21 Comments

1. Good heavens! Where to even start with this one. Half of what was written could have come straight out of the Unabomber’s manifesto. And he was a murderous certified nut job.

   I didn’t see Professor Rice’s name on the list, by the way.

   LikeLiked by 3 people

2. Geoff. I am completely confused. This quartet and their many followers seem equally confused, bothered and bewildered. Two of their demands seem contradictory:

   § design climate policies that protect workers and the most vulnerable and reduce all forms of inequality: economic, racial and and gender.

   § safeguard and protect democracy.

   How can you protect workers when you are determined to sabotage the legal underpinnings of our society? By deliberately creating anarchy how can you have democracy?

   Can 80,000 signatories have so little common sense? No understanding of how the world works? Clearly being successful in today’s world, they do have this understanding, so what gives?

   The activist youth have always been unhappy with the societies that they grew up in and are prepared or willing to pull them down, but what excuse do the mighty 80,000 have?

   LikeLiked by 3 people

3. On reading through this I immediately thought “Extinction Rebellion must be behind this”. Surprise, surprise, it’s one of the signatories and there’s not an aporopriately qualified, traibed or experienced scientist among its leadership.

   LikeLiked by 1 person

4. Actually, to put the record straight, although I may have called Ted Kaczinsky a certified nut job, he wasn’t actually clinically insane; he was just a psychologically unstable idealist. As such, he represents the potential that exists within the average XR member, or indeed the Greta Thunberg flan club. All they would need is the requisite levels of self-delusion and self-righteousness and, of course, a Great Satan to attack – who shall be known by the name ‘The System’. Take the following extract from Ted’s manifesto:

   “If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not make use of violence; it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can’t predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.”

   Or, to put it in the words of our four schoolgirls in their open letter to the EU:

   “Our current system is not ‘broken’ – the system is doing exactly what it’s supposed and designed to be doing. It can no longer be ‘fixed’. We need a new system.”

   In contrast, XR’s Roger Hallam, definitely sees it as a political revolution but is no less militant than would be your average letter bomber:

   “We are going to force the governments to act. And if they don’t we will bring them down and create a democracy fit for purpose. And yes, some may die in the process.”

   Killing to achieve democracy has to be the oldest political cliché in the history of activism. It’s a good thing that there is no such thing as an open letter bomb.

   LikeLiked by 2 people

5. Another good quote from the Unabomber manifesto:

   “Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.”

   It really does look like the four schoolgirls stole their homework.

   LikeLike

6. JOHN RIDGWAY
   Half of what was written could have come straight out of the Unabomber’s manifesto.

   … or a speech by Joe Biden, trying to sound like Ocasio Cortex. Cant say more. My keyboard4s gone qwerty.

   LikeLike

7. I like searching the internet for the climate-alarmed with unusual names, as it reduces the possibility of confusing them with someone with the same – or a very similar – name. Thus I find that Anuna De Wever has her own Wikipedia page:

   “De Wever was born in Mortsel, Belgium. With Kyra Gantois and Adélaïde Charlier, De Wever became one of the leading figures in the School strike for climate movement in Belgium. As a result, from February to May 2019 she had a weekly column in the magazine HUMO.

   In aftermath of the school strikes in Belgium centre-right Flemish minister for the environment Joke Schauvliege was obliged to resign after falsely claiming that the Belgian State Security Service had information indicating that the climate strike was a political front organisation.

   Personal differences led to a fissure within the Belgian Youth for Climate movement, with the departure of co-founder Kyra Gantois in August 2019.

   De Wever made an appearance at the 2019 Pukkelpop music festival attempting to engage the audience to call attention to the climate issues. This call angered some festival goers who harassed her group, hurled bottles of urine at her, and followed her back to her campsite, uttered death threats and destroyed their tent, forcing security to intervene. Because the attackers had been carrying a variant of the Flag of Flanders favoured by far-right elements of the Flemish Movement, the organizers banned such flags from the event, confiscating 20.

   In October 2019, De Wever was among the youngest climate activists to set sail on the Regina Maris for a low-carbon trans-Atlantic journey to the 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Santiago, Chile.

   In February 2020, after returning from South America, she took an internship with the Greens–European Free Alliance in the European Parliament, without becoming a member of the party.

