Climate Change - Blowing Up the Enemy

Once again, I'm late to the party. But I'd now like to add my own little voice to all the other angry statements being thrown around about this video:

It is supposed to be a joke, apparently. But as DK points out, it isn't funny. Not even in a bad taste sort of a way. It is simple, stupid and offensive. It's crass. It is, at best, a massive misjudgment on the part of the 10:10 campaign. But I'd also agree with Mr Eugenides - I don't quite believe this is an incitement to murder, and anyone who genuinely takes it as such is getting a little hysterical.

However, for me this is very revealing of the mindset of many people involved in the environmental movement. They have become convinced that they have found a "truth" - that the survival of the human race is dependent on pursuing the policies they back. And this is not something that is open to debate anymore - what they believe in is the truth. Those who don't agree aren't equal parties in a debate. They are wrong. Worse, they are being obstructive in the creation of a better tomorrow. And, as this video shows, they are lacklustre, lazy people who just can't be bothered to help build a utopia and avoid future dystopia. Hell, you wouldn't miss them if someone in authority blew them up.

Of course, it isn't just the environmentalists who fall foul of this sort of thinking. Pretty much anyone who has discovered the truth starts to believe that those who oppose them are a little less than human. That's how Stalinism came into being. That's how the nightmare of the Khmer Rouge came about. And so on. And that's what environmentalists have to avoid. Those who oppose them aren't doing so because they are bad in some way - they do it because they are not convinced by the evidence and/or the suggested policies to change the world.

Which is the point of plurality, democracy and debate. If you want to silence people, then win them over through talking with them. Because whatever this video was trying to achieve (and I genuinely don't know what that was), it has done nothing other than further alienate me from their cause.

So what if Tory candidates don't care about the environment?

I can't understand why anyone thinks this is news:

ConservativeHome asked Tory candidates to rate 19 policy issues on a scale of one to five, with five being the most important. Only eight of the 141 Tory candidates who responded gave climate change five marks, the lowest number for any issue.

Yeah, that's 'cos they are Tories, for fuck's sake. They are not the Green party. They are not going to be obsessed by the supposed problem of climate change, in the same way that the Green party isn't going to spend a lot of time thinking about marital tax breaks. And personally I'd rather the party most likely to become the government before the year is out focussed on real issues facing this country, like the shafted economy, the two wars we're fighting and the decimation of civil liberties under Labour rather than made up tripe about the environment.

Ed Miliband, Saviour of the World.

Apparently, the fate of the world is in Ed Miliband's hands. Which would be terrifying if the threat facing us wasn't climate change. Because, as the article on LabourList points out, climate change has slipped down the international agenda with good cause:

The world is far from environmental consensus, opposing domestic and international interests make sure of that. Recent attacks on the science behind climate change have dented public support. And several among our world’s leaders are shamelessly playing the expectations games.

It is worth decoding the phrase "Recent attacks on the science behind climate change". There have always been attacks on the science behind climate change; what has happened recently is the exposure of some of the fraudulent claims being made by those who create the "science" behind climate change. Just a little piece of LabourList spin there; but essential to understanding why climate change consensus seems to be falling apart.

Ultimately, you can tell that the British government don't think that climate change is a pressing issue. The key indicator is the fact that Ed Miliband - the less famous sibling in the political equivalent of the political version of the Chuckle Brothers - is in charge. If it really was an issue that the government wanted to focus on, then it would be Gordo himself - the perennial control freak - would be in charge. So Ed Miliband, a charisma vacuum, is going to save the world from a possibly non-existent threat? It could be used as the basis for the plot of perhaps the world's most boring film. It certainly isn't going to be at the heart of this failing government's final months in power.

Quote of the Day - Explaining Global Warming

"The problem we are faced with is that the meteorological establishment and the global warming lobby research bodies which receive large funding are now apparently so corrupted by the largesse they receive that the scientists in them have sold their integrity."

