Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to the Financial Times, you build people’s support for your cause by adding to the misery of their work commute.
Climate change protesters are telling us the deadly truth
Extinction Rebellion challenges decades of belief that pessimism backfires
Camilla Cavendish
APRIL 19, 2019The furious reaction to this week’s climate change demonstrations in Amsterdam, Paris and other cities is in marked contrast to what I’ve observed on the streets of central London this week. “Sorry for the inconvenience” said the young bearded men at Marble Arch, where protesters closed the junction. Further south, one chauffeur-driven executive leaned out of his stationary car window to tell cameras that “climate change matters”.
Attempts to portray this movement as a bunch of angry, self-indulgent hippies don’t capture the reality. I met grandmothers who have never marched before, and commuters who decided to join in. On Oxford Street, one placard summed up the mood of regretful determination. “I apologise” it read “but I don’t know what else to do”. That echoes what many of us feel, as we watch our societies distract themselves with everything except the looming climate emergency.
…
But if this movement can continue to capture the headlines, it might achieve the sustained change that we need. Government action will follow when voters become sufficiently worried. People feel deeply about the natural world, but the silence on the creeping threats to our planet has been extraordinary. Few people are even aware that we are living through a mass extinction of species.
…
The green movement lost years of progress when it went red. In campaigning for things like social housing, world government and the minimum wage, it blurred its message and alienated much of its potential audience. It also enabled successive US presidents to claim that climate change was a pinko conspiracy. When the old movement campaigned against clean nuclear power, it made green prophets like James Lovelock despair.…
Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/6b044d08-61cb-11e9-9300-0becfc937c37
I used to be a London commuter. I can’t help thinking there is a massive disconnect between the feckless dilettantes and climate obsessives who seem to have the leisure time to join weekday climate protests, and ordinary people commuting to work to pay their bills.
Trying to get to work in cities like London is often a thoroughly miserable experience.
Tube strikes, gridlocked traffic, terrorist attacks, the constant risk of being assaulted or mugged, endless maintenance overruns, being squished like a sardine on the Jubilee line or other busy metro lines, paying exorbitant first class prices just to get a seat, melting in Summer, freezing in Winter, worrying about when you will get home to your family and kids, hoping nobody has vandalised your car sitting in an open, unsecured parking lot near a graffiti covered station.
Your baby just missed their goodnight kiss from dad, again.
The last thing most people in these circumstances wants is a group of climate hippies saying “sorry” while deliberately inflicting even more misery on their daily commute.
I somehow doubt this effort to mess up everyone’s day will translate into significantly greater support for climate action.
OK… so resources will be rationed in the future under a New Green Deal. Who do you think will be forced to go without? Rich people or poor people?
The rich will totally agree to give lots of resources to the poor, because they love us so much.
You forgot to add /sarc
Venezuela is the example of idealist dreams faltering on the reality that power corrupts.
Unless you have wind turbines, then you have no power.
If all you have is wind turbines, than you only have power when the wind is blowing. It’s referred to as intermittent for a reason.
Another example showing that Lord Acton was correct.
Okay, if it’s so important, then why aren’t these yo-yos who glue themselves to someone’s house doing something concrete to alleviate the problem, in the real world? Why must they make nuisances of themselves, other than to get attention for themselves? And don’t kid yourself that it’s about “the cause”. It isn’t.
I live in a county that is full of people who like to hike and go bird-watching. Yesterday, I counted about 38 red-breasted mergansers, male and female both, in a lake that is also a popular fishing spot. Three years ago, I saw two mergansers, which was unusual. Now they’re all over the place, like gravy on rice, along with various duck species, herons (both the green and the blue), egrets, and a large number of songbirds like finches and various sparrows, including the white-throated sparrow, an unusual bird for my area. Lots of geese, too, and snowy egrets, depending on where you went. Normally, a river that is a major tributary to the Mississippi further south is about half the width of a football field, but now it is the full width across, full to overflowing and has been for the past three years. It started flooding 15 years ago and has been rising ever since.
We have bird & wildlife counts and conservation projects galore and people involved in them all year ’round, and this is what I want to see, not these numbskulls who think they’re “doing something” by making idiots of themselves in public. Those jerks in London don’t care about the Earth at all. They only care about “being on TV, and did you see me????”, and NOTHING ELSE, period. If they really care, why aren’t they out planting trees where timber has been harvested, or doing bird and wildlife counts?
