Meanwhile, an upsurge in climate protest – Fridays for Future around the world and Extinction Rebellion in the UK – has been met by a policing crackdown. The UK was an outlier on this, with nearly a fifth of environmental protests ending in arrests, while activists’ disruption of daily life provoked public aggravation. The side of the climate movement that emphasised the need for shared sacrifice rather than the promise of prosperity has effectively been neutered.
The number willing to wear hair shirts for Flipper always was low. Not zero, obviously, for there are always some ascetics looking for a justification, but low all the same.
The UK was an outlier on this, with nearly a fifth of environmental protests ending in arrests, while activists’ disruption of daily life provoked public aggravation.
Should have been five fifths but with judges and juries being wetter than an otter’s inside pocket to quote the Hildabeast “what difference would it have made”?
We’ve got boffins saying that we’ll be 60% richer by 2100, rather than 100% and saying that makes us 40% worse off. I’d settle for that 60%. But “shared sacrifice”(?) – that’s the loonies sitting in roads and standing on train roofs actually *wanting* us to be worse off than now.
This stuff is just a Ragnarok cult. Mark my words, when we get to 2040 and peak population looms, everyone will start freaking out about the extinction of mankind and forget eco.
Go backwards from here, there were always “The End is Nigh” people. Before eco it was nuclear power and nuclear war. Why did everyone stop being worried about nuclear war wiping us out? There’s still piles of nuclear weapons out there. Because eco kicked off and it’s like giving an alcoholic a crack pipe. They just switched to another thing.
Before nuclear people had religion, book of revelation, seventh seal.
Wrong way around, chance of nuclear war receded with the end of the USSR (thank you Reagan and Thatcher), so the NGOs needed something else to raise money from.
One might suggest public aggravation isn’t something you should be provoking.
Couple of weeks back two women were walking around here waving Palestinian flags. The didn’t look Spanish, possibly Brit. Very shortly they minus flags & bawling their eyes out. Someone was learning they weren’t back home.
I’ve been hoping for years that the buggers would stop throwing paint and start throwing vinegar so I could talk about “ascetic acid”. Boom, boom!
Anger at environmental failures – from dirty rivers to mould-infested homes – is more palpable than ever. The politician who can seize and exploit that mood remains elusive.
Mould in homes is entirely due to measures pushed by Green politicians: insulation in all its forms, the removal of draughts, the loss of solid-fuel heating. No politician is going to exploit that fact, because so much of the electorate has fallen for it. You don’t win votes by telling people the truth: that they’ve been stupid and that’s why they live in mouldy homes.
I have lost count of news stories about non-indigenous families having to live in black mold infested accommodation complete with photos showing air vents taped over.
Have a heart. It’s cold here and they don’t like draughts. That’s why they wear parkas even in heatwaves. And they get their heating bills paid anyway, don’t they?
We dealt with this at the time the story hit the press. The mould was caused by African enrichment commercially outcooking. The evidence, sitting on the shelves in the photos of the kitchen, was the cast iron cooking pots. Those things cost over a hundred quid a piece. Nobody is going to have more than one of them for domestic use. If I remember rightly, one could count four.