By Robert Bradley Jr. — September 27, 2023
“Personally , I’ve now reached a point where I believe breaking the law for the climate is the ethically responsible thing to do.” (- Chris Packham, UK Wildlife TV presenter & conservationist)
Andrew Griffiths and Verel Rodrigues, UK climate activists, refuse to question climate alarm and forced energy transformation. They are frustrated despite major (anti-commoner) government intervention for not doing enough. And this in a country that produces about one percent of global GHG emissions.
Instead of checking their premises, Griffiths and Rodrigues (and others) want to double down. So what is the floor on despair–when you “hit bottom” in the vernacular of addiction? Is it open-ended violence?!
Verel states:
Watching this eco documentary just after watching Rishi Sunak’s roll back on climate policies genuinely restored hope that there is a significant shift coming. I am grateful for Chris Packham showing leadership and pledging full support to those who break the law for climate.
Andrew states:
This documentary is incredibly powerful and well worth a watch.
The Guardian, of course, gives the eco-documentary a favorable review. Jack Seale’s “Chris Packham: Is It Time to Break the Law? review – the bravest, most anguished TV of the year comes with the subtitle: “This extraordinarily honest eco-documentary sees the nature presenter wrestle with an existential crisis – and he’s so desperate he risks his entire future.”
He goes to state:
Documentary presenters don’t usually make a virtue out of bewilderment, but these are confounding, confusing times. Chris Packham: Is It Time to Break the Law? – an extraordinary, anguished think piece – opens with an audio montage of Packham’s desperate thoughts about the climate crisis, arranged so they chaotically overlap. This chattering inner monologue is accompanied by the unforgettable sight of the presenter’s face slowly being smothered in thick, black crude oil.
OK, the “oil” is probably treacle, but Packham’s film does involve the idea of putting his own safety and future on the line. It is beyond merely thought provoking: it follows him as he deals with a profound dilemma about how to live his life, and what that life is for, and it tells us that this is a decision we at home must also now make. The climate apocalypse is here and, despite fires and floods around the world, there is still – maddeningly – little sign of the change needed to avert the deeper catastrophe that is coming. Voting hasn’t worked. Peaceful protest hasn’t worked. Rational debate hasn’t worked. What now?
Bring on the violence, the article and its subject continues:
Packham, however, is deeply sympathetic towards the ordinary people who have become some of Britain’s most hardline climate activists, via actions organized by the guerrilla pressure group Just Stop Oil. … Packham opines that society ought to feel shame at putting principled people behind high walls and razor wire.
But the risks these pioneers are willing to brave are not confined to retaliation by the state. Viral clips of the actions of Just Stop Oil increasingly feature members of the public taking grim pleasure in reacting with violence, from shoving activists out of the road to driving heavy goods vehicles at them. Packham states that those people have been riled up by “the rightwing media”, referring to a Mail Online article in which Just Stop Oil activists are called “zealots” who have formed a “mob”.
Knowing what is at stake, Packham is still inclined towards extreme measures – not just approving of them, but participating in them himself…. Self-confessedly lost and uncertain, he seeks further counsel. He meets the Swedish ecology professor Andreas Malm, whose book How to Blow Up a Pipeline is worth the publishing deal just for the title. Malm stresses that he doesn’t mean literally blowing things up. Well, not necessarily. But he does advocate sabotaging pipelines or other fossil-fuel infrastructure….
In the end, Packham does not make TV history by publicly announcing his intention to commit an imprisonable offence, though he does reiterate his support for climate activists who cross that line. There is one obvious reason to hope he doesn’t get himself sent to jail: it would stop him making programmes as honest, as challenging and as urgently relevant as this.
Reaction on LinkedIn
Verel’s post seconding Packham got a cool reaction. Stated the self-described “Social Entrepreneur, UN Award Recipient, Inventor, Vegan” Theo Cosmora:
Instead of spending hours sitting in the middle of the road stopping others’ important travel, which may well include someone reaching hospital in time for an urgent operation or giving birth, spend the time and resources raising money for and deploying one of these in permitted river locations around the country to deliver clean very low cost 24/7 energy to local communities nationwide.
Verel responded:
It’s important to understand that the solutions to all are problems are already here, but they are being delayed by lack of awareness, lack of funding, and delay tactics by the fossil fuel industry. The most important thing is social change. How do we change ourselves if we are not aware of how pressing the issues we face are? Most of the population is just trying to survive, they don’t have the mental capacity to think about how climate change is going to affect them 10 years down the line.
