Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Oil industry consultant Dana Nuccitelli, writing for the Guardian, has launched yet another green attack on democracy, by suggesting that older people who voted for Brexit, or who vote against green policies, are committing “intergenerational theft”.
The inter-generational theft of Brexit and climate change
Youth will bear the brunt of the poor decisions being made by today’s older generations
In last week’s Brexit vote results, there was a tremendous divide between age groups. 73% of voters under the age of 25 voted to remain in the EU, while about 58% over the age of 45 voted to leave.
This generational gap is among the many parallels between Brexit and climate change. A 2014 poll found that 74% of Americans under the age of 30 support government policies to cut carbon pollution, as compared to just 58% of respondents over the age of 40, and 52% over the age of 65.
Inter-generational theft
The problem is of course that younger generations will have to live with the consequences of the decisions we make today for much longer than older generations. Older generations in developed countries prospered as a result of the burning of fossil fuels for seemingly cheap energy.
However, we’ve already reached the point where even contrarian economists agree, any further global warming we experience will be detrimental for the global economy. For poorer countries, we passed that point decades ago. A new paper examining climate costs and fossil fuel industry profits for the years 2008–2012 found:
“For all companies and all years, the economic cost to society of their CO2 emissions was greater than their after‐tax profit, with the single exception of Exxon Mobil in 2008”
…
It now falls to the US to do better than the UK. Risk management and the well-being of future generations must trump ideology and fear in the November elections. We simply can’t afford two of the world’s superpowers being dictated by populism and xenophobia at the expense of our youth’s future.
Most old people I know would throw themselves into a fire if they thought it would somehow improve the lives of their grandkids. Claiming old people en-masse do not care about the young is utterly obscene.
When older people vote for Brexit, or vote against fanatics who think it is OK to advocate disenfranchising groups who oppose their views, just maybe it is because they have the life experience to see through the lies of would be tyrants.
Nuccitelli apparently is only giving voice to a widely held notion after the vote.
“Inter-generational theft” seems to me more like “inter-generational squander”. The current generation of under-25 seems not to know of their inheritance of freedom, and seems not interested in finding out.
I look at the college campus and see speech codes and movements to ban “hate speech”. Even such a mainstream speaker as Condoleeza Rice got disinvited as a speaker. Apparently some points of view are not to be tolerated. In some segments of society, freedom of speech has been obliterated. Other freedoms are not far behind. The vote to remain in the EU by the under-25 crowd is very much the same. It seems that if allowed, they will squander their freedoms for reasons even they cannot articulate.
I think no government money should go to any university with “no platform”, “safe space” or “trigger warnings” policies.
A college group hosting a controversial speaker handed out pacifiers to protesters that said something to the effect of “I survived the *speaker* tour”. Many of the protesters were unamused.
I thought it was the cleverest thing I had heard of happening at a campus “protest” in the last few years.
I suggest Dana and his followers look at this:
Outstanding…………And anti-Brexit snob in the US should watch that and try and cling to their arrogance.
+1000
Facts seem to not appear in modern democratic debating. Long ago a statement of a free people of a State, mirrors this Leave vs. Remain issue. That statement in part “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” . Is this to be free from tyranny?
Actually FredericE, what you tried to cite, actually says: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
They actually could have offered as a reason, something like the following:
“The sun rising in the east, being necessary for a warm day at the beach in a free state; the right …..etc.
has EXACTLY the same meaning according to the normal rules of English grammar. Whatever a militia is, is totally irrelevant.
G
The quote at the end of the film from DH Lawrence is worth bringing out:
“Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.”
Ain’t that the case?
From the last slide:-
“Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.”
― D.H. Lawrence
Or to use an old saying from my Lancastrian heritage:-
“Clogs to clogs in three generations”
On a similar note, there’s an old saying in the US “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations”.
Shirtsleeves being a working class garment.
That is, the first generation generates great wealth, the children squander it, and the grandkids are back to working for other people again.
Hello, with age comes not so much a case of being more intelligent, but the result of accumulated wisdom as to what has occurred in their hopefully long life.
Now in my 90th year I can truly say, “Being there, done that” and can spot a fraud coming a long way off.
We have always had what the US West called a “Snake oil salesman” . Budding politicians who mostly would have never made it in the Real World, so they take the politicial way to power and money.
And they can always find a problem that we, the average citizen never realised that we had, and then of course we are told by them that their way is the only way to “Save ourselves from far worst things to come”
Climate change is just the latest one to come along, and sadly its taken off, why ?
Because it suits our present crop of politicians, who want to remain in their well off jobs.
It’s called critical thinking The youngsters do not have it
As with so many Warmist accusations, this is the precise opposite of the truth. The Warmists are the ones who want to steal economic growth and infrastructure resiliency from future generations, in the name of the false religion of catastrophic anthropogenic warming.