They are so utterly stupid, they don’t even know they’re alive. Since these late-spring blasts from up North are happening more frequently each year, and we get slammed with snow instead of just lots of rain, It may just be weather. Or it may be a sign of something else – e.g., the planet is taking care of itself and those ecohippies won’t live through it.
Access to affordable energy is a human right. Using energy access as an tool of political oppression is immoral. The Green New Deal is nothing more than a feudal system update that punishes the poor for the equivalent of cutting down a tree in the Sheriff of Nottingham’s forest.
Access to something that has to be created by others, can never be a human right.
The ability to build a fire is not predicated on the goodwill of others. The Green New Deal wants to make it that way though. As I said, access to energy is a human right; without it we die.
Maybe Obama should have implemented the Affordable Energy Act. That would have done far more to ease the burden on the disadvantaged.
Given Obama’s track record, any “Affordable Energy Act” would have opposite of the effect you were hoping for. It would have make energy less affordable. After all as Mr Obama once famously said “Energy prices would necessarily skyrocket”
As MarkW says, anything scarce requiring allocation cannot be a human right. Its allocation is ripe for political interference.
Then you throw in that adjective “affordable” and show your true colors.
Access to affordable energy is a human right
“You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means” – Inigo Montoya
What a ding-a-ling!
And what do families do when they are sick of urban traffic, bureaucratic locked commutes and impolite city goers?
They’ll head to the country and seaside for rest, recuperation and vacations!
Guess what! These same folks will feel the normal country air, seaside breezes and they’ll note that wildlife is flourishing and the seas are barely rising.
Sure, Financial Times, make commuters suffer so they’ll be glad to escape urban drudgery. Instead of thirty years of failed CAGW alarmism it will quickly become forty years of failed CAGW alarmism.
Ho hum! Tell another sad tale, camilla the despondent…
“I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts, but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere, and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Why do we need cities, again?
We used to need to gather people physically together, to facilitate industry, trade, crafts, commerce.
Modern telecommunications and transport has greatly reduce the utility of physical co-location. And the elites have driven all heavy industry away from the cities they control, and are working on driving away all other businesses. Their goal is cities as elite playgrounds, just them, and those who serve them.
The old adage remains true:
“Cities need the countryside – the countryside does not need cities”.
It seems that when city folk move to rural areas, they tend to try to change them into their idealised
version of where they moved from.
yeah they love it..for about 2 months…then they want the theatre movies clubs all hrs pubs and whatever or the cows bellowing sheep baaaaing in lambing n weaning times annoys them, god help you with roosters that dare crow;-) burnoff and planting with the dust sends em into hysterics
its sortof funny except then tend to get onto councils cos theyre edjumakated types. and then. we suffer their idiocy trying to make new laws and send us into debt for cultural centres no one wants OR needs. we are too busy working to survive.
Dude, there’s an amazing thing called a comma. They even have them on phones!
Don’t forget that retail makes up a large part of the urban economy, and physical retail is on its last legs.
So, yes. Cities are on their way out. They make no sense in a world where communication is easy and most things can be made locally. Few of those commuters really need to waste half their days traveling to and from an office in London, and we’d significantly reduce CO2 emissions if they stopped doing so.
Of course, telling the average urban-dwelling NPC this just results in a blank stare as their software blue-screens and tries to download an update. They’re convinced the future is billions of people living in mile-high apartment blocks crowded into a few huge cities.
Doncha just love a sweeping generalisation to make a point!
Only problem is the smaller downs don’t have high speed internet, because the population density is to low for companies to make money. It is possible that 5G will take care of that, but it will still be prohibitively expensive compared to what us peons in the city pay. Possibly what will have to happen is what the Government did in the ’30’s to ensure that everyone in the country had affordable electricity and phone, put a tax on the services to subsidize the rural citizens. Unfortunately, there are situations where subsidies are needed, but subsidies to create a technology are failures.
Chicken and egg. The more workers who move out of cities, the more demand for Internet, and the more money they can make. Besides, I need about 50kbyte/second to work from home. Most places have at least that much.
And just imagine how much people would be willing to pay for Internet if it meant they didn’t have to spend lots of money commuting to work. We could eliminate one our two cars, for example; that’s $3-4k a year saved.
This piece of insane bullsh*t speaks for itself. Political climate hustlers speak for themselves. It sure doesn’t speak for US for the people and neither do they.
wonder where fin times retirement /invest fuds are?