Piers Corbyn, speaking in 2000

Saving The World, Paul McCartney Style

Paul McCartney has some sage words to help us with the problem of climate change:

Sir Paul told the Independent: "Many of us feel helpless in the face of environmental challenges, and it can be hard to know how to sort through the advice about what we can do to make a meaningful contribution to a cleaner, more sustainable, healthier world.

"Having one designated meat-free day a week is a meaningful change that everyone can make, that goes to the heart of several important political, environmental and ethical issues all at once."

Not sure what this goes to show, other than Sir Paul and I have very different definitions of the word "meaningful". 

However, for me, this doesn't get to the heart of the problem with climate change and "environmental challenges". The problem isn't the changes we are seeing within our world. The problem is people - in particular rock stars who left anything even approaching every day reality decades ago - giving me spurious advice on how to live my life based on bugger all evidence. That really does my head in. This idea that because someone is famous they suddenly become incredibly knowledgeable on anything they care to dabble in is simultaneously idiotic and dangerous. After all, if Sir Paul - or Bono, or Thom Yorke, or that dweeb from Coldplay - wandered into the operating theatre with some advice for the surgeon just before they start operating on your brain, you'd tell them to fuck right off. And this flows across all the different parts of life. I'd probably take advice from the person who wrote "Live and Let Die" on songwriting; for just about anything else I don't really need the glib pronouncements of the man who wrote "The Frog Chorus."

So, in order to deal with my "environmental challenges", I've decided to never again listen to anything Paul McCartney has to fucking say. That goes to the heart of several important political, environmental and ethical issues for me all at once...

The Happening

I watched The Happening* this weekend. Yes, yes, I know – it got slated. But I am a sucker for apocalyptic fiction, and I hoped it might confound the reviews. Sadly, it didn’t.

Imagine you’d let Al Gore write a sci-fi chiller. What would he write it about? Why, the environment, of course. And what would the crushingly dull moral be of the that chiller? That we should respect the environment more. Because it could turn against us. Oooo, scary.

Except it isn’t scary. Trees don’t actually kill people by releasing chemicals that make them want to kill themselves. And this film doesn’t make me want to save the trees for fear that they will unleash a terrible revenge on us all. In fact, if I did believe that, then I’d buy a frigging chainsaw and cut a few of them down. Just to be on the safe side.

And few films have made the threat of mass suicide seem so boring. Basically, if the trees get you, they’ll make you stop, take a few steps back, and kill yourself. And not just kill yourself, but kill yourself in ludicrous ways. So you have the man who, rather than hanging himself with his shoelaces or a belt, decides on death by combine harvester. Or the old woman who decides head butting a window until there is like glass in her face and everything is the best way to shuffle off this mortal coil. And in the background you have a chinless wonder of teacher (who teaches the most placid pupils ever) running around with this girl and his extremely dull wife in ever-decreasing circles until the whole horror just… stops.

The whole experience compares unfavourably to another apocalyptic film released last year; The Mist. In that film, the menace is tangible and real. The whole picture is claustrophobic and terrifying. There is no attempt to make a social point with the threat; it is horrific monsters causing the calamity. As opposed to The Happening, which is basically about people running through the countryside in the summer to escape the wind.

Somewhere within The Happening, there is a great story. And if the script had been rewritten, then we could have had a classic film on our hands. If I was to change anything, it would be to change the pace of the film. By showing the menace from the outset, the director is forced into more and more outrageous death scenes to try to ramp up the tension, and also has to pad out the film with a lot of running around. As a result, we end up with unintentional hilarity. Instead, the events in New York should have been told rather than shown, to a group of people who don’t really care about what is happening in the Big Apple. Then the menace should get closer and closer to them, provoking more and more fear from the members of the remote community. Then, when the calamity hits the town (say, at the 45 minute mark in the film), we’d know (and hopefully care) about the characters, and the mass suicides would be all the more devastating as they would be jarring and the result of the director creating dread in the first half of the film. There is a reason why the first half of The Birds has little to do with the mayhem of the second half of the film – it makes the second half far more effective.

