As an opening statement, I want to say that climate change is real. My concern is the exaggeration, as I see it, of the human causation of it and the reason/agenda behind that exaggeration.
My opening question is, why are so many people willing to believe catastrophe narratives?
I understand why people want to believe good news that they're told, that's obvious. But it's much less obvious to understand why people are so willing to believe potentially really bad news, apparently uncritically.
We have been given, via politicians, global unelected quangos and the media, climate catastrophe ‘the end of the world is nigh’ predictions since the late 1960s. For example, in the 1960s we were assured that overpopulation would mean we ran out of food before the end of the century; in the 1970’s we were told that oil would run out before the end of the century; we were told in 2017 that the Great Barrier Reef is dying, then in 2023 that it has recorded the fastest growth of coral in 40 years; and there are scores of like examples. None of them have come true but we’re continually promised they will or a new one will soon. The predictions of catastrophe keep coming and vast swathes of the population keep believing them.
I can only think that there are three issues in play.
Firstly, people simply cannot believe powerful and influential people/organisations would lie about something as important as this. Therefore, they aren't lying and it's all true. This well-meaning wilful credulity is being used to alter society in ways which under normal, (i.e. non fear & panic) circumstances, would be deemed unacceptable.
Secondly, and this picks up from my previous comment, there are people who have ideological agendas which benefit from keeping people permanently on the defensive, worried, frightened;
Thirdly, and extending the previous point, the climate industry is worth £billions which will not be given-up easily.
People will object to me saying that those people making climate catastrophe predictions are lying and I suppose it depends on how you define lying. If, for you, something has to be 100% untrue for it to be a lie then you are correct; they aren't lying. However as in a court of law where you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, then yes, they are definitely lying.
Let me put my cards squarely on the table. Climate change is real but the extent to which humans are causing it is exaggerated and they know it. The science, to the extent that highly complex multi variant models can be called science, does not support the level of concern which those responsible for communicating on this matter choose to message out.
To me, that constitutes lying because they are not telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Of course we shouldn't be putting raw sewage into our rivers; of course we shouldn't be chucking plastic into the oceans; of course we shouldn't be deforesting & should be planting trees; of course we shouldn't chuck litter and fly tip in the countryside; of course we shouldn't over fish and kill animals to extinction.
The stopping of these things is sensible and obvious.
But as we know, the Net Zero Policies being enacted, both in our country and around the Western world, go much further than this and directly impinge on freedom of movement, freedom of speech, financial security and energy security via unreliable pretend green (think of the rare elements that go to make them and the short working life plus disposal costs) alternative energy sources.
China has more carbon emissions than the developed world combined. But let’s blame it on ‘western’ farmers & cows, plaster solar panels on prime farmland, fill landfills with wind turbine blades & use electric vehicles with batteries that include cobalt mined by child slaves in Congo. Let’s flagellate ourselves while China laughs at us. But it’s all for the greater good, apparently.
All of which brings me on to the political philosophical question of just how austere and restricted we are prepared for our lives to become in order to supposedly (we hope) do something which will benefit humanity on the planet longer term. As in all things in life, there comes a point at which the lack of enjoyment, the lack of freedoms, the lack of civil liberties, the stifling control that the State apparatus has over your life will simply make life so grey and drab that you question whether or not it’s worth living, at least for those who can remember when we had the freedoms. Just ask those who lived behind the iron curtain of communism.
Now I understand that comfortably off people, especially those living in cities with good public transport, will not see many of these things as a major issue because it will be some considerable time before such creeping restrictions on freedom of movement and freedom of what we can do, where we can go, what we can & can't eat etc will hit home to them.
But surely we are intelligent and unselfish enough to project ahead and say that, as usual, restrictions that affect a relatively small number of people in relatively small ways initially, will increase and escalate to the point where it affects a huge number of people in major ways, and it's really only the top 10% or 20% of people who will be in a position of financial strength and/or political influence such that they can continue living as they wish. Everyone in the bottom 80% downwards will find within a generation or two that they'll have lost many freedoms and civil liberties compared to their grandparents and great-grandparents (i.e. us). That where people can go, and by what means (car and plane travel) and how often etc are all severely restricted except for the rich and powerful and there will have been no change from a positive point of view to the climate whatsoever because it's too big, too complex and we cannot alter it unless we set off hundreds of nuclear weapons in one go or something like that. But otherwise we cannot alter it meaningfully either for good or for bad and we should stop allowing this myth to be used as an excuse for giving the State apparatus and unaccountable unelected global bodies like the UN, WHO etc control over our lives and allowing them to restrict our freedoms and civil liberties all based on an exaggerated problem with a series of unachievable goals using civil liberties reducing & financial independence reducing solutions.
I think that the likelihood that those pushing climate change as a human made catastrophe rather than an historically continuous variable and by extension, pushing various policies which just so happen, purely by coincidence of course, to reduce individual freedoms and civil liberties and accrue more power and control to the State & global quangos; the likelihood that those people have only the best motives and intentions, that the increase in State & Global quango control and power is simply an unfortunate accidental by-product as opposed to the reason they are doing it; I think that will turn out to have been a naive and credulous viewpoint.
If I'm going to be criticised for being too sceptical, for being too distrusting of politicians, too wary of large and remote powerful and influential bodies, a conspiracy theorist (see addendum below) then all I can say is that I would rather be criticised for that than being a credulous accomplice to the slow but steady removal of freedoms and civil liberties which our forebears fought so hard for, over many centuries.
After all, someone who is heavily sceptical, who wants to closely question authority and hear opposing views, is merely asking other people to think more closely and more deeply before deciding whether to believe and do what they’re told or not.
What’s wrong with that?
Whereas the credulous are allowing a small number of powerful people with their own selfish agendas to subjugate the majority, which ironically will eventually include themselves, in a modern form of the mediaeval feudal system.
As Huxley said, ‘we'll all be slaves and be happy about it’.
Well, I won't be, and I encourage everyone else not to be either.
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Addendum
In order to try and shut people up or get other people to ignore them and certainly to avoid having to have a sensible conversation about the issue, the derogatory term ‘conspiracy theorist’ is bandied about. First of all, just as a technical point, they aren't theories they are hypotheses; they are conspiracy hypothesists.
Hypothesising is observing what is happening and then putting causal scenarios together that seem to fit that observed evidence.
That just seems sensible to me.
That is properly engaging with what is happening in society rather than just either ignoring it or believing whatever you're told.
The strange thing is, nobody seems to ever discuss what the opposite of a so-called conspiracy hypothesist would be.
Someone who either focuses on their own life to the extent that they really neither know nor care about what is happening (i.e. if it's not affecting me, it's of no importance) OR someone who is happy essentially to go along with whatever is the mainline view given out by, for example, the BBC as long as their life is cushy (i.e. I’m all right, Jack, don’t rock the boat).
If a conspiracy hypothesist is something you shouldn't be (but you should!) then a blind adherer to mainline political narratives is definitely something you shouldn't be.
Perhaps the derogatory term for them should be something like ‘complacent sheeple’? And as I intimated above, I would rather be criticised as a conspiracy hypothesist, for being too sceptical of State & Global quango sanctioned authority via tame ‘experts’ while alternative experts are silenced, than being not sceptical enough, or indeed, at all.
It’s the complacent sheeple who allow those with power and influence to behave just as they like, while telling the rest of us how evil & selfish we are for not agreeing to continually tighten our belts and accept reduced rights, reduced freedoms, reduced services and reduced financial & energy security.
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