Jerry Brown used this tactic through FOUR terms of office. He strategically refused to fund Freeway (Cal Trans) repair and maintenance. He literally sued to stop every freeway expansion … taking taxpayer funds to pay eco-Lawyers to stop any and all accommodation for the automobile. Jerry HATES cars, and HATES your suburban commuter lifestyle. Jerry hates your comfort. Jerry HATES your “ignorance” and “selfishness”. Jerry HATES your “American entitlement”. But the CA voters put him into office 4x … and now sent some smarmy, greased-back, version of Jerry into office. Another DANGEROUS eco-Marxist who is fueling caravan after caravan of 3rd worlders journeys to CA. The Marxist eco leftists aren’t even hiding their disdain of every one of us. They’re waving it in your face. They will surely be SHOCKED when their docile sheeplike followers finally get fed up. They have not considered the fury of the people they scorn.
And note that Jerry didn’t retire to live in the urban utopia he helped create. Nope, far from it.
The people of California elect the Government that they want.
No, the urban population of California elect the government THEY want. The rest of the state is completely irrelevant.
This is why California can’t survive much longer.
And THAT, of course, is why the Founders set up the Electoral College method of electing the US President. It reduces the relevance of the urban masses, and tries to spread the effect over all of a state’s voters. And, (another of course) is why the Democratic Party would like to eliminate the College.
You can tell that even journalists have no respect for journalists when they don’t have the knowledge or self respect to seriously question what a bunch of angry, self-indulgent hippies tell them on a London street.
At least they acknowledged the CAWG faithful are commie reds. “The green movement lost years of progress when it went red.” Although they’re still in denial because, well, watermelons. The CAWG faithful are still green on the outside and red on the inside.
The brown movement is being perfected on the streets in places like San Francisco.
So we wont call them the ‘Brown Shirts’. Rather we will call them the ‘Brown Pants’.
Tim Wells. PG Wodehouse beat you to it with his “Brown Shorts”.
The new age aristocrats have little appreciation for the fact that this type of approach has been tried multiple times in the past and it always backfires.
But you don’t understand. This time we will be in charge. We will succeed because we are the smartest people ever. I know because my mommy told me so.
The more reasonable alarmists take an ordinary weather event and, because they can’t get away with blaming it on climate change, say “we can expect more of this”.
Folks, if you buy into CAGW and accept its prescription, you can expect much more of the kind of misery that these demonstrators have just inflicted on you. With unreliable renewable energy you can expect many more delays in your daily commute.
If you don’t want even more misery on your daily commute, shut down the CAGW scam. Call or write your MP.
It is a bit hard to understand how making people more uncomfortable than they already are, in the name of a movement designed to make their lives even MORE miserable – ie no money to buy things – is going to get them on your side. Wishful thinking. THINKING something is a good thing to do doesn’t make it REALLY a good thing to do.
Thinking it is a good idea to release everyone from prisons because we feel sorry for them doesn’t make actually releasing everyone a good thing to do!
With apologies to Des Cartes, “I believe, therefore I am right”.
I wonder why that could be. [/sarc]
Show us the bodies.
After a recent fish death in a river basic here in Australia, I asked the same question. The answer was a river with dead fish in it, a few thousand. That was their answer to the extinction event happening now.
yup and it happens every long drought.
of course heavier stocking by humans adding fry every year doesnt get a mention..
if the deaths inc a lot of carp then thats excellent news and whatever species theyre great fertiliser
someone makes a motza cos charlie carp liquid fish fert is damned expensive!!!
Patrick, the long answere to
“Hundreds of thousands of dead fish float on the surface of the green water. It is the second such incident to occur in the Menindee Lakes region in south-east Australia in three weeks.10.01.2019” –
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-samsung&q=fish+death+in+a+river+basin+here+in+Australia,&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiC_L-52ODhAhWStIsKHcgCB24QBSgAegQICxAC&biw=360&bih=560
Johann, Give the link to the specific article you want people to read otherwise don’t bother because no one cares to wade through you google search results to try and mind-read which link you wanted them to see. You’ve been told this before yet you keep doing the useless google search results links.
Go find any windmill.
Be sure to get there early in the morning before the staff have had a chance to clean up the previous nights slaughter.
“… one chauffeur-driven executive leaned out of his stationary car window to tell cameras that “climate change matters”.
Sadly, poor Miss Cavendish doesn’t get the irony of that otherwise she wouldn’t have included it.
