Thread by @SteB777

Let me address this in full, in the context of my tweet thread. Essentially I was saying that if governments, vested interests, billionaires started treating the climate and ecological crisis as the crisis it is, then so would everyone else.

https://twitter.com/landrights4all/status/1419529356590817284

People, meaning the public at large, take their cues from their leadership. The only means people have about knowing about the wider world and events in it, are via a media controlled by the same powerful and wealthy cabal, profiting from the carbon economy etc.

We live in a very unequal world. Where if Bill Gates wants to tell us his personal views about the climate crisis, it is splashed across the front pages of the media for several weeks, and forced down our throats.

Therefore, the implication that the vast majority of people in the developed world are equally responsible for the lack of progress on addressing the climate and ecological crisis, makes no sense at all.

Especially given, since the 1990s, opinion polls have consistently shown a very large proportion, often a clear majority, favouring a far more radical and urgent approach to addressing the climate and ecological emergency, than our leadership gives us.
theguardian.com/environment/20…

Look at the history of this. I am not just expressing my opinions about this. What I am saying is supported by contemporary surveys of public opinion over the last few decades.
wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.100…

Around 30 years ago, around the time of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit onwards, politicians kept giving grandstanding speeches about addressing the climate and ecological crisis. People kept voting for politicians and parties that said this.

Therefore, the failure of governments to implement any measures concomitant with their pledges to address the climate and ecological emergency, is nothing whatsoever, to do with the public stopping politicians from taking the measures they promised.

It isn't easy referencing or even finding speeches from the early 1990s, given that the internet was in it's infancy then. However, look at this 2004 speech by then UK PM Tony Blair who came to power in 1997.
theguardian.com/politics/2004/…

Therefore, we see a very clear pattern. The public wanting urgent action to address the crisis, the political leaders promising this action, then repeatedly failing to deliver it. How is this failure to deliver, anything to do with the public at large?

Self-evidently, it is the political leaders, business leaders etc, failing to deliver on their promises to take action, not the public opposing action.

Trump was the first US president to openly oppose action to address the climate and ecological crisis, and he was elected on a minority vote i.e. he lost the popular vote.

Likewise, the "gilets jaunes" protests against tax on fuel, ostensibly to reduce carbon emissions, were not protests against action. It was stupid to expect the poorest to bear the brunt when the richest have by far the biggest carbon footprints.
oxfam.org/en/press-relea…

This is why these assertions, which I hear repeatedly, that it's the public at large which have prevented action to address the climate and ecological emergency, make no sense. Note how I support what I say with empirical evidence, and don't just make unsupported assertions.

I say the reason political leaders and business leaders have kept promising action on the climate and ecological crisis is because they know it is popular, and they fear a public backlash if they don't commit to action.

However, that the powerful and wealthy, political leaders, corporate leaders, billionaires etc, fail to deliver anywhere near what they promise, suggest their pledges are hollow and disingenuous.

What I am saying is they promise the public action on the crisis, because they know they want it and fear a backlash for doing nothing, but then they abuse their positions of power to actually do nothing, and pursue policy that makes the crisis worse.

If you dispute what I say, then give a reasoned and supported argument as to why what I said is incorrect?

PS. Around half the population in the developed world don't fly in a given year and the vast majority of flights are taken by a small proportion of the population. This demographic tend to be in the wealthiest 10% of the population.
theguardian.com/business/2020/…