The British government owned BBC has hosted a talk from privileged Oxford Professor Danny Dorling, demanding that rich people (which includes everyone from the USA) be “controlled” for the good of the planet.
i’m Danny Dorling, I’m professor of Geography at University of Oxford, and in my very humble opinion one of the worst things about high economic inequality is it damages the environment.
High economic inequality is extremely damaging to the environment, because the greedy do not know how to control themselves.
Thomas Piketty, who is a brilliant economist from Paris, has done incredible detailed work recently, looking at the consumption and pollution patterns of the richest one percent, and he has shown that the richest one percent disproportionately contribute to greenhouse gasses and to carbon pollution which are damaging our planet.
This is because they buy so many things they do not need, because money is not an issue for them.
It’s because they have so many homes that they travel between, is because when they travel they don’t travel in a sustainable way. At the extreme they’re flying in private jets; there isn’t a better way to heat up the planet and damage our environment than to fly in a private jet and they need to learn the importance of this.
Because climate change is the biggest threat that we’re facing, and we’re partly facing it because we’re allowing the greedy people to carry on being greedy, and we’re not controlling them for the good of everyone.
…
Video: https://www.bbc.com/ideas/videos/opinion-the-super-rich-are-damaging-the-environmen/p064kjgj
If you listen further the professor extends his definition of “rich” people to include poor people in America, who are rich by global standards – so pretty much everyone in the USA is part of the target group the professor believes needs to be “controlled”. Professor Dorling blames the celebrity culture for driving poor people in rich countries to spend more on extravagances, to try to keep up with the rich people.
Professor Dorling’s solution is for everywhere to somehow become more like Germany and Europe, with government enforced redistribution of income and assets. This enforced equality would create fewer aspirational super rich cultural icons to excite poor people into trying to buy expensive stuff they don’t really need.
Even people from the USA who aren’t white?
If the average income in the US is $40,000 (£30,000) annual, and ALL the US is culpable due to income, then the same thing applies to ALL Oxford Teachers making more than £30,000 annually as well as ALL GB citizens making that much.
And to use Einstein’s argument, it only needs one person in the US – or other ‘rich’ country – to be shown not to be greedy (and I submit there are many) then this ludicrous argument is shown to be false.
How come so many youngsters these days are well below the average, doing jobs that used to pay average wages (e.g. certified healthcare workers)?
The louder he talked of his honor,
the faster we counted our spoons.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We’re on the same wavelength. 🙂
Indeed … as a humble person he should realize that there are people in the world more qualified for his position than he is … so in all humility he should step down.
“I’m Danny Dorling, I’m professor of Geography at University of Oxford, and IN MY VERY HUMBLE OPINION one of the worst things about high economic inequality is it damages the environment.”
Not nearly humble enough, Danny boy! You apparently know less-than-nothing about climate science and are just another ignorant global warming alarmist.
In my not-so-humble opinion, you should shut-t-f-up!
Best personal regards, Allan
Aye, Allan!
Whenever someone declaims how “humble” they are, it is a sure thing they’re not humble, at all.
Pretentious, pompous, condescending, patronizing; everything but humble; this before considering Dorling’s desire to tyrannize people.
He should wear s sign that states “Pompous despot seeks people to tyrannize”.
Indeed, as soon as some starts bragging about how humble they are you know that they aren’t. bragging and humble just don’t go together.
One take on this quote is just not enough, so let’s break it down:
“I’m Danny Dorling, …
Well, hot diggity, Danny, your last name is almost spelled like “darling”, which you sure seem to be one of, to not be able to hear yourself speak anymore hypocritically than you apparently do.
I’m professor of Geography at University of Oxford, …
Whoop, de do ! Congratulations on your position of high economic status.
… and IN MY VERY HUMBLE OPINION
I can only chuckle. You, of course, Danny, will not understand why, but the readers of my comments WILL.
… one of the worst things about high economic inequality
… says the devil.
is it damages the environment.”
What’s YOUR carbon footprint, … in your position of high economic status, Danny? I bet it’s greater than mine, and so I suggest that you quit your job as professor of Geography at an Ivy League university, give up your house, go live in a MUCH lower economic status than you do now, in one of the countries where I’m sure you are aware of the overall lower economic status (since you ARE a professor of geography), and THEN stick by your words.
well said Robert
Allan
the worst thing about people who announce themselves as humble, is that they are invariably wealthy, well educated, connected and have an audience.