I’ll worry about Climate Change when I see real sacrifices from those who consider themselves the “elites” of government and business.
-Selling those vacation chalets in Aspen or Switzerland.
-The Global growth of private jet travel collapses.
-The mega-yacht industry collapses.
-Beverly Hills and Malibu mansions get bulldozed to make way for subsidized housing.
-The rich liberals stop moving to hurricane-prone Florida, and stay in New York and Connecticut and keep “paying their fair share.”
Until those things become reality, Climate Change is a non-problem for the little people, like me as well.
I wonder if this was before or after he asked “pardon me, have you got any Gray Poupon?”
Fossil fuels have produced enough wealth and given the average person enough leisure time so that they can spend that time protesting fossil fuels.
Dave O.
April 20, 2019 at 8:00 pm
How very sad but true!
I have long suspected that these green extremists would one day resort to terrorism. The current wave of lawbreaking takes them one step closer.
They’re antidevelopment anticapitalists, a ‘fifth column’, and I welcome their doing their thing more openly. Normal folks will soon see them for the enemies they are.
That is the plan give them enough rope to hang themselves and find themselves as a prohibited group. It happens with Motorcycle gangs that have special laws in many countries.
All a bunch of crap. Going forward we need fossil fuels and the only alternative is to do without energy. People won’t agree to step back in time and living standard to accommodate a theory. Just watch. I think we’re wasting our time trying to convince them otherwise. Experience will be the only cure.
If you are so concerned go find a chart showing nearby temperatures from Global Historical Climatology Network for the past 125 years. You’ll see there has been NO warming at all. The climate scientists altered the data:
Thanks. That is also useful to see why early Australian records matter. Very little data in SH and size of Aus makes it important.
This is why we need and require transparency and accountability from BoM about their data mangling “adjustments”.
The video producer, Tony Heller, is the guy you get to check your chip design before you commit to fabrication. He doubts everyone and everything for a living. They call him the debug god at GE. His stocks in trade are his thoroughness and dogged determination not to mention his knowledge. Who else would take the time to examine 125+ years of climate data, technical papers and newspaper articles. I’m thankful he is still delving into the minutia of climate data. He is bursting with credibility, would that I could have had him on my team before I retired from business.
Tony has his website here: https://realclimatescience.com/
He has produced more than one hundred videos using the data produced by NOAA, NASA, CRU, NCDC, etc. He doesn’t make up the info he just cites the warmest’s own resources. Search YouTube for Tony Heller. Be careful, some jealous people have vids and articles that are like all fake news these days.
He wrote some code to be able to search the Global Historical Climatology Network here:
https://realclimatescience.com/unhiding-the-decline-for-windows/
If you download it you will be able to check the claims of the warmests. The GHCN database is more than 250GBs but the ability to refute the Climate Data Vandals is worth the effort. I use the software every day.
Howard, your post has probably upset Mr. Mosher. He’s one of the few who is not a Tony Heller fan.
Here’s one of Tony’s latest revelations:
NASA is now bastardizing individual state temperature records
https://realclimatescience.com/2019/04/plummeting-temperatures-in-ohio/#comments
Howard Crawford
April 20, 2019 at 8:23 pm
Many thanks for the great video from Tony. What a scam…well worth the few minutes to watch.
Collateral information retrieval: -Those who finance and consequently steer the hoards of hippies live in another reality and have little first-hand perception of ours.
Deja vu or is it more in line with the propaganda North Koreans are forcibly fed with ? I mean the entire phraseology here is a give-away of a very wrong insider knowledge of commuter’s daily worries.
To me it sounds in conformity with the nonsense spread by Juche Study Groups.
Phraseology matters. This is the first universally accepted tell-tale sign that the mike is in the wrong hands.
Like the idiots screaming “Alert, emergency, crash and burn, save mother earth” on the emergency frequency over EU or other more immediately dramatic situations.
I have a fifteen year old niece. We don’t get to talk much, but recently we were sat visiting an old dementia affected relative, recovering from a broken leg. The conversation was thus a captive situation, where she could not just up and walk away, if the conversation became too complicated. I took the opportunity to see what the last ten years of education had produced in a normal well balanced child.
I was not shocked to learn all the teachers are clear about climate change, and the damage fossil fuels are causing. The destruction of the arctic, due to all the oil drilling going on up there was a revelation. The imminent loss of important wildlife such as polar bears, whales and so many others unmentioned was clearly a huge problem, requiring the cessation of all fossil fuel usage.
