Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to The Guardian, the climate revolution is suffering from a lack of green supporters who manage to make it to the polling booth on the right day.
‘We need some fire’: climate change activists issue call to arms for voters
Campaigners say more than 15m people who care about the environment did not vote in the 2014 midterms – can they create a ‘green wave’ this November?
Among the motivating issues for voters in US elections, the environment is typically eclipsed by topics such as healthcare, the economy and guns. But the upcoming midterms could, belatedly, see a stirring of a slumbering green giant.
“The environmental movement doesn’t have a persuasion problem, it has a turnout problem,” said Nathaniel Stinnett, founder of the Environmental Voter Project, which is aiming to spur people who care about the natural world and climate change to the ballot box. “This group has more power than it realizes. In the midterms we want to flood the zone with environmentalists.”
Any such voting surge would go some way to heeding the increasingly urgent warnings from scientists about climate change. A major UN climate report released this week said the world risks worsening floods, droughts, species loss and poverty without “rapid and far-reaching transitions” to energy, transport and land use.
“We show it can be done within laws of physics and chemistry,” said Jim Skea, a co-author of the exhaustive report. “The final tick box is political will. We cannot answer that.”
An obstacle in the US is the large pool of environmental voters who don’t actually vote, according to public records and polls analyzed by the Environmental Voter Project. It estimates more than 15 million people who rank the environment as a top tier issue didn’t vote in the 2014 midterms. Since its creation in 2015, the voter project claims it has increased turnout of target voters by as much as 4.5% in elections.
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To help inspire any greens who may be having difficulty organising their diaries, below is an interview with a high profile green candidate on Watters World.
the climate revolution is suffering from a lack of green supporters , and they would be right .
Hence why the green party has less electoral success than UKIP , although to be fair more than the Monster Raving Loony party. Perhaps they need to use more of the ‘magic shaken water ‘ which makes up part of their health policy ?
Not sure what the situation in the US may be as regards the demographic of Green voters but here in the UK I would think that it is the younger generation especially the so-called millenials. They are quick to criticise older voters for their lack of green credentials but even the Green supporting BBC is beginning to recognise that its not all about driving large cars. Two recent articles/documentaries on the BBC website highlight the impact of what might be best described as the preserve of the young – a fixation on fashion and streaming videos on tablets.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bn6034/stacey-dooley-investigates-fashions-dirty-secrets
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45798523
I would reckon that when the younger generations see their choices being criticised they will probably decide that being Green is not all its cracked up to be and decide to keep their comforts rather than saving the planet. Not that it needs that much saving in any case.
I care for environment. That’s why I’m voting for conservative.
“We show it can be done within laws of physics and chemistry,”
NOPE!
You notice how the Guardian seriously seems to think that voting can change emissions. And maybe it could, if the entire population of the world had a vote.
They seem not to have noticed that the biggest emitters, in particular China, do not do elections!
This is the classic green fallacy. The idea that if we reduce our local emissions we will in some mysterious way lower global emissions, even if we (in this case the UK) are only doing about 1% of world emissions, and no-one is following our example.
All the same, we have to save the planet by losing a few million tons of emissions, while the developing world (not that China is really in that category any more) increase by billions.
Its like trying to save Florida by closing the Navajo coal generating plant.
Completely mad. But it comes up time and time again.
I guess its a new version of saying to a child, eat your pudding because there are starving children in Africa. And hoping that the child never asks how eating the pudding is going to help them!
It wasn’t pudding: it was usually cabbage and from an early age I said ‘send it to them then!’
I went to boarding school and got several detentions for telling teachers that they would do more to help the “starving children in India” by sending them food than they would by forcing me to eat it.
LOL… The Green’s dude is about on par with your average Democratic Party Congressman or Senator.
I checked out when he revealed he’s just another modern day nazi.
Sceptics like you have to make every issue a political one – and it is people like you who are turning the US into such a divisive country. What the f@#k does this have to do with Repubican or Democrat? You are basically saying that the whole of the IPCC are Democrats which is absurd.
Why don’t you try to start thinking for yourself for a change? Why don’t you analyse why the vast majority of people – apart from a very small US sceptic community – believe that carbon emissions are leading to warmer atmospheric temperatures. Why dl you think this is – because they are all Democrats?
Well, let’s see, he was comparing a UK Green Party candidate, to a political party in the United States.
That’s what it has to do with Democrat or Republican.
Round where I live, the Greenies are the totally militant and committed. You should see their volunteers on election day. Talk about in your face! Seems to me they all vote.
In short, I find it hard to believe the Commie Guardian’s claim. Are they spinning a failure to completely bully and dominate others?
No. The Greens are essentially a very small but well funded and vocal minority of activists. The vast majority of urban hipsters are really only green because it is superficially fashionable.
I always think this is the best parody..
