According to climate scientist Simon Lewis, Professor of Global Change Science at the University of Leeds, a victory for the mainstream green Marxist British leader Jeremy Corbyn on 12th December this year will lead to the USA embracing the Green New Deal.
I’m a climate change scientist – and I’m campaigning for Labour this election
December 4, 2019 5.06am AEDT
The 2019 UK general election matters because the climate emergency means that the next decade is critical for the future of humanity. Only a Labour government can really turn things around, not just in the UK, but globally. This may sound exaggerated, but it’s true. Let me explain.
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A serious plan
Finally, after 30-plus years of scientists explaining the problem, a major political party of a major economy has a serious plan for part one of the process. After wrangling between grassroots activists and trade unions, the Labour Manifestopledges that the “substantial majority” of UK emissions will be eliminated by 2030. This isn’t bluster, as there is serious investment planned across electricity production (more wind and solar), buildings (retrofitting all UK houses to high efficiency standards), transport (investment in buses, only electric cars sales from 2030), and heavy industry (research and development into hydrogen and carbon capture technology), to name a few sectors.
Crucially, this would be driven by those who control the finances of the country. A new Sustainable Investment Board would bring together the chancellor, business secretary and Bank of England governor to oversee and co-ordinate these major investments. A National Investment Bank with £250 billion allocated for decarbonising the economy provides serious funds. And climate and environmental impacts will be included in the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts, so that the cost of not acting will be factored into every government decision.
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Finally, geopolitics matters. The world is gripped by right-wing populists who are often hostile to tackling climate change. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro abandoned hosting this years’ UN climate talks, while Donald Trump plans to pull out of the Paris Agreement. Fearful inward-looking nationalism means that the internationalism necessary to tackle climate change is being eroded.
The antidote to the rising right-wing populism that Brexit and Boris Johnson are part of, is a Labour government with a Green Industrial Revolution at its heart. And just as Brexit spurred the Trump campaign, a win for Labour would increase the chances of the Democrats in the US reaching office and pursuing a similar Green New Deal. The tide would be turning towards deploying the tools of the state to reshape the economy to seriously tackle climate change.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/im-a-climate-change-scientist-and-im-campaigning-for-labour-this-election-128186
You would think the American War of Independence was a hint that the USA no longer looks to Britain for leadership. But clearly at least some members of the British establishment never received the memo.
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Corbyn strikes me as someone who wants to hurt others, but is afraid to for fear of someone hurting him – an armchair terrorist.
sci·en·tist
/ˈsīəntəst/
a person who is studying or has expert knowledge of one or more of the natural or physical sciences.
That is not very well defined criteria is it? “Is studying”?
No wonder credibility of real science is eroding.
Most of the comments above are pointless.
These quotes from politicians bear no relationship to what they would do if they got into power. They are just saying these things to encourage different groups of supporters to vote for them.
If a politician (of any party) arrives at a town with a big car plant he will extol the virtues of road transport. The next day he will be telling a railway-manufacturing conference that the future of transport is rail. His speech-writers will be busy re-jigging the words of his first speech to apply to air transport for the next whistle-stop, and by the end of the week he will be talking about how he will improve sea freight at the nearest port….
I suspect that much of the press reaction has been factored in, and is an intentional part of the message. So, to encourage Greens to vote for you, you say a controversial Green thing to a journalist who will write a piece attacking it. That attack will reach a lot of your supporters, who will be convinced that you are really Green, since the press are smearing you for it….
Yes, they’ll say anything to get into power. It’s amazing to watch. But you can see why they do it: the bulk of the population seem to fall for it every time.
I take the anti-Semitism accusations with a very large pinch of salt. But Corbyn & Co. are definitely Marxists, and would love to nationalise much of British industry.
Have they weighed the expense of rolling out fiber to every home against the increase in productivity that having faster online connections would enable? I doubt it. They seem unable to grasp the difference between spending and investment.
The same applies to their “investment” in green energy, of course.
‘I take the anti-Semitism accusations with a very large pinch of salt. ‘
You need to listen to Maureen Lipman amongst other Jewish, ex-Labour members.
Several former Labour MPs – some, but not all, Jewish – have left the UK Labour Party over the anti-Semitic actions and words of, it appears, many near the top of the Party. John Mann, Joan Ryan and Luciana Berger, included.
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They say those things to entice people to vote for them, because those are the things the voters want.
The danger is not that a specific politician may do a ‘green’ absurdity, but that a great many voters support that absurdity. Sooner or later, the voters will ultimately elect someone who will carry through with at least some of the promises. Labour nationalized the utilities before Thatcher. If they do that again, an all-out pursuit of the Green policies would devastate the country’s electrical grid.