The heroes of her education were all left wing advocates, and Trump was the Antichrist in her view.
This comes from a girl whose parents are normal, caring individuals, with a sensible balance of all things to do with nature and caring for the environment. They are on the right of centre in their political positioning.
Clearly, it matters not one jot, what the parent say, the teachers are always right. We are heating up the world and will melt all ice in the next few years, if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels…apparently.
“The Long March Through the Institutions” as proposed by the Frankfurt School of socialism has clearly capture the educationalists. It has captured the Media, it has all but captured academia, the only place where any volume of individuals not advancing the received Green socialist wisdom, is in the working class. How ironic is that?
They’re right, it’s not accurate to call the movement a bunch of angry, self-indulgent hippies. They’re a bunch of angry, self-righteous hippies who are bad at math and for whom the last two hundred years is a terrifying reality but the last six hundred million years simply do not and cannot exist.
To paraphrase Monty Python, when you expose a climate chicken little to the extended record (flawed though it is), they catch fire, fall over and sink into the swamp.
Plant food is simply not a reason for panic, and it’s even more not a reason to take a wrecking ball to your economy.
Disturbingly, FT may be right on this one.
Most protests which disrupt people’s lives do not find support because the thing they are protesting about doesn’t find support. Here we have something that people have been primed to agree with. Nobody in authority is saying “you are spouting nonsense” so drop your protest. They are saying “well, you have a very good point but we just don’t want you to cause too much disruption”. On that basis, the game is up..
The organisers of this movement may be utterly wrong, but they are very smart. It is the way I would conduct a protest if I wanted to be heard, and heard sympathetically
I’m a Londoner. You’re absolutely right, the Extinction Rebellion protest in London is nothing but an eye-rolling, vengeful ‘end is nigh’ exercise in virtue signalling. There’s nothing good about it at all and it’s just making our lives a misery, especially with Emma Thompson flying from LA to front the PR drive (she dismissed the idea of flying economy with spluttered disdain).
But I’m also a Leaver. I voted for Brexit, to leave the EU and last week my vote, along with 17.4 million others was ignored. UK democracy is dead. What has this got to do with Extinction Rebellion? Well, you could multiply their number by ten or a hundred or a thousand, bring the whole of London to a complete standstill, besiege every resident *including me* until food ran low and petrol stations ran dry…and I would join there number. I would live on tinned fish and carrots for a year if necessary in order to do what is right and see it through to the bitter end: the reinstatement of UK democracy and the recognition of the 17.4 million vote to leave.
It should’ve been us, the Leavers, doing exactly what Extinction Rebellion we’re doing since last Monday. In fact, there was talk on Twitter last week that we should start exactly the same type of civil disobedience and commence on Saturday…two days before Extinction Rebellion turned up and stole our thunder!
What went wrong? Well, Leavers are predominantly working class, working far outside London where such protests matter (as ER have clearly demonstrated). They are busy, hardworking people with little money or time on their hands. Many are on shift work, have to organise child care, take several days off to exercise the luxury of traveling to London to protest. Most would return to find they’re out of a job because their jobs, unlike the politicians, academics and journalists in London, are essential for keeping the UK’s vibrant economy going….the economy that Londoners feed off. These hardworking people simply voted to Leave in 2016 and expected their vote to be respected. Now they’re horrified but because they’re busy, skint and tired, they’re shocked like rabbits in the headlights. This is no different from Trump supporters in the US watching in horror, without having a voice, as the shrill, indignant radical left undermine their 2016 vote by hobbling Trump at every turn. Leavers and Trumpers are identical in their circumstances, current predicament and mindset. Both groups are underrepresented in government, administration departments and media despite being a majority. Furthermore, they’re not networked with each other like the radical left are. Which brings us back to Extinction Rebellion.
Extinction Rebellion is overwhelmingly white, middle class and ‘educated’. Like the Remainers who voted to stay in the EU, they are organised, self-righteous, self absorbed and vociferous (and deluded). In fact it’s virtually certain that the vast majority of Extinction Rebellion members are Remainers too. For all their complaining at the Extinction Rebellion protest, I’m quite sure that the London commuters breathed a sigh of relief when they saw it wasn’t Leavers shutting down London…because Londoners are overwhelmingly Remain.