Made me laugh.
Made me laugh
UNFCCC
Articles: Search results
https://unfccc.int/gcse?q=League%20of%20Conservation%20Voters
https://unfccc.int/gcse?q=League%20of%20Women%20Voters
UNFCCC connections to Voter organizations?
I just wanted to say your screen name is amazing.
Voters that don’t vote are voters? Grow hemp! These people want their hands on the controls?
People aren’t turning out to vote green because they are sick of the outlandish claims continually made by the IPCC and daft activists.
Panic is obviously setting in amongst the climate faithful, not because the planet might fry, but they might lose their jobs soon.
And the public is recognising the shrieks of panic, as the ridiculous claims are ratcheted up beyond even the credulity of even enthusiastic green laymen.
The IPCC has a reality problem. The targets they set should be realistic and achievable but they have gone the other way by attempting to terrify the public into submission. No one considers $200 Tn and petrol at $240 a gallon either realistic or achievable so are just saying f*ck it, lets get on with our lives.
Terrifying people works (well it doesn’t really) when there is no democracy, no communication and there’s jackbooted militia to enforce the regime. The IPCC just doesn’t have the clout, but it wants it.
I always thought that fire was bad for the environmemt?
Depends. In many areas fire is an essential element to maintain a healthy environment.
Here in the UK we had a day of lunacy when the IPCC report was published but 24 hours later it had fallen from the headlines. And look what the Money is doing. The stock markets are busy tanking but these corrections happen all the time. Nobody has suggested that the Money is taking fright because the IPCC has called time on planet Earth and demanded £120 trillion to fix the problem
The lunatic greens are worried and not worried. Worried because they fear that deep down their theory is flawed and we ain’t going to fry. They also know that there is no majority electoral mandate for the extreme lifestyle changes they demand (mostly of others, it must be noted). Hence the last throw of the dice or the “jumping the shark” nonsense we saw published on Tuesday. But all is not lost and hence no need to worry. The £120 trillion Clime Syndicate (@ Mark Steyn) is running along nicely supported by vast oligarch wealth, huge investments in expensive and unreliable windmills and backed by the media and educational activist elites and dim-bulb pop celebrities.
Fighting is now general across the social front. As a previous correspondent noted, once the young start taking casualties their interest in green virtue signaling is likely to decline. Green over-reach has reached desperate levels. A chap on BBC radio 4 yesterday suggested that we stop all meat eating – everyone, everywhere in the world because apparently it leads to hurricanes and nice summers in the northern hemisphere. Needless to say, nobody was summoned to the studio to discuss this tosh.
Once the young understand that a green future means no burgers and video games, unheated homes and no foreign travel, they might stop supporting the new religion and delve a little deeper into the actual science that has been so cruelly denied them for the last 25 years.
The reason Green voters don’t vote is that they don’t exist.
Any survey will find far lots of people who care about the environment as one of the most important issues, often number one. But that doesn’t mean they care about the environment in the same was as Green parties or pressure groups.
Clean air and seas – Yes , please.
Trace gas emission reductions at huge cost – No, thank you.
If a pressure group stuck to proven harmful issues that were solvable in a short time period at a reasonable cost then they would get great support. And most mainstream parties would do the requested actions.
But the parties and voters are not offered reasonable Green policies. It’s expensive fantasies all the way.
Bingo. Most people, regardless of party, care about the environment. Caring about the environment does not mean caring for the nonsense pushed by the “greens”.
Absolutely. Caring about the environment doesn’t mean agreeing that plant food (CO2) is a “pollutant.” It’s just as batshit crazy as calling oxygen “poison.”
So, people are convinced enough to call for a radical reduction to our standard of living, permanent changes to our political systems, and trillions of dollars in expenditures, but they’re not so convinced that they’re going to… vote? Is that what the guardian is saying?
This is a classic example of cognitive dissonance.
At one level the green propaganda is extremely successful. People, when questioned, agree that saving the planet is a top priority.
However at another level the problem of actually getting the boiler mended so that the house doesn’t freeze takes priority over voting for polar bears. The triumph of Socialism and neo-Marxism is that all these things are now someone else’s problem. The government’s in fact, so why don’t they just do something?
Socialism removes personal responsibility, just vote the good guys in, (or in the EU, just assume the good guys have been appointed already) and they will sort it.
There is something rather ironic about that. Totalitarian authoritarianism generates apathy. It doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always gets in, or in the case of the EU, the government is appointed by a bunch of people you have never even heard of.
What is the point of voting?
Especially Green.
They wont get in, unless you live in Gay Brighton, where they run the town and te rubbish just piles up uncollected..
