Note: I don’t normally allow the discussion of things related to Nazi Germany here, including discouraging the use of the word “denier” due to it’s “Holocaust Denier” connotations. But this full page ad in the Sunday papers in Britain, touting “climate crime” and “climate cops” is just a bit over the top, and deserves some attention. It is particularly relevant since the sponsoring website climatecops.com has a teachers section, and we’ve just seen some sensibility from Schwarzenegger in Sacramento on this very issue. I find this method of indoctrinating school children to normal everyday living being harmful to the earth with the “climate crime” connotation as distasteful and wrong headed. I have no problems with energy conservation, in fact I encourage it. But combining such advice with a “climate cop” idea is the wrong way to get the message across. Can you imagine what sort of reaction the neighbors will have to the kids hanging this door hanger on their front door? Will the result of this now be hiding your electric dryer behind false walls so the kids and neighbors don’t see it?
At the very least, npower could have chosen a different color scheme: red, black and white are the same three colors used in the flag of Nazi Germany What were they thinking? – Anthony
Reposted from the website EU referendum:
Can I be the only one more than a little disturbed by the latest campaign to be fronted by energy company npower?
Launched today with large colour ads in the Sundays, it appeals directly to children, urging them to enlist as “climate cops”, to root out “climate crimes“, and thus “save the planet”.
In a luridly-designed website, mimicking the style of “yoof” cartoons, it offers a bundle of downloads, including a pack of “climate crime cards“, urging its recruits to spy on families, friends and relatives, inviting each of them to build up a “climate crime case file” in order to help them ensure their putative criminals do not “commit those crimes again (or else)!”
Quite what the “or else!” should be is not specified, but since the “climate cops” are being encouraged to keep detailed written records (for those who can read and write), there is nothing to stop these being submitted to the “Climate Cops HQ” for further sanctions, the repeat offenders being sent to re-education camps. And for those “climate cops” that successfully perform the “missions” set (or turn in their own parents), there is the reward of “training” in the “Climate Cop Academy”.
In a system which has echoes of Hitler’s Deutsches Jungvolk movement, and the Communist regime Pioneers, perhaps successful graduates can work up to becoming block wardens, then street and district “climate crime Führers”, building a network of spies and informers.
How nicely this ties in with James Hansen’s call to put the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming.
No doubt, with a willing band of “climate cops”, the prosecutors can spread their nets wider, reaching into the homes of all climate change deniers, until the insidious virus of doubt is exterminated (final solution, anyone?). Then we can all march on the sunlit uplands of a “carbon-free” planet – to the tune of Ode to Joy no doubt.
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Keystone Kops
Re-posted from our forum, placed by a noted local (British) journalist:
“No one should be surprised by this turn of events. Totalitarianism always recruits children. In 1984 children are encouraged to join The Spies, a more vicious version of the cubs or scouts. In Pol Pot’s Kampuchea, Year Zero began with children denouncing adults in middle class professions. In Mao Tse Tung’s Cultural Revolution were not Red Guards vicious young ideologues whose pleasure it was to drive out intellectuals into the countryside to shift shit and plant rice? The worship of youth is always a big mistake.
Jim Greenhalf”
My kitty is a klimate kriminal. Kitties are the kause of klimate change. Seriously though, it appears that appeals to Nazism and Stalinism is rooted in human nature when a problem fails to be solved in time, whether it is real or not. So, who should I watch out on the street for now? The Climate KGB, or the Gestapo of Good Weather?
[snip – I welcome your comments but please, let’s leave the taunt and ad homs out of this]
This is very disturbing. I live in Europe, and the politicians are really going off the deep end. The above campaign is yet another unsettling sign of a coming madness, which all starts somewhere. And the latest campaign in Europe shows this madness is starting off in earnest.
What can happen when reason succumbs to radical ideological doctrine and widespread madness?
Expect a sort of “KLIMATE KRISTALLNACHT”, where energy consumers will have their windows and property smashed and spray-painted by marauding eco-zealots. See how Hansen and Gore are fanning the flames of intolerance.
Indeed Hansen now seems on the verge of calling for the herding of climate criminals onto railcars for transport to centers for the final solution. These centres could have signs up front: “ENERGIESPAREN MACHT FREI” (Saving energy liberates).
Or climate criminals may be just sent off east somewhere to climate gulags. Watch out for Stalinst-like cleansings, where millions of CO2 emitters will simply be purged.
The odds of the above happening are sadly far greater than Hansen’s kook scenarios coming true. They’ve hasppened before, and not long ago.
Or else? I can think of a few things a new-minted little cadre of Green Guards could do to coerce their non-complying fellow citizens. Vandalising a neighbour’s SUV. Spray-painting walls and doors (with environmentally friendly paint, of course.) And superglue has its mischievous uses as well (as the geniuses at Plane Stupid have shown.) For indoctrination purposes, it’s vital to get to people while they are young, as radical Islamist groups also know. As the Jesuit saying goes: “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.”
I know my previous entry sounds radical.
But humanity is never ever far from madness. This latest campaingn, and the tones of intolerance by Hansen & Co, are signs that we are indeed entering a new period of madness.
The rest of us ought to be preparing for a kind of Climate D-Day.
IS this what its coming too!?!?
Speaking of re-education.
The chief meteorologist at one of our local TV stations here in Buffalo recently came out in support of AGW after spending a few days in Boulder, CO at NCAR. Should we start calling it the National Center for Atmospheric Re-education?
Are they now operating a concerted effort to get meteorologists to get with the program and embrace AGW, since they’ve been such a well known body of skeptics for so long?
I am speechless.
