Paul Waine wrote:I hope this helps, IT.
Philip Collins in The Times, (Friday), (just a few quotes - its a long comment piece):
Thatcher can teach green activists a lesson
The former prime minister was the first leader to realise that market forces can be the best way to tackle climate change
"The inconvenient truth about climate change is that it does not fit into domestic politics. The protesters of Extinction Rebellion have been disrupting human traffic in London and other cities to draw our attention to the fact that the world is warming up. Yet we know this and have known it for a long time. There’s another reason why climate change has not become a big political issue."
"On November 8, 1989, in a speech to the general assembly of the United Nations, Margaret Thatcher warned that careless human custody of the planet was creating “change to the sea around us, change to the atmosphere above, leading in turn to change in the world’s climate, which could alter the way we live in the most fundamental way of all”. Thatcher was unequivocal about the scientific evidence, which she quoted at length. Human action was at fault and the consequence was environmental damage that could become irretrievable."
"I recall trying to help David Miliband, foreign secretary in 2008, craft a speech to the Labour Party conference. The plan was to go catastrophic, to draw a vision of planetary hellfire in which the poor of the earth were displaced for no sin greater than living in valleys. But we abandoned it all as grandiloquent rubbish. The projections were true, as far as we knew, but they were too remote from the Labour Party conference in Manchester. We were, in effect, asking the delegates to care more about the future population of Bangladesh than the present population of Burnley. That seemed an unlikely, almost meaningless, demand, even to a sympathetic audience."
"In October a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body that Thatcher did so much to promote, showed the devastating tides that would follow if the world heats by another degree, to 2C above pre-industrial levels. There is no question that we need to act and Thatcher had the right answers 30 years ago."
"There is, of course, scope for what she called “a vast international, co-operative effort” but the stress in her speech was on getting the economics right. “We must resist the simplistic tendency to blame modern multinational industry for the damage,” she said, because “it is industry which will develop safe alternative chemicals for refrigerators and air conditioning”. Extinction Rebellion, however, sound as if they want to turn back the clock on technology and ask people to stop living modern lives of such abundance. Theirs is a hopeless case and it will not work.
"A far better answer has been supplied by William Nordhaus, the doyen of climate change economists, who won a Nobel prize last year. Nordhaus ran a famous experiment to measure the energy required to light a room throughout the course of human history. He cut wood and burnt it, lit an antique oil lamp, measured one of Edison’s lightbulbs and then tried the modern version. Back at the start of human history a day’s labour could light a room for ten minutes. By the end of the 20th century, a day’s labour could light a room for ten years."
"The Mission Possible report by the Energy Transitions Commission showed recently that it was possible to achieve a net zero carbon economy without detriment to prosperity. The missing link will not be government intervention or increased awareness. President Trump pulled the US out of the 2016 Paris agreement on climate change but greenhouse gas emissions in America fell 2.7 per cent in 2016-17, more than anywhere else in the world. The vital component will be human ingenuity fostered within markets regulated cleverly by the state. Not many of the people stopping the traffic will tell you that."
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I've underlined the mention of Burnley - but only because we are all Burnley fans.
I've also underlined "Human ingenuity.... within markets" because that's where the challenge of climate change will be solved.
I plan to take a look at William Nordhaus sometime.
The Mission Possible report also sounds like it may be an interesting read.
No, it doesn't help whatsoever. It's yet another article discussing Extinction Rebellion's tactics and not the inaction of the politicians. It's just another example of human ingenuity in finding ways to avoid the issue.
Which brings me deliberately to "human ingenuity ... within markets". lol. **** that. Human ingenuity within markets has had decades to solve this problem already, and all we've seen is that ingenuity be superseded by the ingenuity of the fossil fuel bought politicians, scientists and shills in finding ways to convince the public that it's not even a ******* issue.
The market has failed. It's had 30 years to solve the problem and we're still on course for catastrophic warming.
When has the market NOT failed when it comes to crises like this? Lead? Denied for decades, and that denial was funded by the Lead interests until governments stepped in. Tobacco? Links to cancer were denied for decades, and that denial was funded by Tobacco interests until governments stepped in.
Basically, stfu about protesters tactics. I don't give a ****. Talk about the issue. And stfu about the market solving the issue, it won't without political action forcing it to solve it.
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