The electoral troubles of the green bullies
Eric Worrall writes:
Anyone following the recent G20 will be aware that skeptical politicians, such as Australia’s Tony Abbott and Canada’s Steve Harper, have been subject to intense public pressure from prominent greens like President Obama, to change their public position on climate change. What is less apparent is that all of the most prominent climate bullies appear to be on the brink of losing power, due to a voter backlash back home, against their extreme green policies, and other policy failures.
President Hollande, the greenest of the EU politicians, is plumbing record levels of unpopularity in France;
http://rt.com/news/189444-france-hollande-popularity-low/
Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain just got nailed twice (second time in the last few days) by the upstart United Kingdom Independence Party, in high profile by-elections. As an indication of UKIP’s position on climate change, a few years ago, UKIP’s climate spokesman was Lord Monckton.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2842718/Mark-Reckless-wins-Rochester-election-Ukip.html
Chancellor Merkel of Germany is facing electoral difficulties on the home front, losing ground to euro skeptics (it is not clear if the challengers are climate skeptics, but the challengers are strongly pro business, anti EU);
We all know what happened to Obama – how he and his climate policies were soundly rejected in the US midterm elections.
The question – could here and now really be the last show of strength by green politicians, before voters back home sweep them and their policies into the dustbin of history? Will green politics soon be a thing of the past?
What a poor article. None of the politicians referred to are actually Greens. Cameron has long ditched his “Greenest Government Ever” play for votes in the UK. In the real world actual Green Parties are doing OK – particularly in Europe, but nothing spectacular. The rise of UKIP and similar parties in Europe has zilch to do with the Green movement and has not detracted from the Green movement at all. In fact its interesting that in recent UK elections the Greens and UKIP are doing well at the same time.
The politicians I named are prominently pro-green in their public policy positions, and have been applying significant pressure on skeptical politicians like Abbott and Harper to adopt a greener policy stance. I never suggested they were card carrying members of the “Green Party”.
French President Hollande claiming failure to resolve climate change will lead to conflict.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/16/us-g20-summit-climatechange-hollande-idUSKCN0J00JA20141116
British PM David Cameron “prodding” Abbott on climate change.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/cameron-prods-abbott-on-climate-change/story-fn3dxix6-1227124437244
Angela Merkel: “Climate change will not stop at the Pacific islands”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/17/germany-abandons-their-climate-target-as-their-chancellor-sings-to-the-crowd/
Obama pushing green issues in a speech delivered to voters in Brisbane.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/g20-summit-barack-obama-puts-climate-change-at-fore-in-speech-at-university-of-queensland-20141115-11ndmg.html
Hello Eric and thank you for your commentary.,
This winter in the Northern Hemisphere is predicted to be quite cold in North America (Eastern and Central), Western Europe and very cold all across Russia, compared to seasonal norms.
Energy costs in Europe are much more expensive than in North America, due to imbecilic European green energy policies to “fight global warming” and irrational green opposition to shale fracking. Many elderly and poor in Europe will not be able to keep warm this winter, due to the unnecessarily high cost of energy.
I am concerned about a significant increase in excess winter mortality rates. Winter cold kills many more people than summer heat – typically about 15% more people die monthly in Europe during the four winter months than in the eight non-winter months. Excess Winter Mortality in Europe and Russia amounts to over 500,000 souls per year – these are real people, not just statistics.
While other factors such as flu deaths contribute to Excess Winter Mortality rates, I suggest that the inability to heat their homes in winter due to high energy costs is a significant cause of death and illness, particularly among the elderly and the poor.
I suggest we can thank the greens for causing widespread suffering and death among the elderly and poor. I further suggest that the greens should be held accountable as the consequences of their irresponsible conduct become fully apparent.
Regards to all, Allan
Excess Winter Mortality in Europe: a Cross Country Analysis Identifying Key Risk Factors
http://jech.bmj.com/content/57/10/784.full
Table 1 – Coefficient of seasonal variation in mortality (CSVM) in EU-14 (mean, 1988–97)
CSVM 95% CI
Austria 0.14 (0.12 to 0.16)
Belgium 0.13 (0.09 to 0.17)
Denmark 0.12 (0.10 to 0.14)
Finland 0.10 (0.07 to 0.13)
France 0.13 (0.11 to 0.15)
Germany 0.11 (0.09 to 0.13)
Greece 0.18 (0.15 to 0.21)
Ireland 0.21 (0.18 to 0.24)
Italy 0.16 (0.14 to 0.18)
Luxembourg 0.12 (0.08 to 0.16)
Netherlands 0.11 (0.09 to 0.13)
Portugal 0.28 (0.25 to 0.31)
Spain 0.21 (0.19 to 0.23)
UK 0.18 (0.16 to 0.20)
Mean 0.16 (0.14 to 0.18)
How’s that campaign against “light pollution” coming along James??
http://www.physics.org/featuredetail.asp?id=58
Frankly I’d like a lot if my fellow citizens learned to direct their light to property they own instead of my eyes.