I’m far from financially wealthy (spiritually, immensely wealthy thanks to my family and friends), I’m ill educated, and other than for the grace and patience shown by those on WUWT, not at all well connected, and I have no audience.
I would welcome the opportunity to demonstrate to this sycophant just what genuine humility is, by introducing him to some of the people in deprived areas in Glasgow I worked in as a Copper.
He targets the wealthy 1% of the population for his condemnation, yet utterly ignores the 99% who are genuinely in need of his benevolence. He somehow imagines that stripping the wealthy of their goods and chattels, and distributing them to the poor would make any more than an iota of difference. Give a man a fish and all that!
Despite my shortcomings, I have no problem taking these people on in verbal, face to face combat, and I have sent many, slinking from the battleground, bloodied and bruised.
I despise these virtue signalling liberals, comfortable in their isolated, privileged bubbles, who dispense wisdom from the pulpit of academia; the last place one should take lessons in life from.
When the war criminal Tony Blair (former UK PM) uttered his fateful words, “education, education, education” then proceeded to charge students exorbitant amounts for worthless degrees, I knew we were on a downward social spiral. And so it has proved.
But does this pompous windbag do anything about the degradation of our higher education system? No! Instead, he pontificates about the wealthy 1%, of which he is no doubt a member.
Sorry, rant over.
Signed: PissedOffHotScot!
If the environment is bad in rich, developed nations like Britain and America what does it look like in countries which are ‘poor’? Last time I checked people more pre-occupied with having enough to eat for their children don’t really care about the pristine beauty they are destroying to catch dinner. Survival is our species most basic instinct, appreciation for beauty and nature generally come much further down the list.
Hello HotScot my friend,
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
“Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder’s welcome.”
From “EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS AND THE MADNESS OF CROWDS”
Charles Mackay (1841)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds
______________________
I bought Charles Mackay’s excellent book recently for my daughter’s Science Fair project, and after more than 150 years it is still a good read. She used it to help debunk the 1972 ban on DDT, which DOUBLED the number of deaths from malaria, more than half of which are children 4 and under whose deaths peaked at almost 1 million per year – just babies for Christ’s sake – and half of these deaths were easily preventable.
With the exception of major wars and murderous leftist politics (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.) the banning of DDT in the fight against malaria was probably the most deadly error in hundreds of years – and this incredibly stupid error was made by educated people based on faulty science and a poor grasp of reality.
An even greater error, in terms of human mortality, is the global warming scam and the “phony war” against increasing atmospheric CO2. The overwhelming evidence is that increasing atmospheric CO2 will lead to improved plant and crop growth, and any resulting warming will be mild and beneficial.
Earth is significantly colder-than-optimum for humanity and the environment. Meteorologist Joe d’Aleo and I wrote this conclusion in our 2015 paper, referenced below. Twenty times more people die from cold than die from heat – about 2 million Excess Winter Deaths every year worldwide – an average of about one hundred thousand in the USA, equivalent to two 9-11’s per week for 17 weeks every year!
Even more startling is the preliminary estimate of Excess Winter Deaths in the UK – about 48,000 this winter! The UK suffered about HALF the average annual Excess Winter Deaths of the USA, but the UK has only ONE-FIFTH the USA’s population. High energy prices, or “Heat or Eat” as it is termed in the UK, is becoming a significant cause of premature deaths of the elderly and the poor. Anti-fracking groups in the UK, many of whom are phony-green Marxist fronts, have cost your country dearly in billions of lost pounds and hundreds of thousands of needlessly-shortened lives.
This is very frustrating, because some of us knew that the global warming scam was false nonsense as early as ~1985, based on the evidence available then. Since that time, the evidence against the global warming scam has grown more and more credible, and yet this multi-trillion dollar-per-year scam continues.
I (we) published in 2002 that the global warming crisis did not exist in reality, and that green energy schemes would not be adequate to replace fossil fuels. Both these statements are now proven to be correct, for anyone who objectively examines the evidence.
I suggest that anyone who continues to support global warming alarmism and schemes to abate fossil fuels is seriously deluded at best, and more correctly is guilty of crimes against humanity.
