Whatever one thinks of Roger Hallam, I think it’s fair to say that it’s challenging to listen to him for very long. Or at least I find it so, which is why I claim to have taken one for the team in transcribing below his interview with Nick Robinson on BBC Radio 4’s Political Thinking programme the other week.

I wonder why the BBC interviewed him? Perhaps it agrees with his agenda? Whatever the reason, I think they have done the public a service by allowing them to hear what one of the main people behind Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil believes. If the public hears what he says, surely the cause of XR and JSO must be undermined still further? So here it is, in all its unadulterated glory. I feel moved to say that I don’t think I’ve ever listened to such disjointed drivel in my life, but that’s just my opinion of course. I’d be interested to know what you think. There is quite a lot of talking over one another in places. I have done my best where that happens – it is signified by individual speech blocks beginning or ending with three dots (i.e. …):

NR: Disruption works. Disruption is justified. So says my guest this week, Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, and the mastermind of Just Stop Oil. He joins me here on Political Thinking, an opportunity for a conversation with, not a news interrogation of, someone who shapes our political thinking about what has shaped theirs. Hallam argues – and I quote – that only mass civil resistance can stop the global one percent imposing mass death on billions of people. Agree with him, or passionately disagree, there’s no denying that he is one of the most potent organisers of political protests of recent times. Roger Hallam, welcome to Political Thinking.

RH: Hi.

NR: That quote came from your website. There’s another quote on the front page. It says “The essence of what is human is the ability to make a decision, a conscious decision, about what is right in life.” What do you mean?

RH: Well, I thought we were gonna talk about this later in the interview but, OK, let’s start with the big point. So, the big point I suppose is that at a time of existential crisis people have to and tend to make a decision about what’s right and wrong. And they base their decision on that virtue, on the notion of virtues. They don’t take utilitarian decisions, they don’t go “what will work, what won’t work?” And I think our culture’s in the process of transitioning towards a realisation we don’t have control. We have ontrol of our own lives, we don’t have control over what’s going to happen over the next thirty years. And so what’s most important is that we live a good life, in an Aristelian [sic] sense, dare I say it. And that’s where I’m at and that’s broadly what I promote to the people in terms of them making the decision to go into resistance.

NR: Do you mean that what I spend my day job doing – asking question of politicians about this or that policy initiative – in a sense misses the point, as far as you’re concerned, when it comes to the threat tht we’re now facing?

RH: Yeah, well, at the danger of disrupting you, ha ha, I’m just gonna read you a quote, so hopefully your audience can understand a little more viscerally what we’re actually talking about. So, you know, I get sent science articles three or four times a day. So, there’s nothing particularly unique about this, but it came about a month ago from a peer reviewed paper, er, in a journal called Energies, and this is what it says: “If warming reaches or exceeds two degrees centigrade mainly richer humans will be responsible for killing roughly one billion mainly poorer humans.” OK? So…

NR: And that’s a result of climate change, which produces drought, produces famine and so on and so forth…

RH: No. What that quote is saying is climate change is not killing anyone. It’s mainly richer human beings who are killing poorer human beings. And the tool of the death project is destruction of the climate….

NR: Tool is an interesting word, and I quoted you as saying the global one per cent are imposing mass death. You’re arguing that this is a conscious, a deliberate, a calculated act by those people, are you, rather than the by-product of what they would no doubt justify as growth, expansion of wealth, and so on?

RH: It’s an interesting intellectual digression…

NR: But you think it misses the point?

RH: …to split hairs over what degree of murder it is.

NR: It was a genuine question, because it’s your language…

RH: I’m just choosing my words carefully. I think (pause) when your audience hears that, you’ve got two options, and you’ve got two options, which is to try and intellectualise around it and, you know, ask a reasonable intellectual question, which is “to what degree is it murder, to what degree is it manslaughter?” But that is a displacement activity. The main human response to that should be massively emotional. Emotional about what’s going to happen to you, what’s going to happen to your family, what’s going to happen to the country, what’s going to happen to the whole world. What’s going to happen for the next hundred thousand years, because this is going to go on and on. And the biggest problem is journalists like yourself – with all due respect – and a lot of elite people are incapable of emotionally connecting. And what we know from, you know, ancient wisdom, but also from modern psychology, is that reason is a product of emotion. Unless you can actually feel the terror and horror of what I’ve just said, you’re not going to be able to act rationally and reasonably in response to that horror.

NR: One of the things I want to understand in this interview is how you think – and how you have very successfully persuaded other people to think – do you think that emotional reaction, the thing you say I’m incapable of, but the interview’s not about me, is what you did successfully produce a few years back in that very successful few days for you when Extinction Rebellion brought chaos to the streets of London – if you’re a critic – or finally showed how many people were willing to stand up and be counted to fight for, er to fight against climate change.

RH: So, I disagree with what you just said. I think it is about you. And it’s about the audience. So one of the things you learn about how to persuade people or how to create mobilisation is about centring things on the actual moment, this moment, right? We have a moment here. I am talking to you, you’re talking to me, a whole number of people are listening to this. Let’s focus on our responsibilities and our emotions, when we’ve just heard that one thousand million people will – note the quote – will be killed by mainly rich people in the next two generations, right? If we are going to actually survive this beyond traumatic experience, which is effectively locked in, we have to learn to think about the immediacy of the moment rather than engage in what I would describe as the privilege of detachment. Right? You know, you’re doing this interview, that’s all well and good. If we were in 1995 I would be answering your questions and be very grateful, but we’re not in 1995, we’re in 2023.

NR: What I’m interested in, let’s say I reacted in the way that you – is want the right word? – you, you would want me to, and what you don’t want me to do, and this isn’t this interview, is to say well, some scientists don’t agree with that, a number of them don’t agree with this timescale, we’re not having that debate today, that’s for another time and another place, ‘cos there are other views, as you know. What is it that you want the reaction to be, of me or anybody else, it’s “My God, this should stop and it should stop now”, is that the reaction you’re expecting?

RH: The very question of how do you want me to react, for me shows that you simply haven’t taken the information on. You know, if someone came through that door and said “Your partner’s in hospital” you wouldn’t be saying “Well, what sort of reaction do you want me to have to that?” You’d be going “I’ve got to go, Roger. Bye.” There’s an emergency, you know, like, three years ago the British Parliament, as you know, four years ago I think it is now, made a decision, right, on behalf of this country that we are in an emergency.

NR: That was the wording that they used…when Thereas May was Prime Minister soon after Extinction Rebellion took to the streets…

RH: No one in the political class – including yourself and your colleagues at the BBC – have even come close to understanding and acting upon what an emergency is. An emergency is when you clear the decks, right? What we should be talking about in this interview is not a nice gentlemanly discussion about my background and you know, what I think about the theory of social change. You can have me on for a whole bunch of series’ and we can go into that. But I haven’t been on the BBC for – what?- three years now. The last time I was on was Hard Talk and – what was it called? – More or Less said I was making it up when I said billions of people were going to die, right? I’ve got half an hour on your show. There’s an emergency. What I want to talk about is you. Cos you have been…

NR: Oh, this is interesting. You want to come onto an interview programme and interview me, rather than the other way around?

RH: yes, because that’s how social change works. Social…

NR: Yeah, well I’m going to ask you some questions, and you can ask me some questions, so why don’t we do a deal half-way…

RH: Let me just finish. I’m not going to go on for ages. Let me just finish and say, the process of social change, the process of, of gettings things done in an emergency is all about transgression. It’s all about saying what you’re saying is not important. This is what’s important…

NR: Sure.

RH: …because it’s objectively important, because that’s what an emergency is.

NR: I’m teasing you gently, but you’re suggesting that by hijacking this interview, in a sense, this is a form of civil resistance, like that that you have promoted….

RH: It’s not a move, right?

NR: Well it is…

RH: No it’s not, right? You could construct it as that, but it’s not, like…

NR: Well what is it, then? If it’s not a move.

RH: It’s a visceral reaction to my total horror that the British establishment has completely failed to protect the people of this country.

NR: Well forgive me Roger, you went to university and you studied civil resistance for a long time, you came in to this interview with a lot of notes written down. You do make moves, you do make calculations. One of the reasons you’re interesting to interview is because strategically you have turned out two of the most successful, influential protest movements this country has seen in recent times. So let’s not pretend you don’t work things out.

RH: No, obviously not. I’m human, and I spend a lot of hours each day trying to work out what to do and what not to do. But the critical point here that I’m trying to make, and to your audience, because it’s your audience I’ve come to speak to – no disrespect to you, right – is, is when something so awful as this is happening, you have to get your existential ducks in a row. You need to decide what sort of person you are and what sort of life you want to lead. And the fundamental question is how you’re going to lead a good life, right. Most people don’t think about this much because, you know, most of the time it’s fairly obvious, you’re looking after your family, you have a good job. But there’s a massive missing element, which is to protect your country and to protect the human race.

NR: Perfectly fair point. Why don’t we do a deal, which is I ask you some of the questions I want to ask you and you ask me some, and it’s a podcast. We’ve got, we’ve got time to do both. What you’ve just said, I think, raises quite a fundamental question, which is, is it fear, is it anger, is it what you called visceral emotion, that will drive change? Or is it hope? Now only in the last few days we’ve seen the Prince of Wales talking about the importance of hope when it comes to climate change, and he would see himself – I think the King would see himself – as somebody who’s argued passionately for change; and my guess is privately they’d say “Come on Roger, I mean if you scare the pants off people, that’s not going to work at all”. What do you say to people who say that?

RH: I say that you are not being true to yourself if you engage in utilitarian like distractions, at this stage.

NR: What, hope is a utilitarian distraction?

RH: What I’m saying is – I know you don’t believe me, but I’m just going to assert it again – that I am not coming into this interview, like, with a whole bunch of moves. I’m coming in to say something that’s fundamentally truthful. When I helped to inititate Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, my fundamental rule is to say the truth and to act as if it’s real. That was the foundation, and if you want my analysis on why Extinction Rebellion was so successful, it was because the founders were not interested in being successful. They were interested in telling the truth, that’s a completely different logic.

NR: I understand that as a motive, but it is also the case that having studied successful civil resistance and protest movements, you came up with, I think – maybe it came from someone else – a theory of 3.5%, an idea of how many people needed to resist in society to make a difference. Just talk us through the mindest, if you would.

RH: If you, if you study the history of civil disobedience, as I have, the starting point, right, the starting point of the power of civil disobedience movements is the decision to act on the truth, like, not a post-modernist version of the truth, not like “Oh there’s Roger’s truth and someone else’s truth” right. We know ultimately you can’t say what the truth is, but for practical circumstances, if someone murder’s your offspring, and someone says “Oh well, it’s just a matter of your opinion”, you’re not going to be very impressed. You know, you, your daughter or son is dead. It’s dead. It’s an objective reality. What we’re dealing with here is the objective reality of physics. So if you put more carbon into the atmosphere, and we allow the elites to do that, then billions of people will die, you know. Maybe six billion, maybe three million, billion, but it’s an obscene discussion, and I don’t want to go there, right.

