The Ipsos MORI Issues Index for August 2021 shows public concern about the environment has jumped sixteen percentage points over last month's Index.
This could, of course, be an aberration. It may be that Westminster was out of sight in August. And it could be because people are actually seeing what climate change is really doing to the planet now. Ipsos MORI were, I think, confused, saying:
I think the last is particularly telling. It is rare for there to be such cross-cutting issues. It seems that the environment is.
Now, when will the government take it seriously, because right now, right around the world, no one thinks that it is.
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With the overwhelming evidence of fire and floods, authorities can no longer avoid what the general public is only too aware of. Now is a critical time for moving from lipservice to taking radical action to transition from fossil fuels and all the other measures that are vital even to contain warming to 1.5 degrees. The IPCC report is so damning that if no action is taken now we are doomed. XR rebellion is still being scoffed at, Barclays bank inundated by requests to disinvest from fossil fuels but ignores the warnings – when will it ever change?
Well, there we go.
The environment movement must consider this deeply.
It does not want to make the same mistake as the Union movement did in the 1970s with strikes and disruption that hurt the very people the Unions said it wanted to protect and whose support was needed, but was subsequently lost.
The mistakes of the past must not be repeated. This public sentiment needs be capitalised upon with a much broader and deeper approach to tackling this problem. It’s potentially very powerful.
And another thing, an appeal if I may?
Remember who is in power right now, yes? ; remember how the Tories dealt with the miners? Greenham Common? Other groups? They were infiltrated by undercover officers, some of whom may have advocated certain modes of campaigning that undermined the message, made the cause vulnerable. You’ve seen the court cases, yes?
So, if you are being urged to be naughty and disruptive by individuals, just ask yourselves who in particular might benefit from it?
Remember that the filth we are living in at this time is not just pollution; it’s also the dirty tactics that have been and will be used by your Government to keep things as they are for the people who fund them.
You will be called the ‘enemy within’, they might even say you’ve been funded by China, or even the Taliban.
So my advice to you is be good, be clever, be subtle and be alert.
For all our sakes.
There’s 3 issues combined there – and two of them, climate change and pollution are unrelated, CO2 not being a pollutant at the chemical or toxic level, whereas tyre and brake particulates are and are not regarded as components of climate change.
However while it’s good to see these issues moving up the list – it could be wrong to infer that support for any particular course of action preferred by the Greens has changed. People might have swung round to nukes as more environmentally friendly than solar panels on agricultural land. Or they might be sick of XR blocking roads. Or at the margins there might be a few who want a bit more biodiversity and nature rather than the landlordism that is rewilding especially in neo-feudal Scotland and the North.
How many rivers in England are fit to swim in? Monbiot in his recent video “Rivercide” noted that there is exactly ……….one.
The documentary covers, mostly, the Wye. I have canoed on the Wye. Sadly, due to the recent arrival of large numbers of….. chicken farms in the river vallay the water is now foul (fowl?) one can no longer swim in the river. Thus does capitalism destroy the environment. The morons (politicos – one or two of the whining scum were interviewed in the documentary) that allowed the (seemingly uncontrolled) growth of chicken farms, never gave much thought to the impact on the river when permitting said farms.
Given these developments, it is hardly surprising that UK serfs are concerned about the environment. But hey, as long as one can have a chicken McNugget that’s oK – isn’t it?
As for the government responding to environmentalists in the way it crushed the miners – the riots in 2011 showed how erm… “effective” it is. Different times & different ways to communicate & organise.