Best personal regards, Allan in Calgary
________________________________________
COLD WEATHER KILLS 20 TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS HOT WEATHER
By Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae, September 4, 2015
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
Addendum to my recent post, now in moderation:
Add Lysenkoism, another scientific scam that probably caused the deaths of tens of millions in the Former Soviet Union and China.
Lysenkoism (lĭ-sĕngˈkō-ĭzˌəm)►
n. A biological doctrine developed by Trofim Lysenko that maintains the possibility of inheriting environmentally acquired characteristics.
Plus +10,000, Janice!
🙂
I think it was a Churchill quote…
“A man with much to be humble about”
The biblical account of the Pharisee and the publican (tax collector) in the temple comes to mind. The Pharisee’s prayer is one long humblebrag about how much good he does and how he thanks God that he’s not a deplorable like the publican praying next to him.
SUCH UMBRAGE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SUCH OUTRAGE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SUCH A PREDICTABLE REACTION !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
PERHAPS IT WAS POSTED ON APRIL THE FIRST ??????????????????????
IN WHICH CASE…………………………………………………….GOTCHA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The “poms” are noted for their sense of humour and their eccentricity !
AND this guy is no different !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Direct from HIS WIKI………………
..”…………….[He} completed a PhD in the Visualization of Spatial Social Structure …………………………………… ……………….His favourite pastime continues to be building sandcastles on beaches. ”
AND , MIGHT I , VERY HUMBLY SUGGEST…………………..(.Shirt ! It’s contagious !! )
HIS FAVOURITE ACADEMIC PURSUIT IS BUILDING CASTLES IN THE AIR !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.
It seems to be quite possible that HE HAS ACTUALLY MOVED INTO ONE OF THEM
and that HIS LANDLORD is THE PSYCHIATRIST WHO NOW COLLECTS THE RENT !
I wonder what his Modest Proposal is?
Hmmm. Wonder how he gets along with the English monarchy?
His opinion is pretty humble, all right.
Keeping the peasants in their place is the goal of a fair number of initiatives, and to some people, all Americans are nothing but uppity peasants.
“Keeping the peasants in their place…” Bingo, we have a winner.
As a one percenter who can’t control himself, he talks proudly from his prestigious podium about controlling all the others …
First question that comes to mind — how much do YOU make, Mr Oxford professor?
Or more to the point, where does your pay come from? Certainly not poor people.
Tom in Florida
Yes it effing well does. The poor people who struggle to pay UK university fees in any UK university are contributing to his salary by supporting the higher education system, not just the privileged few that can get into Oxford.
Head teachers in publicly funded secondary schools are known to be paid anywhere between £250K and £400K a year, for running an effing school!
Sorry, you touched a nerve.
I understand your point but it is too broad. It is the elite who fund Oxford directly and those are who pay his salary. I wonder if they want to be controlled as he suggests.
My “pay” comes from my long, hard-worked job-earnings. Where does your come from?
beng135, that’s how you earn your pay. The pay itself comes from the owner of the company you work for.
The EU is filthy with rich elites, who manage to keep all their money while distributing the taxes provided by the middle class.
Large amounts of CO2 are down to equality not inequality. If almost everyone was poor and only a few could have a decent life then CO2 would be way down. How do these sorts of idiots get so far in their career?
Well here it is right out in the open – the “Global Warming” movement is really about imposing communism on the world. Remember when they would say anyone who said that must be crazy?
It sounds more like a glorious return to feudalism where the commoners know their place or will be forced into it.
Mr. Darling Dorling needs to get his math straight. The United States has about 5 percent of the world’s population, so even if there was nobody outside the USA in the top 1% wealthiest people, only 20% of Americans would be in the top 1%. How many of you AGW skeptics out there own a private jet? I don’t!!!
…Professor Dorling’s solution is for everywhere to somehow become more like Germany and Europe, with government enforced redistribution of income and assets. …
Germany is cram-packed with very rich Euro-Elites, who have done very nicely out of the Euro being underpriced on the World Markets – thus allowing them to export high-quality German engineering at rock-bottom prices…
He leaves out Germany is totally failing it’s own emission controls. It has already admitted it will miss it’s 2020 targets and has scrapped them. The 55 percent of 1990 targets for 2030 stands but no-one has any real idea how they are going to achieve it.
