Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The UK parliament has caved in to Extinction Rebellion climate protests and declared a climate emergency.
After weeks of protests, UK becomes first country to declare ‘climate emergency’
THURSDAY 2 MAY 2019 6:59PM
The UK has become the first country in the world to declare a national climate emergency following protests and acts of civil disobedience from a grassroots environmental group that launched in October.…
The Extinction Rebellion has changed the paradigm of climate protests, according to Leo Barasi, the author of Climate Majority, a book investigating how to shift public opinion about climate change.
He’s also written a Master’s thesis on whether climate protests will ever convince lawmakers to act on climate change (his conclusion, they wouldn’t).
“I found that extreme weather sometimes influences public opinion, while UN climate conferences and IPCC reports often trigger media coverage and parliamentary debates,” Barasi wrote on his blog.
“But climate protests generally have little direct effect on any of these.”
…
For 10 days in April, tens of thousands of people committed acts of civil disobedience, including blocking traffic across the Thames, gluing themselves onto trains, graffiting the headquarters of oil giant Shell, and blockading the stock exchange.
And it apparently worked: The protests led to two separate parliamentary debates, and these were capped this week by the successful climate emergency motion.
…
How did the protests work where others have failed?
But showing the protests have worked doesn’t help explain why this happened now, in April 2019, after apparently failing every other time.
One theory is that the climate denial movement has run its course.Richard Black, a former BBC environment correspondent and author of Denied: the Rise and Fall of Climate Contrarianism, told the Guardian the BBC appears to have stopped giving air time to climate deniers to ‘balance’ the debate.
Mainstream media is now taking the issue seriously, he said: “The facts have changed. And in the end, if you want to be credible you have to go with the facts.”
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/uk-becomes-first-country-in-world-to-declare-climate-emergency/11074582
The government funded BBC dominates UK broadcast media, so their decision in 2007 to exclude competing viewpoints may have had a significant impact on public opinion.
The following is a video of the speech which led to bipartisan UK parliament agreement there is a climate emergency (speech by Jeremy Corbyn, the brother of British climate skeptic Piers Corbyn ).
British MP Michael Gove responded by agreeing there is a climate emergency (an apparent change from his previous position when he was negotiating with climate protestors). According to Breitbart Gove said;
“I want to make it clear that on this side of the House we recognise that this situation IS an emergency, it IS a crisis, and it IS a threat that all of us have to meet.”
Read more: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/05/01/goves-green-cant-is-a-betrayal-of-conservative-principles/
The UK does not have a constitutional right to free speech – in my opinion, any escalation of government sanctions against climate skeptics for the duration of the “climate emergency” could mean difficult times ahead for climate skeptics based in Britain.
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Bloody Hell!! here I am enjoying a nice vacation in Florida and as soon as I leave the country you do this?? just you wait til I get home..
If I were you, Jerry, I’d stay over there a while!
If only I could.. then I could buy myself a nice 5.0 V8 Mustang and not worry about being taxed off the road..
Delingpole: Corbyn’s Red-Green Guards Prepare for Government Under Banners of Mao and Stalin
“We [Labour] have brought Extinction Rebellion in to start advising us on how we tackle some of these issues. We’ve already developed our own proposals for a Green New Deal… It is about an industrial strategy that confronts the fourth industrial revolution but actually makes it green. Everything we’ve heard in recent years but more importantly everything we’ve heard in recent weeks from Extinction Rebellion is demonstrating we are running out of time.”
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/05/02/corbyns-green-red-watermelon-terror-could-soon-engulf-britain/
So, no more debate about how to ease the congestion at Heathrow airport, no more thought about adding a third runway. They have just given cart blanche to Extinction Rebellion to double down on its threat to close down Heathrow altogether. Irresponsible hoafs.
I used to “work” full time on climate, but there was literally no money. Worse, eventually there was also nothing to debate on the science because the evidence shows absolutely no abnormal trends.
We sceptics won the the scientific debate a long time ago, but this cult is not based on scientific evidence but on belief despite the clear evidence showing nothing abnormal is happening to the climate.
All we have is a doomsday religious cult which is prevalent in the numpty sectors (media, politicians & academics).
To put it bluntly I’m not wasting any more of my time on religious nutters.
The lack of Constitutional free speech is the emergency!
What the British nobility used to do with the runt of the family who was otherwise useless was send him into either the Church, the Army or Parliament where he couldn’t do much damage. The situation is quite similar today but they are given a thin veneer of academic credibility and we thus find ourselves ruled by a cadre of dim-brained oxbridge waffleologists.
Strangely we do still rule the world with so called “soft power”. What the Americans call BS. The capitulation to Extinction Rebellion, the result of incredible weakmindness and incompetence, will be copied and applauded around the world.
Watch this space.
“Proposal approved without a vote, and not legally binding”.
Trouble is the Cabinet Office is approving, without a vote, total EU integration.
Professor Gwythian Prins: EU ‘participation’ is not partnership, it is integration.
Professor Prins briefed Defence Sec. Gavin Williamson one week before Williamson was ousted…
So while MP’s and voters are gas-lighted by CO2, no pun intended, in spite of Brexit, Sedwill’s CO carries on unnoticed :
https://www.ukcolumn.org/ukcolumn-news/uk-column-news-3rd-may-2019
There was a European Geoscience Union conference in Vienna about the same time as the XR protests in London. 15,000 scientists but no wailing or weeping. You can get the entire set of talks online (at least for the time being). The last session US3 on Friday 12th April on tipping points has some projections.
I gave up posting links and mentioning things that maybe don’t agree with the XR story – my posts got shouted down and eventually banned on The Guardian and removed with a threat of banning at The Times. Incidentally I think the Times Science Editor Tom Whipple is an ex-Guardian writer.
Basically all I did was say maybe you should look at what some scientists are saying. For example – did you know that the planet had warmed up 25 times in the last 100,000 years – Dansgaard events – and they still don’t really know what caused them.
Oh yes; there was a presentation from the University of California that happened to point out in passing that for most of the last billion years there have been no glaciers at all. Mentioning this in the newspapers got immediate deletion.
Good luck with the struggle as science seems to be driven by politics. My un-provable opinion is that there are some geo-scientists who have doubts about the AGW mantra but that to make them public is a complete end to their career and any future funding.
One comment that did not get censored, at least immediately, was my suggestion that the UK leading the way in CO2 reduction when it represents only about 1% of world emissions was about as useful as being the only person in a crowded lift who hadn’t farted.
The British Parliament has a long history of declaring climate emergencies. We should not be that concerned.
1. Samuel Pepys 21st jan 1661
It is strange what weather we have had all this winter; no cold at all; but the ways are dusty, and the flyes fly up and down, and the rose-bushes are full of leaves, such a time of the year as was never known in this world before here.
House Of Lords 11th jan 1662
The Fast to be observed in Westm. Abbey, and the Bp. of St. David’s to preach.
¶Whereas His Majesty hath been pleased, by Proclamation, upon the Unseasonableness of the Weather, to command a general and public Fast, to be religiously and solemnly kept, within the Cities of London and Westm. and Places adjacent: It is ORDERED, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, in Parliament assembled.
Samuel Pepys 15 jan 1662
fast day ordered by the Parliament, to pray for more seasonable weather; it having hitherto been summer weather, that it is, both as to warmth and every other thing, just as if it were the middle of May or June, which do threaten a plague (as all men think) to follow, for so it was almost the last winter; and the whole year after hath been a very sickly time to this day