Well the Guardian should remember — American people don’t need it around anyhow.
n/t Lynyrd Skynyrd
You have to bait and bribe them…
Promise a street party, destruction of property, profanity, and pink hats
back when jim jones showed the SF dems how to do it, things were much simpler.
he just bussed his congregation around to various districts to do multiple votes.
moscone won by 4000 votes. he was feted.
pelosi never forgot the lesson. it’s the basic platform of the democratic party!
ocasio/hogg 2020 make Jonestown great again!
drink the koolaid — who says the left can’t meme?
Which also proves that the environmental movement and Stinnett have a major problem with separating reality from fantasy.
Or they would have noticed that “global warming” or “climate change” rank at the bottom of polls that solicit voter’s concerns. Voter concern poll votes based on loose vague questions.
And rank AT ALL on such “polls” ONLY because the “poll” INCLUDED “climate change” as one of the items to “vote on” to begin with.
Ask people to list the [insert number here] most important “concerns,” and I bet for most “climate change” wouldn’t even make the list unless there was someone tugging at their elbow “suggesting” it.
WE CAN ADAPT to “climate change” – whatever changes actually occur, and whatever the cause of those changes, and we can do so a lot better if we continue to use abundant, economic, reliable fossil fuel energy.
The “environmental movement” has many problems, including an aversion to truth, the facts, and actual science. Getting their fellow Believers to the polls, not so much.
I do not know why anyone pays attention to the Guardians persistent wailings about the climate. Not even the Guardian’s own readers could care less. All this week, in spite of all the hysterical headlines, no article has survived the algorithm that demotes any article without sufficient clicks to keep it at the top “above the fold” on its homepage. This is probably due to readers not clicking on articles that block their comments. I notice the same thing happening to the Independent. If readers see that they cannot express their views on an article they just keep scrolling down the page. This lack of interest has reached such a stage that by the end of this week none of the Guardian’s climate articles could even manage to reach number 10 in the Top Ten articles listed at the bottom of their homepage.
That’s a very good point.
The Guardian readership has recognised that this is alarmist nonsense but the editorial board can’t perform the volte face.
Result – no comments allowed as the readership point out the failings in the IPCC reports and thus no0ne bothers to read the narrow-minded folly.
The fact that the news disappeared so quickly proves that the issue of newsworthy global warming is over.
We Sceptics Won.
The Guardian is also of the opinion that people who died in Hurricane Michael had it coming – see this piece by the high-minded, self-aggrandizing, moral paragon, who hails in the best tradition of witch-burners, John Abraham:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/oct/11/victims-of-hurricane-michael-voted-for-climate-deniers
By the way, the picture of the weed-puffers is also telling – not only does the drug itself promote fuzzy-minded, half-‘baked’ abstract meanderings that those under its influence define as ‘deep thought’ – when you legalize it, you flood your town with a bunch of out-of-state stoners that really don’t care much about any other issue, but bring their votes with them.
That’s the progressive left – exploit your vices, and then use it to control you.
It not just getting our the green vote.
There has been a Green ‘Revolution’. Do to the Green Revolution, many mainstream political parties are not reality limited.
Revolutions destroy until the public wakes up and stops the scam.
The Zombies really believe and have been really successful in pushing CAGW and pushing their fantasy concerning the benefit of wind and solar gathering.
The politicians can fake anything, to them it’s just an intoxicating game.
This the UK Labour Party’s Green ‘Plan’: Triple the nameplate solar capacity and double the number of off shore wind capacity.
Solar panels for the UK? Come on too far north, too cloudy. No need for an engineering study.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-45655310
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/23/rich-borrowed-time-warns-jeremy-corbyn/
More UK labour ‘plans’. Basic tax and spend, with extreme prejudice.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenpope/2018/09/27/the-uk-economy-faces-greater-risk-from-labour-than-brexit/#ff668a2728ca
You guys just don’t get it, do you?
How do you explain the destructive havoc wrought on Floridians over the last two months? Do you really think those people who have lost their homes and everything they possess aren’t now thinking that global warming is exacerbating these extreme weather events?
Climate change will definitely be an issue in the upcoming Mid-terms, particularly for those living in areas exposed to climate events.
So instead of continuously denying climate change how about focusing on solutions to combat it – it would be much more worthwhile use of your time:
http://mankindsdegradationofplanetearth.com/2018/10/10/hellfire-this-is-what-our-future-looks-like-under-climate-change-world-news-the-guardian/
How about reducing your astonishing ignorance about PAST Florida Hurricanes with more time spent on research?
Wikipedia is an easy first start about PAST Hurricanes:
List of Florida hurricanes
“The List of Florida hurricanes encompasses approximately 500 tropical or subtropical cyclones that affected the state of Florida. More storms hit Florida than any other U.S. state,[1] and since 1851 only eighteen hurricane seasons passed without a known storm impacting the state. Collectively, cyclones that hit the region have resulted in over 10,000 deaths, most of which occurring prior to the start of Hurricane Hunters flights in 1943. Additionally, the cumulative impact from the storms totaled over $191 billion in damage (2017 USD), primarily from Hurricane Andrew, Hurricane Irma and hurricanes in the 2004 and 2005 seasons.. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Florida_hurricanes
Ivan’s famous for declaring that everything is evidence that CO2 is going to kill us.
