The reflexive attribution of anything bad to climate, however implausible, is way out of hand. And it is another example of the tendency of modern communications to reinforce biases instead of forcing people to think, assuming they remember how. In which context we also catalogued three stories that hit us in quick succession in one newspaper. A term here meaning “all on the same day. One was on the failure of politicians to solve high and rising food prices by using their magic powers, whatever those might be assumed to be. Another was Ebola (with a side of Boo Trump!). And in case that one didn’t finish you off, the third was that your gin would soon taste like cardboard because climate change is walloping juniper bushes, the famous can’t-kill-’em bushes that grow when everything else quits. Admittedly if you like being told climate change is behind everything from political posturing to haemorrhagic fever, it’s the kind of thing you’ll like. But is nobody out there wondering whether it’s really possible to tease out the influence of the dreaded global warming given all the other stuff going on? Still, if you’re worried about, say, invasive species, throw in climate change. As with anything.
For instance, grocery prices:
“Michael von Massow, a food agriculture economist at the University of Guelph, said the grocery price hikes over the last five or so years have been a result of poor weather, global warming, currency fluctuations, rising energy and fertilizer costs, the wars in Ukraine and now Iran, and of course pandemic-related supply chain problems – many things, but not an industry conspiracy.”
No. But a blazing globe. Though surely it would strike anyone not hypnotized by the chanting that given that long list of real-world things there’s very little left for “global warming” to have done to the price of, say, coriander, which actually was the focus of the story although arguably it is not a staple food in most households. Even if you treat “poor weather” as a consequence of “global warming”.
It might also strike people that for most crops, harvests have been consistently at record highs, and indeed extreme hunger is at a record low in the world even though population is also at a record high, so what exactly is wrong with the weather or indeed climate conditions?
The problem is, you can blame climate change for just anything and you won’t get in trouble with your editor. Whereas you might if you didn’t mention it. Unlike, say, Canada’s obnoxious system of agricultural supply management which the story does not mention though it deliberately inflates the price of dairy and poultry in this country to hurt the poor. Or, as the government’s cheesy propaganda puts it:
“Supply management is a system that balances supply and demand of a commodity through production setting (quota), price setting and import control as a means of avoiding overproduction and underproduction, setting a fair income for producers and allowing for a stable supply for consumers.”
Why we don’t use it for cars is anyone’s guess if it can really spew wealth by restricting its creation. Remember when chumps thought market forces balanced supply and demand, whereas government subsidizing something created too much supply and restricting it created too little? The press seems not to.
Or the dratted politicians. Canada’s Official Opposition doesn’t criticize supply management while the loony socialists want government grocery stores. As for Prime Minister Mark Blarney, 14 months ago, in March 2025, following the swearing-in of his cabinet, he declared that he and they would be judged at the grocery store:
“Canadians will hold us to account by their experience at the grocery store, when they’re paying their electricity bill, when they or their children are looking for a place to live.”
But apparently it was just some slick-sounding PR that has become, in the classic Nixonian phrase, “inoperative.” So never mind truth or consistency. Whereas climate heating breakdown thingy…
Oh yeah. All of them believe climate change is changing the climate and causing every bad thing.
Thus, from the same paper on the same day, hantavirus and worse:
“The deadly hantavirus and Ebola outbreaks are only the latest crises in ‘dangerous and divisive’ times, the World Health Organization chief says. Opening the body’s annual decision-making assembly in Geneva last week, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus spoke of the new Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which he declared an international health emergency over the weekend, and the rare hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship. The two ‘are just the latest crises in our troubled world,’ he told the gathering of health ministers and high level delegates from around the world. ‘From conflicts to economic crises to climate change and aid cuts, we live in difficult, dangerous and divisive times,’ said Tedros.”
Then he passed the hat since that awful Donald Trump doesn’t want to fund such rubbish. Whereas evidently a great many people are happy to hear that climate change priced coriander out of reach and caused haemorrhagic fever and want more.
So same day, same paper again, “the small indigo berries that have made the Balkans a key part of the global gin industry” are reeling:
“In Serbia, juniper is not farmed but gathered from wild bushes by hand. Growing over a wide range of the Northern Hemisphere, the hardy plant thrives on rocky slopes and in harsh conditions where few others can survive. Despite that resilience, the presence of juniper has declined in parts of Europe in recent decades – particularly in lowland areas where it once grew, under pressure from climate change, overgrazing and habitat loss.”
So overgrazing, habitat loss and of course all together now baaa baaa baaa “climate change”.
What climate change? Junipers thrive on rocky slopes in harsh conditions. Specifically what’s that thing called you get with global heating? Oh yeah. Heat. Also the thing you get with drought. That’d be dryness. So while heat and drought kill things that like cool wet weather, they also kill things that like hot dry conditions because um uh climate aaaaaaaah!
Print. Print. Print.