I know the UK government has bathed itself in the baptismal waters of the Church of Global Warming. But, what in the H#%$ are they thinking?
This isn’t helping anyone or anything. This is nothing more than nasty propaganda. Teach em young to be eco zealots and turn in others that don’t follow their climate religion?
Ahg. I can’t even begin to describe my utter disgust at this!
My name is Rich Hickey and I am a Climate Skeptic.
Oops, I left my computer on overnight. Might want to come write me up.
Isn’t it interesting watching the fascination Europeans have with dictatorial personalities? They seem content being ruled by either a political strongman, or a huge nameless, faceless, unelected and unaccountable government bureaucracy, which intrudes on all facets of their lives, right down to their clothes lines and cell phone chargers. And ten dollar a gallon gas? It’s a small price to pay for the putative security of having all those tax sucking bureaucrats rule their lives.
Looking back on 20th century history, I wonder why the U.S.A. paid so much blood and fortune to save these Euroweenies from the same fate that they seem to crave today.
There’s no denying that most Europeans have a serf mentality. The only difference in the cartoon ad is that the kid has on a red shirt, instead of a brown shirt. Sign of the times, I guess.
As an American, I can’t help but be disgusted at the Europeans’ servile demeanor. Those with any “can do” attitude must have already immigrated here. As a John Wayne character once said, “The weak died along the way, and the cowards never started.”
/rant
After reading Pierre’s post above, and the others, I owe them an apology. Not all Europeans are wusses. But there are too few who believe in their own self-sufficiency to outnumber the servile herd, which is always eager to trade its last remaining freedoms in return for the mirage of security.
creepy
Orwellian.
I think this climate cop thing is a good idea. Parents who are caught out should be suitable chastened and help put things right. They should carry out the following CO2 reducing activities:-
1) Remove the fuses from most of your child’s toys, tv, phone charger, etc.
2) Turn off the heating/air con to your child’s bedroom, ambient should do
3) Refuse to drive your child to anything fun
4) Serve cold, locally sourced food (lots of broccoli)
5) Buy new clothes for them from a second hand source
6) Halve their allowance and place it in and eco fund.
7) Make them plant trees on the weekend.
8) Send them to a local camp while the rest of the family fly away on a holiday.
9) Make them wash the dishes and their clothes by hand.
I’m sure we can think of some more helpful carbon cutting hints.
Smokey:
That’s a pretty broad brush. Let’s wait and see what kind of backlash this causes. There are plenty of libertarian types, at least in the UK. It also means very little until some important icon comes under threat. For example, curtailing night time football will likely produce a backlash of sizable proportions.
This type of program, like throwing blood on people with fur coats, may well serve to wake up people to the more extreme political aspects of AGW promoters.
Re Smokey (13:19:51) :
I am a climate sceptic, and I live in Europe. I feel offended. I could come up with some counter arguments, but I will not.
I can’t see how Smokey’s post is helping the issue of fighting the AGW madness. Can’t we just work together?
The future belongs to them.
Stunned. Just stunned. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up.
[RANT]
Why not just come out and call them “der Gore-Jugend?” It can be mandatory service until age 16 and pack’em off to the Climate Change Assault Detachment also known in the inner circle of the National Green Workers Party (NAGWP or Naggies for short) as the ‘Storm’-troopers. There could be special opportunities for the ones willing to turn in family and friends, especially their parents and siblings. They get a carbon-black shirt when they join the Climate Protective Squadron!
Perhaps skeptics shall become inconvenient “Lebensunwertes Leben” and the Naggies will gas us with their sequestered CO2 at Climate Concentration Camps?
Skeptikerfrei! Das ist gut, mein leader, ja?
[/RANT]
My apologies to my Deutsche friends. The slide into totalitarianism can be invisible to all but the most observant until the Reichstag burns. This sort of stuff scares the heck out of me and sarcastic humor is sometimes the only release from the fear that we are tottering on the edge of that dark night.
“Lebensunwertes Leben” was the Nazi philosophy of ‘Life Unworthy of Life” which was the justification for the extermination camps and the other horrors of the holocaust. When we allow the marginalization of any segment of society simply because they don’t agree with the opinions of the current majority, we risk repeating the history (again).
I wonder what Hitler’s carbon footprint was?
We’re going to jail boys and girls… just a matter of time. Ain’t science grand?
Pierre Gosselin:
Klimate Kristallnacht? Why did I not think of that? I think it is time we d****rs prepare for a Climate Cleansing, where the Supreme Green brainwashes us like in A Clockwork Orange, where they hold our eyes open with those rod things and constantly give us eye drops, all while watching An Inconvenient Truth and having the IPCC AR4 report read to us during the credits. I think I would say that it is “very likely” (greater than 90%) that politicians in Europe will push even more radical things than this before a very ugly public uprising. It’s funny how most mentions of global warming in the media are made by politicians, journalists, and actors instead of scientists these days.
[…] This foolishness was brought to my attention by Watts Up With That. […]
The UK has rather nice organisation called the Advertising Standards Authority. I’d advise anybody who lives in the UK and finds the advert disturbing to complain to the ASA. Just a single complaint will result in them investigating the advert.
In response to Smokey’s comment, and as a Briton whose grandfather fought on the Western Front, I would like to assert that not all of us here, on the other side of the Atlantic, are servile in the way you state. Try telling the young British soldiers currently fighting in Helmand Province that they are cowards and serfs, and you will get a robust response, to say the least. We have nothing to prove.
Regarding green taxes and the like, politicians in the UK now surely know that if they attempt to coerce the people into carbon serfdom, they will lose their grip on power, come the next election. We will exercise our democratic rights and throw them out.