Pollution or not, ugly bright lights have bad effect on price of neighbours house.
Whilst I’m normally happy to have a go at Abbott’s nonsensical views on CAGW, on this particular issue he’s right. Excessive light is pollution of a sort. As a libertarian I am all in favour of reducing government (including local government) spending to an absolute minimum and so I’m totally against the unnecessary lighting up of the sky which we see all over the country. There is no justification for street lighting which leaks upwards so much and which is on all night. In my village, where we are the proud owners of about 8 street lights, almost no-one is about after midnight yet all the lights are on. What’s more, from 15 miles away, I can clearly see the orange glow which is Swindon. Frankly, I don’t need (or want) to be reminded of Swindon at all!
This has b*gger all to do with CAGW and everything to do with reducing unnecessary splurging of tax-payers money.
A stopped clock is right twice a day. Mr Abbott has shown himself to be right once (so far) so there is hope, even for him 😉 .
Europe Goes Green
Sir Edward Grey
“The lights are going out all over Europe and I doubt we will see them go on again in our lifetime”
Fine thanks.
James Abbott:
If you will note, the alarmism of the Greens is falling flat as people start to laugh. As the alarmism goes, so go the Greens. The Greens are nothing but a “warm” air balloon and they have run out if warm air. In the US the movement has collapsed, in Germany they they are ignored, in Australia they are a smelly corpse and everywhere the Greens are foundering.
Wishful thinking.
Without the climate alarms, the Greens are nowhere, politically. I’m sure you understand, James.
“In fact its interesting that in recent UK elections the Greens and UKIP are doing well at the same time.”
Not true of the Rochester & Strood by-election. UKIP won. The Green candidate got less than 5% of the vote and hence forfeited his deposit, along with the Lib Dems. Indeed, I wonder if the green vote was in part a “plague on all your parties, but especially the Lib Dems (lowest ever % of the vote). By-elections are famous for being expressions of “anti”.
The Green vote went up in the R&S by-election, not by a huge amount, but it did go up. Only UKIP and the Greens saw their vote go up.
James Abbott, don’t extrapolate by-elections to a national trend. Neither UKIP nor the Greens will win the General Election. But they do well in by-elections. So why did the Greens gather extra votes in Rochester and Strood?
My suspicion is that the LibDems are so disgusted with the coalition that they are seeking alternatives. Some LibDems are almost Green anyway (although without the honesty, obviously. A lefty party that backs the Tories has no principles). That is why the Green vote increased.
Now, UKIP have gained MPs from defections – Why haven’t the Green Party?
Some LibDems must be on the cusp, right? If the Greens can win a by-election.
The only good green is the green served on a plate with a nicely cooked steak with oodles of gravy and mash taties!
Obama, the ‘Pigeon President’ of the G20. Flies in, shits on everything, flies out.
From an Australian perspective, Obama, leader of the free world, contributed the least to the G20 conference.
And with his cowardly retreat from Iraq he contributed nothing to world peace either.
Now there’s a quinella for you.
Will Green Politics soon be a thing of the Past?
No, it will not. The ability of the greens to use our love of nature to control us may well abate in the near future but they will continue to be a force for a long, long time.
Part of the reason is that most people want a clean planet and love wildlife. We want clean air, clean water, and all the other warm and fuzzy things that go with good environmental stewardship. The greens play on that desire for good conservation practices to slip in their socialist dreams of total control.
The greens also have a very, very powerful co-conspirator in all of this. Politicians and bureaucrats love power over the “mundane” unwashed masses more than life itself. The greens offer “saving the planet” to the state’s minions as a cover for their power grabbing. It is all for your own good don’t you know.
