Climatism versus Democracy
Translated from this post by Benoît Rittaud:
The dream of environmental dictatorship is being expressed more and more openly, and the normal social safeguards no longer work. Take this headline to an interview with climatologist François-Marie Bréon in Libération, 29/07/2018: “The Battle for the Climate conflicts with Individual Freedoms.”
This title alone might suggest a critical assessment of some new ecologically punitive law. Alas, it is quite the opposite: in order to fight against climate change, the interviewee appears to be in favour of a restriction of individual liberties.
What’s most disturbing is that he can do so in a national newspaper without raising an uproar. The complete sentence from which the title is taken is even clearer: “We can say that the battle against climate change is in conflict with individual freedoms and therefore with democracy.”
In hearing this assertion, does the journalist take a step back to consider the import of such an obviously dangerous statement? Not at all. Having established that the question of democracy and individual liberties is of secondary importance, the interview goes straight on to attack the grave issue of energy-consuming air conditioning – obviously the mother of all vices.
We can reassure ourselves by saying that this interview is just one more silly season article to fill newspapers in need of copy, and that all this will disappear in the first frost. But one can also see there the illustration of a worrying fragility in our social institutions, which remain silent when faced with a call to institute what one might call a climatorship.
The climatorship is progressing slowly but surely, with no popular resistance. Three years ago, Cécile Duflot [ex head of the Green Party] proposed inscribing the fight against climate change in the constitution. Nobody paid attention. The current constitutional reform is preparing to satisfy her desire dramatically; the very first article of the Constitution will be disfigured with a mention of the “fight against climate change.”
Who questions the desirability of such a modification? No one. Where is the constitutionalist to remind us that our fundamental law does not exist to promote ecological virtue signaling, but to organize the distribution of powers? Nowhere.
The fact is that we have lost all collective capacity to conduct a normal climate debate. Everyone is paralyzed by the fear that the slightest questioning of the climate orthodoxy or its implications (energy transition, environmental policy, climate diplomacy, etc.) will immediately be labelled as ignorance, selfishness, or even denialism.
Is it too late to return to normality, or is it only a matter of time before the introduction of a climatorship that would barter our basic liberties “for the good of the planet”? Can we begin by allowing everyone to exercise their critical spirit, without immediately throwing an accusation of Trumpery in their faces? Can we also agree that that the title of climate scientist no longer offers moral protection to those who display their will to attack our values.
Whether our world is getting warmer or not, and whether we are responsible for it or not, we have the inalienable right to remain free.
Climate Scepticism 
False fears about the environment are being used to justify a totalitarian government.
I live in Brighton (UK) where the government is implementing a plan called “One Planet Brighton” which includes a demand that politicians be given direct political control of “Happiness.” Their justification for that demand is that they need it to stop the climate from changing.
My response to that is to ask
“What percentage of scientists say that if we give politicians direct political control of happiness then that will stop the climate from changing?” Answer – zero.
and
“What percentage of scientists say that we can stop the climate from changing?” Answer – zero.
It is important to know that zero percent of scientists say that we can stop the climate from changing.
The reader ought to know about the “One Planet” political program, because it will eventually be imposed upon them wherever they are.
At the moment it is being imposed on all of Wales – (google “One Planet Wales”) as well as my home town (see:- my article about this at :- https://tinyurl.com/SustainBrighton
It is also being imposed on Fremantle Australia (google “One Planet Fremantle”)
This “One Planet” program is an implementation of “Agenda 21 – Sustainable Development”
What’s going on is that false fears about the environment are being used to justify false solutions. These solutions are totalitarian political, economic social and even psychogical systems.
As far from democracy as you can get.
Sustainability is poverty and slavery.
Sustainability is about shivering in the cold and dark so that in the future they can shiver in the cold and dark
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Note today that Britsh Heart Foundation has put out an Air Pollution SCARE STORY in an attempt to set the AGENDA for a govt consultation that ends in 10 days time
https://consult.defra.gov.uk/environmental-quality/clean-air-strategy-consultation
BBC article has open comments (until they have a tantrum)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-45034972
In the radio report I counted 6 errors of bias/logic.
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Belgian writer Drieu Godefridi in a similar vein:
With the Paris Accord, which is not born from nothing, we enter a completely different dimension. This time, it is no longer morality, generosity or compassion (i.e. disaster relief) that requires the transfer of the wealth of the West. It’s science! It is the idea that because the Western industrial world has polluted the world for so many years should mean that the West must transfer its wealth to the rest of the world, which can continue to pollute. Further, this guilt money must be paid into the Green Fund which puts unaccountable, unelected green groups and green rent-seekers an opportunity to exploit this ultimate global subsidy for renewable-intermittent energies! Admire the finesse of the process: it employs the very strength of the West — capitalism — to show that the West has sinned. How naive and amateur are the Third Worldists of the past, with their moral arguments, faced with the omnipotence of the scientific argument!
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2017/06/17/climate-geopolitics/
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This is profound and timely.
The climate obsession is corrupt and destructive. Just last night a friend of several years made it clear that my climate skepticism is a threat to our friendship.
I am not, in his perspective, merely disagreeing in my skepticim of the climate consensus.
I am disagreeable, if not evil, for even showing him the article used in the earlier post on heatwaves.
He is an educated acclompished professional in the publushing industry.
He has published contrversial authors for decades.
And he can no longer calmly discuss the weather.
Climate obsession is a dangerous perversion of religion. Climate obsession corrupts everything in its grasp: science, education, critical thinking, rational thought and apparently the pillars of our governments and freedom itself.
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BOBDOBBYDOBS
Your article which you link to on the ‘One Planet Brighton’ plan to downsize Brighton by two thirds (what do they do with the excess population, heave it into Hove?) dates from 2011. How are they getting on with their ambitious project?
RON CLUTZ
Drieu Godefridi is the founder of the Belgian Hayek Institute, which gives an idea of his political position. He also publishes frequently in the Belgian and French press on such subjects as George Soros (anti) and the recent Trump-Putin meeting (pro). In other words, despite lying outside the political consensus, he has some media exposure. Benoît Rittaud has much less in France, despite having written books on climate politics and the Paris Agreement. Their equivalent in Britain would never appear on the BBC, which says something shameful about the state of the British media.
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The problem with environmentalism is that it’s been captured by a faction of elite Malthusians. The best way to fight them is not to let them get away with marginalizing the more rational ones like Michael Shellenberger. Shellenberger has shown how the current environmental movement has its roots in the anti-nuclear movement:
http://environmentalprogress.org/history-of-nuclear/
He has a great interview with Alex Epstein:
http://industrialprogress.com/power-hour-michael-shellenberger-on-a-new-approach-to-environmental-issues/
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It looks like an extension of socialism to me. Just another ’cause’ used as a
front to acquire political power and influence. Some people genuinely fear
we’re entering the end of days and this justifies them acting by whatever
means necessary. Prepare for imminent re-education in the first climate gulags
of ‘sunny’ Siberia.
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