NR: Yeah, and I don’t want to have an argument about it. I’m not a scientist, you’re not a scientist, and we don’t know, it’s a forecast.

RH: What you need to understand is this is a unique moment in human history. We can look at, we can look at civil resistance like, you know, in various other contexts, but this is totally new.

NR: Sure. What I’m interested in is what you are saying – and you are talking to people via this podcast and programme – is necessary to make that change. You’re telling them that you want them to join in with civil resistance. You’re saying – sometimes to people who’ve never been on a protest in their life – I’d like you to get arrested if you’re willing to be arrested, I’d like you to go to prison. What I’m asking you is, how is that going to change the thing that you say is so frightening?

RH: Well, the first thing to say about disruption is, you know, I’m interviewd a lot about this question, and as far as I’m concerned it’s a bad faith question, right, it’s a cynical question, and the reason it’s a cynical question “Why disrupt, Roger?” is everyone disrupts.

NR: I’m not asking you why you disrupt. I am asking you to explain to people who you want to disrupt, how it will work….

RH: …This is why I say to people, you know…

NR: …We will come to whether this is counter-productive, how will it work…

RH: …This is what I say to people, people say “Oh, why should we engage in disruption, why should we engage in civil disobedience to the point of arrest?” and what I say is you’re being dishonest with yourself, right, the reason you’re being dishonest with yourself is that if you have values, and those values are disrupted, everyone disrupts. Historically, right-wing people disrupt, left-wing people disrupt, the determining factor is are you utterly horrified by a social development such that you cannot live with yourself and not engage in disrupting your society? Ultimately disruption is war, right, you know, there’s very few people that would argue that disrupting Hitler was a bad idea, otherwise known as World War Two, right, so you can work back from that, and what I’m saying here is if you have someone come in to your interview and say a billion people are going to be killed, that’s a no-brainer, right, that’s twenty World War Twos.

NR: Ah, but I’m interested, you said disruption is war, it’s a war against who?

RH: It’s a war against those people who are engaging in mass murder.

NR: Who are they?

RH: The global elites.

NR: But who are they? I mean, it’s a phrase.

RH: Well, practically speaking , in this country it means the UK government and the forces behind the UK government. But the UK government has a constitutional responsibility as the people that control the British state…

NR: …Now, after you and your supporters occupied the streets, particularly of London, in 2019, after what, a thousand-odd people got arrested, the UK government not only listened – er, they would no doubt deny there was a direct link to the declaration of a climate emergency – but they did declare a climate emergency in Parliament, also some of your representatives – not you – got to meet with Michael Gove, who was then the Environment Secretary, did it feel to you like a moment where Wow, these people are, they are actually listening?

RH: Well, this is a really mind-numbingly stupid question, right, OK, one billion people….

NR: …We can swap if you like, you can do my job and I’ll do yours…

RH: …With all due respect, right…

NR: …I love the addition of “With all due respect”. That makes it feel a lot better….

RH: …It’s a mind-numbingly stupid question, is, is, and this comes back to emotional, like, connection, right, I mean I’ve got no expectation of you motionally connecting, right, with what I’ve just said, ‘cos you’re part of that system, that isn’t able to connect. When I’m, when I’m coming on to this programme….

NR: …I’m paid not to take the side of people who are in front of me to be interviewed…..

RH: ….Exactly, exactly, you’re paid, but also it’s part of the culture, the psycopathic culture of the British elite, is just not to connect with the emotional reality of what’s going to be imposed on the British people…

NR: ….But just get to why, why – I don’t wish to invite you to endlessly repeat how stupid I am – but why is it not a sensible question to say did you feel then you were getting somewhere? And do you not feel now….

RH: …What I’m trying to say is the pretence that the British establishment is taking seriously its resonsibilities is self-evidently ridiculous, given the gravity of what we face…

NR: ….But did it feel that way then, or was there a moment you thought – not for a second that you’d won: of course not – but. We’re shifting things. We’re moving things, things are changing….

RH: …Yes, there was a moment when the British establishment – the political class of this country – had the opportunity to fulfil it’s most grave obligations towards the British nation, the British people, and it utterly failed.

NR: That was in 2019…

RH: …That was in 2019, when there was [sic] ten thousand people on the streets of London, and it was an opportunity, right, that was a very graceful, very well-organised, very peaceful protest, as everyone knows. I spoke to the head police officer afterwards and he said he’d never known such a big congregation of people doing civil disobedience that had ever led to no police officer having any injury at all.

NR: Well, I remember being on Waterloo Bridge as a reporter, and it was something like…

RH: …So this was an opportunity, this was an opportunity…

NR: …It wasn’t much of a party if you really couldn’t get across the bridge and had important jobs to do, of course, but it was a party for those who were on the bridge. It was an opportunity missed. That meant that you changed your approach. You adopted different tactics, tactics which led you to fall out even with your own daughter at one point.

RH: Yes. So, I think the next question you should be asking…

NR: …Can I ask the quation I want to ask, then you can ask me the question that I’m meant to ask, OK? You fell out with your daughter, she said, and indeed she threatened to walk out of Extinction Rebellion unless you left it…

RH: …No…

NR: …There’s a documentary that shows that happening….

RH: …I don’t want to answer that question because I don’t think it’s that important, right, what the important question, I mean, you can ask me questions, and I can choose whether to answer them, right…

NR: …No no, let me put it another way, and then you can tell me, er OK you don’t want to talk about the personal thing, but there was an argument, wasn’t there, about whether you could keep the party atmosphere of Extinction Rebellion going, if you like, or whether you actually had to harden up, which you wanted to do with causing disruption at Heathrow. And it led eventually yo Just Stop Oil.

RH: It did, but that’s not what’s important in a half hour interview. What’s important in this half hour interview…

NR: …I’ll give you more time if you want…

RH: …OK, what’s important in this half hour interview is to focus on the patholgy of the British establishment in its treasonous inability to understand politically, emotionally, what is coming down the line, right. This is what’s avoided over and over again by the media, right, it’s this focus on the civil disobedience, to focus on this movement. This movement is not important. Civil disobedience is not important, right. What’s important is for the audience to discuss and be aware of this utter betrayal of our fundamental rights. The most fundamental right in this country is the right to livelihood and a life. And what we have down here is overwhelming scientific evidence that the people of this country are going to be liable to starve to death in the next half century.

NR: Well, this is….

RH: …That’s a substantive probability…

NR: …This is not just an argument about tactis, if you’ll forgive me, which I know you think is trivial compared with the scale of what we face. It is an argument whether, if I give you the whole half hour to simply repeat how many people are going to die, and how awful it’s going to be, in one pamphlet you wrote at one stage you talked about mass rape. Is that going to work? Because you’re somebody who’s interested in what ultimately will work, and there are plenty of people in the old Extinction Rebellion movement, outside the movement, going “it doesn’t work, it alienates people, it turns them off”. People want hope.

RH: Well, as I expected, you haven’t listened to me….

NR: …I think I have, actually….

RH: ….I have tried to make it clear several times that I am not primarily (pause) I am not primarily motivated by what works, right. What I’m primarily motivated by is, in a fairly inadequate way, obviously, because I’m human, is delivery of a good life, so that when I’m on my death bed I feel like I had some integrity at a time when society was heading for the most catastrophic collapse in the human story…

NR: Forgive me, that sounds – which I’m surprised by, genuinely – that sounds like you’ve almost given up. It’s “How do I live with myself before my maker?”, and your mother was a Methodist preacher, and it’s clear that religion played quite an important part in shaping the person that you are in your youth. It sounds as if you’ve….

RH; …It doesn’t mean…

NR: …given up…

RH: …It doesn’t mean I’ve given up, it doesn’t mean I haven’t given up, right, it’s just not thinking that question’s important…

NR: …Yeah. Are you still motivated, I mean that’s a deep question you’ve asked about whether you can live with yourself and your sense of whether you’ve lived a good life. Were you shaped, are you shaped a lot by the values and experiences that you had at home?

RH: I think what I’m primarily shaped by is my understanding of what people do when they are presented with a catastrophic future, a catastophic present even. And what we know, and what we feel in our veins obviously when this happens to us, assuming we’re open to it, is the questions of whether we’re actually going to make it or not are not the most important questions. The questions that I hope many of your audience are asking is, I [garbled – have been?] presented with overwhelming evidence of a catastrophic future for my children. What’s my responsibility to my children? It’s not like what’s my responsibilities to my children…

NR: …Ok, what is that responsibility, no, no, understood, cos you’ve said that. What is it you think is their responsibility because the danger with any discussion about politics is individuals think “well, there’s a great limit to what I can do, what difference I make, it’s not up to me. There are forces beyond my control.” So if there’s someone listening or watching now and says “Ok, I’ve heard that. He’s right”. What is it they can do?

RH: Well, first of all this is not politics, right. This is one of the biggest problems with how we frame all of this. And one of the reasons why people are so confused. They think that climate change – you’ll notice I haven’t used those words, right – they think that climate change is as you said at the beginning, is n issue, it’s a thing, it’s on the agenda, there’s [sic] policies. You know, it’s got to be fitted in with our obsession for economic growth and all of the rest of it, right. That’s not what’s going on here, right. What’s going on here is the imposition of evil into our lives. Evil is something beyond politics. What evil is is a scheme of creating mass death…

NR: …Yeah, but you’re still not answering the question, which is, the person who’s listening, and has heard what you’ve said, and has woken up emtionally in the way you think I have not, and they say “I’m going to do something. What does Roger Hallam want me to do?”

RH: This is, this is, the framing of how I hope and wish that people listening to this will adopt, right, cos as soon as we feel like it’s politics, then we go into this utilitarian “does this work, what should I do, I’ve got to go on holiday that month, you know, how can I negotiate all my other elements of my life”, right…

NR: …But the floor is yours. I’ve just asked you, what do you want them to do?…

RH: …I know, I’m getting to it. I’m saying on the basis of understanding what it actually is, right, that it is an evil situation, in total seriousness. I’m not talking science fiction novels here, I’m talking about Hitler, you know, the Holocaust, I’m talking about Cambodia, I’m talking about what happened in Congo, this is a beyond serious situation, right. If the AMOC, if the AMOC current, as you may know, right, collapses before 2050 – that’s one headline in the newspapers – the British people will starve.

