Thread by @clim8resistance

Read my report for the @thegwpfcom on the UK Climate Assembly, which was an obvious and deeply flawed attempt to circumvent democracy.

https://twitter.com/thegwpfcom/status/1355116451619889152

The Climate Assembly was convened by six parliamentary select committees:

@CommonsTreasury
@CommonsTrans
@CommonsSTC
@CommonsHCLG
@CommonsEAC
@CommonsBEIS

But half of the funding came from two green billionaire "philanthropic" foundations who controlled the event.

Those foundations are the European Climate Foundation (ECF) & the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation (EFF) @EsmeeFairbairn.

(Don't take my word for it - the influence of political organisations in Parliament is supported uncritically by MPs like Darren Jones.)

https://twitter.com/darrenpjones/status/1354118940679696386

The Climate Assembly brought together 108 "randomly selected" members of the public, who heard from speakers chosen by four 'expert leads'.

One of those leads is Chair of @theCCCuk, Chris Stark @ChiefExecCCC.

That's obviously problematic, as the report explains.

The other Leads are:

* @Bankfieldbecky formerly of the @GreenAllianceUK

* @lwhitmarsh, chair of UK Centre for Climate Change & Social Transformations (CAST)

* Former @UKERCHQ chair & chair of @theCCC's Net-Zero Advisory Group, Jim Watson.

No bias there then.

These four biased leads were then free to chose the speakers that the Climate Assembly would hear from.

I shall not tag them each in here, but they included:

* An XR organiser.

* A founding member of the UK chapter of EarthFirst!

* A founding member of Plane Stupid.

The speakers we nearly *all* drawn from the nexus of academia and activism, and academia and policymaking.

They were all presented as academics and experts.

Their backgrounds in political activism was not explained to the Climate Assembly.

The Assembly members themselves are no idiots.

But their choices were constrained and deliberately so, by the Expert Leads and other (ECF and EFF-funded) organisations involved...

And their votes have been manipulated by the convening organisations, as I explain in this video...

Here @ChiefExecCCC lets his subordinate tell an untruth about what the Climate Assembly report found.

Climate Assembly member's choices were constrained by not letting them vote *against* the options they were presented with. They were only allowed to express their support for the options.

This has allowed the convening organisations to misrepresent their votes.

MPs in the @HouseofCommons allowed this to happen because they were aware that the public do not share their consensus on #netZero.

They knew, because of work by the @GreenAllianceUK that they had no mandate for their policies.

Here is that research. green-alliance.org.uk/building_the_p…

So green organisations -- almost all of which are entirely or substantially supported by the ECF and EFF --had to find a way to claim that #NetZero policies DO have a mandate.

They arrived at the idea of Citizens' Assemblies, which seemingly offered an alternative to democracy.

Citizens' Assemblies may or not have merit. But the UK Climate Assembly was not a faithful instance of a Citizens Assembly.

The Assembly was not free to choose its own agenda or call its own witnesses.

It was often divided into groups by the convenors and Leads.

Members of the Assembly were not able to speak freely with each other.

It was in other words, nothing more than a focus group-cum-PR stunt.

And the @HouseofCommons and @POST_UK have been crowing about what a huge success it was.

In November, the House had a "debate" on the Climate Assembly's final report, introduced by @darrenpjones.

MPs now *really* seem to believe that the Climate Assembly have given them a mandate for #NetZero.

theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=20…

But the idea that the Assembly can give Parliament a mandate only holds any water at all if you believe that 108 random people can represent 67 million people, and that the 650 MPs that the public DO select do not represent the public.

MPs recognised that they no longer represent the public.

The only way they can produce a mandate is by getting dubious special interest lobbying organisations and activist-academics to browbeat a focus group, depriving them of any inconvenient counterarguments or criticism.

The UK Climate Assembly was therefore modelled on 1980s timeshare selling scam techniques.

MPs had already let the public down in passing both the Climate Change Act 2008, and then increasing its targets to #NetZero in 2019.

They have now even further undermined democracy.

It is not possible to fully list the dangers this creates. The #NetZero policy is so far-reaching, and so encompassing of all areas of policy that every other policy area and duty of all levels of government come under its scope.

Yet there is zero scrutiny of it in Parliament.

Instead, Parliament has deferred all policy design to @theCCCuk, led by deeply conflicted Peers, and ambitious and intransigent civil servants, led by special interest lobbying organisations like the @GreenAllianceUK.

E.g:

Since the mid-2000s, the public has been entirely excluded from this policy-making process.

It has been urged on by billionaire-funded NGOs, and the false promises of green tech salesmen.

The only things approximate to a "mandate" are opinion polls, and a 108 member panel.

If MPs do not realise their mistake, and allow the public a FULL and proper choice on the most radical policy agenda in the history of our democracy, then it will be the end of our democracy.

Who knows where we go from there.