To start with the first piece of good news: most Europeans support climate action. In 2023, 93% of EU citizens rated the climate crisis as a serious issue, and 88% supported actions to achieve climate-neutral status by 2050. In the UK, the picture is similar: more than 75% of voters have expressed concern about climate breakdown, with more than 50% calling for government action. Public support for tackling the climate crisis is not in question.
But here’s the hard truth: turning this broad support into action is not simple. Support often polarises when concrete policy action is at stake, because the costs of climate policies fall immediately and unevenly.
Be nice, obviously, but that price…..
Storm Darraghhhhh-we’re-all-going-to-die is being blamed by MSM on climate change, even though the IPCC (pbut) themselves say the link between higher temperatures and more severe storms is “weak”.
It’s a triumph of ignorance over knowledge, stupidity over skill, and excitability over expertise. I can’t think of any other topic that has made me feel like an academic snob but I must point out it started with a few duds from dud universities, armed with dud degrees in dud subjects, demonstrating that it was a profitable line of enquiry well suited to propaganda while making only trivial academic demands of its new priesthood.
Soon they were joined by a flood of crooks who were more cunning and more shameless. So this absurd quasi-religion, with its hysterical fears of a fiery death, took over Western Civilisation.
For decades one prediction after another has been proved wrong. For decades they’ve proved unable to explain well attested warm spells in the past – or cold spells, come to that. For decades they’ve prayed in aid any inconvenience caused by weather, purportedly unprecedented but actually familiar to our grandparents. And still they get off with it, looting the public purse while preaching puritanism to the population. I hope the fuckers hang for it.
Is it a co-incidence that a similar percentage of the population also took the untested, Wuhan Flu “vaccine” that was offered by the caring, considerate and efficient state?
The problem with climate science is that people are told it’s science and they believe it, possibly because they don’t understand how science works. This lecture by Richard Feynman should be required viewing. It’s very short as it is, but only the first 90 seconds need to be watched to understand that climate science does not follow the scientific method.
We have 50 (probably more) climate models that each has a different outcome. This means that at least 49 are going to be proved wrong, and it stretches the bounds of credibility if it’s not all 50 that are wrong.
The scientific method tells us if the results don’t match the theory, the theory is wrong. It doesn’t matter how beautiful the theory is or how many people claim it’s true, it’s wrong.
Would have helped to include the link …,,
https://youtu.be/EYPapE-3FRw
And the answer to climate change is socialism. If it were technology and the free market it would have less support. For a long time climate change has just been a front for social change. I was looking for the quote from Christiana Figueres that said that explicitly.
In 2023, 93% of EU citizens rated the climate crisis as a serious issue, and 88% supported actions to achieve climate-neutral status by 2050. In the UK, the picture is similar: more than 75% of voters have expressed concern about climate breakdown, with more than 50% calling for government action. Public support for tackling the climate crisis is not in question.
Lets see how keen they are in quoting public opinion in a couple of years when the high costs of unreliables really bites and we start seeing rolling power cuts.
It’s not just about expressed v revealed preferences. Asked to rank their concerns (inflation, jobs, crime, etc) global warming comes around the bottom of the list, in most polls.
Storm Darraghhhhh = winter gales.
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.”
Ottmar Edenhofer IPCC Co-Chair Working Group Ill 2008-2015
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 14 November 2010
A while ago I saved this comment, I think made under a Speccie article, by a commenter called Ian Bland. I thought it summed up the current paradigm perfectly:
Ian Bland
32 MIN AGO
The Progressives in general do believe that we are fallen beings. However, their Calvinist heritage leads them to see humanity as divided between the Elect and the Unsaved; and the new believers consider themselves to be Elect, and thus it is their duty to be the shepherds of use Unsaved.
There is a profound religious dimension, but after many years of study I’ve come to a different conclusion to the one in the article (that humans naturally need faith and if you take one away another will replace it). The New Believers are, rather a *continuation* of certain strands of devout Religiosity, in particular that form of Protestantism that was once the Puritans, the kind who moved to the USA to build God’s Kingdom and resurged as Post-Millennialist Pietism in the Yankee States in the 19th Century as the various Great Awakenings (are ye Woke, Goodie Smith?). Progressivism grew directly and verifiably from this cohort.
