Climate sense
Brendan O’Neill, writing in the UK Telegraph makes the valid point that environmentalism is diametrically opposed to the ordinary human desires for wealth, health and happiness, and the rejection by the public at large of climate hysteria and alarmism is worthy of celebration:
But has the public really tuned out from eco matters because it doesn’t understand them, because it is perplexed by “expert discourse”? I don’t think so. I think the reason people are switching off from the enviro-agenda is because they disagree with it. They just don’t buy the idea that capping carbon emissions is the most important thing in the world, more important than growing the economy, increasing wealth, and being free to choose to live in a big house with the heaters permanently switched on and Tesco just a short 4×4 drive away. They see the mean-minded, sacrifice-demanding politics of being green as a challenge to the thing that has motored human communities for millennia – the desire to create a world of plenty, an overflowing “land of milk and honey”, a utopia filled with stuff and comfort – and they don’t like it.
Environmentalism is, by its own admission, a campaign against the public and our historic desire for more things and freedom. George Monbiot has stated this baldly. Environmentalism is “a campaign not for abundance but for austerity”, he says. “It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less… it is a campaign not just against other people, but against ourselves.” And that is precisely how most people experience environmentalism – as an extraordinarily elitist drive to reprimand and possibly even punish the people for daring to want more; as a top-down, hectoring effort to make us acclimatise to austerity and give up on that age-old dream of a “great production that will supply all, and more than all the people can consume” (Sylvia Pankhurst). If environmentalism is a “campaign against people”, then it makes perfect sense that the people bristle at it, even hate it and deny its “truths”. (source)
And just to be clear, this does not mean ‘denying’ the existence of climate change, or the contribution that man has made to it. It is about denying the environmentalists the free rein they desire to dictate the response.
Australian Climate Madness 
I would be happy to read this but I just don’t care. N
Spot on and to the point.
It is very well put. There is an another aspect though. Why should well-meaning politicians who set out “to make the world a better place” end up harming their constituents?
A clue is at the UK Dept of Energy carbon valuation page. https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/carbon-valuation–2
In Dec 2007 the DECC replaced the “social cost of carbon” with the “shadow price of carbon”. The explanation is a policy paper for this switch was
(T)he SPC is based on the SCC for a given stabilisation goal, but can be adjusted to reflect:
– estimates of the MAC (marginal abatement costs) required to take the world onto the stabilisation
goal; and
– other factors that may affect UK willingness to pay for reductions in carbon emissions, such as political desire to show leadership in tackling climate change.
In other words
– The value ascribed to policy should not be the benefits, but the costs of achieving the targets.
– Political kudos should be valued.
Politicians take the credit for creating green jobs and for doing their bit to save the world. They have been separated from serving the real interests of the people of their countries.
Spot on. Fortunately, they are now beginning to get the wake-up call. It seems slow coming, it sure is slow watching, but they are beginning to blink. Could be some excitement ahead. 🙂
The tone of the dialogue from the Federal USA Government astonishes me as on top of John Kerry going around the World saying that climate change is one of the World largest problems when all it is is a giant con, it seems that they are doing this because they have been offered $100millionus dollars in election funding for all of the true climate change believers, with all the proof that CAGW is a con then they are having an all nigh pajama sleep over and the words that are coming out of their mouths is a load of crap, it seems that the elected US members will say anything to get election funding. N