?itok=-Y-xcb52
The money shot graphics of German GHG emissions is
So while green eco lunatics think Germany has done a great job because of it’s power generation reductions most other sectors have increased removing the gains.
..He leaves out Germany is totally failing it’s own emission controls…..
The rich Germans, and, indeed , Professor Dorling, don’t care about that. Emissions targets are for little unimportant people….
I wonder how much of the decrease in the German industry emissions was because of companies leaving Germany because of the high energy prices.?
The reality is much of that heavy CO2 intensive stuff just got moved to China, so your right. Taicang is a town where many of the German industries have congregated.
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/m/jiangsu/taicang/taicanghomeofgcic.html
Another liberal who believes he’s psychic.
“This is because they buy so many things they do not need, because money is not an issue for them.”
How does he know what people need? Just because he doesn’t “need something” is not evidence that others don’t.
I’ve never met anyone for whom money is not an issue. No matter how rich they may appear to me.
In what free society is anyone required to prove they “need” something they want to have?
The contempt the Left seems to have for freedom is frightening.
What’s more frightening is that they are entrenched in our institutions like the imperial forces at Iwo Jima.
MarkW Yes but he’s a Professor. He knows what is right and true and good. It is for our own benefit that we listen to him.
PS Blessed are the Cheese Makers.
Blessed are the Cheese Makers, for they are inherently dearth dearth…
Oops, dearth edit made redundant words. Dreadfully embarrassing.
Blessed are the Cheese Makers for they will cut it.
MarkW
Agreed. The people I have found most careful with their money are the wealthy.
I am privileged to know one of the wealthiest me in the UK. We used to meet for coffee occasionally. Guess who always, somehow, ended up buying the coffee. The clue is, it wasn’t him.
At least his subject is Geography, not Economics. Who does he thinks is employed making all the stuff we don’t need? And if we redistribute it, the people who get the money will spend it on stuff too.
So how does that reduce consumption?
“Is it hot in the rolling mill? Are the hours long? Is $15 a day not enough? Then escape is very easy. Simply throw up your job, spit on your hands, and write another Rosenkavalier.”
-H. L. Mencken
My dearest danny darling
Here is some information that may console you.
https://chaamjamal.wordpress.com/
I always thought that Ayn Rand was exaggerating until I read Professor Dorling! Another example of “creeping logicalism”.
The logic of a despot, bent on controlling the masses from high in the ivory tower.
Let’s hope the BBC aired it at 3am.
He quotes Germany as being an example to us all – Germany has a significantly higher CO2 footprint than the UK and hasn’t reduced its emissions in almost a decade. Many of the super rich from the poorer countries in the World are living in the US or the UK, so much for their frugality. The inequality disatisfaction western people feel is down to better communication of our differences, not the differences themselves. People in a democracy feel that they can improve their lot, whereas people from less free parts of the World know that they have to make the best of a bad lot. However they now believe there is a chance for them – hence mass migration. It turns out that they’re not satisfied at all.
Why doesn’t someone tell the conceited little turd to f*ck off?
Geography used to be about rivers, mountains and such like, now it is about (from the link in the article):
Much of Danny’s work is available open access (see http://www.dannydorling.org). With a group of colleagues he helped create the website http://www.worldmapper.org which shows who has most and least in the world. His work concerns issues of housing, health, employment, education, wealth and poverty. His recent books include, co-authored texts The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the way we live and Bankrupt Britain: An atlas of social change.
i.e. politics by proxy.
Geography used to be about rivers, …
” Strabo was a Greek geographer, philosopher, and historian. ”
Modern academic geography has fractured into as many parts as there are gas molecules in a cow fart.
Amen. National Geographic Magazine covers anything under the sun. Every issue I ask myself, “What does this have to do with geography?!?!”
I think he misses the other side of the coin:
“High economic inequality is extremely damaging to the environment, because the greedy do not know how to control themselves.”
…and because the disadvantaged are so busy trying to survive the day they do not have the luxury of choice.
Some of the most horrible and systematic enviromental damage I’ve seen was in China, USSR, Cuba, Venezuela…all ruled by communists. Although when I think of it, the upper party ranks do live much better than the average comrade.
MJB
Brilliantly put.
