1) In this mini thread, in responses to my tweet below, I lay out irrefutable proof, that 50 years ago, world leaders were well aware that our economies and societies had to radically change direction to avoid an ecological crisis in the future.
https://twitter.com/SteB777/status/1396682679500910594
2) In an Orwellian re-invention of history world leaders, politicians and other establishment figures peddle the lie that we have only recently discovered the depth of the climate and ecological emergency, and that is why we have taken no action until now.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwellian
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwellian
3) As the UN documents and conferences I link to in that mini-thread make crystal clear, our state of knowledge about the ecological crisis was well enough established 50 years ago, to understand that we had to radically change direction to avert a future crisis.
4) The lie is peddled, that they didn't know back then how serious the situation was. Just read the report of the 1972 UN Environment Conference and Our Common Future (1987) to see just how big that lie is. They knew back then.
5) Once again, I must re-iterate that if a politician is not willing to take radical action to address the climate and ecological emergency in their current term of office, and treat it as the crisis it is - THEY ARE LYING!
6) Politicians know very well the public are very concerned about the ecological crisis and would be alarmed if they knew our leaders didn't intend to take the necessary action. So politicians feel compelled to promise action, for fear of the public, voters, turning against them.
7) The very reason the public have become indifferent to the crisis is that they have been misled, and are misled by their leaders promising to take action. The public trust their leaders and don't know what degree of action is necessary, and that what's promised is inadequate.
8) Again and again, we see our leaders making token gestures, and vague promises well in the future. They implement weak and small actions, which might seem big, but make no overall difference in the scheme of things.
9) This is a classical abuse of a ploy used by fraudsters throughout history, usually known as "the cheque's (check in the US) in the post". That is to eternally promise payment for something, and to keep putting it off, renew the pledge and keep pushing it forward.
10) Given the 50 year track record of world leaders and politicians promising action, and then delivering nothing meaningful, only token gestures - How much more empirical evidence do we need that our leaders are insincere and disingenuous?
11) Action is all a matter of scale. Any gesture which doesn't make any overall difference, even if it appears to be quite big, is tokenism, and a type of fraud. In any other aspect of society this wouldn't be acceptable. #MindTheGap.
12) As I say, it is all about scale #MindTheGap. Global finance is so massive in scale, beyond anyone's comprehension, that these token gestures offered by politicians, look big. Yet in the overall scheme of things, they are tiny.
13) When politicians promise action, say at COP26, the first thing we should ask of it, is what difference will it make, in what timescale? How does it compare to the degree of action the science says is necessary to avert dangerous climate change and biodiversity collapse?
14) The reason we have got ourselves into this mess, is that academics, the media, even NGOs, have taken the position that "okay, it's not enough, but at least it's a start". Arguing it will hopefully lead to substantial action in the future.
15) We now have 50 years of empirical evidence to know that keeping quiet in the hope that politicians will take substantial evidence further down the line does not work. It has totally misled the public.
16) Because academics. the media, NGOs etc, have not called out world leaders and governments for promising inadequate action, the public have been seriously misled. The pubic have become fatalistic that nothing can be done, because the promised action makes no difference.
17) However, because of the silence from academics, the media, NGOs, to supposedly not discourage politicians - the public never realised that our leaders were offering totally inadequate action to address the crisis i.e. the public were seriously misled by the silence.
18) Environmentalists have been labelled doom-mongers for pointing out that the promised action is totally inadequate, simply because academics, media and NGOs have not properly backed them up, and called out the totally inadequate action promised. @KevinClimate @GeorgeMonbiot
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