M. Night Shyamalan can write decent films. Where he struggles is bringing his films to the big screen. Even his best films – like The Sixth Sense and Signs seem flatly directed, with occasional flashes of brilliance. But watching The Happening made me feel that he lost his way by being unable to write a decent story and put that story on the big screen. If I was him, I’d be more inclined to focus on writing great scripts and letting someone else direct them. That way, we may get another classic film form Shyamalan. As it stands, I think his films will end up being living proof of the law of diminishing returns.

*Terrible, terrible title by the way. Makes it sound like a 1960’s style party, or something. “Yo, dude, you heading to the happening, man? Be there or, y’know, like, be square.”

The Underbelly of the Environmental Movement

It happened – third runway, here we come! This can’t be a massive surprise for anyone – after all, the government wanted this bill to pass, and since they have a healthy working majority, it was going to take a lot to stop this proposal from taking on an certain edge of inevitability. I’m quite apathetic on this issue – rather being a NIMBY, I’m more NMFP*. After all, I’m not on the flight path and tend to fly from Gatwick anyway. However, I’m expecting a howl of impotent rage from those who oppose the third runway.

Which leads me back to a point I have already made – just what, precisely, to those who oppose this third runway expect Heathrow to do about all their problems? Yeah, we have Boris’s plans to build airports in the river**, but I don’t hear many of the third runway protestors supporting that idea. Partly because the real nub of the issue isn’t so much the location of the extra runway, but rather the desire to expand air travel. I’d say most of the protestors simply don’t want there to be more air travel for environmental reasons.

However, this makes the question of what exactly is the alternative even more pertinent and urgent. If we want to stop the expansion of air travel, or, indeed, reduce it, then what precisely is the alternative? Because so much of the modern economy is based around air travel. If we stop the expansion of air travel, or even reduce it, it is going to decimate a global economy that is already floundering badly.

And there’s a further point. Air travel is not alone in being a potentially environmentally unfriendly mode of transport. Yet all the modern modes of transport exist for a reason. They are there to meet the demands of the growing global population. And this isn’t just demands for people to take their annual holidays to Tenerife. This is about the mass transit of commodities people need to survive. Sure, you could reduce this mass transit system across the globe a little bit, and impact on the quality of life for some. As soon as you start radically attacking that system, you are going to start hurting people in crucial ways.

The problem, therefore, is the size of the global population. Some environmentalists concede that only a substantial reduction in the number of humans on this planet can actually save the environment. Which leads us to the unsavoury, brutal, extreme underside of the environmental movement – how we reduce the population. And the ideas are not pleasant. This sort of mindset is, for me, best summed up by this old comment from a radical environmentalist character calling themselves Miss Ann Thropy way back in the 1980’s:

If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human population back to ecological sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS. So as hysteria sweeps over the governments of the world, let me offer an ecological perspective on the disease (with the understanding that the association between AIDS and homosexuality is purely accidental and irrelevant - in Africa it is a heterosexual disease, and is destined to be everywhere).

I take it as axiomatic that the only real hope for the continuation of diverse ecosystems on this planet is an enormous decline in human population. Conservation, social justice, appropriate technology, etc., are great to discuss and even laudable, but they simply don't address the problem. Furthermore, the whole economy of industrial affluence (and poverty) must give way to a hunter-gatherer way of life, which is the only economy compatible with a healthy land.

Of course, such a decline is inevitable. Through nuclear war or mass starvation due to desertification or some other environmental cataclysm, human overpopulation will succumb to ecological limits. But in such cases, we would inherit a barren, ravaged world, devoid of otters and redwoods, Blue Whales and butterflies, tigers and orchids.