NR: Yeah. I’ve very deliberately not had an argument with you about the science or the numbers, but I am going to say – because I think it’s right to say – there areplenty of people who will say it’s nothing like the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a deliberate industrial, industrialised destruction of a people, and climate change, you think, is the responsibility of an elite. You slightly dodged the question when I said “Was it deliberate?” – you sort of suggested it was a kind of verbal game – but it is not therefore the same as Pol Pot massacreing people for who they are.

RH: It’s worse. And the reason it’s worse is because of the scale, right.

NR: Yeah, but motive matters when people are doing it…

RH: …Motive matters, motive matters, absolutely. Don’t get me wrong, right. What happened in the Holocaust was an obscenity beyond words because there was a direct motive to kill. But as you well know, right, and as any legal person would say is, there’s [sic] two elements to a crime, right. There’s the scale of the crime and there’s the intentionality. And the intentionality is in the mid-ground as it were. It’s not like they didn’t know, they didn’t have the information. They do know, and they do have the information, and they’re prepared for people to die. But admittedly…

NR: …Let’s go back to what….

RH: …Let’s just deal with this issue, right. Admittedly noone’s pretending the elites want to kill the poor of this world just because they’re poor…

NR: …OK…

RH: …But. Let me just finish….

NR: …All right…

RH: …But, I’ve just told you there’s [sic] a billion people according to peer-reviewed papers – and I could come in with a whole bunch of other ones – and people on this programme…

NR: …You’ve shared quite a few different numbers in this interview, but anyway…

RH: …Let’s fo for one billion people, right. That’s twenty times the number of people that were killed in World War Two. That’s why it’s worse…

NR: …Forgive me. I know my audience reasonably well. I think they’re at the – listening to this, watching – they’re interested in what you’re saying. They’re saying “What does Roger Hallam want me to do?” and then what does the Government do – we’ve still got to come on to that…

RH: …OK, we’re coming on to that. Yeah, yeah, yes.

NR: So, what do people do, first of all? Now, do you want them – and do you think this would make the difference – to join the ranks of people, say in Just Stop Oil, for example, direct protests, whether it’s kind of throwing things at paintings, whether it’s lying down in the streets. Is that what’s going to bring about the change?

RH: There’s, there’s a fundamental decision, and then there’s a degree of practicality with any fundamental decision, right. In the real world there’s a degree of practicality. The fundamental decision is to emotionally connect with the criminality of what is happening on the basis of what is said. Therefore you have no choice. You have no choice morally not to enter into resistance against the British Government at this time because of the intensity and extent of the horror that’s coming down the line.

NR: To be clear what you mean by resistance. You’ve basically talked about going to prison. If you’re not in prison, you’re not resisting, is what you said at one stage…

RH: …Yes, well I’m coming on to that. So, there’s a practical, there’s a practical side to that. There’s a practical side to what resistance means, right. Resistance is a foreign notion to most people listening to this, no doubt. But it’s not, like, impossible to get youur head round. People resist all the time on different levels, right. What we’re practically talking about here is mass civil disobedience in the UK context. And as a pathway – which is Just Stop Oil, and dare I say it, people can go onto the website, it takes two minutes and you get into the system, and they will tell you what you can and can’t do and all the rest of it, right. The fundamenatal point is, is that in order to create the change that we need in the time that we’ve got, we have no choice other than to engage in mass civil disobedience.

NR: And you believe that will make a difference? How?

RH: It’s not a matter of whether it makes a difference or not. Obviously, by definition civil disobedience makes a difference. The question is, is it at a scale which will tip a western democratic government into enacting climate policies in the first instance?

NR: But then there is a practical question, which I think it’s entirely fair to ask you, which is, you got thousands onto the streets in 2019. Since then, we’re taling of small-scale resistance, and unless you get many more than the ten thousand you had before, it’s not going to happen, is it, what you want to happen? Governments are not going to quake. They are not going to dramatically change their policies. So, are you anywhere close to that?

RH: We may be, we may be not. And the reason I’m saying that is not because I’m trying to avoid your question, right? It’s very difficult to predict, because….

NR: …Did you know before 2019, in other words, was there a moment you thought “My God, this is going to happen. We are now not getting just a few hundred…”

RH: …Yeah, I said, I said to Extinction Rebellion, if tens of thousands of people go to London, there will be a result, right. That was my prediction on the basis of a study that I’d had. But one of the things about being in this work, as it were, is, is that it’s very difficult to predict whether those people tip over to saying “I’m going to have to act, because I cannot not act”, right. And they may, and they may not. And if they do, then we’ve got a chance of saving what’s left to save. And if we don’t, then we’re heading into this mass starvation scenario…

NR: …It often takes something very immediate, very personal to tip people into action. Now in your case it was as a farmer seeing what the climate was doing to your farm.

RH: I think actually it’s not that much about what’s actually happened to you, for most people. I think for most people, most people who enter this, this situation and say “I cannot live without acting”, it’s due to an involuntary feeling of horror.

NR: Humour me by answering one question, just for the sheer hell of it, we could do that. Erm, your farm failed. And it as one of the things that made you think “there’s something I now need to do something about”.

RH: Yes. There’s [sic] hundreds of millions of farmers [sic] around the world who’ve had the same experience as me, which is the trauma – and it is a trauma – of finding out that the weather systems are not going to enable them to grow the crops they wanted to grow. Right. It’s a financial disaster for them, but it’s also an emotional disaster, cos they lose control of their lives. You know, you’ve got a nice, calm sort of life, dare I say, you know, you don’t have to worry this studio exists every time you go to work…

NR: …No, that’s true…

RH: …If you’re a farmer, you can be the best farmer in the world, but if it rains every day for seven weeks, a hundred per cent of your crops are going to die. You know, if it’s minus 20 in the winter, you’re going to lose all your winter crops. The fact that it’s a one in a thousand year event is no solace to you. You’re losing your livelihood.

NR: But did that feel to you, when that happened to you, like a moment?

RH: It was a moment of making real what is going to happen…

NR: …So something you knew intellectually, but seeing…

RH: …Exactly. This is the problem, right, and this is why civil resistance works, because we can have as nice a chat as we like, and, you know, I can do lots of interviews, nothing’s going to change. What’s going to change is the emotion of finding people getting dragged off the street, put into prison, on a mass scale. Students crying on motorways, right. This is how change works. It doesn’t change, with all due respect, right, we’ve got plenty of time, right, for an intellectual discussion, dare I say, you know I’m not a researcher at King’s College. But at this moment it’s an obscenity to just come on a show and say well, let’s, you know, let’s discuss this as if it’s over there. It’s not. It’s in, it’s in your stomach, Nick, right…

NR: …Yeah, and in your case it’s in your stomach enough for you to go to prison, what twice, three times?

RH: People go, people go to prison all round the world through civil resistance. There’s nothing particularly peculiar about that…

NR: …Ah, no, but there may be people in jail unlike you who say “For me, that is a hell of a thing to risk doing”, either because they’re personally frightened of it, or they’re worried what it’ll mean for their family, or how they’re seen in society, their job, their ability to earn a living, so it is a big thing…

RH: …The big thing is what’s going to happen to us. That’s, that’s…

NR: …You’ve no words of comfort for them on, don’t worry about going to prison, it’s just, this is…

RH: …There’s no…

NR: …It’s just, this is so important, you’ve just got to do it…

RH: …I have, I have no words of comfort, right. Let me say that again. I have no words of comfort for your audience. What I’m saying to you and your audience is, get real. Right. This is not the time to look for comfort. It’s the time to actually understand how totally terrible this situation is, and to act accordingly. That’s your duty, right, as a parent, as a citizen, and as a human being.

NR: Some people will be inspired by what you say. Other people will be terrified, thinking “If he is so clear about this in his mind, he’ll stop at nothing.” It’s not just inconvenience, it’s not just civil disobedience, what would it be?

RH: What I’m clear about is what’s clear. OK? [Laughs.] Objectively clear, which is there’s a thing out there called physics, right…

NR: …Yeah, no but I’m asking you whether there’s any limits to this.

RH: The limits to what you do?

NR: Yeah.

RH: We have to engage in civil disobedience, civil resistance, to the point that we fundamentally change the regime, right – the regime of digging fossil fuels out of, out of the ground. I don’t know quite what that looks like, and I don’t need to, right. You don’t need to have all the information to act. What you have to have is the visceral horror of what’s happening. And what we need to do is in November, is go down to London and engage in civil disobedience, cos that’s our best bet. No-one’s pretending it’s going to be successful. No-one’s pretending that Just Stop Oil is necessarily the best thing ever, right. But that’s what, that’s the opportunity your viewers have. And it’s the opportunity, dare I say it, for you and also all these people, right, OK?

NR: What, the ones behind the glass who are pressing the buttons and my producers…

RH: …Yes, every, it’s the opportunity. No, don’t smile about this, it’s very serious, right. This is the opportunity for you at the BBC to fulfil your duty to the British people, which is to say to the British government you will no longer co-operate with a genocidal regime.

NR: Yeah, no it’s not the duty of the BBC to do any such thing…

RH: …It is, it absolutely is…

NR: …Well it might be in your mind…

RH: …Because what we’re talking about, what we’re talking about…

NR: …It’s my duty…tell us what’s happening in November, cos we don’t know what’s happening in November…

RH: …No, no, no, no, I’m not letting you go on that. What we’re talking about here is treason against the British people…

NR: …You’re applying for a job? Now, what is happening in November? You’ve told people you want them to come to London in November, but I don’t know, they don’t know, what it is you’re talking about.

RH: What I want to say to your audience is, is, your reaction over the last two minutes is symptomatic of why they’re being betrayed, right. Your belittling of your responsibility, and these people, to actually make a concrete step to save our country. And you will suffer the consequences of it in the next decade…

NR: …I’m suffering in this interview at the moment. Now what is happening in November that you think people should do?…

RH: …No, what I want to say to your audience is, you will be taken, you will be taken to Court. You will be taken to Court…

NR: …Who will be?

RH: You will be…

NR: …Oh, me personally, right….

RH: …as a member of the British establishment. You need to take this seriously.

NR: I’m going to be taken to Court for what?

RH: You’re, absolutely, you will be taken to Court…

NR: …For what, for what?…

RH: …as a member of the British establishment, for betraying the British people during the two thousand and twenties…

NR: …But what will I be guilty of?

RH: You need to think about….You will be guilty of treason. This is a, a pregnant moment of potentiality, right, for people in the establishment to decide what they want to do.

NR: In the meantime, you invited people to go to London in November. Can you tell us more? What is it you’re hoping will happen then?