I notice he doesn’t mention the 200,000,000 people anticipated to die prematurely by 2050 from smoke inhalation because they don’t have cheap electricity from fossil fuel power stations.
But that’s OK, because he doesn’t have to associate with them.
You’d think this fellow with his Posthole Digger degree would realize that global affluence for all is the ultimate solution to overpopulation. I think young Danny needs to spend some time off-campus among the folks he proxies into convenient statistical compartments. He badly needs to educate himself on both sides of the issues he pontificates about.
I love the way he substitutes “greedy” for “wealthy”.
If it were that simple, then we can solve poverty easily – just get the poor to be greedy. Then they become rich apparently.
For many people, greedy is defined as having more than I do.
This sad speech comes as no surprise. Both the politicisation of Britain’s universities (great and small) in general, and the move of political geographers into the climate debate seem to be recurring themes these days.
Consider this as a simple example: the Geography function at one of Britain’s very oldest and (perhaps previously) respected learning institutions – Glasgow University – has been combined with the Earth Sciences department to form the School of Geographical & Earth Sciences.
The Deputy Head of School is one Professor Jo Sharp. She lists her professional interests via this link: https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/ges/staff/joannesharp/#/researchinterests, which starts off with the following gem of a statement: “I am a political, cultural and feminist geographer with particular research interests in postcolonialism and critical geopolitics.”
I have no doubt that Professor Sharp’s work is of the very highest quality. How, precisely this qualifies her to administer an Earth Sciences faculty is, I am afraid, beyond me.
I will repeat, ad infinitum, that the AGW argument started as a scientific one, and it must end that way. The political activists (whether doubling up as geographers or not) should leave the climate science stage, not be encouraged.
Ian Magness
As a student of postcolonialism, I wonder if she supported the work of Bruce Gilley, Department of Political Science, Portland State University, on his work “The case for colonialism.”
I understand the paper was peer reviewed and due for publication, except that the magazine editor and his family received death threats if it was published, so Gilley withdrew it.
I also wonder if this is now the future of academic publishing.
I suspect I have one of the few copies of this paper in circulation.
@HotScot
I’d be very interested in reading that paper.
Hugh,
I would love to get it to you but no idea how.
All I can give you is the information printed on the report:
The case for colonialism
Bruce Gilley
To cite this article: Bruce Gilley (2017): The case for colonialism, Third World Quarterly, DOI:
10.1080/01436597.2017.1369037
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1369037
Published online: 08 Sep 2017
Perhaps it can be found in an archive somewhere.
Hope it helps.
Yet the political and climate venues are the best means of global exposure. If one wishes to be a contemporary world influence, those are the ideal arenas in this world gone bonkers. I suppose that recipients of the global media limelight will continue to become more and more bizarre in their ideologies.
>sigh<
more of the Paul Ehrlich lie, dressed up like lipstick on a pig. Ehrlich's bs is nearly 50 years old, stale, and still flat out wrong.
This derivative twit is just boring and predictable.
Hey, Ehrlich still makes money off of his doom mongering. Whatever the market will bear, I guess.
Being the Bing professor at Stanford, I must assume that he operates “The Machine That Goes BING!” on that campus:
“Thomas Piketty, who is a brilliant economist from Paris, has done incredible detailed work recently, looking at the consumption and pollution patterns of the richest one percent,“
‘Incredible’ being the correct word in the most literal sense.
It seems to me that the wealthy do the best at controlling their procreation, which helps limit the number of people potentially contributing to climate change.
Indeed. I was under the impression that Piketty’s work had lost all credibility years ago.
It did. Nowadays Picketty is recognized as a leftist economist.
Yes his central claim has been debunked. The Times Rich List, just published in the UK shows he is wrong too.
If inequality is so dangerous to climate change, faux left academic virtue signallers should live on the local minimum wage, stop drinking wine, stop smoking weed and never go on holiday. Ever.
Or going to conferences.
If this nincompoop ever gets in a position controlling me he will find that I will have got myself a gun.
“High economic inequality is extremely damaging to the environment, because the greedy do not know how to control themselves.”
A TRASH-CHOKED estero in the slums of Sta. Cruz, Manila.
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/files/2013/03/01_estero.jpg
Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
” trash choked ”
The USA is banning plastic straws and single-use plastic bags, so all is well.
Indeed John