I can't read this paywalled article. But it worries me that the 'greening of the economy' is being offered as a benign agenda, distinct from XR's more obvious politics.
XR are only superficially more extreme. The green agenda more broadly is no less ideological.
It's not *about* merely making it possible to do the things we do every day, but just slightly better.
It's about a fundamental transformation of politics.
Government and others distancing themselves from XR puts no distance from themselves and the fact that theirs is still a deeply ideological project -- a project which has ZERO democratic legitimacy. It is, at its core, absolutely hostile to democracy.
The "greening of the economy" is to cede control of the economy to those who determine what is "green".
It is to say that what you may take from and must give to the economy will be determined by the same people.
It is to say that all economic life must be governed by the same.
And this does not stop at economic life. It extends far into private life too.
Any candid account of what the green agenda means -- in its largest part, given by its own architects -- states that it is about 'behaviour change', elicited, coerced and forced.
That's fact.
Leaving aside the detail (to avoid a megathread), there is NO WAY an agenda of "behaviour change" can be *benign*, in the sense of "oh, don't mind us, we're just making the economy greener, so that everything will be as it was before, and you won't be poorer".
You will be poorer. And there will be nothing you can do about it.
It's a fundamental transformation of the relationship between people and government.
It has consequences even greater than the facts that they're going to take away you car, and your boiler and your home.
If it were NOT this that was being sought, then there would have been disagreements between parties, and there would be debate about the "greening of the economy".
Instead there is political consensus -- in Westminster, and amongst the political class, but not in Britain.
Politics is *about* the economy.
You can't say "oh, we're just making the economy more X" without it being a deeply political statement.
"Greening the economy" is as political as abolishing private property or privatising everything in sight.
It should be contested.
But somehow, "green" makes people blind to the politics, red or blue, even though the implications of "green" is far more deeply political than anything red or blue have argued for in over half a century... possibly longer.
Journalists at the blockaded newspapers included, have *continually* failed to see that environmentalism is as ideological as any early-mid twentieth century ideology.
That failure contributed to the growth of a dark and weird ideological movement that needs to be confronted.
And it's no use, saying, "oh, they're the weirdo left anarchist greens, there are nice market-centric greens".
There is little difference between them. There's no democracy to the green agenda -- it is hostile to democracy. There's no debate -- it is hostile to debate...
No version of environmentalism conceives of you being able to make decisions for yourself, to live outside of the lifestyle designs that they have set for you, to participate in democratic debates about the management of the economy, or of being challenged and overthrown.
The *point* of "sustainability" is to *sustain* wealth and power in perpetuity.
The 'environment' is a fig leaf.
I've been sent the full text of the article, and it is exactly as I feared.
"since I took over my think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies, we have published policy papers on carbon taxes, emissions offshoring, the hydrogen revolution, clean air zones, green tech and so on."
And " Last year I took a leave of absence to help write the Conservative manifesto, which featured a commitment to reaching net zero as one of its core pledges, along with a host of other environmental commitments."
And "As a journalist I’ve written repeatedly about climate change, and devoted chapters of my book about the acceleration of modern life to humanity’s alarming impact on the planet."
The problem is that all think tanks have "published policy papers on carbon taxes, emissions offshoring, the hydrogen revolution, clean air zones, green tech and so on."
And all manifestos "featured a commitment to reaching net zero as one of its core pledges, along with a host of other environmental commitments."
And all journalists' bang on about "the acceleration of modern life to humanity’s alarming impact on the planet."
But they don't seek anything further than confirmation.
What if it is not true that "modern life" is having an "accelerating" "impact on the planet"?
And what do the terms even mean?
So much is taken for granted, that the only word that can adequately describe such a vast constellation of presuppositions is IDEOLOGY.
And what if an "impact on the planet" is the necessary condition of a way of life that ensures human dignity, and ultimately therefore, ecological health?
You have to chop down trees to build a home.
Too many writers at the blockaded newspapers take too much for granted.
The extent to which environmentalism has narrowed democratic politics can be seen in this statement published by Colvile's think tank -- a categorically Thatcherite organisation...
*ANY* party-affiliated UK think tank could have written that.
But where's the discussion about what the UNFCCC process and the COP meetings are aiming for?
And what if the "decarbonisation" of the energy, transport, industry and housing sectors results in a degradation of those sectors -- as they surely will?
The problem is that think tanks aren't really doing any thinking, and journalists aren't really doing any journalism.
So I have little sympathy for limp, wet tories who find themselves on the receiving end of campaigns, which are funded by billionaires, enabled by networks of NGOs, and urged on by the same institutions the journalists and think tanks have also not investigated.
Does *this* look like evidence that "people are quietly and seriously getting on with working out how to make the economy greener without making the public poorer"?
No. It is in fact evidence that no politician -- and no quango, NGO, or this or that researcher -- has any idea about how to "make the economy greener" without causing more problems than it solves.
If I may speak for most people...
The main difference between green-ish journalists/policy wonks and XR, as perceived by most people, is that one lot have jobs.
Other than that, how can anyone tell the difference?
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.
Charles should sit on his golden chair with his silly gold hat and STFU about things he has no business speaking about.
If he does not, then he forces the issue, and reversing the political establishment's preoccupation with climate will therefore require a new settlement...
You may well yet be a monarchist. But the idiot king has forgotten that it is degenerate elites, whose hubris, intransigence and arrogance are suffered by millions, who then remove them.
"Love" of monarchs does not survive hunger.
At the very least, the democratic deficit afflicting climate policy is going to cause a constitutional crisis.
The House of Commons is completely unrepresentative. The House of Lords is corrupt, self-serving and aligned to the blobs. And the monarch is a green activist.