In the 1950s and 60s, no major party candidate in the US would espouse socialism. It would be a career killer. Today, not only is it acceptable to voters, it is fashionably ‘woke’. Sanders and Warren aren’t the danger; it’s the fact that they have so many supporters.
No scientist there. reducing something that is not the cause cannot provide a solution. It will, however, bankrupt the country. Happy days.
Jeremy Corbyn – Far Left!? Good grief… if that’s what you think, then your political spectrum is seriously in need of recalibration! This from a country that sees the Democrats as Communists! If Corbyn is Far Left, that would make Trump a Far Right White Supremacist misogynistic cretin… oh wait, he actually is!
BTW… it’s the Tories that have tanked the economy – that’s already been done, and when they get in again, it’ll get even worse. Perhaps you haven’t noticed, or figured out that thanks to the Tories, the UK now has the worst form of capitalism imaginable. I used to think the people here were literate, learned, intelligent, thoughtful, moderate and civilised. Just goes to show how wrong you can be.
Sounds like you didn’t experience the Labour years before Thatcher. Do you remember 1979?
You know how stupid the average person is;
Remember that 50% are stupider than that !!
saveenergy
At least 50% of voting adults when you take into account traumatic head injuries from sports activities and motorcycle crashes, brain cells killed from chronic overdoses of alcohol and recreational drugs, and dementia in the elderly.
Who would you consider to be to the left of Corbyn, and on what basis?
On any measure, foreign policy, defence, role of the state, fiscal policy, taxation…. he and his associates are well to the left of any regime that has ever come close to office in Europe. Well to the left of any previous Labour Party leader.
He is well to left of Attlee, for instance. Well to the left of Michael Foot.
How much further left can you get? I guess there is always the Mao of the Great Leap Forward, or perhaps Pol Pot. Give him a few months, and he may get there.
You must be very young. Here is a clue: which countries, and what leaders, past and present, favored nationalism of industries, like Corbyn?
And only a very poorly educated person would believe Trump is a white supremacist. I think your mistake is in thinking you are literate, learned, intelligent, moderate, and civilized. You have proven yourself otherwise.
If JC isn’t far left, then what would you class him as? Are you seriously suggesting that he would be a better choice to run the economy? That’s before we get onto things like Diane Abbott….
It really fascinates me how those on the far left actually believe that they are middle of the road politically.
I guess it comes from refusing to associate with anyone to the right of them, therefore leading them to believe that they are the mainstream.
Trump is only far right compared to communism, there is nothing white supremacist about him, and while he’s crude, claiming misogynist can’t be supported either. This is just another example of the left declaring that anyone who dares to oppose them is evil, then just applying all the evil labels that they can think of to that person.
The worst form of capitalism is what you in Britain suffer from, it’s capitalism that is being controlled by the government. Of course that isn’t capitalism, it’s socialism. But then most leftists declare that anything that isn’t pure communism is some form of capitalism.
Corbyn will save the world?
What a load of tosh!
Bring it on. If the British people are so stupid as to vote for this then they deserve what they get – and they will get much: massive rises in electricity prices; a run on the pound as productivity dives and public debt sky rocket; imported inflation as the result of the previous; brown outs, black outs leading to further drops in productivity; transport dysfunction as people can’t get to work after either ICE cars banned or there’s insufficient power to charge their Nissan Leafs.
But the good news is, after that economic apocalypse, extinction rebellion won’t be welcome anywhere in the country, and climate change will just be a toxic label for austerity economics on steroids. And Labour will cease to exist as a serious political party.
He wants to nationalise everything (I sort of agree with utilities because privatised utilities don’t have a great track record for users unless you are a major “shareholder”), INCLUDING the NATIONAL health service. Part funding of this boondoggle policy, he intends to raid the savings of retirees.
I have a feeling the Tories will be in power before the end of the year.
Just what do you think the result would be if Corbyn nationalised electrical production, with a strong Green influence in his government? The best business would be selling candles.
There is another option for utes: co-operatives. My electrical utility is a co-operative, and every customer is a voting member. We pay about $0.11 per KWh (it’s tiered, based on usage), and we give ourselves refunds every December if fuel costs come in under what was projected. We have one of the lowest rates in the nation, and highest level of customer satisfaction. Better still, the government’s public service commission leaves us alone.
BTW, power is produced via hydro, NG, and coal. They pay lip service to renewables, but do the minimum.
I am thinking more water utilities, traditional power utilities are dead in favour of renewables. This was all kicked off and set in stone in the UK in 2008, and there is, apparently, no going back.
Utilities like Thames Water (TW) for instance was sold off to MacQuarie Bank (Australian) in 2006, forced TW to borrow billions of pounds in 2007/2010 which benefited no-one but the Bank and it’s “investors”, stripped TW of all saleable assets leaving TW customers with a massive bill. There are many examples of this in the UK (And Australia) where a public asset, paid for in full by taxes, is sold to private “investors” ultimately failing their customers and raising costs.
