…I have a problem with this. I’m a vaguely hippyish, Greenie type by nature. I used belong to CND. I buy organic and Fair Trade. I recycled before it was compulsory. I have a brick in my toilet cistern though I don’t really even know why. So, y’know I’m a natural constituent for the Climate Changers. I should be buying the books, wearing the tee shirt, there at the demos, calling for Action Now to save the world from boiling to death.
But I’m not. I can’t be. Because to me Climate Change, or Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming to give it its proper name looks at best like an unproven hypothesis in deep need of data, and at best like hysterical, poorly reasoned pseudo-science.
So, I can’t join the party. Which is a shame because it’s a pretty cool one, and everyone who’s anyone is going.
As I see it, CAGW is just a crazy collision of human insanity, venality and political opportunism. The Hardcore Warmists are pushing their agenda because careers and research grants and reputations are all riding on it. The Greens are pushing it because they see it as the best way of getting their voices heard. The politicians are pushing it because they see it as a way of increasing taxes, increasing social control, and possibly issuing in a whole new era of nuclear power, all of which will make them and their friends richer and more powerful.
These three separate interests have all coincidentally come together to create a cross-party super-lobby so powerful, so pan-demographic that it’s swept all before it. It’s become a mass movement in all the wrong ways and for all the wrong reasons. And worst of all it’s a mainstream Establishment-backed movement selling itself as marginal and oppressed so that millions of wet liberal, former hippy conscience-stricken idiots (like me) are conned into thinking they are backing a persecuted minority view.
Stop and think guys. How many persecuted minority views get this much airtime? How many persecuted minority views end up on the front page of the NY Times or the Independent? How many persecuted minority views have major politicians making movies about them?
None is how many. This is a persecuted minority view in an Armani suit and with a fleet of PR guys behind it. It’s a slick fake is what it is. As fake as the fake data that created the hockey stick we’re not supposed to remember any more, as slick as the PR that seamlessly turned Global Warming into Climate Change as soon as people started noticing the globe wasn’t actually warming any more.
Not because someone conspired to fake it, but because it just kinda happened that way. Because being a crusader even on a fake crusade offers instant meaning. Climate Change makes eco-heroes out of all of us without us needing to do anything more strenuous than read a few headlines. It lets us all belong to the biggest, safest, coziest persecuted minority there has ever been. And that’s pretty seductive. And a whole lot easier than thinking for yourself.
