(Photo by Guy Smallman/Getty Images)
Insulate Britain, the radical offshoot of Extinction Rebellion, presents a strange conundrum. Where XR aimed to build a broad-based coalition of support — apologising when they overstepped the mark — Insulate Britain’s campaign of civil disobedience targeting commuters at rush hour in and around London seems explicitly designed to alienate as many ordinary people as possible. Since its campaign began in September, footage of activists being shouted at or dragged off the roads by angry motorists has gone viral, overshadowing the group’s core demands that the Government pay to retrofit insulation to Britain’s unusually draughty housing stock.
Last week, after some negotiation, being passed from activist cell to cell, UnHerd was granted access to a group of Insulate Britain protestors preparing to disrupt rush hour traffic in the City the following day. I wanted to find out who they are and whether they think their campaign is working. Arriving at their safehouse — an Airbnb flat off the Edgware Road — we were welcomed by their organiser Louise Lancaster, a middle-aged teacher from Cambridge. With a few exceptions, the activists were middle-aged or impeccably middle-class retired professionals from Middle England: as they hugged and grazed at the buffet, the atmosphere seemed more like a Church of England social than that of a radical protest group.
Yet all were united by a firmly-held belief that the climate crisis presented such an urgent, apocalyptic threat that the only course left was direct action. “I’m prepared to lose my liberty, lose my home that I love, not see my family, have everything taken away by the government,” Biff from Canterbury told the group, as they took turns introducing themselves. “Because I’m raging now. And I’m absolutely disgusted at the criminality of this government. They are condemning our children and our grandchildren to war and starvation. Our children are going to be the cannon fodder in what’s coming and what’s looming, and the Government are just lining their pockets, and blinkered to what’s going to happen to this country.”
David, a white-bearded retiree, agreed, arguing that “anybody who understands this problem now, and does not begin to act — not write to their legislator or MP — get out into the streets, make themselves known and tell the Government this is unacceptable, and join with others around the world. They will be in a state of complicity. They’ll just be observing the end of humanity. And knowing that it was coming.”
Yet there seemed to be a curious mismatch between the apocalyptic scale of the climate threat — which absolutely accords with the scientific consensus — and their proposed solution of insulating homes. Britain accounts for a mere 1% of global carbon emissions, and by their own reckoning, leaky insulation accounts for only 15% of that 1%. Surely there were more pressing targets for their campaign? Why not campaign for an increase in nuclear power generation, which underwrites France’s vastly superior carbon efficiency compared to the UK? The response was one of horror: despite claiming there were only a few years left to save human life, the activists cited the millennia-long storage times for radioactive waste as a reason to discount the idea. “Nuclear power stations need extreme control,” argued Margarita, a retiree. “And if we lose that, you know, if there’s social breakdown, what happens, is those power stations could become extremely dangerous.” Instead, they argued, home insulation was “low-hanging fruit”, a concrete and easily-achievable goal behind which the public could finally be rallied to the looming urgency of the climate crisis.
The advanced age of Insulate Britain’s activist base is striking, and judging from the tone of much online commentary, which snarkily portrays them as baby boomers who have enjoyed the most comfortable living conditions in world history now seeking to enforce eco-austerity on the downwardly-mobile young, it’s an Achilles heel for the wider movement. Why does their demographic skew to the old in such a pronounced way? “I’ve got the time,” answered David: “I’m here because I can be here, there are millions of people who aren’t in the fortunate position that I’m in, I’ve had my career, I’ve paid my mortgage. I passionately am concerned about humanity going down the pan while I watch.”
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SubscribeNothing so utterly facile as an ecofascist disparaging nuclear power.
Indeed – it baffles me that anyone listens to the preachings of a group that can’t see the blindingly obvious uber-contradiction in that stance.
This anti-nuclear stance bewilders me; even an early environmentalist like James Lovelock, of the Gaia Theory fame, says that nuclear power is the only green solution and that we don’t have time to find a novel solution that delivers the energy needed to power a complex, advanced society. By all means we should improve insulation, it saves money for the house owner, and new builds should be energy efficient, and I support developing re-newable sources – provided thay don’t cause more environmental problems that they solve, but I cannot see that they will be a viable solution.
By the way Britain’s contribution to CO2 emissions is greater that the 1% quoted if you use our consumption rather than our production, i.e. we import a lot of manufactured goods that emit CO2 during production. If we made this stuff ourselves we would increase our emissions, so in a way we are responsible for that too. However, we still don’t approach some of the big hitters like the US, Germany, China, India because we use less of teh really dirty sources of energy, or produced less per capita in the case of the US.