Privately owned utilities have to get permission from the government in order to sneeze.
The reason why privately owned utilities don’t do well is that politicians can use them as scape goats for everything that goes wrong.
Do you think the utilities in California would have been sued over last years wild fires had they been government owned? Of course not.
Do you believe they would have done a better job of maintaining their equipment? Of course not.
Funny. You haven’t seen how utilities are “run” in the UK or Australia.
“Qualifications and Education
1994-1998
PhD Tropical Forest Ecology, Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge. Joint with the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, Brazil. Thesis title: Treefall gaps and regeneration: a comparison of continuous and fragmented forest in central Amazonia.
1990-1993
BSc with First Class Honours in Ecology, University of Leeds.
Lewis, S. L., Phillips, O.L., Baker, T.R., Lloyd, J., Malhi, Y. Tropical forests and atmospheric carbon dioxide: current knowledge and potential future scenarios. DEFRA ‘Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change’ international Symposium. Invited Speaker. Hadley Centre, Exeter, UK [Presented by Lewis]
Phillips, O.L., Lewis, S.L., Malhi, Y. A general framework for testing hypotheses of drivers of ecological change in mature tropical forests. May 2004. NASA workshop on Amazon carbon dynamics. Invited speaker. New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A. [Presented by Phillips]
Phillips, O.L., Baker, T., Malhi, Y., Lewis, S.L. Ecological changes in old-growth neotropical forests, at the October 2003 BIOMERGE Adapative Synthesis II workshop, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A. [Presented by Phillips]
Lewis, S.L., Phillips, O.P., Malhi, Y. & 27 others. Impacts of global change on tropical forest dynamics, at the September 2003 British Ecological Society annual meeting, University of Manchester, U.K. [Presented by Lewis]
Lewis, S.L., Phillips, O.P., Malhi, Y. & 27 others. Impacts of global change on tropical forest dynamics, at the July 2003 Association for Tropical Biology & Conservation international meeting, University of Aberdeen, Scotland. [Presented by Lewis]
Lewis, S.L., Phillips, O., and Malhi, Y. August 2002. The What’s driving global changes in tropical forests?: a framework for testing causal mechanisms, hypotheses, and some initial results. Association for Tropical Biology, STRI, Panama: Tropical Forests, Past, Present, Future. [Presented by Lewis]”
So this is what passes as climate science qualifications these days?
Back in the day, after your CV had been (hopefully) approved by external assessors, you were asked to suggest a title to accompany your elevation to the professoriate. This was expected to reflect your field of eminence and the title would be approved by a sub-committee and signed off by the VC. However, the sub-committee might not be of a congruent background with the applicant, and some odd titles could get through.
I recall ‘Professor of structural engineering’ for someone whose entire research output was in construction management and ‘Professor of low-carbon society’ (?) So titles can be chosen to give a spin and sometimes it works.
Another famous Englishman called Eric Morcambe had a catchphrase which fits my opinion of Simon Lewis, it was, ‘This boy’s a fool’.
The Brits are still under the delusion that the UK is a world power and the leader of a great empire. After all they won two world wars, didn’t they (never mind Dunkirk and the loss of France in 40 days)? The world media may think that President Trump will be impeached and removed from office in a few weeks, but he most likely will be President for 5 more years. Americans do not look to the English for advice and counsel.
“The Brits are still under the delusion that the UK is a world power and the leader of a great empire.”
Of course we bloody don’t!
You are confusing us with the French.
Too bad for the author he isn’t going to win, but good for the rest of us.
“….(never mind Dunkirk and the loss of France in 40 days)….”.
I wonder why you seem to be blaming the UK for that, when you might expect the French to have had something to do with it…?
I see you are of the opinion that the French are actually good for something, militarily. That’s cute. 😀
They did win the War of American Independence. 😉
They also have a National flag [The Tricolore] which is the only one in the world required to be made with Velcro – so allowing the rapid removal of the red and blue bits whenever Germans are seen approaching Paris.
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“Climate-human interaction associated with southeast Australian megafauna extinction patterns”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13277-0
“Chronological analyses have attributed megafaunal extinctions to climate change, humans, or a combination of the two”
So now Humans were causing “climate change” 126,000—12,000 years ago ?
lol
If Corbyn gets in again, I hope the last Jew leaving the country remembers to turn out the lights.
If Boris gets in, will you be expressing similar feelings about the last muslim?
Not giving the muslims everything they demand is not being anti-muslim.
YES!