He fails to point out that the vast majority of nonvoters were young. We have no idea how they think. We are not Obama who upon losing the midterm ascertained as his lesson that the nonvoters were in favor of his policies.
Anyone less than 40 has never lived without the chains of Brussels and so is unqualified to have an opinion. They should not have been allowed to vote.
Then again, all those old folks generate no wealth, they are only a drag on the economy.
I suppose they should all be euthanized for the good of the under 30s.
Do these ****ers understand what they are saying?
Actually, I think they do.
Criminals.
Typical Nuccitelli. Certainly not “73% of voters under the age of 25”. It might be 73% of people under the age of 25 who bothered to vote.
Sky Data 25 June:
18-24: 36%
25-34: 58%
35-44: 72%
45-54: 75%
55-64: 81%
65+: 83%
Projection, not collection. The poll wasn’t designed to measure age turnout, so this is a guess, but others have come up with similar figures. The young didn’t bother turning out.
Spot on, Martin, I was about to point that out. As Mark Twain said “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Dana Nutcase deals in the latter, as do his partners in intergenerational theft – the climate hoaxers.
Not sure how many Sky Data surveyed. Lord Ashcroft surveyed over 12 thousand people who had just voted before the result was announced (and got the 52/48 split correct). His figures indicate that only 32% of 18-24 year olds voted, that 3.6 million did not vote (total electorate 46.5 million, votes cast 33.6 million) and that 76% of 18-24 year olds either voted Leave or didn’t care enough to vote. Not quite the story Dana Nuccitelli would have you believe. How young people in UK can view the catastrope that EU has brought to other young people in southern Europe with collapsed economies and huge unemployment and then vote for more of the same whilst accusing us oldies of selfishness escapes me. Most people I know having had 40 year’s experience of what morphed into EU voted to give their granchildren a chance of something better and a say in that.
Martin
You are right and as I pointed out on the thread below –75% of the 36% who voted is only 27% of those eligible to vote in that age group. Nuccitelli is just using the usual alarmists twisting of figures tactic.
“The problem is of course that younger generations will have to live with the consequences of the decisions we make today for much longer than older generations.”
As a consequence of decisions made by the older generations, the younger generations are alive today.
As it as always been.
Youth is wasted the youth…..
The generational voting gap may also reflect a problem with the schools teaching logic and critical thinking.
No sense in pointing out that there would be no European Union to withdraw from without the efforts of the greedy old farts during WW2. History is so, like, yesterday.
If not for the old farts the ballots would have been in German.
There was once some minor activity called “The Battle Of Britain”. You ought to read what the old fart Britons did in it.
They had help from some like mined refugees from a devastated europe, who knew all too well what failure would bring.
I salute every one of them that stood and fought what must have seemed an unstoppable juggernaut.
Nuccitelli’s argument is a classic example of the unethical debater who doesn’t have a case. In its absence, he descends to ridicule, discredit by derision, and character assassination.
Nuccitelli’s argument about generational differences also rests on the basic falsehood of cultural determinism — that one cannot think beyond one’s contemporaneous culture.
This is the foundational mistake of Marxist/Leninist thinking — that there is no human independent mindfulness and therefore cultural propaganda controls all thought and development.
This idea that humans are clay upon which propaganda would work its magic was the basis for the attempted ‘new socialist man.’ It failed abysmally.
This is also the central idea of post-modern culture studies.
There may have been a time when cultural determinism could be validly debated, but today the idea is beyond stupid.
They make the assumption that the young people who did not vote would have followed their socialist teens in voting for remain. There is no way of knowing since they chose to abstain.
Having abstained the question becomes why?
Apathy would be number 1 reason.
2nd reason might be, they trusted the older generations including their parents had enough experience to make a choice.
All this intergenerational nonsense does not stand up to scrutiny. DO these accusers have a crystal ball that can foretell the exact nature of the world 20,30, 40, 50 and 60 years out? NO.
In others words, this marxist confected outrage designed to cause trouble because they were beaten.
The vote has to be ratified by parliament, but it would be a foolish parliament that defied the people’s vote.
> … it would be a foolish parliament that defied the people’s vote
I’ve seen that statement before and asked this question before:
What exactly do you think would happen if indeed the UK Parliament decided not to honour the plebiscite results ?
So far, no sensible answers.
What exactly do you think would happen if indeed the UK Parliament decided not to honour the plebiscite results ?
So far, no sensible answers.
Insurrection
More likely, they just didn’t care enough. Which implies that they are fine with either outcome.
Is there anything that points out that climate is really the issue and communism is the bottom line when the people who want to stay in the EU start using youth as their rallying cry? All is pretty much a fabrication without any bases. The only thing the greens are lacking at this point are armed soldiers. But First, they have to be able to silence the skeptics. It isn’t for a lack of trying. Which if the greens are trying to do that in more than one country, isn’t that close to racketeering?