You can’t really attribute the carbon in imported consumption in Britain without subtracting the carbon cost of goods exported outside Britain. Same goes for Germany, more so in fact. Only the countries themselves can solve their own emissions, so China has to take a major role.
Even taking into account exports we ctill consume more than a simple equation accounting only for what we produce in this country. Britain has very little in the way of exported manufactured goods compared with, say, China or Germany.
The problem with Germany is that it still burns coal and relies on imported gas, mostly because it closed down its Nuclear production after the Fukushima incident under pressure from the “Greens”.
Ah yes, Fukushima. That all people recall of that episode is the nuclear meltdown, is telling. The nuclear accident caused one death attributable to radiation (and that had to be determined by an expert panel). 2 workers were taken to hospital with possible radiation burns, 16 were injured by hydrogen explosions (green hydrogen generation anybody?). All terrible for those involved: I would, of course, never deny that.
Now for the earthquake and resulting tsunami: almost 20,000 people confirmed dead, over 2500 missing and over 6000 injured, following the most powerful quake ever recorded in Japan : 9.0 – 9.1 on the Richter scale, with a ground acceleration of almost 3g. The tsunami waves were estimated to have been over 40 meters high in some places. So why do we always hear about the reactor and never about the earthquake?
Could it be politically inconvenient to acknowledge that the 4th biggest earthquake ever recorded on earth was so many times more deadly than the reactor meltdown it subsequently triggered? What’s really amazing is how hard it is to have a discussion with most people on this issue without them becoming shouty about nukes…
Exactly. Very well said.
Nuclear is one of the safest ways to produce large quantities of energy, but this irration fear stymies at every turn. One death in a nuclear accident always seemed to ttrump 100s deaths in a coal mine for instance.
I always tell friends who suffer nuclearphobia that I hope they never go (for example) to Cornwall for their holidays as the background radiation, in many parts, gives an exposure above that allowed for working in tha nuclear industry.
I was in Tokyo at the time. The subsequent panic whipped up by the mainly foreign media (CNN one of the worst) caused a lemming-like stampede by gaijins (foreigners) for the exits, some 500,000 in total. A huge radioactive cloud was approaching Tokyo, etc. It was an astonishing example of herd instinct and irresponsible media disinformation.
Was not James Lovelock viewed by most of the environmental movement as an apostate for his support of nuclear power
Yes, he was, to their great and ongoing disgrace.
Just read an article by Mr Lovelock in The Spectator.
This part of the article suns up so well the kind of people we are dealing with (bad faith, illogical, fascist, stupidity combined with high self worth etc etc)
“despite claiming there were only a few years left to save human life, the activists cited the millennia-long storage times for radioactive waste as a reason to discount the idea. “
Excellently put.
Ugh Samir, there you go putting logic into it. Tch tch. None of that now.
Tsk, tsk, please.
Hilarious! Yes, I hadn’t thought of that!
They strike me as being CND types with the same facile arguments – that the West should act on net zero/nuclear disarmament but, curiously, not China or Russia. They are of that generation.
The govt should drop all its other messaging and make this the central argument: we need to expand nuclear five-fold* to hit net zero. All the rest – heat pumps, vegetarianism, air travel, hydrogen and the rest are complete red-herrings. If the base electricity supply isn’t there, nothing else matters. Get that stable and cheap enough and the market will supply the cars and boilers &c.
Not only is it a simple message, a proven technology and a plausible solution, but switching to nuclear – especially British-made SMRs – is popular with people not really worried about global warming e.g. many Tory voters. If they are really lucky Labour will oppose it to pander to their “radical” base and give a “you scream: we fix” dividing line.
* or whatever multiple it needs to be to displace gas generation when the overall demand is increased to cover transport and home heating.
Very good comment. I completely agree.
Here’s another example of people who live in an echo chamber and only listen to views that confirm their own. They have shut their minds to sensible solutions and are self-congratulatory of their own virtue. They should make a reasoned case and present it but I don’t think they can as even this short article highlights the nonsense of their aims when viewed in the world context.
One of their XR own who came to see the nonsense now points out that their hysterical rejection of nuclear energy has in fact only increased the world’s problem with CO2. Perhaps most ironically, a study was made at MIT in the US showing that if India burned more coal it would reduce their CO2 output because as poverty is alleviated women have fewer children and population decreases.