RH: There’s a website. Just Stop Oil. There’s various other websites. It’s easy. If you’re in the audience you go on the website, you sign up, and a whole bunch of practical details, right…

NR: …Yeah…

RH: …The fundamental point is, is making that decision to enter into that process. You don’t need to make that decision, ultimately, by getting involved in the process. The thousands and thousands of people in this country who’ve engaged in civil disobedience, they enter the process with a lot of fear, trepidation, but they’re driven to do it, and they go through a series of steps, right. And they’re supported in those steps by other people that have had a similar experience of fear and trepidation…

NR: …Understood…

RH: …Right, that’s the process.

NR: Now, over the course of this conversation, er, you’ve told me how frightening it is, what’s gonna happen. You’ve accused me of not doing enough, of not being stirred emotionally to do enough about it. You’ve got to address, I think, don’t you, the people who just say “I don’t want to be hectored and harangued and terrified. I want to be persuaded by cogent arguments about what will change and how it will change and what will make a difference”. To those who think that do you think they’re just missing the point?

RH: Yes.

NR: But they’re your audience.

RH: No. The audience is the 1% of the population. Civil resistance and social change happens [sic] when 1% of the population decides that they have been morally violated to the point that they engage in resistance.

NR: Now we’re getting to the point. So in a sense, all those people – and you know them well – who say “Why the hell’s he disrupting our lives? Why are they disrupting our lives, by occupying a road, or why are they ruining some beautiful piece of art by throwing soup or dye at it?” your point is it doesn’t really matter what 999 people out of a thousand think…

RH: …What matters….

NR: …We need the one to come out and fight…

RH: …No. No no no. No no no. What matters in this life is whether you vilate your core values, which are objective. It’s whether you violate your children, you violate your community, and you violate your country. Those are like trans-cultural norms, right, going back ten thousand years. And what I’m saying is, is when a culture, like the culture you’re part of, right, violate those norms, it’s not a matter of whether you like it, whether you want to be persuaded, right. That’s like, it’s a stupid, it’s a stupid response because you have to grow up and realise sometimes in life you have to make an act. You have to make a decision, right. Just as when you decide to defend your children’s lives or you defend your country. You don’t sit there and analyse it, right. Obviously, obviously there’s a place when you’re engaged in that process of confrontation and resistance for looking at tactics and all the rest of it. But that’s not, that’s not what we need to discuss on this programme…

NR: …Mm, but you do end up discussing it and it obviously matters whether it’s working or not…

RH: …What we need to discuss….sure, if you give me, if you give me ten programmes, I’m more than happy to spend half an hour…

NR: …Well you’ve had quite a lot of time already. Does it matter, therefore, that six in ten, even of people who’ve protested, said disruptive protesting hinders rather than helps the cause. Does that matter?

RH: No. No, for the reasons I’ve just said.

NR: So, in a way “to hell with them”. As long as you’ve stirred one person out of a hundred on this programme…

RH: …No…

NR: …you’ve succeeded…

RH: …No, you’re totally misrepresenting what I’m saying. It’s not a strategy. It’s not like, oh those people don’t matter cos we’re just going for those, that one per cent, right. We’re not going for anything. We’re making a statement, right. We’re making a statement to eternity about the sort of people we are. That’s a completely different universe, right, of mental activity. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?

NR: I do.

RH: I’m trying to say there’s something totally unacceptable about the situation we’re in…

NR: …No, I do understand it. I just want to end on this, if we may, cos I hear your – I think it’s anger, isn’t it? – is it fair to describe it as anger? It’s not frustration…

RH: …I am utterly, utterly infuriated…

NR: …Yes. Look. And I’m aware that occasionally – because we’re having a civilised conversation – that I’ve smiled and you’ve found it annoying….

RH: …Because, because. Of course I find you annoying. I find, I find everything about the British establishment disgusting….

NR: …Yeah, OK, well we’re clear about that…

RH: …I’m saying that, as a, as an ordinary….

NR: …Understood….

RH: …farmer in this country. I spent twenty years doing my part of the bargain, which is producing food, running a business, doing my bit…

NR: …But I’m entitled therefore, Roger, to go back to what I asked you before. You couldn’t even persuade your own daughter of this. She thought you’d got it wrong. She thought your tactics were counter-productive. She walked out of Extinction Rebellion. If you can’t persuade her…

RH: …That’s a cheap shot, as you know…

NR: …Why is it cheap?

RH: It’s a hard talk point, right. As you said, you said to me, you weren’t going to use that sort of routine on me, right….

NR: …But hold on, you’ve just accused me of being complicit with genocide…

RH: …For the record, for the record, for the record, she’s fully supportive, as it happens, right…

NR: …Well, she wasn’t…

RH: …That’s not, that’s not the point, is it? The point is, Nick, is what are you going to do to have integrity in your life, right. What are these people going to do…

NR: …I will reflect on how I have integrity in my life, if you’ll forgive me, not with a complete stranger who I’ve only just met. I’m paid to ask you questions….

RH: …You’ve had, you’ve had thirty years, right…

NR: …Yeah…

RH: …You and your generation have had thirty years to look at this information. And what you’ve chosen to do is have a quiet life, right. And Hell’s coming down the road because you didn’t act in time, right. It’s not my job as a farmer to do this, is the political establishment’s job. You’ve got lots of privilege. You earn lots of money. I don’t have a problem with that, right. There’s a nice guy in there. What are you all doing? What are you all doing?

NR: You’re not merely a farmer, Roger Hallam, are you? You’re a political organiser, you’re a strategist…

RH: …I explained that, because you didn’t do youur job. I would love to be weeding carrots, right. The reason I’m in this studio…

NR: …I’d love to be asking questions that get answered, but we don’t always get to do what we want….

RH: …No…

NR: …And that’s it…

RH: …And that’s the problem, isn’t it? That’s the problem.

NR: Are you a depressive? Isn’t this the problem?

RH: [Laughs]

NR: No?

RH: …Let me finish on this, right….

NR: …No, I mean, I don’t mean, I’m not intruding into your…

RH: …No no no…

NR: …personal life. What I mean is….

RH: …Let me tell you what the other side of the world is – a world that you cannot see, right. Because that’s one of the reasons you don’t ant to go to the, this other world, right. There’s another world out there, which is a world of acting on your fundamental beliefs. When you act on your fundamental beliefs you experience a certain ecstasy, right. There’s a certain glory in it, right. Which is invisible to the political elite, because that’s why you’re so terrified. That’s why, that’s why you won’t act, because you don’t understand as I see it, that there’s a different way to live one’s life, right. And you project, you project…

NR: …I’m intrigued, that you experience…no, let’s not talk about me, we’ve done enough of that…

RH: …No no no…

NR: …But do you feel…Honestly. You’ve had a lot of time to accuse me of all sorts of things. Are you saying that you – and you hope your supporters – feel a kind of ecstasy…

RH: …There’s not a matter, there’s not a matter of, there’s not a matter of, of, what I want them to do. I’m. I’m being straight with you, right…

NR: …No. I’m just asking you to describe…

RH: …Yes. So let me say quite clearly, right. Many – and not all, not all, not all times – when people are put into a cell in a police station they have a sense of peace, a profound sense of peace. This is an involuntary experience, right. You know, because they’re going into the, they’re going into the police station terrified, right, if it’s the first time. And then they’re put in a cell. You’d expect them to be terrified. And often they are. But, but, and, at the same time they have a sense of peace, right. This is a spiritual phenomenon, which is when people stand up against evil, there’s a release. There’s not a tension any more. There’s not that, that violation of your core self. And when you go into resistance, you suddenly feel like you’ve rediscovered your integrity. You’ve rediscovered the essence of what, what you think you are. You return to yourself, right. This is a universal phenomenon when people stand against evil historically. And that’s what I’m saying to your audience is this is not like an accounting cost-benefit analysis, right. It’s an invitation to be who you already are, right. It’s a, it’s an invitation to come back to what you already are, which is a fundamentally decent person.

NR: This is the Zen of protest? The Zen of standing up to what you insist is evil.

RH: It’s, it’s something that people experience. You can give it fancy religious words if you like. I don’t mind, right, you know. Maybe it’s Christian, maybe it’s…the fundamental point I’m trying to say here, right, is that you can feel joy, you can feel wholeness, and you can feel connection when you enter into this resistance orientation. And it’s not despite entering into it. It’s because you do, because you return to some sense of wholeness.

NR: You, you talked about that belief – even hope, I think – that you had in 2019, that there was a moment of change that looked possible, briefly. A moment that was dashed, rejected in your view. Do you see another in your lifetime? Do you still have hope?

RH: I have twenty more years of my life, and each day I get up and I endeavour to be the good person that I want to be. And what that means in the present context is to be in civil resistance against the genocisal British government. That’s it, right.

NR: Roger Hallam, thank you for joining me on Political Thinking.

NR: Well, that certainly challenged my politicial thinking. I wasn’t sure whether he was interviewing me or I was interviewing him at times. I Usually approach these interviews with some sort of rough plan, some rough structure. I even try to help the guest by giving them a sense of what we will talk about, and what we won’t, to try to relax them. I did that with Roger Hallam, and he threw that out of the window. And I threw my notes and my structure out of the window too. But I hope it was still a revealing conversation about what motivates him, and what he believes might work to bring about political change. He’s not interested in coaxing, he’s not interested in wooing, he’s not interested in any of the conventional tactics of political discourse. He believes that shock and anger and emotion, and ultimately civil disobedience leading, yes, to a willingness to go to prison is all that will change what he refers to as the regime. And he doesn’t just mean this or any other government. He means what he sees as the elite, are finally forced to change. And, yeah, I’ve been told, apparently I’m part of that elite, and I might go to Court for treason. Memorable interview, wasn’t it?

62 Comments

  1. Nut job. Is that ‘political’ thinking? Or even ‘thinking’?

    the only thing likely to kill “billions of poor people” is attempts to impose ‘net zero’ upon them. Fortunately, poor people are far too sensible, and focused on their and their families’ survival, to fall for this nonsense.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. We often ascribe faith-like characteristics to belief in AGW and to those holding them. RH has these in spades with his frenzied arithmetic and wild calendar of doom; a straight lift from the books of millenarians and end-of-time merchants. Even those political elements of his ramble have their parallels in history where scenarios of a coming apocalypse were used as a tool for social control.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. “Bat schitt crazy” comes to mind. Captain Queeg, at least was an honorable but mediocre man driven crazy. This mediocre dude is crazy with no honor.

    Like

  4. There is a kind of logic to his craziness:
    ” There’s an emergency, you know, like, three years ago the British Parliament, as you know, four years ago I think it is now, made a decision, right, on behalf of this country that we are in an emergency.

