Heated Discussions . . .

The Mayor of Venice blames global warming for the current floods, the second highest in over fifty years.  But then what was responsible for the record tide in 1966?

Now I do share some of the concerns that people have over climate and agree with some of the solutions proposed, too.  I am in favour of extensive re-afforestation and curbs on air travel—this latter on the basis of curbing the cultural suicide of mass tourism—and the protection of species and dealing with the plastic scourge.

But beyond that I am somewhat sceptical.  Because really I know nothing about climate change other than what I am being told.  Nor do I have the skills set necessary to reach any true conclusion on the matter for myself.  No more, I suspect, than do most people.

We are told that scientists say it is so, so it must be so.  But then the world is full of scientists—anyone with a BSc Pass being likely to qualify—and they are all active in an exponentially increasing multitude of scientific subdivisions.  Few of them would be purely climate scientists—to the extent that there are such things as pure climate scientists, and not just simply an amalgam the various core disciplines of the earth sciences—and few such climate scientists would, in turn, be in a position to take an ex cathedra overview of all the research, which, as I say, is complicated and fragmented across any number of fields and sub-fields.

But, then, of course, that still doesn’t mean that it is not true.

The thing that gives me pause for thought, however, is the extent to which virtually overnight popular certainty in the matter has turned into a stampede.  There is hardly anyone now that hasn’t got an opinion on man-made global warming, and it is generally one of absolute and unqualified belief.

Over roughly the past forty or so years, a new political strategy has developed on behalf of what might be broadly described as left-liberalism, involving what are generally called ‘social movements’ or ‘social cure movements’.  The purpose of these movements is to change the way people think by ancillary means—means other than political argument or rational debate etc.

Behind such movements lies the realisation that human beings are broadly conformist and are generally uncomfortable in being out of step with perceived majority opinion.  The strategy involves creating the illusion of a mass movement, David Copperfield-style, often with smoke and mirrors.  Most of these movements start out as small handfuls of middle-class intellectuals, students and academics, who by means of clever marketing create the idea that they are at the forefront of much larger popular movements, which in turn are driving them on.

Now this is not to say that some of these movements didn’t in their time do useful work.  But the fact is that down the years the process became fashioned into a ubiquitous weapon—a sort of one-tool-fits-all-type—capable of being adapted to all sorts of purposes, to the extent that there are any number of organisations around the world peddling a claimed expertise in such things as regime change and various lesser matters of liberal concern.

A core element of these programs involves the ‘weaponising’ of schoolchildren and college students and bringing them on the street as activists.  In general, argument or debate plays no part in this process, instead it seeks to exploit the youthful desire to be ‘cool’ and ‘alternative’—all as a means of adding an appearance of specific-weight to the overall movement, which in turn it is hoped will infect the broader population, and cause the whole thing to go viral.

Now, as I say, I am not in a position to make any statement on the validity or otherwise of the overall climate change position.  Instinctively, I would be to a degree sympathetic to it.  But I’m certainly not prepared to empty the cup in one go.  I remain to be persuaded.

But what I am clear about is the fact that the climate movement is at risk of being turned into a political vehicle by the usual suspects, who having time and again failed to implement their programme by other means, are now intent on hanging it on the horns of the self-proclaimed climate emergency.

Yesterday we had the schoolkids giving their advice on dealing with climate change in a Youth Assembly—a sort of junior version of the equally dubious Citizens’ Assemblies.  What is the point of all this, other than to encourage them by bestowing on them a sort of cut-price legitimacy?  What do they know about the matter more than anybody else?  And such being the case, why the fuck should anyone bother listening to them?

[It has been at the back of my mind for a while to write—though in more depth—about the various ‘social-cure movements’ afoot in the world.  It is just the speed with which things seem to be at this moment developing that has caused me to do so now.  For anyone who doubts the underlying validity of what I am saying, there are various books—mostly pro-social movement—out there in the marketplace.  Nor is the social-cure phenomenon the only strategy being pursued by those whose other strategies down the years have inevitably failed.  At some stage, and to the extent that I keep writing, I may deal with them, too.]