The spun headlines from the UN panel report do nothing to help (and they scare our children). Why does no one mention its reference to nuclear energy for instance? The worst outcomes are emphasised without pointing out that they only apply if nothing is done.
My lifetime has been littered with apocalyptic warnings but we’re still here! This is the latest but ramped up by internet communication silos.
“One of their XR own who came to see the nonsense now points out that their hysterical rejection of nuclear energy has in fact only increased the world’s problem with CO2.”
Indeed so. The person you’re thinking of is Zion Lights.
The two biggest growing emitters are China and India.
China, of course, is beyond any control.
But what would make a lot of sense, instead of disrupting the economies of countries like UK, and subsidising “biomass”, would be to fund renewable and nuclear in India.
Would actually help reduce emissions, and improve pollution levels and therefore lives of many poor people.
But that would be doing something useful, and that too without any preening “look at me I am so brave”, so no.
China is in a mich better shape to decarbonise. But I agree that it has to.
It is worth pointing out that when the US, UK, EU, India and China’s emissions are accounted for the rest of the world pumps out more emissions than China. If all the small countries worked at cutting emission that would make a big difference. It is also worth looking at emissions per head of population. China is not the biggest emitter per capita.
China bot are you?
China is, second to the US, the largest historical emitter of carbon (dioxide, as we should say).
Correct. We don’t have a ‘CO2 problem’ (even if you accept that CO2 is a problem – and I do not). We have a population problem. And the surest way to reduce population is more competitive free market capitalism as everyone gets richer, lives longer and have fewer children.
Yes, but, all other things being equal, fewer children with higher consumption and higher per capita emissions.
A virus out of a place like, oh, Wuhan works pretty well.
I don’t think even have a population problem. We have an. ‘addiction to doom mongering, evidence free’ problem.
“My lifetime has been littered with apocalyptic warnings but we’re still here!”
That has been true. By 2030 you will not be able to say that anymore as the Tech industry is 100% coupled with the security services, and your life is about to be totally owned by the Corporatist Oligarchy.
Zucker brings his Metaverse, and joining will not be an option. Central Bank Digital Currency accounts on your phone will have every transaction, every person you buy/sell with, geo-locate you, and everyone around you – your state ID, and your entire medical records (vax id expanded to all NHS), and that is just the tip of it all.
These foolish people, they miss the entire issue on the future
Soon your phone will score everything you do – buy meat? Get = C02 points, buy carrots instead, get less. Ride a bus (and your spending and geolocation is tracked, as is your heart beat…) and your C02 points scored. Fill the car? Get points. Buy a shirt – cotton = one score, nylon = another. The temp of your house (which it reads from your smart devices – cold = less points, hot = high points….
And when your points get too high – your digital wallet stops working, or the prices double……
This is driven by the WEF, UK, USA plan for universal ID, with bio-metrics, and will be your phone, which will also be your passport, your bank, your monitor – AND THE PLAN is no more anonymous Internet. None – you will not get on unless your phone shows who your are, or your bio-metrics are read. Every wrong thought posted? Bad Points on your score, and correct thinking? Good points…..all which = money, or privilege….
You will be a serf, and your phone (those behind it) your absolute masters. And with NO way to be outside the system. Phone Mandates will not be allowed to be refused.
There’s no fool like an old fool.
What selfish people.
To quote our commentators: mad, cos-play.
They’ve ‘paid off the mortgage’, they’ve had ‘three children’ and now they are disrupting people who are working.
Bang ’em up.
It’s the smug certainty of the ignorant and arrogant – a toxic combination.
I was struck by the old lady from South Wales conjuring this glorious past where the countryside was lovely and its “all gone now” blablabla. What utter codswallop. Presumably she wasn’t living in the filthy brutal reality that characterised large parts of industrial South Wales.
It’s incredible how often people genuinely think the world and society peaked when they were entering adulthood.
I mean, the world was definitely at its best in 2003… 😉
“Insulate Britain, the radical offshoot of Extinction Rebellion, presents a strange conundrum.”
There is no conundrum and they are not radical anythings. They are simply mad people. Mad people have always been with us. The traditional response was to confine them to an institution, where they could not create a nuisance. Unfortunately the British Government is now so enfeebled that it cannot perform even the simplest of its duties.