   Awards
   In May 2019, De Wever and Kyra Gantois jointly received the Ark Prize of the Free Word.
   In September 2019, De Wever and Adélaïde Charlier received Amnesty International Belgium’s Ambassador of Conscience Award on behalf of Youth for Climate.”

   It’s a pity she sailed all the way to South America for a climate conference that wasn’t there. The Wikipedia page doesn’t tell us how she returned.

   LikeLiked by 1 person

8. ‘ ‘I’m wild again, beguiled again
   A simpering, whimpering child again
   Bewitched, bothered and bewildered
   – am I, tra la.’

   …Pity they’re too young and indoctrinated to have learned any history
   re the consequences of wipe – the – slate – clean political movements.

   LikeLiked by 1 person

9. All is not well among the young climate-concerned:

   “Amid rising tensions, Youth for Climate co-founder will leave group leadership”

   https://www.brusselstimes.com/all-news/eu-affairs/123098/european-parliament-threatens-to-block-approved-eu-long-term-budget/

   “The co-founder of the Youth for Climate movement in Belgium will leave the group’s leadership amid tensions with fellow leader Anuna De Wever, but will remain active in the larger climate movement.

   In a statement published on Twitter at the weekend, 20-year-old Kyra Gantois said she was “tired of being treated like a piece of dirt,” according to De Standaard.

   Gantois, who has received less media attention than De Wever, said that, as the group gained attention, she saw her role diminish even though she continued playing a leading role in the weekly school strikes which saw hundreds of students take to streets throughout the spring to demand political action on climate.

   “What nobody saw is that I organized almost everything behind the scenes and that I also had things to say and that I never had the chance to do so,” she wrote, according to the outlet.

   Gantois’ announcement follows media reports during past weeks which cited tensions between her and the more prominent figure of De Wever, which reportedly came to a head during music festival Pukkelpop, where De Wever was threated and harassed.

   Amid the fallout from the events, De Wever announced she would be leaving for an extended sailing trip to the COP25 in November, which she said will allow for a sort-of respite for what the 17-year-old described as “Anuna fatigue.”

   The youth for climate protests school strikes are set to return in September, when the students go back to school, but will take up a new form in order to fend off criticism that their strikes were only an excuse for the group to take a day off school.

   In the statement, Gantois said that she doubts she will return to the group’s leadership but that she will continue to pursue her climate goals and to show up during the marches.”

   LikeLiked by 2 people

10. From the French wiki article on Anuna – At 16 she accompanied her mother, a sociologist specialising in gender and diversity, on a trip to New York to attend a conference on feminism, where she discovered the great vulnerability of women to climate change. There’s more on the Flemish Wiki, but my malfunctioning keyboard is not up to repeating it. Love the expression ‘Opwarming van der Aarde’ though.

    LikeLiked by 3 people

11. It looks like upheaval in the flatlands

    LikeLike

12. Covid shows that there is no climate crisis.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

13. This quote is actually true: ““It is now clearer than ever that the climate crisis has never once been treated as a crisis, neither from the politicians, media, business nor finance…” in the sense of any kind of crisis that is concomitant to the dominant public (and authority) narratives of imminent and certain global catastrophe. The entire renewable effort, for instance, has still had negligible effect on world energy use.

    Greta has hit exactly upon the most key characteristic of a culture – it’s dominant narrative, while being highly emotive and persuasive, *must* be dead wrong in order to achieve its purpose. Within adherents generally, a *subconscious* mechanism alerts them to the fact that the emotive narrative, the ‘crisis’ in this case, isn’t true, and that their actions should be to virtue-signal, *not* to act like it’s literally real. The virtue-signalling tells others they are part of the club, and this is *only* what the culture is about. En-masse, this not only results in the lack of any useful action, but typically cultures do everything possible to *not* solve the (false) issue / problem, while of course individuals must *look like* they’re doing so, because this policy prolongs or even enhances the conditions which feed the culture’s growth. If fossil-fuel usage actually dramatically declined, the culture would be immediately doomed.