But I would go further: whilst Extinction Rebellion had a separate agenda from Leave/Remain and while their protest was imminent, I believe they chose to start last Monday to overshadow any possible protest by Leavers who were mumbling about similar direct action. Being Remainers, they decided to kill two birds with one stone. They protested on climate as planned and chose the date in order to do the bidding of the majority in London.
sigh
Devil’s Avocado incoming, hypertensives avert your gaze.
Now!
Please lets engage brain around here a bit more.
What this tells me is that the author here is pi55ed off, belligerent and getting angry at Every Body Else getting in his way – him being The Most Important Person In The World.
OK maybe, every single one of us is that person.
Its OK also to *think* these things but the rant is now out in the open – thus we have some deep seated anger going on here.
Why
Let’s say that this “Lack Of Beauty” is in the eye of the beholder, so, why is The Beholder so angry?
Is it normal to be so angry, we are supposed to be Social Creatures after all. We surely are not evolved to be in this state of mind.
Something has upset the thinking processes of the author?
Like what?
Cortisol the stress hormone, but why the stress?
Lack of Dopamine the happy hormone. Why the lack of that? Possibly lack of the chemicals that make it – sugar, booze, nicotine, dope, cocaine, coffee etc etc
Wait a minute – why the dependence on all these toxic chemicals in order to be ‘happy’ = Fake happiness at that
Hunger. Why that?
Hangover and or dehydration = headache & grumpiness. Why that?
Lack of sleep. Why that?
Money worry. Why that?
Health concerns (self or family) Why that?
Distrust of others (car trashing). Why that?
Then we get into lack of Vitamins B and or D.
Also Vitamin A, now nearly devoid from all citrus fruits we now eat. and rice.
Maybe Iodine, Boron, Iron, Magnesium or Potassium deficiency = neurotransmitter and hormone prerequisites and all = things that affect thinking, mood & memory and subsequent behaviour
(Boron deficiency coming from eating food grown in California. a minor concern)
Why all these worries?
And all the people within the gun-sights of the author here are probably thinking: Exactly The Same Thing
Too many people? Is that the problem? Is that why the Social Gene has overloaded and snapped?
Is that why ever stronger Happy Drugs are now being recommended and dispensed by doctors?
100 deaths per day, in the US, just from prescribed opiate?
How does that rank against the 100,000 (in total) climate casualties from 1910 that we heard about recently – now all saved because of fossil fuel and rising temperatures?
Then booze takes down 5% of everybody. Another de rigueur Happy Drug supposed to induce Sociability.
ha ha ha
Cancer from sugar and veggie fats take out 11% of everybody. Sugar being another Happy Drug
Fatness (Cardio Vascular Disease from eating excess carbohydrate) takes out 25% of everybody – carbs being = Comfort (happy) Food
Wheat gluten, attaching fragments of itself to cells everywhere inside its consumers and very effectively vaccinating them – against themselves.
Hence 200+ autoimmune diseases
Lets do remember: Things Have Never Been Better.
Thus, is it beyond comprehension that the use of Fossil Fuels created all the above problems?
That ‘we’ turned coal and oil into babies = ever more people.
Yet we hear relentlessly on here that the use of Ever More Fossil Fuel will *solve* these sorts of problems.
Thus we have the root of a rather serious problem, how is it possible to believe both these things at once?
Very easy.
You (try to) live on a diet of carbohydrate
Carbs supply lots of things – the happy feelings and sociability but also the dehydration, the stress & grumpiness from not eating them every 3 hours and not all least, carbs supply all those deficiencies.
And more: inhibition/depression = the physical and mental laziness that makes it so easy to blame everybody else for your real & imaginary woes.
Growing, production and processing of same creates the CO2 and alters the landscape, thus altering thermometer readings
Again and as Piers Corbyn asserts: CO2 is the symptom, not the cause.
Basically, we have poisoned ourselves. En masse
And are trashing the farmland by growing the stuff.
Pig of a problem innit, where do you even *think* about starting to tackle it……………………
Global warming demonstrators had enough of London and have moved on to the Brighton beach
The writer of the FT article was talking absolute rubbish when they tried to maintain that the London protests weren’t just comprised of hippies but also included people from all walks of life.
I went to witness the demos on 2 days. Both times I visited the blockade of Waterloo Bridge and Oxford Circus. The demonstrators were only deluded teenagers in dreadlocks (trustafarians) and crusty old hippies who never grew up since the 60s. Absolutely none of the protesters were your regular hard working man-in-the-street.
Needless to say, all the regular far-left activists were there: some waving “Socialist Worker” signs and others giving out magazines promoting Marxism. Look behind the green cloak and see the red inside.
