Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Has anyone else noticed a growing tendency, for greens to criticise the high carbon flaws of their leading lights?
The latest focus of this green backlash is Sir Richard Branson. Branson, who owns Virgin Airlines, regularly self promotes his personal green credentials, with grand public gestures aimed at raising environmental awareness. But the green backlash has caught up to Branson, in the form of this eloquent tweet from British comedian Frankie Boyle:
Click here to view the original tweet
Frankie Boyle is no climate skeptic – he appears to be deeply concerned about CO2 and natural resources. However Boyle is one of a rising chorus of green voices, who are starting to insist that prominent leaders of the movement live by the standards which they demand of the rest of us.
Green hypocrisy is nothing new – witness the blatant green hypocrisy of the Guardian, hilariously satirised by Josh. And the regular frequent flier climate conferences enjoyed by prominent greens must upset at least some in the movement.
We also have Al Gore’s habitual disregard for green sensibilities, such as Gore’s gigantic personal household electricity bill.
What is new is that ordinary people, many with green sympathies, are starting to publicly challenge leaders who claim to be green, but whose jetset lifestyle choices generate more carbon emissions in a year, than most people manage in a decade.
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Why do you think Climate Change keep polling at the bottom of worrisome global issues? It’s because the general public has been wise to their hypocrisy and realizes that if those that use the most don’t cut the most, then why should us little folk? It’s obviously not that big of an issue since they aren’t doing anything to change their lifestyles except preach at us to change ours.
It might be because the global warming elite rarely winter over in the North. They either live on the CA coast or have winter homes in FL, the Caribbean or Med. Mayor Bloomberg used to fly to Bermuda every Thursday.
Switching to nuclear power is inevitable. It is the question of the design and nature. The problem with the nuclear energy production of today is, as someone pointed out, improper choices in design. The problem with the usage of wind, solar, tidal, even hydro, is improper choices in design.
A prototype is created, it’s made to work, and the rush to profit is on. The designs don’t sit around long enough in the “trial and error” stage to spot the changes that would make it a better system. Profit, profit, profit, is the call. Charge! Full speed ahead! it truly is in these aspects of research that the government could and used to be of great service.
When the R&D is done on public dimes, the rush to profit is replaced but the crawl to perfecting. Once perfected, then the system can be implemented with greater safety and reliability. Private companies used to be able to do that because “profit for stock holders” wasn’t the driving force behind what they did. With the advent of large corporations, although they are better situated financially to innovate and produce, the focus isn’t on the service or the product that they create, but the profit for the stockholders – the source of that extra funding.
Big governments are no longer focused on doing what is right for the citizens that support it, any more than are large corporations interested in the welfare of those that support them. Both entities are focused on aggrandizing themselves. Where private companies were more focused on service to their customers, corporations have become, along with government more focused on “servicing” their clientele, much the same way as you would get serviced at “Grandma’s whorehouse,” if you can recall the joke.
And it will continue this way until humanity becomes more enlightened as to what really lies ahead. Carbon fuels will eventually run out, but we can use them now to power our way while we find the truly reliable and safe “alternative energy options.” Until there is a storage system to buffer solar, wind, and tidal sources, there will always be a need for fast acting generation systems, and they currently are all carbon driven. But when the storage system is finally in place, then the only sources needed will be wind, solar, and tidal, with a steady state supplementation from nuclear sources.
We are truly blessed. We have enough fossil fuels to last centuries and enough fission fuels to last much longer. It is rhetorical of me to say I just don’t understand the greenies’ worries. It appears to me that the sense of original sin in mankind is deeply felt and as the Christian religion has diminished in the West,, that sense of original sin has transferred to the environment, making it a new religion.
Peta in Cambria writes:
“Someone here on the interweb, a while ago, planted an image in my mind.
It was of a bunch of hyperactive monkeys, sitting/standing/perched on the branch of a tree all the while shouting and screaming at a few other monkeys down on the ground quietly going about the business of ‘life’ – getting on with things and doing real stuff.
The monkeys in the tree were making no secret of how clever they were by being in the tree – completely oblivious to how fragile their position actually was. They’d lost all idea of how dependant they were on the few monkeys still on the ground
Was it ever so………”
And that image, in turn, reminded me of a Kipling poem from very long ago. Yes, I know Kipling is un-pc. But this poem is so perfectly aligned with that image:
Road-Song of the Bandar-Log
(From The Jungle Book)
Here we go in a flung festoon,
Half-way up to the jealous moon!