    Unfortunately, Greta has opted for the wrong explanation to her astute observation (which maybe she has arrived at via her incorrect processing of cultural narrative; Asperger interrupts the proper processing of social communications). While why wouldn’t she? Her presumed logical alternative is that everyone has been lying to her, including her parents and teachers. About incredibly serious matters, including the mass well-being and deaths of children. But they are not lying; they are believers, they are proselytising, which is an entirely different thing. And presumably, a thing she doesn’t know about. We know all these characteristics to be true from the much more familiar case of religions – only a vanishing minority even of true believers actually behave as if they’re going to burn in Hell for their sinful actions – somewhere deep inside, subconsciously, they know it isn’t true albeit they consciously ‘believe’ that it is.

    Alan: ‘…Two of their demands seem contradictory…”

    The fundamental untruth at the heart of all strong cultures, mean that they are riddled with contradictions, which typically buffer the main narrative untruth from outside reality via a vast network of smaller / lesser contradictions. Of which as John notes for strong political cultures, one near the top of that network tree is an old chestnut, though it is not typically expressed in such an obvious form. Albeit the implication is a few will die to save the many, to state it so obviously is a sign of the cultures confidence, its ascendancy. More typically such cultural hypocrisies are *obscured* by smoke and mirrors. It’s not usually worth unravelling all the myriad contradictions and hypocrisies; they occur in reams of convolutions, and we know why this is.

    LikeLiked by 5 people

14. “If fossil-fuel usage actually dramatically declined, the culture would be immediately doomed.”

    This is why Renewables are such a perfect policy for the culture, involving mass effort and money and infra-structure tied up in the culture, and constant proselytising of the culture’s values to expand same, while having no chance whatsoever of removing the fossil-fuel usage that is actually keeping the culture alive.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

15. Hunter Lovins used to be married to environmentalist Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, Colorado, which she co-founded with him. She obviously liked the name…
    Yet another lawyer – Hunter Lovins received an undergraduate degree in sociology and political science from Pitzer College in 1972, and a J.D. from Loyola Law School in 1975.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amory_Lovins
    Amory Lovins spent about a decade as British Representative for Friends of the Earth. Married Hunter Sheldon in 1979, divorced in 1999.

    LikeLike

16. Greta Thunberg is the Winner of the First Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity • MassisPost

    Greta Thunberg said: “I’m extremely honored to receive the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity. We’re in a climate emergency, and my foundation will as quickly as possible donate all the prize money of 1 million Euros to support organizations and projects that are fighting for a sustainable world, defending nature and supporting people already facing the worst impacts of the climate and ecological crisis — particularly those living in the Global South. (Global South is UN-speak)

    Starting with giving €100.000 to the SOS Amazonia campaign, led by Fridays For Future Brazil to tackle Covid-19 in the Amazon, and €100.000 to the Stop Ecocide Foundation to support their work to make ecocide an international crime.”

    The Grand Jury chaired by Jorge Sampaio, President of the Portuguese Republic from 1996 to 2006, is composed of personalities like:
    Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (Founder and Director Emeritus of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research),
    Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim (President of Indigenous Women and Peoples Association of Chad),
    Johan Rockström (Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Professor at the University of Potsdam),
    Katherine Richardson (Coordinator of the Centre of Sustainability Science at the University of Copenhagen),
    Miguel Arias Cañete (former European Energy and Climate Action Commissioner),
    Miguel Bastos Araújo (Geographer, Pessoa Award 2018),  
    Runa Khan (Founder and Executive Director of the Friendship NGO and Country Chair of Global Dignity Bangladesh) and
    Sunita Narain (Writer and environmental activist, Director of the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi).

    Her “foundation” is obviously well financed, if she can afford to give away a million euros.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

17. ANDY WEST

    Greta has hit exactly upon the most key characteristic of a culture – it’s dominant narrative, while being highly emotive and persuasive, *must* be dead wrong in order to achieve its purpose.

    Really? “dead wrong”? Surely it must be at least a little bit right – morally for example – in order to take hold. The defiance of a freaky minority of Hebrew and Aramaic-speakers on the fringes of the Roman empire first provided a focus of resistance to the corruption and cruelty of the regime (a moral good) but also made some progress towards rationality (less use of chicken entrails in decision-making, less waste of protein on altars.) Could they have done it without getting eaten alive by lions in the arena? Probably not, and that’s where your analysis of the irrational nature of cultural change is so useful. Early Christians correctly spotted some things wrong with the system, and blundered towards some partial solutions. “Doing some things a bit better for the wrong reasons” seems a description that aligns your analysis of the nature of cultures with the undoubted facts of progress.