As an Englishman I can only apologize to the rest of the world for the utter lunacy being shown by most of our politicians. Corbyn, so beloved of the hate filled far-left, is the head of a bunch of dangerous, deluded Marxists and green muppets who would destroy our relationship with the US and indeed any sane, democratic state in favour of ties with a rag-bag assortment of terrorists and socialist states which, apart from the small issue of national security, would destroy our economy in record time. No rational, thinking person could seriously endorse him or his party as it is at the moment. Sadly, all we can do next week is vote for the least green bunch of windbags on offer, which means Boris Johnson for PM. Hardly ideal, but hey-ho. Are their any free-market, anti-green democracies left? If you find one let me know….
Doesn’t Griff support Corbyn though?
Oh, right! Never mind.
As an Englishman I can only apologize to the rest of the world for the utter lunacy being shown by most of our politicians. Corbyn, so beloved of the hate filled far-left, is the head of a bunch of dangerous, deluded Marxists and green muppets who would destroy our relationship with the US and indeed any sane, democratic state in favour of ties with a rag-bag assortment of terrorists and socialist states which, apart from the small issue of national security, would destroy our economy in record time. No rational, thinking person could seriously endorse him or his party as it is at the moment. Sadly, all we can do next week is vote for the least green bunch of windbags on offer, which means Boris Johnson for PM. Hardly ideal, but hey-ho. Are their any free-market, anti-green democracies left? If you find one let me know……
(Rescued from spam bin) SUNMOD
I like elections of this sort — a very clear distinction between parts of the two platforms; both candidates possessing a lot of baggage, but one so odious only an ignorant fool could vote for. The outcome, in terms of result and voter turn-out, is a pretty good measure of how far gone a society is. We might see a similar test in the U.S. next year.
Let’s face it, the UK is in need of some hard lessons like the French. Corbyn is the one that can deliver that generation message of pain and suffering to not soon forget.
Corbyn the Democrat:
One Person of whatever gender, sexual leaning, colour, creed (except, oddly, those who value the Torah), or age.
One Vote.
One time.
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The guy who barely managed to graduate from high school, is claiming to be a scientist?
Piers Corbyn – Scientist.
Jeremy Corbyn – Ninny.
Simples!
Absolutely impossible without a substantial investment in nuclear ebergy.
Or a substantial reduction in the size of the UK economy.
Corbyn is already talking about a 4 day working week, 32hrs (Avge.) down from 40.
The last time something like that was proposed was back in the 1970’s, under Conservative Ted Heath (Another one of his gems like the joining the Common Market (CM) in 1973), where a 3 day week was imposed on some businesses (Which started Jan 1st 1974, the very day the UK officially joined the CM) in the face of energy shortages predominantly brought about by coal miners strikes.
The UK joined the Common Market [no ‘EU’ then, we were conned into thinking it was j u s t a free-trade area] on 1st January 1973, at the same time as Eire [Ireland] and Denmark.
And the three-day-week was a power-saving measure, as the Miners had gone on strike, at least partly over wages. Although one official, Arthur Scargill, at least, wanted to overthrow the Government . . . They got that at the first General Election of 1974 [February, IIRC], when Heath had asked the electorate, in effect – “Who Governs the UK?”
“Not YOU, matey” was the electorate’s response.
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From the article: “Finally, geopolitics matters. The world is gripped by right-wing populists who are often hostile to tackling climate change. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro abandoned hosting this years’ UN climate talks, while Donald Trump plans to pull out of the Paris Agreement. Fearful inward-looking nationalism means that the internationalism necessary to tackle climate change is being eroded.”
No, nationalists in the US are outward-looking and without fear. Trump is not excluding other nations, he is just putting his nation at the head of the line of priorities.
Putting ones own immediate family first is a good thing, and something everyone does. We help ourselves first, but that doesn’t prevent us from helping others if we are able.
And don’t blame skepticism about the belief in human-caused climate change on nationalism. It’s not nationalism, it’s just common sense, which anyone in any nation can exercise for themselves. There is no evidence for human-caused climate change so it is common sense to be skeptical of such claims.
Key words are ‘control’ and ‘finances’. It’ll be an earner for the Prof and his cartel.
This insanity is the best argument AGAINST one-World-government.
Solving a non-existent AGW crisis is akin to war over which way to break an egg (J. Swift).
But big-endian vs small-endian was a case where fools fight over two feasible options to achieve a necessary end, with little or no consequence to the choice.
Solving a non-existent AGW crisis is a case where the end is not necessary, most of the choices are not feasible, and the delusion that some kind of action is necessary has huge consequences.
Plus the only way to go is big end.
In the most unlikely event that Corbyn wins, if I were Jewish, I’d be looking to move to another country and not just because Corbyn’s policies will bankrupt the UK, drive industry and jobs out of there and leave the people freezing or sweltering in the cold and heat unable to pay their utility bills. No, it’s for a far older problem from which Jews have long-suffered.
I would hope that President Trump, unlike FDR, would provide a safe haven for them in the US.