Thread by @clim8resistance

This is what vapid MPs do.

Where is the "emergency"?

Where are the bodies?

Where is the damage?

To say that calling a "climate emergency" is irrational is an understatement.

https://twitter.com/RLong_Bailey/status/1122447934652583936

"To unlock public and private investment".

I.e. to take your money away. And to charge you for taking it away.

To reduce the expectations of politicians and government.

In a nutshell: enforced austerity.

Calling a "climate emergency" is intended to give politicians extraordinary powers.

That's not hyperbole. That it is what 'declaring an emergency' *literally* means.

It means that ordinary due process is not required.

This is why governments have *always* loved climate change, and how a cross-party consensus on climate change was so easily achieved.

It changes the fundamentals of the relationship between government and individuals.

In normal democratic politics, political ideas vie for assent from the public. Political ideas relate to people's material interests. Put crudely: "who gets what, when, how"...

That means, for instance, political parties with competing ideas ('ideologies', if you prefer) about how the economy is managed are put to the test. That's why we in the UK have never accepted full socialism or full capitalism. (This example is put simply, to make the point).

But climate change gives permission to politicians to suspend that competition of ideas. The "emergency" is declared, such that the contest of ideas is put on hold (indefinitely, of course), to deal with the "crisis", for mere basic survival. Just as in WW2, for example.

There are two things we can say about this.

1. It behoves politicians like Long-Bailey to claim there is an 'emergency', because she is an entirely vapid individual, just as her party, and the others are entirely hollow. She no longer has to trouble herself with ideas.

2. It is NO coincidence that climate change has risen up the political agenda as the political parties and politicians have become identically vacuous.

You don't need to be a climate change sceptic to notice it.

Climate change, whether it is real or not, and whether there are scientific facts or not, is the vehicle for a radical political idea, which is entirely corrosive to the principle of democratic government.

A "climate emergency" forces us to lower our expectations of politics and government. It empties the political sphere of its content. It says that you cannot have a say in politics until the 'crisis' is over.

Don't expect the BBC to point it out.

Still not convinced?

In a "climate emergency", how do you hold government accountable for unemployment?

In a "climate emergency", how do you hold politicians accountable for economic recession/depression?

In a "climate emergency", how do you force the government to consider alternative ways of dealing with the 'emergency'?

In a climate emergency, how do you put forward alternative cost-benefit analyses (etc)to the government's estimation of the 'emergency' and policies?

The answer is that you cannot. That is not your right under emergency government powers.

That is what 'emergency' means.

Footnote:

No climate science was denied in the above thread.