    What’s “right” about environmentalism is the objection to the trash littering the countryside, the conditions of work in Bolivian cobalt mines, etc. We all struck at some time in our lives by the realisation that the planet is in a mess. Life is messy; death is messy; our bodies are messy – and who better than adolescent girls to articulate this profound truth?

    LikeLiked by 3 people

18. Geoff: Good observations. But the problem here is that the absolute right / wrong of cultural narratives, and the moral alignment that humans derive from such narratives, are not the same thing, albeit such narratives as each comes along for sure shift the moral landscape (for better or worse).

    In absolute terms, while I add the caveat of ‘strong’ culture and I guess also ‘established’, then ‘dead wrong’ is still applicable. Regarding your example, ‘a single God’ is still just as dead wrong as ‘a pantheon’, because there are *no* gods. We tend to let this go for religion, and some political cultures too, because indeed they often boil down to “Doing some things a bit better for the wrong reasons”. Which incidentally is a great way of putting it. Yet it is still important to understand that the primary cultural narrative *must* be dead wrong, because it cannot accomplish its purpose otherwise, after which realisation we *may* choose to turn a blind eye if it is driving a net ‘better’ context than what went before, but at which point we may also choose not to if it is net worse. In the specific case of catastrophic climate change aka global warming as was, while indeed some good things are no doubt hiding within, e.g. simply more environmental awareness, I think it’s highly likely that this is the worst thing that could ever possibly have happened to the prior causes of environmentalism, and so indeed the environment. Not to mention the numerous other human damages. Imagine a planet where everything was exactly the same as here, but for some magical reason GW hadn’t taken off as a cultural movement, remaining a rational and scientific topic, so rationally dealt with. I strongly suspect that would be a net much better planet.

    But for sure I concede that only future history can tell whether cultures are net good or bad. We know from our evolutionary history that they have systemically been net good for group survival, because that is exactly why they are so prevalent and why our brains are so geared to them. But we also don’t know how much we need them any more, and that for sure they can be very net bad on occasion, like the culture that arose in central Europe in the 1930s for instance. In practice, I think we still do need them. We are not Vulcans, and so need cultural motivation to do communal good things, despite this means we will be doing some cultural bad things too. We haven’t yet grown out of the need; as someone Latin and famous who I can’t recall once said, ‘even by our own aspirations, we are but half-men’. But despite this continuing need, we have to remember indeed that they are all dead wrong, because that’s our main tool for mitigating the downsides and applying the brakes, should the beast veer too far off the path. This is more important especially for secular cultures that have stolen the cloak of science, because science is the very lens which we use to understand that cultural narratives are dead wrong (as exemplified by the exposure of religious narratives). If the culture has grabbed the focus knob, far less people who should be rational about the issue are going to realise that it is indeed dead wrong, even it it has transitioned from dead wrong but useful to dead wrong and deadly.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

19. There is so much still to learn…

    For example Hunter Lovins “served the King of Bhutan on his International Expert Working Group, charged with reinventing the global economy.”

    It is amazing in all sorts of ways. I might have to spend the rest of the day evaluating just what a prodigious achievement this is

    LikeLiked by 2 people

20. There’s not much that’s notable about Hunter Lovins other than her cow girl outfit. I remember her from this Intelligence Squared debate on whether “Major Reductions in Carbon Emissions are Not Worth the Money”:

    https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/major-reductions-carbon-emissions-are-not-worth-money

    She probably out-shined her two dull team mates, Oliver Tickell and Adam Werbach. Werbach is probably a more interesting character (albeit a bleached flour bland debater}:

    https://reason.com/1998/03/01/green-beyond-his-years/

    They get hopelessly outclassed by Peter Huber, Philip Stott and Bjorn Lomborg. Intelligence Squared scores their debates by tallying how many minds get changed and Hunter’s team loses big time.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

21. A notable fact about Hunter Lovins: for a long time she lived in Hygiene, a settlement named after a TB sanatorium founded by a dunkard bishop called Stoner.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.