It is a fundamental of democracy that the proponent of a thing should actually say something intelligible, and of course, set out an argument that can be meaningfully engaged with.
But they didn't manage it.
You can't actually argue with ignorant, conspiracy-theorising street thuggery.
It's only performance from the likes of @James_BG that makes it seem respectable.
It was a rabble. It was unable to express its grievances. And it had to resort to fantasy to compensate.
For instance, the occupants of the house are charged with having "destroyed democracy", with having "blood on their hands", and with covering up "hundreds of billions of corporate profits".
Grave charges. But no actual explanation about when/how these crimes took place.
This, from the article, for e.g.
Smith: "There are people whose business it is to make science look like opinion. Who aim to transform genuine feelings of climate grief and guilt into defended ignorance and positive denial".
Ok. Like what? Where? When? How?
And so?
It's a poetic litany... "eloquent"...
But it doesn't mean anything.
Even if it is true, why should there not be organisations who question science used in policy-making?
And what are "genuine feelings of climate grief and guilt"?
Who experiences them?
And then this, too long to quote in a tweet.
What does it mean? How is it a claim against the occupants of the house?
If there is any evidence of "lobbying at the highest level of our government", it's undermined by the fact of the government's commitment to #netzero.
They have no rebuttal to the "lobbying". The lobbying being (we must assume) little more than the publications, which you can read for yourself -- and which the protesters have not read.
It is also blind to the lobbying in the other direction, which is far more substantial.
In £ terms, it is several orders of magnitude greater.
And it is not done in public.
For instance, the cross-party consensus on climate change, which *is* used to prevent the public expressing a view on climate policy, was organised by a lobbying organisation, the Green Alliance.
To the extent that it is not mere nonsense, this is green mysticism: "the climate crisis is driving the foundations of economic shocks".
People internalise this irrational green ideology. We should take it seriously.
Inflation and interest rates have nothing to do with 'climate'.
There is no climate change signal in cocoa production stats. Thee of the last four years saw record production. The last year's production was still higher than any year prior to seven years ago.
Prices of commodities often fluctuate, for myriad reasons. Greens always blame a single outlier on 'crisis' to support their ignorant ideological view.
Labour will further exclude the public from political decision-making by outsourcing policy to unelected panels of people, who will be tortured into submitting to the will of the fake experts that will bore them close to death, before providing them with rigged questions, and then writing up their deliberations to suit the conveners, not what the 'citizens assembly' actually determined...
Read my analysis of the climate 'citizens assembly'.
This is a somewhat shallow and hollow attempt to circumvent the major problem haunting global climate politics for four decades.
It was the 'free-rider' problem: why should we commit to self-harming policies when others won't?
Those other countries were 'developing' when the first global policies were being considered. Now they are well and truly developed, and their progress is accelerating, while much of the seemingly 'developed' world is stagnating, thanks in large part to rising energy costs, owed in turn directly and indirectly to the green policies she is arguing for.
Ritchie tries to counter what she claims is a 'weak argument' with a series of arguments that are even weaker.
1. Rich countries – that have emitted the most – have a moral responsibility
Why? The data provided by her own project show very clearly that there are no adverse signals in fundamental metrics of human welfare that can be attributed to climate change.
Moreover, the same data show that affordable, abundant and reliable energy are key to that progress.
So there is no injury. And thus there is no moral obligation.
This work is an add-on to our @ClimateDebateUK/@Togetherdec report on air pollution politics.
We show how green billionaires and their fake civil society organisations are corrupting UK democracy at all levels of government -- international, national, regional and local.
My 'debate' with Donnachadh McCarthy on @petercardwell's @TalkTV show this morning.
Starts at 1h.46m.44s into this Youtube clip.
A discussion thread follows...
Unfortunately debate with green zealots is not possible, because of what I call the 'Femi effect'. As with debates about Brexit with Remainer activists, you end facing a machine-gunned litany of unconnected factoids, precluding any focus on facts, let alone coherent argument.
That means you have to try to limit what you respond to -- McCarthy wanted to talk about everything from ice cores to annual global temperatures and his solar panels, not the rights and wrongs of UK climate and energy policy. And much of what he said was simply untrue.