The press is another powerful co-conspirator. The lazy people in the mainstream media are in reality just printing and mouthing government press releases. You have to dig deep into the alternative press, such as this site, to find out the truth surrounding the green’s claims that CO2 is a dangerous poison that will destroy life on this planet if it passes a certain “tipping point”.
Recall that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming was not the first scare coming out of the watermelons. (watermelon = green on the outside and red on the inside) Once upon a time, DDT was going to wipe out all bird life and was said to have driven the bald eagle to the point of near extinction. I am sure others here could name many other examples dating back before the CAGW hysteria.
Notice that the EPA is formulating a tsunami of new regulations as I write this according to recent reports. The war against the greens will go on for a long time.
Well put
The bald eagle has a new enemy.
Ronco’s all new Rapture Eliminator.
It will remove those pesky eagles, hawks and owls from your local skies.
(good for removing those nasty bats and sparrows, too)
What DDT couldn’t do, GE will fix it for you.
Good post, Mark. Going Green is cultural, and isn’t going away.
Extremists will continue to exploit it for their own purposes. CAGW will die, but other absurdities will take its place. Skeery ocean pH, for example.
The idea of Obama “contributing” to anything seems kind of flimsy from the get-go.
With his extensive properties, energy consumption and travel, he contributes to CO2 fertilisation of the planet.
Finally, someone found some good from the Obama presidency.
By taking an ideological and fantastical approach to public policy and extending power by false claims rather than one based upon practical analysis ( which wouldn’t serve them) the truth has now become the enemy of the green politicians.They are oul on a limb of their own choice. Unfortunately when we were in third grade most of us learned that turning down the path of “the dog ate my homework” didn’t have a good long term result. Most people when they pay attention are not as stupid as the politicians believe they are. The people are beginning to pay attention.
Eric Worrall
November 22, 2014 at 1:11 am
I think the appropriate response on behalf of my fellow Australians to any American interference which might have occurred in Australian politics in 1977 is “thank you”.
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If you prefer U.S. appointed candidates on the Australian ballot at election time, why not just move to the U.S.?
Then you can vote for our real leader.
Will Green Politics soon be a thing of the Past?
With that kind of loot at stake, only over their dead green bodies. Seriously. Like asking “Will Russian Marxism be a thing of the past?” “Will mafia tactics be a thing of the past for the mafia?”
Purge all communists from government appointed leadership positions. It’s difficult to identify them because all communists are liars but not impossible when you take apart their policies that will always lead to us having LESS of something and them being more assured of a position of control over us.
Imagine how many sparrows would have been saved if Mao had had “climate change” to blame for famine instead of them? But then again proving that SCF (sparrow caused famine) was a hoax was a LOT easier than proving CAGW is a hoax.
I remember as a child all that scaremongering about the oil running out. I also remember the dissenting voices about using coal instead. In fact, we’ve more known oil, gas and coal reserves than during the energy panics of the 70s. I also remember the scares about acid rain when the evidence proves that lake acidity is natural, not the result of industrial pollution. No doubt there were scares about the motorways yet the evidence suggests nature has benefitted from their existence. Lets see what scares about fracking prove unfounded. There’s nothing new about Green and it will never go away, I’d say it will just plod along from one unfounded scare to another.
Firstly, it is not “Steve Harper”. It is “Stephen Harper”. He is not anti-green. He is just cognizant of the fact that Canada’s economy depends on trade with the US and refuses to set policies that will destroy the Canadian economy by imposing green costs that will make industry non-competitive.
Harper is a deeply rational person and as such he is deeply unpopular with the idealistic greens who give no thought to the practical implications of their policies. he will address the science of climate change in a reasoned and deliberate manner. He realizes that his actions have consequences and that he must be careful in ways that bloggers and newspaper columnists do not have to be.
Pat, Patrick, Rick…serial? Oi you usually works with me too! I am sure that Steve Harper or Stephen Harper is none too bothered.
You don’t know that Stephen Harper emphatically does not like being called “Steve” and is always referred to as “Stephen” in Canada. Anyone who refers to him as ‘Steve” does not know Canadian politics.
So, what you are saying is that he’s a bit “anal”? He should get a life…
I hope you are right, however there are billions being spent to keep the narrative alive, and money talks. In the case of harper he faces an election next year and his anti GW stance will certainly be a thorn in his side and with most of the media against harper, it’s a very close race right now with harper in second place. Needless to say the other party has all the GW money supporting them.