The police (who do a damn good job normally) were ham-strung by their senior commanders because they were not allowed to be more forceful with the childish hippies, who were sat on the road and refusing to move.. Instead, they had to gently lift them, one by one, into waiting vans.
It was a massive waste of police resources, and if they had been allowed to quickly clear these idiots out of the way they would have been able to return to tackling the rising levels of violent crime that London is currently suffering from.
Needless to say, the hippies didn’t have a clue about the science. As a mini experiment, each time a protester tried to thrust a leaflet in my hand I asked them if they knew about the science in detail. Every single one of them emphatically replied with “yes!”. I then asked them for their opinion on the logarithmic absorption abilities of CO2. Blank looks every time…
Oh wow, “Socialist Worker” still going in UK ?
Not surprisingly, I suppose, their HQ is run by MI6 .
Last saw them in the 80s. After a meeting attacking the banks, the banking system and capitalism in general they said orders had come down from head office that all members must now on pay their “subs” via direct debit !!
Not only totally at odds with the talk they had just given but a pretty clear indication that their national structure was completely compromised and more concerned with gathering information on revolutionary left wing activists than in revolution.
And after the protest the hippies got in their SUVs and drove home, to use fossil fuels.
“I apologise” it read “but I don’t know what else to do”.
Ain’t that the truth.
“I apologise but I don’t know what I’m doing” would be more accurate. Those who have no point find their lack of message hard to articulate. Occupy Wall Street, redux.
“I apologize … … but I don’t know what else to do”. Apart from being a tiresome twat. Yes, that should fix it.
“one chauffeur-driven executive leaned out of his stationary car window to tell cameras that ‘climate change matters’. ”
…apparently just not enough for him to eschew his comfort and luxury.
As I’ve said many times before…I’ll believe that the people harping about “climate change” take it seriously when they start living like they take it seriously. “Do as I say, not as I do” doesn’t cut it for me.
“Trying to get to work in cities like London is often a thoroughly miserable experience. ”
With technology you could put an office just about anywhere on earth. Yet these idiot corporations keep packing into the most congested places on Earth. I don’t get it.
The main reason that telecommuting isn’t widespread is that ‘the bosses’ have a need to be SEEN to be in charge! And THAT means that he/she feels that they HAVE to be able to see their employees – after all, how do they know that their staff are actually WORKING?
VR solves that, since you can all work in one virtual space, where the boss can keep an eye on you.
You’re right, telecommuting does give a strong incentive for family members to bug you to do stuff in work time (‘since you’re home, why not do the laundry, or cook supper?’) but once they’re trained that yes, you really are actually working and not taking a day off, it can improve productivity by keeping you out of pointless office meetings that would otherwise just waste your time.
I’m not even talking about telecommuting. Move the whole office to some place green and open. Spread out. De-clumpify.
For me, it’s improved ‘outa sight’, since I stopped driving 12 miles and back across London. I now catch the train. (A proper train that travels above-ground in the light and fresh air.) After a bracing 10-minute walk to the station, I rarely have to wait more than 5-minutes for the train to arrive. It usually arrives 2-minutes early and departs exactly at the posted time. Fifteen minutes is enough time for a quick crossword and then we are at the London terminus. After a quick change of trains – and again, I rarely have to wait more than 5-minutes, a very fast express gets me to my workplace. One hour from door-to-desk.
My route has yet to be targeted by these idiots (probably because it is their route home to Brighton).
Their targeting of public transport facilities seems ironic. I would have thought one of the central tenets of the ‘green’ idea was to encourage use of trains.
This is exactly the type of behavior that will cause society to collectively reign in the idiots. It is fine to believe in Armageddon, or ghosts, or aliens running Washington as long as it is just a harmless hobby that doesn’t affect the average person’s quality of life. But when you interfere with the rights and enjoyment of others they will very rapidly demand that you be restrained by any means possible, and if the present government doesn’t, then a new one will be found through the vote that will.
“the constant risk of being assaulted or mugged”
I’ve worked in various parts of London for a cumulative 20 years and lived there… and in all that time have never been mugged or assaulted or indeed known any work colleague who has.
London is far, far safer than US cities (where I have had dire warnings about certain districts while visiting).
And despite tube strikes and breakdowns, it has an excellent public transport system… far better than New York, for example.
Never been assaulted or mugged, but one scammer got on his knees saying he had just ben mugged could I please give him money for a ticket.