    NR: That was the wording that they used…when Thereas May was Prime Minister soon after Extinction Rebellion took to the streets…”

    If the UK government declared a climate emergency then it would be logical to act like there is an emergency. Some fault then must lie with the wording used by the UK Parliament as it has led Roger astray.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. “RH: Let me just finish. I’m not going to go on for ages. Let me just finish and say, the process of social change, the process of, of getting things done in an emergency is all about transgression. It’s all about saying what you’re saying is not important. This is what’s important…

    RH: …Let me tell you what the other side of the world is – a world that you cannot see, right. Because that’s one of the reasons you don’t [w]ant to go to the, this other world, right. There’s another world out there, which is a world of acting on your fundamental beliefs. When you act on your fundamental beliefs you experience a certain ecstasy, right. There’s a certain glory in it, right. Which is invisible to the political elite, because that’s why you’re so terrified. That’s why, that’s why you won’t act, because you don’t understand as I see it, that there’s a different way to live one’s life, right. ”

    All about transgression, a certain ecstacy, a certain glory! Vision of the anointed?

    Liked by 1 person

  6. A few takes from me on this interview:

    1. Mr Hallam talks a lot about being a farmer. His farming activities appear to have failed. He appears to blame that failure on climate change, rather than wondering if he could have done things differently. Farmers in the UK do have problems, but I doubt if they are climate change related, and many are doing just fine. He then talks about:

    …hundreds of millions of farmers [sic] around the world who’ve had the same experience as me, which is the trauma – and it is a trauma – of finding out that the weather systems are not going to enable them to grow the crops they wanted to grow. Right. It’s a financial disaster for them, but it’s also an emotional disaster, cos they lose control of their lives….

    I am no psychologist or psychiatrist, but I can’t help wondering if the failure of his farm is at the root of this. He appears to blame climate change for that, and he goes on to pluck an absurd number out of the air as to others who must have suffered like him. In his own mind, I suspect, if hundreds of millions of farmers (sic) around the world have suffered as he has, then it can’t possibly his failure, and it must be the fault of climate change.

    2. This was just one of many dubious claims made in the interview, and Mr Robinson failed to challenge him. Instead, I felt that he (Robinson) copped out, by saying that the interview wasn’t about the rights and wrongs of climate change. It was an incredibly soft interview, but it was obvious that by the end, even Mr Robinson was finding the whole experience deeply frustrating.

    3. The reason for that frustration seemed to me because Mr Hallam was impossible to pin down. He refused to accept the relevance of any question or the premise on which it was based, and interviewing him must have been like wrestling with jelly. How someone as vague as that can be an inspiration (as, apparently, he is) to quite a few XR and JSO supporters, is a complete mystery to me. I can only assume that his supporters are equally vague and impressionable, and so it’s worrying to note that some of them are (or claim to be) doctors, scientists, etc.

    4. Equally worrying is the thought that the 1% of the population he seems to be aiming at apparently include the vast majority of people in Parliament (the very establishment that he says he loathes), since they declared a climate emergency, on the flimsiest of evidence. As potentilla points out, if you’re going to declare a climate emergency, it’s logical to expect you to do something about it, or at least to act as though you believe that there is an emergency. Parliament (and Councils up and down the country who have also declared a climate emergency) are to blame for the sort of mindset and frustration expressed by Mr Hallam.

    5. Finally (though there’s much more, I’m sure, to be extracted from that interview), the view that the British government is indulging in treason against the British people by not stopping the use of fossil fuels immediately, is just the sort of woolly-headedness that we at Cliscep never tire of pointing out. If the UK Parliament and the entire UK establishment immediately acceded to Mr Hallam’s demands in full, it would make absolutely no difference to the world’s (and UK’s) climate, in the absence of similar action by the governments and establishments of the world’s largest “carbon emitters”. Perhaps Mr Robinson should have pointed that out and asked Mr Hallam whether, that being the case, he urges Chinese people to act in the same way he asks UK people to act? Or would Mr Hallam sit back and consider it then to be a case of “job done” (even though, in his terms, it self-evidently wouldn’t be)?

    Liked by 1 person

  7. We have here a genuine nutter, with an obvious pathology, citing ‘the science’ as justification for his mental illness. Yet, strangely, the ‘experts’, as John has pointed out in his last post, persist in pathologizing climate change sceptics who roundly reject, using mostly rational arguments, the kind of extreme catastrophism promoted by Hallam and others. They don’t appear to want to bother with psychoanalyzing the likes of Hallam. ‘Climate science’ itself is a distinctive pathology.

    Liked by 3 people

  8. You certainly have taken one (or perhaps many) for the team. I have only got about half way through the interview (and read Robinson’s summing up) and I’m unsure whether reading the remainder will add to my understanding or to my mental health.

    I would dearly like to know whether RH was deliberately sabotaging the interview (I suspect he was) but if so, to what purpose. As you know I place much stock upon trying to step in other people’s shoes but in this instance I cannot. I believe I started out well, RH is someone who entirely believes 1, climate change is extremely dangerous, 2, imminent and requires urgent action. He also believes (or says he does) that the powers that be are deliberately inactive and so any disruptive actions by the populace are justified. This message seems to be interwoven in an unprovoked attack upon the interviewer in a deliberate attempt to sabotage the entire interview. But why? I doubt I will learn the answer within the unread second half. Nor will I learn why the BBC is firmly placed within the ‘elites’ that oppose necessary changes (when most in Cliscep think the opposite).

    The other opinion I gained was just how good (and patient) Robinson is as an interviewer.

    Liked by 2 people

  9. Alan, thanks for your sympathy. There were times when I wished I hadn’t started, but having done so, I was determined to finish. Mr Hallam can’t help his voice and mannerisms, but I found his voice to be intensely irritating, and his habit of ending many sentences with “right” drove me almost to distraction. Those things are part of the reason why I can’t understand how attending a talk by Mr Hallam would persuade anyone to join him – quite the reverse, I should have thought. If anyone can bear to listen to the interview, they can find it here:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001r7jn

    I suspect that my transcript offers a sanitised and less irritating version of the audio interview itself.

    And yes, I agree that Nick Robinson is very good at his job – patient and focussed. That’s why I’m disappointed that he gave Roger Hallam such an easy ride, and why so many dubious claims went unchallenged.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Mark, with respect to Nick Robinson, and that ‘interview’ I don’t think he was ever given a chance to challenge many of the dubious claims. I don’t believe Hallam gave him a chance to reach any common ground at all, let alone any firm or common ground from which to contest anything. You can sense the relief that the “interview”(or contest) had ended in Robinson’s summing up. One wonders why Hallam gave the interview at all (or what his intent was) when he could spend his time, as he said, more profitably weeding his carrots.

    A very puzzling bit of propaganda. Many of his more thinking supporters might wonder what his game was. I certainly have no inkling (but then I’m far from being a supporter).

    Liked by 1 person

  11. Mark: well done and thank you for undertaking such a ghastly chore. I agree with Alan that it’s hard to understand Hallam’s intention in agreeing to this interview. Here’s a thought:

    The BBC has, in relation to its refusal to describe the Hamas killers as terrorists, insisted on its obligation to maintain ‘due’ impartiality. So maybe, to balance this interview, it should try to find a suitable interviewee from the other end of the climate debate spectrum, hopefully someone rather more coherent than Hallam. Perhaps someone who believes for example that talk of man-made climate change is a scam utilised by such people as Bill Gates and George Soros and in particular by the WEF with the intention of destroying Western civilisation – and who believes that’s a view supported by many European politicians and officials.

    Perhaps Cliscep could help by nominating a suitable candidate – any ideas?

    Liked by 1 person

  12. I suspect farmers in Britain have always bitched about our variable and unpredictable weather. Blaming this now upon climate change (and the behaviour of an elite) sensu Hallam is a much more recent development and without much evidence. I remember as a youngster hearing some of the earliest episodes of the Archers when I came home from school and hearing about how weather caused great tribulations (I also half remember a claim that that radio series was designed to give British farmers specific weather information).

    Have long given up listening to the Archers. Does it still include weather information or has it evolved this element into climate ?

    Like

  13. Alan,

    I agree with much that you have said in your comments on this thread, but I do disagree with your suggestion that Nick Robinson wasn’t given the chance to challenge any of Roger Hallam’s more dubious claims. He actually went out of his way to say that he didn’t want to have an argument about those claims (I suspect on instructions from the BBC hierarchy). See this exchange:

    RH: …What we’re dealing with here is the objective reality of physics. So if you put more carbon into the atmosphere, and we allow the elites to do that, then billions of people will die, you know. Maybe six billion, maybe three million, billion, but it’s an obscene discussion, and I don’t want to go there, right.

    NR: Yeah, and I don’t want to have an argument about it. I’m not a scientist, you’re not a scientist, and we don’t know, it’s a forecast.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. Robin,

    Andrew Montford, Paul Homewood, or Ben Pile (formerly of this parish) might all be worthy contenders for a Nick Robinson Political Thinking interview. Certainly, IMO< any one of them would offer considerably more sense and thinking than Roger Hallam did. Sadly, however, I suspect that the chances of the BBC agreeing to such an interview are remote in the extreme. There is no balance at the BBC as regards climate change.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. Mark, you are correct. That snippet of the discussion clearly identifies Robinson’s desire to steer the discussion away from certain areas which I suspect he was not going to get much joy from. However, I can see, and applaud his desire to explore other areas. Both of us, I suspect, would agree that Robinson would have got absolutely nowhere if we had pursued certain avenues and he was deliberately trying to explore others (eventually also unsuccessfully). Nothing was really going to work and it throws into focus the question of what Hallam was attempting to achieve by being interviewed in the first place. Perhaps disruption is now ingrained

    Like

  16. Mark: I think you may perhaps have missed my point. I don’t think any of your candidates believes that ‘talk of man-made climate change is a scam utilised by such people as Bill Gates and George Soros and in particular by the WEF with the intention of destroying Western civilisation … a view supported by many European politicians and officials’. Surely you agree with me? What I had in mind was to balance an extreme position with one from the other extreme.

    But it wasn’t a serious proposal. I don’t think there’s any prospect of the BBC being interested.

    Like

  17. Alan,

    I think you may just have discovered Hallam’s objective. For him, civil disobedience and disruption are everything. That means disrupting the establishment. He made it very clear that he regards Nick Robinson and the BBC as part of the establishment. So perhaps his intention was simply to disrupt the interview. Goodness knows why, though. Try as I might, I can see the interview only as doing more harm than good to his cause.

    Like

  18. Robin,

    Apologies, I did misread your comment. Actually, there might be the prospect of the BBC interviewing someone from the lunatic fringe of climate deniers, in a sneaky claim of being balanced, as in doing so they could present such a person as typical of climate sceptics, thus usefully tarring us all with the same brush.