Assuming that technology is going to fix all of our problems without fixing ourselves, is only going to create more problems. It’s a deadly cycle. Worth reflecting on this for a few days
Which garnered this response:
They don’t have the mental capacity. Well, that pretty much says in all about you, does it not? We know, you are special, you are mentally capable. We bow down to your genius.
This critic added:
Given that you are already committed to that reality, you are not open to reason, logic, or fact based-dialog. In other words, your mind is closed and you have moved on to justifying violence in the name of the “greater good.” That makes you no better to the millions who have come before you. They all thought they were right as well.
I had to add my two cents at this point:
Verel: For goodness sakes, check your premises. Don’t assume, study. Human betterment is just the opposite of what you are proposing as the God in the Machine. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Another wise comment:
Yes – there are times when governments pass laws that go against basic morality and those with morals should disobey. However regarding the use of energy to live that some say will bring disaster sometime in the future is hardly a moral imperative. Especially in light of the ongoing debate by good and honest skeptics. It is in fact immoral to silence those who may in fact be right.
But Verel might be beyond saving. He has a religion, the Church of Climate. As he commented to one critic:
I don’t see sitting in the road to raise awareness about how climate change is going to kill so many people across the world as violent. Allowing and being complicit with climate change to killing millions of people is not moral, and I support those who are doing their best to raise awareness about this crisis in whatever way they can, as long as they are not violent.
I’m just wondering whether this Verel Rodrigues is related to Shirley Rodrigues, deputy London mayor for the environment, that has twice (at least) tried to suppress scientific conclusions that go against the ULEZ narrative?
“UK Climate Alarmists Debate Violence (hitting bottom?)”
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Does damaging petrol pumps constitute violence?
Police tackle ‘Just Stop Oil’ protesters vandalising London petrol stations – YouTube
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I am beginning to believe that the climate alarmist narrative is one way (along with end-of-the-world prognostications — remember Harold Camping some years back) in which society weeds out the most ignorant, gullible and naive people who don’t know how to think critically for themselves and look more cynically at belief systems like CAGW. I hope I never see the day when I degrade mentally (think Biden) and start believing everything that the U.N., academia, the MSM and my government tell me.
People tend to embrace ideas that appeal to them emotionally or which provide confirmation bias for their pre-conceived belief systems, and never mind the facts. Hatred of or opposition to fossil fuels likely provides at least some of the impetus for CAGW. Climate scare believers are made by playing on that hate. Using hate and fear to get into their heads and getting them hooked is not hard to do. Cults do that to recruit new members.
When climate alarmists start seriously contemplating violence, it is time that we start asking ourselves if this climate scare has gone on too long. It was back in 1988 when James Hanson testified before Congress and seriously got the CAGW ball rolling. That’s 35 years. It has drawn me to the famous quotes of H. L. Mencken who, to a certain extent, has made a cynic out of me as well.
Violence begets violence. If they resort to this tactic, they will open a can of worms that will never again contain the worms.
“For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”
I don’t think they have the slightest clue as to what the consequences of their actions will be. The people of the UK have a long history of amused tolerance of extreme or erratic behaviour, until we don’t – then it stops.
This winter will be an interesting test.
If pensioners start freezing and starving in the cold dark, things might get dicy for the Lord’s and Ministers.
These extremists are cognitive dissonance plebs on nuclear steroids!
Yes, but bear in mind that cognitive dissonance is a force which causes reconciliation within the human mind.
Perhaps the extremists might be more accurarately described as being immune or resistant to the positive effect of cognitive dissonance.
I just love how these activists are always urging other people to sacrifice themselves in pursuit of the activists goals.
If they truly believed that the fate of the earth was on the line, they would be out front leading the demonstrations and violence.
Bottom line fear mongering leads to self righteous hysteria creating cadres of vulnerable normies and no so normies for the gifted elite to manipulate into street action. The people who are radicalizing cadres are corrupt political power seekers. Seems even heads of state are falling victim.
It’s the communist belief that they can perfect humanity by creating the perfect society, all over again.
Up to now, communists/socialists have managed to kill several hundred million people. This time their goal is billions.
And once again, the reveal that they consider themselves to be the only smart ones on the planet, and that this alleged intelligence gives them carte blanch to run the lives of everyone else.