Don’t you envy our pranceful bands?
Don’t you wish you had extra hands?
Wouldn’t you like if your tails were — so —
Curved in the shape of a Cupid’s bow?
Now you’re angry, but — never mind,
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!
Here we sit in a branchy row,
Thinking of beautiful things we know;
Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,
All complete, in a minute or two —
Something noble and grand and good,
Won by merely wishing we could.
Now we’re going to — never mind,
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!
All the talk we ever have heard
Uttered by bat or beast or bird —
Hide or fin or scale or feather —
Jabber it quickly and all together!
Excellent! Wonderful! Once again!
Now we are talking just like men.
Let ‘s pretend we are… never mind,
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!
This is the way of the Monkey-kind.
Then join our leaping lines that scumfish through the pines,
That rocket by where, light and high, the wild-grape swings,
By the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we make,
Be sure, be sure, we’re going to do some splendid things!
What of the hunting, hunter bold?
Brother, the watch was long and cold.
What of the quarry ye went to kill?
Brother, he crops in the jungle still.
Where is the power that made your pride?
Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.
Where is the haste that ye hurry by?
Brother, I go to my lair — to die.
Branson believes in Branson.
A mega ego who will live in hypocrisy, say anything, do anything to make himself out to be a Christ.
He knows he owns an airline….he doesn’t care… it is all about his persona… and how it is advanced… today it is eco-religion, tomorrow it is breast cancer….what ever the dumb ditties fall for.
Jet aircraft truly are miraculous, flying above 90% of the atmosphere, using an engine descended from the wheel and burning a fuel JD Rockefeller sold for oil lamps.
One could present him with a rational argument which showed that Arctic sea ice loss is greatest in solar minima, like around 1816, and that increased forcing of the climate cools the Arctic by increasing positive North Atlantic Oscillation states. But who would he believe, the data, or Jason Box?
We have our own energy hypocrites here. Fortunately, one of the more evil ones is retiring.
@ur momisugly dbstealey
What the heck is a “energy hypocrite” ??
====
You’re not going PC are you ?
Probably a bad choice of words on my part, sorry. Reid talks about energy independence, but those are only his words, not his actions.
Also, it was a good opportunity to post that article. Interesting picture, wasn’t it? Reid claims he got broken ribs, assorted cuts and bruises, and a fractured eye socket from ‘exercising‘. Exercising can sure be dangerous!
Reid is from Nevada. Las Vegas is reputed to have a gangster or two. Connect the dots…
Really, it looks more like he crossed one of his organized crime ‘associates’. And now he’s abruptly retiring. There is much more to this story than the media is telling the public.
I believe “cow” only has three letters.
About time someone really tackled Branson.
He overcame his virginity in business (the brand name Virgin comes from that), but he’s a sucker for being seduced by negative people like climate alarmists.
If you keep pointing out the logical inconsistencies of progressives/leftists they’ll take you off their Christmas card list. Oh wait, they don’t do Christmas.
Branson, who’ll take your money now for a space jaunt later, has been begging for it. However, something tells me that very wealthy Frankie Boyle has himself taken quite a few flights on planes…the mad c****.
Frankie is a beneficiary of Polanski effect: namely, his correct tribal credentials and appeal to posh-left luvviedom mean he can get away with saying and doing just about anything (eg, his worst possible kind of joke about Peter Andre’s heavily disabled child).
The barbarians used to be at the gate. Now they’re inside, and institutions like the ABC and BBC can’t wait to give them a gig.
He’s a comedian you stupid c***
I happen to have first-hand experience of what a two-faced tosser Branson is. Self-promotion is all he really cares about.
One would think that the environmental green movement would be honouring carbon dioxide because it is a plant food beneficial to the planet and crop production. But it is actually the opposite. The greenies hate carbon dioxide, which they treat as evil. Carbon pollution is how they describe it. They cannot be very clever. So I offer them the following basic lesson.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is the elixir of life. It is the primary raw material out of which plants construct their tissues, which in turn are the materials out of which animals construct theirs. This knowledge is so well established, in fact, that we humans – and all the rest of the biosphere – are described in the most basic of terms as carbon-based life forms.