Why is pushing renewables and social reform more important to most greens than reducing CO2?
If you want to reduce CO2 emissions convince your fellow travelers to support low carbon industry friendly nuclear power.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/31/a-conversation-with-dr-james-hansen-on-nuclear-power/
Because it isn’t about CO2 for them, CO2 is just the lever they have choose to get to their real goals – power and the restructuring of society to the shape of their left-wing/socialist agenda. If reducing CO2 truly was important to them, they would, as you point out, be in support of nuclear power.
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Updated April 18, 2018
U.S. Department Of The Interior
Wind Turbines
Includes Department Of Energy (DOE) stated goal for wind energy (20%) by 2030 . Migratory bird information and wind turbine issues.
http://www.fws.gov/birds/bird-enthusiasts/threats-to-birds/collisions/wind-turbines.php
UNFCCC
Articles: Search results, renewable energy goal 2030 Canada and USA.
https://unfccc.int/gcse?q=renewable%20energy%20goal%202030%20Canada%20and%20USA
Like all sceptics you think that anyone who acknowledges climate change is anti-nucleur.
If you bothered to do your reading, you would know that the independent scientist James Lovelock – who knows that global warming is a reality with rising CO2 emissions – advocates nucleur power as one of the solutions for mitigating it. I am in full agreement with him.
‘Like all sceptics’,
Just can’t hold back that collectivist bigotry, can you? Even when you’ve just been called out on it.
And using words like ‘acknowledges’ and ‘knows’ just makes it sound like you’re trying too hard.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt(?) that you REALLY know how to spell ‘skeptic’ and were just in the grips of a temper-spasm while you were typing.
Hey Joel I suggest you get a life rather than devoting it to WUWT. It’s a big world out there man…
Hey Joel I suggest you get a life rather than devoting it to WUWT. It’s a big world out there man…
“Climate change will definitely be an issue in the upcoming Mid-terms, particularly for those living in areas exposed to climate events.”
There ARE no “climate events,” just WEATHER. If you blame “climate change” for hurricanes, then you must also CREDIT “climate change” with the LONGEST PERIOD ON RECORD WITHOUT ANY MAJOR MURRICANES HITTING THE US, which sort of flies in the face of the demonstrably falsifiable “more and more powerful” hurricanes (and everything else “bad”) we’re supposed to be getting because “climate change.”
Now you also need to consider that inconvenient FACT that there is NOT A SCRAP of empirical evidence that any changes to the earth’s climate are caused by CO2 levels, OR the minuscule human contribution thereto. That continued, yet scientifically baseless, assertion falls under the category of “hypothetical bullshit.”
That some gullible people fall for the “extreme weather” con (hint: there is nothing unusual about the recent hurricane or any other “extreme” weather event, as anyone with a modicum of knowledge of weather history can tell you) is no reason to waste precious resources coming up with solutions to non-existent problems
‘Do you really think those people who have lost their homes and everything they possess aren’t now thinking that global warming is exacerbating these extreme weather events?’
That’s because demagogue-idiots like you keep telling people that. See, that’s called ‘exploiting tragedy’ – which is what Progressives specialize in – when they aren’t actively causing it.
Over a decade hurricanes drought and now you get a couple during hurricane season.
Talk about not getting it.
Also known as “waving the bloody shirt”.
Often the bodies aren’t even cold when they pull the shirts off.
1) Welcome back. Finally got over you snit I see.
2) There is no evidence that global warming, assuming it’s happening made those hurricanes any stronger.
BTW thanks for the tip Ivan – new post https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/12/the-guardian-support-climate-action-or-face-hellfire/
The democrats/sjw warriors/greens are in full panic mode.
Give them no quarter.
For a lot of Greens, it’s just a cheap religion; I recycle, therefore I Am A Good Person, and I get to be self-righteous towards the unfashionable schmucks. But they don’t invest any great belief in being Green, it’s just the current tribal fashion. Actual sacrifice, no way!
So, I’d bet on this driving away a noticeable percentage of Greens.
Not quite sure why the Guardian, or anyone else, is surprised there are no folks left to vote ‘green’. For years the politicians and the bureaucrat ruling class have been convincing us that only they know how to run the country (or the world in the case of European bureaucrats). To a certain extent they have succeeded – witness the very low voting rate, usually less than 50% of registered voters in most elections. And NOW, when they are ‘needed’ they are expected to get out there and vote? Forget it, they have been trained not to do that!