And if son of Trudeau gets in, we’ll have another made in Canada recession like the 1980’s, only it will be worse this time with more to lose. Is anyone out there old enough to remember P.E. Trudeau’s National Energy Policy that erased billions of dollars in investments over night. Trillions this time if it happens again like his spawn has suggested.
Jack
November 22, 2014 at 1:15 am
That [Abbott’s daughter being awarded a secret & unprecedented scholarship from a private design college lobbying for public funds] is a Labor/green position. The email you refer too was hacked by the communist newspaper, New Matilda. They hacked it to discredit Abbot and they have hacked other emails because they disagree with the politics of the person.
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That’s how they tried to deflect attention from the incriminating content of the climategate emails.
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The Abbot government removed the mining tax that cost more to administer than it brought in. They removed the ruinously expensive CO2 tax that did not move the temperature of the planet by even 0.0001C but had pensioners deciding between eating or heating.
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1) We didn’t get the original mining tax because the elected prime minister (Rudd) was removed in a coup while the tax was still being discussed in the public arena. Gillard then introduced a deliberately weak and pointless version of the tax to pacify the mining companies … and the public:
quote: “January 2014 poll conducted by UMR Research, however, found that a majority of Australians still think that multinational mining companies do not pay enough tax”
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/big-miners-in-firing-line-over-tax-payments-20140115-30va9.html
2.) Most of the power price increases are driven by an agreement (from the government regulator) to guarantee a 10% profit on an any investments the new energy corporations can dream up. We pay that 10% profit in exorbitant connection fees. The privatization of power in Australia occurred under both Labor and Liberal governments against the wishes of the people (nota bene), and we are much worse off for it. The removal of the “carbon tax” didn’t make much difference in the end, because it represented only a small fraction of the automatic annual price increases.
I’m glad its gone. But I’m still paying John Howard’s 10% GST on electricity, gas, and almost everything else I spend money on. Howard’s regressive tax is much worse than the carbon tax, being responsible for accelerating wealth disparity in our once egalitarian nation to the ugly extremes proudly on parade in the U.S.
The GST REPLACED OTHER taxes, eventually! Check your food bill, Coles/Woolies list items that GST is applied to. It’s NOT almost everything. You want to see a GST applied to EVERYTHING? Go to NZ. Ok, not everything. Female sanitary products are GST free.
Just short of their goal?
‘There’s nothing new about Green and it will never go away, I’d say it will just plod along from one unfounded scare to another.’
In 1967 when I attended grade school water pollution was all the rage with the ‘concerned set’. Education departments across Canada instructed schools to show a film about it and the film was very much like ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. The film showed and proved that pollution was so bad in the Great Lakes that you were risking your health by dipping your toe in that toxic mess. That seemed strange to me because the summer before I had spent holidays swimming in those very lakes. In retrospect I guess it was a time when I learned I had a skeptical nature.
I was also told that around that time there were people eating DDT, so adamant they were that it was harmless to humans and other animals. Remember that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBxNGnBxkSI
they wont go down without a fight. In the Rochester by-election in Britain this week they came fourth beating the Lib Dems who are in government with Cameron. They are only sustained by the liars in the UK media whose knowledge of climate physics is zero. We need in the UK both politicians and scientists who have courage to speak out against the green nonsense. Maybe UKIP? We shall see. Scientific truth is on the side of the skeptics. Green history in Germany was Nazi history(70 percent were card carrying nazis!)
I’m no Green but I strongly doubt that most Greens today are Nazis.
They are wrong because:
1) They ignore counter-evidence and so overly assert their certainty.
2) They prioritise their bugbear over reducing poverty and thus propose mass murder – without passion.
3) The models were wrong (whoops).
And yes, some of them tell lies, but I’m sure not all.
Let’s not attack views we disagree with because of unfortunate historical errors. We’d end up condemning all Christians for the Crusades and all Atheists for the Great Leap Forward.
That would make conversations while buying our groceries a trifle awkward.
Terri Jackson
Did you hit send before you had read that through ? Looks like 2 postings about completely different subjects spliced together. Who were 70% card carrying Nazis ?.
At least 70 percent of the greens in Germany in the war years were card carrying nazis!
James Abbott,
This neo-Nazi is a hero of yours.☺
Use of the term “Green” to denote these people is one of the most Orwellian phenomena of our time. Intended to evoke images of flourishing plant life (“unspoiled” by humans), it is the adopted symbol of those whose crusade is to rid the word of the three things that make plant (and, in fact, all) life possible: warm temperatures, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the demon element carbon itself.