This is the void being filled- not a (questionable) religious need in humanity in general, but the assumption that society should be an evangelical enterprise. There is much else in there too. The need for an apocalypse and day of judgement, a profound, disturbed and destructive antinomianism (isn’t it always?). Cancel culture is the exposure of sin before the congregation and sobbing self-condemnation in the Chapel (Protestantism is particularly cruel in this regard, having abandoned the private confession of sin to a priest and his magic power of absolution).
So it’s a mistake to presume people will always need fanatical faith and construct new ones when old ones die out. Instead, this is a particular consequence of the Protestant World’s particular history, particularly the USA, whose Puritans lie a-moulderin’ in the grave but their soul goes marching on.
Further to my comment, the important thing about Climate Change is it acts as a kind of Grand Unified Theory of neo-puritanism that can be used to condemn and prohibit everything that sandal wearers have always hated. Motor cars, industrialism, meat eating, cities, “chemicals”, “materialism”, normal social and family relationships, and more generally anyone daring to have a good time, however minor, ever.
And it gives them a lovely Apocalypse to warm the cockles of their tiny, shrivelled hearts.
And another thing.
Climate bollocks/Net Zero/The Great Reset demands humanity to stop striving to thrive, and instead strive to diminish and decay.
No species anywhere ever does that. It is contrary to one of the fundamental instincts. This, above all, is why it can only be a catastrophic failure.
People want action on climate change as long as other people are paying. The uptake of flight carbon offsets is still about 1-3 %.
“In 2023, 93% of EU citizens rated the climate crisis as a serious issue, and 88% supported actions to achieve climate-neutral status by 2050.”
Something tells me, other than the Guardian using the results as a go-to, that there is a high likelyhood of this thing called “bias” in those results.
‘And the answer to climate change is socialism. If it were technology and the free market it would have less support. For a long time climate change has just been a front for social change.’
One notes that the French had no particular problem in reducing their CO2 production by switching to nuclear power. If the climate crackpots were prepared to support policies that would actually achieve what they pretend they want, they might have more success.
The good news is we finally have a plan to destroy the Russian economy, shut down their factories and industries and demilitarise them thoroughly.
Let them join the EU.
You think it’d be a good idea to try that one on the Chinese too, Steve?
Bboy – Worth a try, but all the Chinese around here are smart enough to do cash only.
Norman – Climate bollocks/Net Zero/The Great Reset demands humanity to stop striving to thrive, and instead strive to diminish and decay.
That’s why it was HRH The Prince of Wales’ Great Reset. For some reason everyone remembers Klaus Schwab but fewer people remember that Charles was the most enthusiastic Great Resetter, so much so he presented it as his own great idea:
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2020/06/great-reset-launch-prince-charles-guterres-georgieva-burrow/
A man who doesn’t know how to squeeze his own toothpaste knows exactly how the global economy should function.
People say they support it because they know what happens if you don’t. Although it’s notable that it’s always well down their list of priorities when they’re asked. To listen to the political class, you’d think it was the only problem in the world.
“Storm Darraghhhhh-we’re-all-going-to-die is being blamed by MSM on climate change”
What, is there one on right now? It was a bit blowy this morning, right enough. I thought it was just December.
@BiND & Grikath. Two commenters who used that quote. But 2023. What is it now? I would suspect considerably lower. And my guess it’s dropping like stone. And will continue to do so as the consequences of the “actions” are increasingly felt. Was that early ’23? May mark the high tide point. Just post Covid people still had confidence governments knew what they were doing.
Net Zero: engineering decisions being made by lawyers and sociologists.
bis,
I didn’t bother seeing how the data was collected, I assume self selecting web survey to be that high. Even if it was a reasonable quality survey its one of those questions where people like to appear virtuous, a bit like “of course I support higher taxes to support the NHS”.
But yes, that approval will be dropping like a stone.
bis,
I’ve just seen a text saying that German Greens were on 24% in July 22 just before this survey but close enough, they’re now on 12%, up from10%, which can’t be far off their hardcore base.