Barring a cure, the possible benefits of this (AIDS) to the environment are staggering. If, like the Black Death in Europe, AIDS affected one-third of the world's population, it would cause an immediate respite for endangered wildlife on every continent. More significantly, just as the Plague contributed to the demise of feudalism, AIDS has the potential to end industrialism, which is the main force behind the environmental crisis.

None of this is intended to disregard or discount the suffering of AIDS victims. But one way or another there will be victims of overpopulation - through war, famine, humiliating poverty. As radical environmentalists, we can see AIDS not as a problem, but a necessary solution (one you probably don't want to try for yourself). To paraphrase Voltaire: if the AIDS epidemic didn't exist, radical environmentalists would have to invent one.

Now, I’m not trying to imply for one moment that every environmentalist is like that evil fucker quoted above, but this does point out a fundamental problem at the centre of the environmental argument. The human population needs to decrease, not increase. Making the environmental movement anti-human. And how is this reduction in the human population going to be achieved? The quote above – as odious as it might be with phrases such as “the possible benefits of this (AIDS) to the environment are staggering” – shows that something radical needs to happen. The problem is that any radical solution that fundamentally reduces the human population is, against the parameters of nearly any ethical or moral code, staggeringly evil.

A seismic reduction in the human population – or a radical contraction of the world economy (which would probably cause the former anyway) – may well be the only way to truly achieve these environmental objectives, but it is also worth revisiting why these objectives exist anyway. Some environmentalists argue that the planet is already beyond the point of no return. Which does leave me wondering why we would want to do anything to stop what is now inevitable. Or, as Mr Eugenides puts it:

“…on the "urgent need" to combat global warming (though if it's irreversible, where's the fucking urgency?)”

And if the status quo is reversible, then I think it is still worth challenging some of the fundamental assumptions of the environmental case. DK takes a look at some of the facts around climate change for a US Senator:

Yes, yes it is. Still, here are some facts for you, Senator Cardin:

 The world may or may not be warming. Honestly, we don't really know.
 The world may or may not be warmer than at any time since the last ice age. But, honestly, we don't really know.
 If there is some warming trend, man may or may not be contributing to it. Honestly, we don't really know.
 Ah, fuck it—you get the idea...

So, we don’t know whether we are causing some of the environmental damage to this planet. Therefore, we don’t know whether pursuing an environmental agenda would actually stop that damage. Culling the human population, or fucking with the global economy, is problematic even if you think it will do some good. When we are lacking in any real evidence that it would make a blind bit of fucking difference anyway, it becomes even more nonsensical.

Digging into the environmental and ecological movements shows that there is far more to both of them than a bit of fashionable airline bashing – and I dare say some environmentally minded people would be surprised where the extremes of their movement are at, ideologically speaking. However it also sums up nicely why I could never be an environmentalist – I refuse to sign up to an ideology that, deep down, is anti-human. And I’m also happy to be called a climate change sceptic*** - because, although conclusive proof will be next to impossible to come by, I would like something a little more concrete than the incoherent and utterly inconclusive “evidence” of the climate change lobby.

*NMFP – not my fucking problem.
**Can’t help but think of recent events in New York here, but I know I am being deliberately obtuse.
***Not denier, please not. Sceptic. Climate change happens; it is the causes of it and what we can do about it that I am sceptical about.

Plane Stupid: Getting Stuck In

Protests can, of course, take any format. And there have been some dramatic forms of protest in the past. Firebombing shops that sell fur, rioting over the poll tax in Central London, taking over Strangeways prison, throwing yourself in front of horse at the races - that is legendary, memorable and controversial protesting.

This, however, really isn't. But what else might you expect from the morons in Plane Stupid?

I mean, seriously, what sort of a plan is this? Gluing yourself to the PM? From the words of the protestor:

"My left hand was covered in superglue and I stuck it to his sleeve... I just glued myself to him and after 20 seconds he tore my hand off - it really hurt. He had to give it a couple of tugs before it came away."

