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And forgive us our trespasses

25 Sep 2019 | OP ED Watch

NBC News, as it is still called despite the increasing predominance of uncritical advocacy in its output especially on this file, asks its audience for “Climate Confessions.” Because “Even those who care deeply about the planet's future can slip up now and then. Tell us: Where do you fall short in preventing climate change? Do you blast the A/C? Throw out half your lunch? Grill a steak every week? Share your anonymous confession with NBC News.” Man, they’ve got a Goddess and Saint Greta and now a confession booth. Can it be a religion? If so, and if its practitioners need a bit of spiritual direction, we are glad to help.

NBC offers a few samples to get you going, like forgetting the reusable bags in the car, eating ground turkey despite being a vegetarian for 39 years (arguably proof of sins against the language rather than the environment), or commuting alone in a car. But these misdeeds seem trifling. Let’s talk about the mortal sins.

You make stuff up. You fabricate. You repeat discredited stories. You take things out of context. You fiddle data in order to jeer at people. You tell people normal weather extremes are their fault. You terrify children so badly they need drugs to cope, you manipulate them, and you hide behind them (“Youth out front adults behind”, says the Fridays for Future’s “Toolkit”). To be fair you’re also scaring yourselves right into the therapist’s office so apparently you’re going to take climate change lying down.

You puree bats and birds and ignore the toxic waste and exploitation of workers in remote countries that make our solar panels. You issue hysterical predictions and when they don’t come true simply change the date and start again. You say 97% of scientists agree with you but never produce survey data to support it. You say this time the science is certain every three weeks, and that the sky is on fire and we can put it out with a metal straw or some beeswax wrap. You peddle false panic and false hope in the same breath.

You try to starve poor people even in remote countries. You bully academics who don’t toe the party line. You compare climate skeptics to Holocaust deniers.

There. Feel better now? We don’t, because we don’t think you’re really sorry.

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