    Liked by 1 person

  19. Mark: good point – an unlikely prospect but not wholly impossible.

    Like

  20. So Just Stop Oil has a website. The US is breaking records with its oil and gas exports. Which one of those matters more?

    In August alone, the value of U.S. oil exports, at $10.3 billion, had the highest share of all American exports with 6%, followed by gasoline and other fuels, per WorldCity data.
    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Oil-Poised-To-Become-US-Single-Largest-Export-Product.html

    They wouldn’t be getting those numbers if the demand wasn’t there.

    Like

  21. Oldbrew,

    Yes, JSO does have a website. From this it is apparent that their planned action in November is a series of slow marches in London for three weeks, commencing, as it happens, on 29th October. By the way, I think this is pretty scandalous:

    Pay taxes in the US?
    You can make a tax-deductible donation to Just Stop Oil’s recruitment, training and educational programs through the Climate Emergency Fund, here.

    Like

  22. Have watched a few Political Thinking & Hard Talk progs on BBC NEWS & found most to be biased IMHO. Wonder how many ordinary BBC Viewers even watch them.
    ps – BBC News seems to aiming at the American market lately?

    Like

  23. I feel like I just lost an hour of my life. I was going to stop just after the beginning, at his conspiracy theory that the elite was deliberately planning the murder of a billion people. But somehow reading on had its own morbid fascination.

    About 30% through, I thought maybe this was just a potty English eccentric who somehow became the proverbial dog who’d caught the car.

    About 60% through, I was fascinated by his first-hand account of the martyr’s mystical peace, and wondered to myself, my attention drifting, did that help those burnt at the stake?

    At about 90% I realised he has a really disordered mind — not unlike some political radicals I hung around with in my misdirected early ’20s. Possibly he’d be diagnosed with ADHD.

    I guess after reading all this, including the comments, I’m still not really sure why he’s gathered such a big following.

    Liked by 1 person

  24. I am still trying to decide whether it would be a good use of my time to read this transcript. Having read the comments and Nick Robinson’s closing statement I am getting the impression that Hallam has turned into something of a David Icke. You may recall that Icke used to be a prominent member of the Green Party before resigning to become a ‘Son of Godhead’. A week after resigning he shared with the press his prediction that the world would come to an end in 1997. Not wishing to shirk on detail, he explained that this demise would be preceded by a hurricane around the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans, eruptions in Cuba, disruption in China, a hurricane in Derry, and an earthquake on the Isle of Arran.

    So my question is this: If I were to read the transcript, would I find any lizards? Would I end up laughing at Hallam rather than laughing with him? I need answers before I could possibly commit.

    Like

  25. John, whether or not you should read it is perhaps the same as asking whether two wrongs make a right. I would be disappointed if I wasted my time transcribing it, but I suppose it wouldn’t cease to be a waste of my time if you wasted your time reading it.

    Like

  26. Mark,

    Okay, I have read it now, and I am pleased to say that I do not feel I wasted my time.

    The overall impression I am left with is that Hallam is a classic case of the cult leader, displaying all of the traits that go with that role. His position is basically this:

    I have gained a personal insight into a great moral and physical peril that confronts us all. You must surrender yourself to the visceral impact of what I say to you and recognise that your attempts to rationalise and focus upon practicality is just a symptom of your personal failure to understand. I, and I alone, have gained this great insight and you must not look to your traditional leaders since it is they who are behind the peril of which I speak. All that matters is that you act faithfully in accordance with the truth, and I am the bringer of that truth. I am surrounded by little people. Do not be one of those little people. Join in the Great Disobedience and share in my glory.

    No lizards, but no shortage of megalomania.

    Liked by 1 person

  27. John,

    I’m very pleased that you read it. I would say that your analysis has nailed it.

    Like

  29. Jaime,

    Just to belatedly respond to your point regarding the pathologizing of scepticism: You will recall that the two psychologists who were responsible for the sceptic-bashing article in The Conversation (professors Barbara K. Hofer and Gale Sinatra) were at pains to assert that a major reason why people adopt ‘anti-scientific’ positions is because they react too emotionally to certain science topics. Their advice was:

    “Ask yourself if your attitude toward a science topic is based on your emotions and, if so, give yourself some time to think and reason as well as feel about the issue.”

    But according to Hallam:

    “[W]hen your audience hears that, you’ve got two options, and you’ve got two options, which is to try and intellectualise around it and, you know, ask a reasonable intellectual question…But that is a displacement activity. The main human response to that should be massively emotional. Emotional about what’s going to happen to you, what’s going to happen to your family, what’s going to happen to the country, what’s going to happen to the whole world.”

    But did our two psychology professors have the likes of Hallam in their cross-hairs when they wrote their article? No, they were aiming at the average climate change sceptic or ‘anti-vaxxer’, i.e. ‘people who deny, doubt or resist scientific explanations’. As far as I am aware, there have been no academic studies into the psychological pathologies that lie behind XR or JSO.

    Liked by 2 people

  31. Perhaps the Guardian has misrepresented or exaggerated her comments? If not, this story seems to fit quite well here:

    “Children at ‘existential risk’ from climate crisis, UK’s top paediatrician says
    Exclusive: Physical and mental impact on young people needs immediate action, Dr Camilla Kingdon says”

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/oct/21/children-at-existential-risk-from-climate-crisis-uks-top-paediatrician-says

    The climate crisis poses an “existential risk” to the health and wellbeing of all children and action to tackle it is needed immediately, Britain’s most senior paediatrician has said.

    In a major intervention, Dr Camilla Kingdon, the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), said every adolescent was at grave risk from the physical and mental effects of the climate crisis. Healthcare professionals were already seeing its impact first-hand, she added.

    Air pollution, extreme weather and unprecedented energy costs were having a very real and detrimental effect on millions of children, she said. But as a country we have our “heads in the sand” when it comes to the climate crisis.

    Kingdon attacked what she described as the rolling back of net zero policies by Rishi Sunak and said the country’s most vulnerable children would be left bearing the greatest burden as a result….

    Like

  32. “Do Individuals with High Climate Anxiety Believe That They Will Die Earlier? First Evidence from Germany”

    Stratified by age group, a significant association was only present among individuals aged 18 to 29 years (β = -3.58, p = 0.01)

    According to this – and I have not read the paper – young people with climate anxiety believe they will die earlier than do those without. Tis a pity that Kingdon is not able to reframe climate anxiety as the psychological condition it obviously is, rather than a rational response to a doomed Earth.

    But she’s the expert. That’s why she earns the big bucks and us oafs are only capable of drinking brown ale and discussing ferrets.

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36981973/

    Liked by 2 people

  33. Jaime,

    Yes that is a very emotional reaction, but I also recognise it as a comment made with the tongue firmly embedded in cheek. I don’t for a minute believe that you actually have list of despised professions, although we all have a view on the relative levels of respect in which they should be held. In the case of psychologists, my respect is compromised by their willingness to intervene in a debate that is essentially a matter of scientific assessment when they themselves will often have less scientific understanding than those they brand as ‘anti-scientific’. And the fact that the reproducibility crisis in science is most evident within their own field should be a reason for them to hold their counsel. But they don’t. I won’t go so far as to put the whole profession in my Room 101, but when it comes to the question of explaining the causes of ‘anti-scientific’ sentiment, they are not nearly as qualified to comment as they think they are. Also, note that the authors of the article in The Conversation are educationalists as much as being psychologists. Educationalists – now they really are a danger to society.

    Like

  34. He’s a nutcase.
    I assume that the lack of challenges from the interviewer to his outlandish claims, is either due to lack of knowledge or the Begum Broadcasting Company’s established bias against challenging Climastrological claims.

    Like

  35. “Met uses new anti-protest powers to arrest climate protesters for first time
    Force makes first use of section 7 of Public Order Act to curtail slow march protest outside parliament”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/30/met-arrest-more-than-60-climate-activists-just-stop-oil-protest-first-use-powers-public-order-act

    Police have arrested more than 60 climate activists taking part in a slow march outside parliament in the first use of draconian new anti-protest powers.

    The Metropolitan police used section 7 of the Public Order Act 2023, which bans any act “which interferes with the use or operation of any key national infrastructure in England and Wales”, to order an immediate end to a Just Stop Oil protest on Monday morning.

    After forming a line and attempting to direct protesters off the road, police began making arrests, according to Just Stop Oil. Pictures and video circulated by the campaign showed officers kneeling on and handcuffing protesters, and carrying them into waiting police vans.

    A spokesperson for Just Stop Oil said the campaign would not be deterred by the police’s response, and its supporters would continue until its demand – a moratorium on new oil and gas licences – was met.

    “Just Stop Oil supporters are willing to slow march to the point of arrest today and every day until the police take action to prosecute the real criminals – the people who are facilitating new oil and gas when they know that to do so will kill hundreds of millions of people,” the spokesperson said….

    Like

  37. Mark,

    When terrorists hijack aeroplanes or buildings they will often issue demands for the release of hostages. Usually these include the demand that a statement be read out by the national broadcaster stating their grievances. This is what this article reads like, only JSO didn’t have to ask the BBC to oblige. Just like they didn’t have to ask the BBC to run with an article that included a JSO statement claiming that they would always let blue light emergency vehicles through:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-63203547

    And just like they didn’t need to ask the BBC not to run with an article that proved that was a lie:

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/just-stop-oil-protest-arrests-waterloo-bridge-ambulance-b1118976.html

    Liked by 1 person

  38. “More than 1,000 climate scientists urge public to become activists
    ‘We need you,’ says Scientist Rebellion, which includes authors of IPCC reports on climate breakdown, as diplomats meet for Cop28”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/04/more-than-1000-climate-scientists-urge-public-to-become-activists

    Wolfgang Cramer’s first involvement with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was in the 90s. He worked on the second assessment report, delivered in 1995, which affirmed the science of anthropogenic climate breakdown. At that point, no one could say they did not know what was happening.

    Almost three decades on, Cramer was part of the international scientific team that prepared the sixth IPCC report. Its conclusion, delivered in March, issued human civilisation a bleak “final warning” – the biosphere stands on the brink of irrevocable damage.

    Now, as diplomats meet in Dubai for the 28th round of the Cop climate talks, in a year predicted to be the hottest on record, and as carbon emissions continue to rise, Cramer is one of 33 IPCC authors among 1,447 scientists and academics in signing an open letter calling on the public to take collective action to avert climate breakdown.

    “We are terrified,” they warn. “We need you.”

    “Wherever you are, become a climate advocate or activist,” the letter, published on Monday by Scientist Rebellion, a climate activist group, implores. “Join or start groups pushing for policies that help secure a better future. Contact groups that are active where you are, find out when they meet and attend their meetings.