Ok, worst case scenario, what would have happened? He'd have glued himself to the Prime Minister. And what do we think the Prime Minsiter would have done? Panicked, realised the error of his ways, and changed government policy? Or perhaps he would have just taken his jacket off.

The protestor also notes Brown's reaction:

"He was just grinning about it. He didn't seem to take me seriously."

I'm not surprised. This must have been one of the happiest moments Brown has had since he became PM. For the first time in months, he was the biggest, most moronic and incompetent fool in the room. Brown was actually face to face with a bigger fucktard than himself.

But the protestor, having not made enough of a tit of himself already, went on to further *protest*:

When he left the building he tried to glue himself to the gates of Downing Street but had his hand detached by a police officer.

And how was that police officer able to do that so easily? Again, in the words of the protestor:

"I didn't have much glue left by that point," he said.

*Sighs*.

Look. If you are going to protest through the medium of a moronic stunt, then at least prepare yourself adequately first. And the only thing this fucking chimp needed to remember to do was bring enough glue. And he failed at that.

There is a case to be made against a third runway at Heathrow. However, that case is undermined given it is so voraciously supported by such utter choppers as this lackwit. Seriously, what are people meant to do? Support the guy whose idea of revolutionary protesting is to try (and fail) to superglue himself to the PM? This is the antics of a drunk, retarded student - not of a serious campaigner.

Once again, Plane Stupid are living up to their name. In fact, they couldn't have picked a better title for their group. Unless it was "bunch of fucking morons."

Plane Stupid? Yep.

You may remember Plane Stupid. They were the ladies and gents who scaled Parliament to protest about runways or something. Not a bad little publicity stunt. They ripped it off from Fathers 4 Justice, of course, but the history of protest is littered with one protest group stealing another group's ideas.

The Guardian on Saturday ran an article about the group - link here And there is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a feeling of muted admiration from The Guardian:

More than audacity, what captured people's attention was the smart articulacy of young activists who confounded the eco-warrior stereotype. "That's far from accidental," Murray says. "We just recognise that it's extremely counter-productive to play into people's stereotypes. I mean, I only own a suit for when I'm on TV or in court. Some people in the activist movement were certainly suspicious of ... how prepared we are to play the game ... At this stage, direct action is mostly a tool of PR."

I have to admit a bias here - almost nothing said or done by Plane Stupid has grabbed my attention. What did grab my attention was the picture in Saturday's Guardian of Plane Stupid. Yeah, they don't look quite like a cliche of an eco warrior. What they do look like is a group of people who were rejected from the Arcade Fire for being too dowdy and frumpy. I can imagine them standing up at a meeting of a student union, and banging on about environmental issues regardless of what the debate is supposed to be about. And whilst you cannot say they look exactly like your average tedious eco-warrior, what they say and the way they behave is perfectly in line with those well-meaning but dreadfully dull environmental activists who watched too much Captain Planet when they were young.

Even when talking about their current legal woes, they show a detachment from reality that you would normally associate with paranoid schizophrenics:

But when we meet this week at a north London cafe they laugh about the bail terms, which ban them from coming within a mile of Westminster. "Was it a square mile or a radius?" says Leo Murray, 31, who is studying animation at the Royal College of Art. They have been granted an exemption: travelling through on public transport. "But what about on my bike?" Olivia Chessel, 20, asks mockingly.

Yes, Olivia, "what about on your bike?" Your bike is travelling on public transport. If it is a fucking tandem and you let the public ride on the back seat. Otherwise, I'm guessing, as private property, that bike isn't exempt. You twat.

But I'm nitpicking here, when there are far more glaring examples of the stupidity of, well, Plane Stupid. Because as soon as you start to pick at the ideology of these eco-nuts, you see just how pernicious and wrong their ideology is:

"I fully appreciate that at the moment, for an ordinary person making choices on their personal circumstances, which is exactly what you would expect people to do, flying from London to Edinburgh makes sense, because of gross distortions in the travel market," Murray says. Urging anyone to alter his or her "consumption behaviour" is a total waste of time, he continues. "We need to change the conditions of choice - not individuals' minds about things."