I think the writing was on the wall in England, money flowing out, rules and regulations flowing in. I don’t doubt that financial interest in the EU will try to punish England.
Dana N and his ilk lost. He seeks a reason why. His published reason does not to have any merit.
Why even give him further unreasoned voice here?
Because the more people see the ‘Greens’ red in tooth and claw, the less they’ll fall for the ‘Green’ BS.
I honestly think Twitter may have saved the world by allowing the left to shout their obnoxious thoughts to all and sundry without a compliant media to ensure they’re filtered for sanity first.
“However, we’ve already reached the point where even contrarian economists agree, any further global warming we experience will be detrimental for the global economy.”
Which “contrarian economists” would he be blathering about… some may wonder? GK
The IPCC declared long ago that warming up to 2C from the pre-industrial was good. We are less than half way through that. Is Nuttichello disagreeing with holy script?
You know, that remark makes sense if “contrarian economists” is referring to economists who support his ludicrous ideology. I suspect he and other retainers took a leaf from Gruber’s book: depend on the stupidity of the voter. Fortunately, the Brits actually got a direct vote about this particular issue.
All I got was increased premiums and decreased care. Thanks, scumbag senators.
Whoops! Should be “remainers”. Autocorrect is not always smarter than I am.
The human brain does not reach full maturity until age 35. How did the Framers of the US Constitution know this now well established fact, when requiring the president to be of this age?
A society of humans all under 30 couldn’t function. Even Neanderthals had elders in their 40s and 50s.
Ut oh. 35? Damn. Um, can I get a do over? I wasn’t paying attention and let it slip by.
Richard Fernandez had this to say:
“Essentially people much older than you gave you what you now take for granted. They won World War 2, fueled the great boom, walked through the valley of the shadow of nuclear death — and had you.
You didn’t make the present, nor as you now complain, are you making the future. No children, no national defense, no love of God or country.
“But that’s just it. You’ve brainwashed yourselves into thinking someone else: the old, the older, the government, the dead would always do things for you.
“If you learn anything from Brexit, learn that nobody got anywhere expecting someone to do things for him.”
Sounds right to me!
They have also allowed World War 2 – by appeasing Hitler, allowed Cold War – by being blind to the danger of communism until around 1946, made a giant debt, burned most easily extractable fuel, lost the Western superiority in technology to Asia, in case of UK – lost an entire empire that their predecessors had built – how spectacular! They allowed huge islamic immigration, and allowed the spread of this ideology in homeland. Essentially invented eco-nuttism. Now they are trying to mess up European integration.
Related issue: have a look at Luboš Motl’s site – http://motls.blogspot.com.au/
” France, Germany demand the establishment of the Fourth Reich
Remaining 25 member states should be turned into protectorates ”
At first glance I thought this was satirical …
To be fair, the Germans will be responsible for funding the EU now the UK is going. If they’re paying for it, they should at least end up owning it.
If the Germans are smart, they won’t want it. Now, let’s see how smart they are.
Sorry Rocky – but the Germans are definitely not very smart today. You have only to look on their “Energiewende”…
http://notrickszone.com/2016/06/27/red-blood-on-green-hands-germanys-energiewende-turns-into-a-wrecking-ball-the-rescue-that-isnt/#sthash.9Gghonsv.dpbs
The reason for that sorrowful state of German public thinking is too much lopsided green propaganda in their MSM. And history shows the Germans have a sad tendency of following all kinds of insane propaganda rather uncritically…
Ugh. I used to think Merkel had some sense but her actions of the last few years do not support that hypothesis.
All the free thinking Germans immigrated to Pennsylvania. Trust me, none of my Pennsylvania Dutch relatives let anyone tell them what to do, and are likely to do the opposite just to tick off the person.
All of the comments here summarize all of my reasons for never as much as clicking a link to this vile leftist tabloid, never mind take anything it writes as something even remotely associated to anything truthful.
The numerous comments here just summarize all of my reasons for never as much as clicking a link to this vile leftist tabloid, never mind take anything it writes as something even remotely associated to anything truthful.
So those who have contributed decades of taxes and work are thieves as opposed to those who have contributed nothing? The opposite is happening. What is wrong with you, Guardian? Don’t you understand democracy?
Dana
The Guardian understands what democracy is alright, that’s why they despise it and vehemently oppose it. That vile left-wing tabloid would be the most undemocratic publication in the free world. They advocate TYRANNY not democracy and only support speech that upholds their wicked party line.
It was the “older” generations that made the original decision to join the EU … they have now realized their mistake … the young folks should STFU and get a job …
If the staff at the Guardian weren’t embarrassed by publishing that incoherent screed (excerpted above,) why was I embarrassed reading it?
Because you have a better grasp of reality and critical thinking would be my guess.