    “If we are to create a liveable future, climate action must move from being something that others do to something that we all do.”…

    …“No country is taking action in line with a 1.5C pathway,” the Scientist Rebellion letter says. “Continuing on this path will mean untold suffering. Large parts of our planet will become uninhabitable, creating hundreds of millions of refugees, unprecedented famines, and severe political conflicts.”

    But “we do not have to surrender to this future”, it insists. “The solutions are available” but their implementation relies on a “large-scale mobilisation of society” to overcome vested interests that profit from the status quo.

    “We need to rapidly phase out fossil fuels, yet Cop28 is being chaired by the CEO of an oil company, illustrating the profound influence of this entrenched power,” the letter adds.

    Minal Pathak, an associate professor at Ahmedabad University’s global centre for environment and energy and another signatory, was a senior scientist in the technical support unit for working group III of the IPCC’s sixth report, which focused on climate breakdown mitigation. Like Cramer, she too has become frustrated at the apparent impotence of scientists’ warnings. She told the Guardian she was, in fact, angry.

    “At one point we would think that writing impactful papers in high quality journals or publishing UN reports the thing, to lay down evidence,” she said. “But apparently that’s not working, right? Or not working as it should. I’m really, really disappointed at the way things are going. I have a teenage daughter, and I’ve seen it happening over a decade. What does it take, really, to take action?”

    Scientist Rebellion? IPCC authors? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

    Like

  39. Mark, the public are being taken for fools yet again. The latest Scientist Rebellion letter says:

    …“No country is taking action in line with a 1.5C pathway,” the Scientist Rebellion letter says. “Continuing on this path will mean untold suffering. Large parts of our planet will become uninhabitable, creating hundreds of millions of refugees, unprecedented famines, and severe political conflicts.”

    Ahead of COP27, the SR letter then read:

    Signatory to the letter, Professor Marta Guadalupe Rivera Ferre, a food systems expert and an IPCC lead author, says: “This is a landmark statement from academia. It underlines the urgent need for experts to state clearly to the general public, politicians and the environmental movement, that there is no viable pathway for staying below 1.5°C.”

    The letter states: “Senior academics accept there is no plausible pathway to 1.5°C. This requires global emissions to peak before 2025 and be reduced by 43% by 2030. Even that would likely lead to 1.5°C being exceeded within the next ten years. The most optimistic scenario reported by the IPCC rests on the hypothetical deployment of large-scale carbon dioxide removal technologies to drag temperatures back down by the end of the century.” It continues: “Continuing to say publicly 1.5°C is still alive is no longer defensible, yet politicians, leading academics and the environmental movement persist in doing so.

    In response, the letter calls upon the community of scientists working across all aspects ofclimate change to make a public statement ahead of COP27 consisting of the following:

    “First, make clear the inevitability of missing the 1.5°C goal as laid out by the IPCC in its latest assessment”.

    https://scientistrebellion.org/about-us/press/over-1000-academics-sign-our-letter/

    Spot the difference? Keeping the world below 1.5C now seems to be back on the agenda again and is just possible if only we completely destroy our industries and way of life over the next decade (us rich westerners that is).

    Liked by 1 person

  40. Perhaps Mr Hallam and his followers should read this. I give the Guardian credit for straying from its normal hysteria-laden reporting, though it’s a bit ironic that it should appear there, given the Guardian’s track record on alarmism:

    “Hannah Ritchie: ‘Doomsday predictions are a dream for climate deniers’”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/02/hannah-ritchie-not-the-end-of-the-world-interview

    It includes gems such as this:

    …You write that “I used to be convinced that I didn’t have a future left to live for”. What changed?

    I grew up with climate change. I don’t really remember a time when it wasn’t talked about, so I became obsessed with it – a big part of my life was worrying about it. Then I went to university and that was all I was studying. The environmental metrics were getting worse and worse. I was also assuming that extreme poverty and hunger must be getting worse. This fed into the notion that humans were incapable of solving problems. A key turning point was discovering the work of [Swedish physician and academic] Hans Rosling. He did these Ted Talks, mainly focusing on human metrics, where he would show how the world was changing, through data. And it turned out that most of the human wellbeing metrics that I’d assumed to be getting worse were actually getting better. Take child mortality: 200 years ago, almost half of children would die before reaching puberty, and that’s now less than 5%. Now, the world is still terrible, and we have a lot of progress to make. But the realisation I came to was that we have the opportunity to improve both of these things at the same time: we can continue human progress while addressing our environmental problems….

    Liked by 1 person

  41. Bizarrely, perhaps, they have two articles. There’s this:

    “I thought most of us were going to die from the climate crisis. I was wrong”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/02/hannah-ritchie-not-the-end-of-the-world-extract-climate-crisis

    …hen I was in my early teens, I thought most of us were going to die from climate change. I tried to convince my classmates of this, too. For my English oral exam, I held up a map of all of the cities and coastlines that were going to sink by the end of the century. I showed projected satellite images of the wildfires that would ravage the globe. In trying to light flames of interest, I simply added fire to my own anxieties.

    By the time I reached Edinburgh University, I was being flooded with images every day. Some from my university lectures, which, given the fact I’d chosen a degree in earth sciences, was expected. But, more importantly, my obsession for environmental sciences was growing in tandem with the uptick in the frequency of reporting. The more determined I became to stay informed, the quicker the stories came at me, often accompanied by streams of recorded videos. I didn’t have to imagine the pain of the victims, I could see and hear it, too. As a responsible citizen, I wanted to stay informed. I had to know what the latest disaster was. To switch off from them seemed like a betrayal to the lives that were lost.

    With reports of disasters coming at me faster every day, it seemed that things must be getting worse. Climate change was driving an intensification of disasters, and more people were dying than ever before.

    Or so I thought. The problem was that I mistook the increase in the frequency of reporting as an increase in the frequency of disasters. I mistook an increase in the intensity of my secondhand suffering for an increase in the intensity of global suffering. In reality, I had no idea what was happening. Were disasters getting worse? Were there more this year than last? Were there more people dying than ever before?

    Then I discovered the work of Swedish physician, statistician and public speaker Hans Rosling. Videos of his lectures taught me that extreme poverty and child mortality were falling and education and life expectancy were rising. I went looking for other areas where my preconceptions might be wrong. I started with data on “natural” disasters. I would have bet a lot of money that more people were dying from disasters today than a century ago. I was completely wrong. Death rates from disasters have actually fallen since the first half of the 20th century. And not just by a little bit. They have fallen roughly tenfold….

    …In the past, it was common for disasters to claim millions of lives a year. The 1920s, 30s and 40s were particularly bad. There were a few large earthquakes that claimed many lives: China, Japan, Pakistan, Turkey and Italy were all hit by a series of earthquakes that cost tens of thousands of lives. The most lethal – the 1920 earthquake that struck the Gansu province in China – is estimated to have killed 180,000 people. But it was drought and floods that were the most deadly. China endured a number of large floods and droughts through the 1920s and 30s, which often led to widespread famine and killed millions at a time.

    Today, the annual death toll is much smaller, usually between 10,000 and 20,000. Sometimes, there are particularly devastating years where the toll is much higher – like 2010, when the annual death toll was more than 300,000, with most deaths resulting from the Haitian earthquake.

    When I zoomed out and saw these trends, I felt stupid. I also felt cheated. I had been duped by an education system that was supposed to teach me about the world. I was a diligent student. I won medals for coming top for everything, from earth materials to sedimentology, atmospheric science to oceanography. I could create complex diagrams of seismic faults, I could recite the chemical formulas of pages of minerals from memory, but if you’d asked me to draw a graph of what was happening to deaths from disasters, I’d have sketched it upside down.

    I wasn’t alone in my ignorance. In the 2017 Gapminder Misconception Study, the public, across 14 countries, were asked 12 key questions, one of which was:

    How did the number of deaths per year from natural disasters change over the past 100 years?

    a) More than doubled
    b) Remained more or less the same
    c) Decreased to less than half

    Just 10% got the right answer: c). The most popular answer, 48% of the vote, was a)….

    Guardian, she’s looking at you.

    Liked by 2 people

  42. Mark – thanks for the Hannah Ritchie Guardian posts above.

    Wondered what she meant by “Doomsday predictions are a dream for climate deniers”
    from the 1st link (partial quote) –

    “You write that doomsday messages are often no better than climate denial. Why?
    It’s appropriate to say that climate change is a really serious problem that has a large impact. We need to get across a sense of urgency, because there is a lot at stake. But there’s often this message coming through that there’s nothing we can do about it: it’s too late, we’re doomed, so just enjoy life. That’s a very damaging message – because it’s not true, and there’s no way that it drives action. The other thing about doomsday predictions is that they’re a dream for climate deniers, who weaponise poor forecasts and say: “Look, you can’t trust the scientists, they’ve got this wrong before, why should we listen to them now?”

    Not sure I understand her logic on the last part. When the public have been bombarded for years by predictions/forecasts that this is our last chance to save planet Earth from boiling/no ice at the north pole/no cute polar bears/etc, but the “last chance” date keeps moving & real world data does not tally with predictions/forecasts, some people have every right to think “they’ve got this wrong before, why should we listen to them now?”

    And that does not make you a “climate denier”.

    Liked by 2 people

  43. The global sea surface temperature Holocaust and how the media are Holocaust deniers for failing to report on it.

    Like

  44. “Why is Roger Hallam talking about Keir Starmer being hanged?
    Extinction Rebellion’s wildeyed co-founder says Starmer will soon meet the same fate as Adolf Eichmann.”

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/02/12/why-is-roger-hallam-talking-about-keir-starmer-being-hanged/

    Roger Hallam’s having another normal one, I see. The wildeyed co-founder of loony eco-group Extinction Rebellion – and the alleged brains behind its soup-throwing spin-off, Just Stop Oil – is known for his apocalyptic, attention-seeking statements. (He once made a video, addressed to young people, arguing that unless something is done about climate change soon they will one day have their eyes poked out with hot sticks by marauding rape gangs. Seriously.) Now, Hallam has said that Keir Starmer will be hanged for ‘genocide’ in the near future, because of his apparently insufficiently alarmist response to climate change.