Delusional. If they were truly intelligent they would realise that their own ideology is badly flawed and their approach to protesting is alienating more and more people who have the mental capacity to think how climate change activism is going to affect them 10 years down the line and reject it.
Look how many marxist/communists declare that “this time it’s going to work”.
“Personally , I’ve now reached a point where I believe breaking the law for the climate is the ethically responsible thing to do.” (- Chris Packham, UK Wildlife TV presenter & conservationist)
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Hmm can gas chambers for deniers be far behind?
They are free to break the law but I would enforce the law brutally.
“Pour encourager les autres!”
You would, but would the current government?
The current government needs to be made to enforce the law, that is their job. If they can’t do their job they need to go.
… and be replaced by another government who won’t enforce the law either?
Would you be willing to use violence in order to make them go?
What do you consider violence?
“Packham, however, is deeply sympathetic towards the ordinary people who have become some of Britain’s most hardline climate activists, via actions organized by the guerrilla pressure group Just Stop Oil. “
Ordinary people!??? Packham is a deluded idiot. Socialism goes on about the ordinary people but seems to be adept at killing millions in the name of equity, justice and good intentions. The modern left despise the ordinary person, especially when the ordinary person doesn’t want what they are being forced to accept.
“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.” – Thomas Sowell
Socialism is the theory that when you take money from the productive, and use it to buy the votes of the unproductive, you can perfect society.
I see no evidence that the eco loons aren’t getting everything they want, every day, in every way, and at an alarming pace. If they could snap their fingers and attain their proclaimed utopia this afternoon they would still find some reason to resort to force and violence, because force and violence are their raison d’être. They dress it up with appeals to nature, the environment, ecology, Gaia,
the whales,the eagles,uncluttered mountaintops, polar bears, and the climate, but those are their Trojan horses, to be abandoned the way feminists abandoned women when they stopped being useful enough as a cause, and for the same reason: They’re nihilists at bottom. They’re impervious to data, facts, logic, and reason because they’re not seekers of the truth but of death. If you’re agog at their mind-numbing irrationality in the face of insurmountable evidence, it’s because you benevolently grant them a humanity they haven’t earned. They’re not trying to save the smallest snail darter. Weather modification, mining for EV materials, decommissioning nuclear plants, making CO2 a “pollutant” in the service of shutting down Western civilization: Those are the pipe dreams of rabid misanthropes. They’re foaming at the mouth to see the final results of their suicidal schemes. To range-of-the-moment barbarians, Nut Zero is an eternity away. They’re working up their nerve to pick up a gun and finish the job themselves, because for them the “debate” about whether to use violence was over a long time ago.To them, the world will never be perfect enough.
Meanwhile, it’s all coming apart from the top down:
“IPCC chairman rebukes exaggerated climate alarm
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has welcomed the rebuke of exaggerated climate hype and alarm by Professor Jim Skea, the new Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In interviews with German media, Skea said it is wrong and misleading for climate activists to imply that temperature increases of 1.5°C posed an existential threat to humanity.
In the eyes of many climate activists, limiting warming to 1.5°C has become the decisive benchmark for ‘saving the planet’. In 2018, the IPCC warned that humanity had 12 years to prevent a global climate catastrophe if global warming could not be limited to 1.5°C.
https://www.sustainabilitymatters.net.au/content/sustainability/news/ipcc-chairman-rebukes-exaggerated-climate-alarm-329382719#:~:text=In%20interviews%20with%20German%20media,for%20'saving%20the%20planet‘.
“Why Did Bill Gates Make Sudden U-Turn On Climate Doom Narrative?
Microsoft co-founder, philanthropist, and climate alarmist Bill Gates has backtracked on ‘climate doom’ prophecies. The writing is on the wall for the political and financial elites, who have long championed imminent climate doom, realizing that the public sees through the charades.
In 2021, Gates previously warned about apocalyptic consequences if the world does not achieve zero net carbon emissions by the year 2050. He also promoted his new book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” (fear sells).
On Thursday, Gates made a sudden U-turn on his climate doom narrative and now expects “No temperate country is going to become uninhabitable.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/why-did-bill-gates-make-sudden-u-turn-climate-doom-narrative?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1848
Well I think the eco-nazis policies will harm the environment with poorly thought out plans that blight the country-side and put ridiculous pressure on the mining industry. So then eco-realistics would be justified in violence against eco-idiot plans and such.
I’m surprised that the eco-nazis didn’t think about that, but deep thinking and prudence are not hallmarks of the left.