See that? That is what Plane Stupid are about. They've decided what is right, and given that knowledge, they want to reduce your freedom. Stupid little totalitarian fucks, they believe they have a right to decide how you live your life. The arrogance of youth meets with the naviety of youth - and creates this mindset where dicatorial politics is ok - just so long as this twattish group of acivists is in charge.

And given this arrogance and their detachment from reality, the article goes from bad to worse - to the point where even The Guardian seems to be mildly mocking them:

What Plane Stupid are campaigning for is the removal of that choice - by the closure of all short-haul flight routes. But what about long-haul flights? These would be acceptable, only if they were "necessary". But who would be the judge of that? "We're not policy wonks," says Murray. "But we're calling for some kind of demand constraint."

To translate - Plane Stupid have policies, they have no idea whether they are workable or not, or how to implement them, but others should find a way of making their half formed beliefs into law. One can imagine the phrase "we're not policy wonks" coming from ignorant protestors anywhere. Hell, it would sound just as normal coming from a racist BNP supporter in Essex somewhere, stating he wants to send all the immigrants back home, but when challenged on it falls back on the get out clause of "I don't know how it will work. I'm not a policy wonk."

And it does seem to be the default position of Plane Stupid:

But when pressed on the "equitability" of this solution - the rich would be able to continue flying, the poor wouldn't - they keep retreating behind the same disclaimer: "We are not a thinktank."

I think everyone can see that Plane Stupid are not a think tank. Probably from the lack of any intelligent thought coming from the group.

The article ends with the group saying they would happily go to prison for life if that is the sentence for escalating their protests. The thoughts of this raging ego maniacs in prison for the rest of their days mildly amuses me - I somehow can't imagine that, when surrounded by murderers, armed robbers, sex offenders and others serving a life sentence at Her Majesty's Pleasure, the whimpered phrase "we are not a thinktank" will save them from a sound beating. Or maybe worse.

There is a case to be made for environmental politics. I'm not sure it will ever win me over, but there is a case to be made. However that case can only ever be undermined when it is supported by the plain stupid members of groups like this.

The Evil Of The Plastic Carrier Bags

Government is, to a large extent, a question or priorities. A good politician will be able to decide what needs to be done and when. In the UK, today, with everything that is going in this country and elsewhere, the priority, according to our Prime Minister, is carrier bags.

And damn right. What could be more pressing than plastic carrier bags? What the ruddy fuck could be more important? I defy you to come up with even one area that requires government intervention more urgently that those evil, mother fucking plastic carrier bags. Jesus, how have we managed to survive for so long with the ever-present threat of plastic carrier bags hanging over our heads? I confidently predict that this country might - no, scratch that, will - collapse if we don't deal with the blight of carrier bags. Thank fucking Jesus fucking Christ for Gordon Brown. His bold strategy, his visionary approach, his eloquent idle threat of "I want to make clear that if Government compulsion is needed to make the change, we will take the necessary steps" - what a man, what a fucking hero. He is the prince of policy, the very kingpin of cool. We should make 29th February Gordon Brown day*.

Anyone who can listen this sort of half hearted environmental guff or anyone who can even see a picture of Gordon Brown these days without feeling waves of devastating nausea and shame is either a cretin or Hazel Blears. Or both.

*Not least so we only have to celebrate it once every four years. Mind you, the sort of celebration I'm thinking of is not that complimentary to the one-eyed arse wipe who resides in Number 10. It involves putting up effigies of Gordon Brown throughout the land. And instead of burning them, we piss on them. And then chop the gurning effigies into little pieces. Then stuff them into plastic carrier bags. And throw them in the sea.