    On Saturday, Hallam published a piece on his website entitled, ‘A small matter of treason: Starmer and the “climate”’. Furious with the Labour leader’s decision to drop a proposed £28-billion-a-year climate-investment fund, Hallam argues that the next generation will take ‘him to trial for genocide at some point in the 2030s’. He also compares Starmer to Nazi butcher Adolf Eichmann – one of the main organisers of the Holocaust, who was hanged in Israel in 1962 for crimes against humanity – and implies that Starmer will soon meet a similar end:

    ‘No doubt Mr Starmer’s top legal team will point out, echoing Adolf Eichmann, that he did not actually do the killing. But it won’t wash any more in 2033 than in 1963 [sic]. It will be a political trial. Starmer, like Eichman [sic], will be guilty before he enters the courtroom. They hanged Eichmann. No one gets to kill Jews, and no one gets to send the next generation to their death either – without consequences.’…

    Like

  46. “Climate protest accused defies judge to give hours-long speech in court

    Jury sent out three times during address by Roger Hallam, who is on trial for alleged role in organising M25 blockade”

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/02/climate-protest-accused-defies-judge-to-give-hours-long-speech-in-court

    A climate protester ignored a judge’s instructions and refused to leave the witness box, instead delivering an hours-long speech telling jurors that his alleged role in a conspiracy to block the M25 was justified by the risk of human extinction.

    Roger Hallam, 58, spoke for more than two hours on why a judge was wrong to rule that he and co-defendants could not bring evidence in their defence on the impacts of climate breakdown, and why such evidence justified the sort of acts of which they are accused.

    The judge Christopher Hehir sent out the jury three times during Hallam’s extended address, left the court himself once, and interrupted Hallam many times to make clear it was not his place to instruct jurors on points of law.…

    ...Hallam said: “There is a not insubstantial possibility of absolute human extinction by putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at this moment in history. What we are looking at here is no one existing any more because everyone has died in the most excruciating awful circumstances.”

    The trial continues.

    Liked by 1 person

  47. “Climate protest trial turns to chaos as defendants defy court rules

    Accused speak out of turn about climate threat and challenge judge who orders jury to leave”

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/04/climate-protest-trial-chaos-defendants-defy-court-rules

    There was chaos in the courtroom at a climate protest trial when two defendants stood and made statements defying the authority of the court.

    At separate points during the trial on Thursday, Roger Hallam and Daniel Shaw, charged along with three others with conspiring to block traffic on the M25 in 2022, stood up in front of the jury and spoke out of turn.

    Hallam, whose evidence was discontinued on Wednesday, stood up just as court got under way on Thursday and said: “I wish to communicate to the jury and the court that I was forcibly removed from the court yesterday for refusing to break my oath and speak the whole truth.”

    Later on, while Louise Lancaster, a co-defendant, was in the witness box, Shaw, whose evidence was also discontinued on Wednesday, stood up from his place in the court and directly challenged the judge.…

    ...Each time the defendants continued speaking as the judge, Christopher Hehir, ordered the jury to leave the court.

    Lancaster refused to submit to cross-examination by the prosecution, as Shaw and Hallam had done the previous day, prompting Hehir to discontinue her evidence.

    Hehir told jurors: “Members of the jury, in your absence I had a discussion in open court with Miss Lancaster. In frank and straightforward terms she has told me she is not prepared to submit to cross-examination. In those circumstances her evidence is at an end.”...

    As it’s an ongoing trial, I shall refrain from commenting, save to observe that having listened to Roger Hallam’s interview with Nick Robinson (transcribed above) I am not at all surprised at this turn of events.

    Liked by 1 person

  48. They think “Climate protest” is above the law & love to be leading & in the headlines.

    1st impression is lock them up, 2nd is that they want to be a martyr & that would fit the bill.

    Still would go with option 1.

    Like

  49. “Five Just Stop Oil activists receive record sentences for planning to block M25

    Campaigners receive longest ever sentences for non-violent protest after being convicted of conspiracy to cause public nuisance”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/18/five-just-stop-oil-supporters-jailed-over-protest-that-blocked-m25

    Five supporters of the Just Stop Oil climate campaign who conspired to cause gridlock on London’s orbital motorway have been sentenced to lengthy jail terms.

    Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin were found guilty last week of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance for coordinating direct action protests on the M25 over four days in November 2022.

    Hallam received a five year sentence on Thursday, while the other four were each sentenced to four years.…

    Liked by 1 person

  50. The BBC (naturally) gives Hallam a platform for his views and quotes him. I will do the same, since I think it’s fair to say that they are about as balanced as was his interview with Nick Robinson:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c880xjx54mpo

    Hallam said in a statement during the trial: “The corruption of our judges by the carbon state has crossed a line in the sand.

    “This is an opportunity, and an obligation, to act. We only have a limited amount of time to halt the unimaginable horrors of climate and social collapse – and to save our democracy.”

    It’s only my inference, of course, but the concluding paragraph in the BBC article suggests that it disapproves of the law and its application by the Court:

    The judge in the M25 case argued that Parliament had made clear it saw non-violent direct action against national infrastructure as serious and passed a law allowing him to hand down sentences of up to 10 years – more than for some violent offences.

    Liked by 1 person

  51. Mark – partial quote from your link –

    “Michel Forst, the UN’s special rapporteur on environmental defenders, who attended part of the trial, issued a statement at its conclusion.

    “Today is a dark day for peaceful environmental protest” in the UK, he said. “This sentence should shock the conscience of any member of the public. It should also put all of us on high alert on the state of civic rights and freedoms in the United Kingdom.

    “Rulings like today’s set a very dangerous precedent, not just for environmental protest but any form of peaceful protest that may, at one point or another, not align with the interests of the government of the day.”

    Well Michel (that rhymes) your ““This sentence should shock the conscience of any member of the public. It should also put all of us on high alert on the state of civic rights and freedoms in the United Kingdom.” comment is to be expected.

    But I think you are very out off touch with the “conscience of any member of the public” in the UK I know.

    But you can bet the UN Human Rights About UN Human Rights | OHCHR will be involved next.

    Like

  52. “You may find Just Stop Oil annoying. You may dislike their tactics. But they do not belong in prison

    Chris Packham and Dale Vince

    These protesters are shouting ‘fire’ while the world burns. A society that locks them up cannot be called democratic”

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/19/just-stop-oil-tactics-prison-chris-packham

    …These people might be annoying. They might give you an earache. We might wish they would tone it down. But in a democratic society, they do not belong in prison. We need to be listening to them, not locking them up.…

    Annoying? Earache? It was a bit more than that. Read the Judge’s words and it seems obvious that it was a criminal conspiracy that over-stepped the mark of legally entitled protest. I’m all in favour of freedom of speech and the right to demonstrate, and will always defend it when it’s within safe and reasonable limits, but so far as I can see, these people deliberately broke the law in full knowledge of the possible consequences.

    …It’s madness to be locking up people such as Cressie for taking on the might of the fossil fuel industry. An industry that has not just polluted our land, air and waters, but has corrupted our democracy with its money and misinformation for so long.…

    Whether that’s right or wrong is irrelevant to the question of whether or not a criminal offence has been committed. Completely false logic. Belief in the rightness of one’s cause doesn’t change criminal intent to non-criminal intent. Curiously, perhaps, I also think the words could be just as readily applied to the renewables industry so beloved of Messrs Packham and Vince – An industry that has not just polluted our land, air and waters, but has corrupted our democracy with its money and misinformation for so long

    Liked by 2 people

  53. “. . . . . it was a criminal conspiracy that over-stepped the mark of legally entitled protest.”

    Can than not be said of a large number, even a majority of XR/JSO ‘protests’ over the years. This appears to have been the first occasion that they’ve been sent down for serious porridge, and significantly, the founder himself has been jailed.

    Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I believe that XR/JSO were tolerated and even entertained in part measure by the government in order to make the government’s Net Zero extremism look moderate and measured. Now we’ve got the swivel-eyed climate activist loon Miliband at the heart of government energy policy making, we don’t need any swivel-eyed loons on the streets spraying orange paint and disrupting traffic, stealing his thunder. So they’re banging them up. Hallam and the others were maybe just too dim to realise that they were being used.

    Like

  54. Wow, in a stunning instance of synchronicity, I just noticed this post by Andrew Montford. That’s weird.

    The sentencing remarks of the judge in the Just Stop Oil case are interesting. Those found guilty were essentially engaged in economic sabotage. But this bit is intriguing. Who is Roger Hallam referring to in the remarks highlighted at the end?

    Image

    Liked by 2 people

  56. Jaime,

    “The protestors were chained to the gantry and so were perfectly safe. There was no need to stop the traffic at all”

    And there was just no need for that. The occasional stupid statement, maybe. But not that.

    Like

  57. Jaime, re Montford’s question, Hallam was almost certainly referring to himself. Although Hallam sometimes struggles with basic arithmetic, he sees himself as the protest movement’s ‘numbers man’. So:

    ‘And there’s a whole mathematics around it but you have to take it on trust [cos you wouldn’t understand it] – [tell yourselves] that’s what [Hallam and his maths] are saying to [you] to do.’

    *

    I like this bit on page 15 of the judge’s sentencing remarks:

    52. During your evidence you described yourself to the jury as “the most influential environmentalist in the country apart from Sir David Attenborough.”

    53. I fear you may have got a bit carried away at that point…

    Liked by 4 people

  58. Chris Packham’s bleeding heart elegy on X for the jailed Climate Crisis Five:

    Tonight somewhere out there are five cells with sleepless people in them . Elsewhere there are empty beds , empty homes and broken hearts . Fear and tears . Anger and confusion . A bunch of good people whose lives have just been smashed by injustice . We hold you in our dreams .

    What I don’t understand is why climate activists are whinging so much. These five now have a unique opportunity to reduce their carbon footprints for the next few years: no travel, nice cosy, small, well insulated cell, meagre prison food. After all, isn’t that what they are advocating for the rest of us?

    Liked by 2 people

  59. Could be interpreted that way Vinny, but a bit odd really as he uses the plural ‘they’ rather than ‘it’ (referring to the mathematics). If he included himself in that ‘they’ then that would be even more odd. But he is a really odd person. I still think he has been duped by his Green Blob funders, who are in turn connected to the government.

    Like

  60. Here’s an interesting piece in the Guardian from Rupert Read, in which he seems to acknowledge that “decarbonisation” isn’t going to happen any time soon (despite XR’s 2018 call for the UK to achieve net zero by 2025). Instead, he argues, we need to adapt to climate change. Isn’t that what we “deniers” have been arguing for all along? Maybe we are winning the battle of ideas, after all.

    “At Extinction Rebellion, we aimed for UK net zero in 2025. That won’t happen – so here’s what to do instead

    With the climate crisis hitting Britain, we must build resilience at a local level by rewilding, saving water and fighting floods”

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/01/extinction-rebellion-uk-net-zero-2025-climate

    … climate activists and thought leaders need to stop clinging to the fantasy of decarbonisation as the sole answer to our predicament. As well as thinking about preventing and decarbonising, we need to start thinking about coping, adapting and preparing...

    Who’d have thought it?

    Liked by 2 people

  62. Ah, so maybe it’s all about book promotion. Still, it’s progress – of a sort.

    Like

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