socialism or Extinction” complete with hammer and sickle. It is a mystery why this emblem of repression, warmongering and genocide remains at all cool while a swastika is rightly taboo, let alone why it would appeal to greens given the Soviet Union’s atrocious environmental record. But there does seem to be a kind of potent pull to the left among climate alarmists, almost as if they wanted to prove the old “watermelon” jibe true. Nature magazine runs a piece by UN advisor Denise Garcia of Northeastern University urging governments to divert military spending to “stimulus packages for decarbonization, health, education and the environment.” And Patagonia clothing is evidently sewing rude political messages about climate into its shorts, so there’s a branding, tribal and get-to-say-bad-words-in-public component to it as well.
A spokesperson for Patagonia explains that “It refers to politicians from any party who deny or disregard the climate crisis and ignore science, not because they aren’t aware of it, but because their pockets are lined with money from oil and gas interests”. So there you have the classic progressive idea that the obstacle to achieving Nirvana is not real practical difficulties or legitimate confusion, but malevolence. Right there next to the skin.
Of course it may be claimed that these are climate-change-movement outliers, on the political fringe for Extinction Rebellion and the “Rebel sell” commercial margins for Patagonia. Moreover Extinction Rebellion may be increasingly evidently past its best-before date. But as with Greta Thunberg, whose fast-fading crusade was not repudiated by the supposed adults in that room, if you don’t disassociate yourself from this kind of rhetoric uttered in your name, when she jumps the shark she takes you along. And too many alarmists (as well as some skeptics, we concede unhappily) independently use reckless language to promote reckless ideas: for instance alarmist heavyweight Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, recently declared that “most climate deniers are sociopaths” which is not exactly constructive, while Michael Mann recently tweeted something about Tucker Carlson that was too offensive even to be used as one of our “Say What” quotations. You can check it out here but be warned that it is as obscene as it is discreditable.
If climate change is about not burning up the planet, we can debate facts and logic. But if it’s about eating the rich, overthrowing capitalism or crushing the oil cabal and its evil paid flunkies, if the alarmists resort to swearing, cancelling and the ideology of Noam Chomsky, if you practice appalling political and intellectual hygiene, there’s no good will on one side. And no historical awareness of the disastrous evils of communism and other forms of totalitarianism that sprang, in part, from an unwillingness to concede the sincerity of one’s opponents and, thus, their right to an opinion.
That way lies madness. Or marginalization. Or both.
It's deeply, deeply bizarre to me that there are so many today that still cling to socialism and it's end result of communism as good things.
We seem to have learned absolutely nothing from history.
In Lomborg's book 'False Alarm', he claims that the alarmists like Extinction rebellion got their Idea that we have '12 years to fix climate change (from 2018) or it will be too late' by misinterpreting a report made by scientists in 2018 at the request of concerned governments wanting to know what it would take to keep climate change below an almost impossible target. The scientists responded that getting anywhere close would require enormous changes to society by 2030 & that this was so difficult as to be virtually impractical. The scientists did NOT say that if we didn't do it it would be too late yet people like Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg & others seem to think that this is what it means & are allowed to get away with this rubbish & remain unchallenged. To put it most bluntly, they are liars, falsifiers of the truth & it needs the main stream media to call them out, but they don't. The British 'Gaudrain' believes there is a climate crisis & the BBC is equally vociferous. These people ( both media & climate activists) are creating unnecessary fear & are therefore evil. It is interesting to note that the British government has been considering making Extinction Rebellion a criminal gang in law after the disruption that they have been causing in London. This means that their members can be given prison sentences instead of paltry fines which they can easily pay from their extensive funds. Get on with it I say. All governments have a responsibility to call these creatures out for what they are & take action against them.
Hey, Martin. I recommend the docudrama Mister Jones, based on how British journalist Gareth Jones discovered the Soviet famine waged on Ukraine and how it was kept secret from the world with the help of a complacent media. For any journalism teachers with backbone out there, please show this movie to your students along with the surrounding historical facts (including the debate of the Holodomor being a genocide or democide and how the communist “deniers” are crackpots just like their Nazi counterparts) so that they will learn that the establishment mostly cares more about status and wealth than the truth, even at the expense of countless lives.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BqnfmCu6fUk
Thank you so much for your clear, concise and to-the-point article. We live in dangerous times, and need to expose and speak up about the totalitarian forces facing the enlightened world.