Same guy a year later with the same story (just five minutes after telling my son to look out for him)
not an assault or a mugging. but not so nice
btw I got his name – it was ‘whiff’ or ‘griff’ or some such. ….probably whiff
Walking back from Southwark to Waterloo one night 3 men got up, and sat down again when they saw how big I am. I was followed downstairs by two guys one afternoon in Mile End station. I didn’t seem them, but my South African friend was standing behind them, they shrugged, went back upstairs to wait for another target.
This disgusting drunk guy started spitting near my mum and sister to try to coerce us to give him money, I’m afraid my response wasn’t very diplomatic.
I know people who have been mugged and even raped in London streets.
So I stand by my statement that London is a dangerous place – though there are other parts of Britain which are more dangerous.
Portsmouth! If you get cough up in some “issue” with some “sailors”, it can be “interesting”. I can tell you that from experience. London, Waterford, Brussels, Wellington, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, New Your and Sydney no so much a problem in my experience, no-one goes near me anyway.
Griff, if you are genuinely trying to be convincing, can you avoid hyperbole and ambiguity? Can you please elaborate on what “dire warnings” you have received about “certain districts” while visiting the US? Specifically, what cities? And what were you warned about?
London is far, far safer than US cities
As long as you aren’t going into one of the “no-go zones” that is.
When commutes are painful, people want more routes, more options, and more lanes. They don’t want to reduce CO2 emissions or face hikes on taxes.
Doesn’t quite stack up with the interview I heard with a man who, when asked what he thought about the environmental protesters said I have just paid £70 for a taxi ride that cost me £3 by bus normally so what the f**k do you think I feel about the climate protesters?
What gets me is the environmental damage done by Microsoft canning windows 7 so we have to buy a new far more powerful, more current hungry computer that still does the work you used to do on a less powerful one slower on an operating system not really designed for desktop operation any longer. How many computers world wide will be trashed thanks to them? Why is no one protesting about that environmental damage?
cartman on south park nailed it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Hippie,_Die
hippies come in all shapes, sizes, and ages.
To go with the heading image.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf4EFDGP4yg
Very troubled times in the UK at this time. Mr. Weller was anti-capitalist, anti-Thatcher who came to power at about the same time, but was happy to become rich selling his work (Fair enough, that’s capitalism).
Dear Extinction Rebellion true believer, maybe you’re correct, maybe this is the best there is and all you have to look forward too is the gloom of doom and even more depressing doom. So whether you’re 3 or 30 years old, this is it. You future is all downhill from now on!
You can not fight it, you’re done for. And you should blame people like me who, despite our real poverty, enjoyed those unsustainable halcyon days of the mostly cool and wet 1960s, the freezing 1970s with its coming ice-age, the petrol crises, the fear of nuclear annihilation and nuclear winters, the late 1980 warm-up, etc., all enjoyed by burning fossil fuels in huge vehicles.
Yes we old white types are to blame for it all with our extreme profligacy from so many of us working long hours in difficult dangerous jobs, all-the-while willfully polluting. Ways that have ensured your kind will be thrust into a future of mass extinction, starvation and poverty, with little more than modern affordable fashionable clothing, modern medicine, over abundance of food, mass personal communication, affordable mass and individual transportation systems that take you to heated and/or cooled air-conditioned building, and to vacations just about anywhere on the planet, lives filled with so much instant gratification at the touch of a button, etc., etc.
I know you believe I should feel guilty for all I’ve done but no, I do not, and I will never feel so. You deserve it all and so much more!
Now live with it and when you survive to old age (however you define that), recall all the actions you’ve done that has really made a difference, that’s made the world a better place. Until then, just remember you’ve already seen the best there can ever be, from now on it’ll get rapidly worse for you ungrateful Extinction Rebellion ignoramuses.
Do you all really believe YOU deserve so much(?) because I don’t believe it!
The message they’re really sending is “I’m a clueless, know-nothing, self-indulgent asshole.”
I suppose you could win lots of people to your cause with a message like that. But it’s not very likely.
I see that in their latest stunt, Excretion Rebellion all lay down and ‘played dead’ in the main hall of the Natural History Museum.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/extinction-rebellion-arrests-pass-1000-on-eighth-day-of-protests/ar-BBWb46w?ocid=spartanntp&fullscreen=true#image=3
It would be more of a challenge for them to play the same stunt in the middle of Millwall Football Ground. I’d like to see that.