There are some stories in the media so surreal that you have to doubt the collective sanity of a society that requires that they be reported. One such story is in The Observer this morning, where it is reported that:
A government extremism adviser has admitted during a private meeting that it is wrong to label Extinction Rebellion (XR) supporters as “extreme”, despite the home secretary, Priti Patel, condemning the group as “criminals” who threaten the nation's way of life.
The government adviser was former Labour MP, but now Tory supporter John Woodcock, who sits in the Lords as Lord Walney.
It is reported that during a conversation with XR he accepted that XR was not, per see, extremist. He added that he agreed there was a need for urgent action to address the climate crisis but said:
I have become increasingly convinced of the need to act further and faster than we have. I supported the Labour party's position of declaring a climate emergency [in parliament] but what comes from that is not clear in my mind.
He apparently then speculated on XR harbouring a “far-left” anti-capitalist agenda and said of XR's participatory democracy that:
You can change the form of democracy, make it more participatory, but ultimately the public are not going to accept … the level of economic reduction, which you believe is necessary, and therefore … you will end up in an alternative to democracy itself.
In other words, opposing the form of capitalism that we have that is unquestionably destroying the planet that we are living on is extreme, after all. And representing the will of people is also extreme, apparently, and even anti-democratic.
Woodcock, I am quite sure, does understand all of this.
And I am sure he also knows more than enough about what climate change is all about.
But he also knows that his Tory paymasters require that nothing change.
So he labels those who think that we must change to survive - which is a necessity - as potential extremists after all - not for any logical or factual reason but because he wishes to maintain the neoliberal political and anti-democratic status quo.
As I have already said elsewhere this morning, this is what is not just killing politics in the UK, but quite literally us too.
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‘but ultimately the public are not going to accept … the level of economic reduction’
Codswallop.
I sat in work this week listening to two colleagues worried that they had to drive around the city we work in, in diesel cars and why couldn’t they just do my interview through the phone or on Skype or something similar. I’ll be back on the train this week with my bike.
What Lord Wally(sic) really means is this: People will NOT BE HELPED to accept limitations on ‘economic reduction’ by doing such things as:
Better rural bus services.
More trains and longer trains to stop overcrowding.
More railways lines being built.
Re-gauging to European gauge
More electrification of railway lines – in fact complete, electrification
More tramlines being built or trolley buses brought back beyond cities.
Cheap, subsidised fares for all the above.
More cycle lanes.
Payments for car sharing.
Lower national speed limits on motorways.
More charging infrastructure for electric vehicles.
Requirements for fleet vehicles to be electric.
Huge investment in low carbon and PV for housing newbuild and existing stock – subsidised heavily for home owners and landlords.
I’m damn sure all of this could be achieved, and the well paid jobs created too – including enough people to ensure that the Government investment was being used properly.
If the lying stopped and the reality set out clearly, divorced from Party politics, THEN the public will accept the changes necessary. But THAT means a collective political decision to admit a total failure of the global economic model and to spell out that we need to make policy to protect own children’s lives, not even the grandchildren’s, such is the imminent nature of the catastrophe. And that makes Lord Moron right in the sense that baldly telling someone to give up their car and all manner of other things because we’ve now decided things are really bad is likely to produce a rude sign accompanied by robust language. He probably knows catastrophe is unavoidable because he knows that political consensus is a pipedream. Extinction Rebellion is an entirely logical response to realisation that political leadership on this matter is simply unavailable.
He has very small children
I wonder what he thinks their future will be?
What John Woodcock doesn’t realise is that for decades many people have been campaigning on climate and other environmental issues to no effect, for example, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Green Party, and many other groups and organizations such as RSPB, etc. No amount of letter writing to MP.s lobbying, marches, brilliant articles by George Monbiot, you name, has stirred the powers that be to understand the desperate ecological scenario that faces us. Rather than sitting comfortably in armchairs and moaning XR has had to take dramatic direct action to get climate near the top of the agenda when now it should really be at the top. Priti Patel suggests criminalizing protest, An unopposed government is a dictatorship. It is only by huge protests in the past that we “enjoy” whatever democratic freedoms we have now. Let us hope the global climate strike planned for 24th September this year will be supported by millions worldwide to nudge the international community to take the radical measures needed at the Cop26 Glasgow conference.
I always wonder if the rich, including the ones taking masses of cash from the public purse, have another planet to go to when armageddon really does happen. As my son says, why are so many older people making huge and disastrous decision, about all of these crucial matters, when really, it’s the young who are going to bear the brunt of human made climate change. Since Rachel Carson wrote her book, ‘Silent spring’, and no doubt before that, it’s been known that humans are wrecking planet Earth, destroying flora and fauna at will, and eventually, themselves. If you read William Blake and others around his time, I guess the start of the industrial revolution, they were not in favour of modernisation and mechanisation, which I used to think was a bit backward looking. Now I understand, they knew that it would be massively misused, with a less than good ending. To label those who feel they have to shout loudly about climate change, as extremists, is ironic really, because the actual extremists are the disaster capitalists in governments. Also, the storm troopers who are called upon and paid handsomely to attack climate protectors, surely they have kids and don’t want a world to be uninhabitable for them as adults?
It’s impossible to fathom the situation we are in, where those at the helm are hell bent on getting ‘back to normal’ and ‘back to the office’, when the climate crisis is actually upon us now, and it’s not looking good for the future when temps are going up so fast, and may well go up to 1.5 degrees by the end of this decade, it’s bizarre.
I watched ‘The age of stupid’, when it was released in 2009, and cried all the way through. If you haven’t seen it, it may be available online. This is the story, too close to reality.
Ps. Everyone I speak to now, say they do not want things to go back to ‘normal’, they know it was/is the most destructive, ineffective, inefficient way to conduct society, but sadly the disaster capitalists are only interested in money for themselves, and power of course, a dangerous combination if ever there was.
https://spannerfilms.net/films/ageofstupid
I discussed this with my son on the walk I have just blogged about
As he put it, he is living on a planet that is running out of time by the day
As he also put it, at least his dad is trying to do something about it
From a purely political point of view, the ‘non environment’ issue that worries me is organised crime.
As far as I can make out things haven’t been that clever in Ireland for a while, or for that matter Scotland given the recent attack on a Councillors home
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-57545325
But I see little sign of action in the UK