I shake my head in wonder every time I hear it. Doesn’t anyone else notice this? Or that Zoolander has just one look?
We live in hope Eric.
“Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain” – And the alternative is,
Ed Miliband, the author of the UKs Climate Change act – http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2008/27/part/1
Smaller partys are available
Dave’s coalition partners are the Liberal democrats.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2580570/Ban-petrol-diesel-cars-2040-earlier-say-Lib-Dems-no-Jags-Mr-Clegg.html
“Ban all petrol and diesel cars by 2040 or earlier, say Lib Dems”
Peter Lillee’s a Tory.
Graham Stringer’s Labour.
There not all bad.
I mean the LibDems have… oh.
Well who knows what Carswell or Reckless think on AGW, anyway? Have you heard?
http://www.talkcarswell.com/home/i-was-wrong-about-the-climate-change-act/2607
It wasn’t that long ago that Democrats in the U.S. were proclaiming the death of the Republican Party and saying they were fast becoming a thing of the past. Then came the 2014 elections and a resurgence for the GOP. I wish I could be hopeful that extreme-green politics was on its way to extinction, but history indicates otherwise. All they need is one warm year, perhaps caused by an El Nino, and they’re back in the alarmism business, at least for a time. Like the tide, these things tend to fluctuate up and down over the years, similar to the climate.
People may not forget your coming winter
http://www.weatherbell.com/saturday-summary-november-22-2014
Will Green Politics soon be a thing of the Past?
————
In the US, the politics of green is morphing into the tyranny of green. No politics about it. No voting, no public input of any kind. It’s stultifying decrees issued by nameless bureaucrats working behind the scenes to hobble the economy and whittle away at freedom.
Grave new world.
I’ll believe they are in full retreat when senior politicians openly challenge or decry or put down, the hypothesis of global warming and when they do not condition their warmist pronouncements with some degree of conciliation to the environmental terror groups.
Hey, people of the world outside the US, get used to OBama, he could be yours in the future. In two years, he’s out of a job here in the USofA. What could be better than community organizing on a world stage. So long as they have teleprompters at the UN, he’s already got the Nobel credential for doing nothing, now he can climb the Peter principal to a new height! Sometimes white, sometimes brown, but always green and red on the inside. I think he would make a great world dicta… I mean leader, when will the UN main chair be available for him? No constitution to shread or trample, just unelected dictation for the foreseeable future…Think on it. The vomitory is on the 9th floor on the Left.
WUWT has habit of doing this – implying that somehow political results are referenda on the green agenda. Yes politician that are sympathetic to the green agenda are polling badly. But the environment is so far down the electoral priority list that I doubt it has any bearing on any vote/poll.
Why do you think any politician will stand on a ‘Green’ platform if all the others are losing at the polls? it’s not as though they do these things because they believe in them, they do them becasuse it will give them more wealth and power.
So what ?
Nobody is forcing you to read this, or is it a habit.
I’ve heard it takes only 7 days to break a habit, I mostly like my habits so I don’t see myself testing that theory anytime soon.
It seems to me that an implication is a two-way street, it needs a recipient.
Best not to be one ?
Green politics is about to become a thing of the past, but it also is about to become a whole lot more shrill and desperate in coming days, as it realizes that it is about to become a thing of the past. Just like tyrannical regimes, fanatical movements become more and more insane as their time runs out – this happens over and over again, sometimes culminating in unbelievable tragedies such as the one at Jonestown, in Guyana. (we just passed the anniversary of that massacre, that’s why it was on my mind)
The greens won’t go like that, of course (or maybe only a few) but it illustrates that many of the hard-core true believers will choose to go down with the ship, so to speak, rather than change their beliefs, and out of spite many will try to take as much down with them as they can. That’s just how ideologues are – if they were reasonable, rational, people, they wouldn’t be there still clinging on until the bitter end.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR the Marxists had very few options open to them. They are, after all, the greatest mass murderers in human history and their numerous economic and social failures left them only one “get out”, the environment. Thus the explosion of Green groups worldwide.
They dream of world wide Government under the UN, a major crime scene in its own right, and have major supporters in obviously Left Wing political parties.
The Greens will not disappear any time soon, if at all. They have nowhere else to go, at present.