I think that’s what the Soviet Union did to political protesters. We really don’t want to encourage the state to lable those who agitate as insane and lock them up in institutions. I don’t agree with the actions of these people but locking them up?
“I think that’s what the Soviet Union did to political protesters”
Playing the Russion card. You were quick off the mark their Claire. They are clearly not politcal protesters as they have no politcal agenda. They are simply mad people.
It’s clearly a political protest. I’m opposed to their views and am pro nuclear but locking people up into institutions because of their views is clearly abhorrent.
I do not propose locking them up for their political views. I propose locking them up for sitting down in the middle of a motorway, which is about as mad as you can get.
Quite. If I went and glued my bottom to the M25, without the qualification of a political protest, I would get bundled into a meat wagon and charged, then probably end up with a stretch of porridge, assuming I didn’t get sectioned.
Are those who disagree with you therefore advocating that we don’t lock people up as a consequence of their actions, provided they have certain political viewpoints? Just as slippery a slope if you ask me.
I wasn’t even suggesting that they be treated as criminals, merely that they should be confined to a psychiatric hospital to recieve appropriate care. It would be for their safety as well as mine.
That’s what the West is doing to political protesters right now – as long as they are the protestors the Marxist, leftist elite don’t like.
Some protestors, yes. Like the supposed “insurgents”. That’s no reason to extend the idea.
Arrest them, find them guilty of unsocial behaviour, and award an ASBO. Then you can lock them up if they offend again.
While with them, the author should have done a (totally unscientific) straw poll: had any of them, ever, in all their decades, voted tory? Also, if they all took the graun and if any of them ever opened the torygraph. Also, were there any asians (especially hindoos) or afrocarribbeans amongst them. Also, if there was homogeneity among them on their views on wokery, especially transwokery. I’m willing to bet: nothing of their views will have changed from the late sixties onwards, the years have done nothing to their worldview – although they will have collectively rewritten swathes of their own past as they have silently disowned antiglobalisation in favour of a peculiar internationalism. These are Corbinonians (both brothereal sects), come into their own, in their old age willing to play useful idiot for XR, who are Millennials and GenZees playing rope-a-dope with an advanced guard of oldie stormtroopers whom it doesn’t matter if they get destroyed while taking the first rounds of flack, ’cause they are all wrinklies anyway…
….
I’m a wrinkly, crinkly, set in my ways, It’s true that my body has seen better days, But give me half a chance and I can still misbehave, One foot in the grave
….
Or whether they’d ever queued in Waitrose or been on a bollix to Brexit demo.
To answer one part of your question: there would be close to zero non whites in this group.
I would normally vacation in UK and use trains (far more env friendly than flights to Spain….and so many great places to visit in this beautiful, foggy little island)
One of those journeys was disrupted by these idiots blocking off roads to Waterloo so had a first hand view of a large crowd of them.
Not one non white. Not a single one.
Doesn’t surprise me. Looks like some form of exhibitionism – but they’re not gonna look good doing a nude march in rainy London in October at their age, so they glue themselves to the road instead. Either that, or its purely monetary and they are looking in their old age to get the government to pay for re-doing the loft insulation in their homes – feeling a bit chilly these days, so looking for a sub from taxpayers.
“nude march in rainy London”
Fanatics like the
Dukhobors
But without their moral compass and passion for freedom. (the entire community marching nude was their protest for generations back to 1800s, that and arson)
But not yet doing the arson thing….
Wait for it.
An excellent point. Where is their diversity quota compliance? Why are they exempted from that (otherwise all pervasive) discussion?
Because these spoilt fools are the keepers of the diversity quota, not the subjects.
Prash, I am an oldie too – and as hard in my ways as them, just opposite ways. They want everyone controlled totally, I want all free. I refuse to mask, to vax, to go along with any loss of Freedom. Freedom is All. I have been this way all my life, which is why it has been so F***ed up in so much of it –
they are just soft, nice, polite, kind, Fas *ists.
PS, I have also refused to own a cell phone since the day they came out as I refuse to be geo-tracked, and refuse to be monitored. I knew where phones would lead – and they are chains you sheep are hammering onto your own neck….Your phone will be your owner by 2030, not the other way around.
Fair play
Of course. Most people outside the media barrage know that.
It’s no accident that IB activists are mostly retired former state employees on defined benefit pensions. The people whose time they contemptuously waste are the poor schmucks paying for their early retirements and unsustainable pensions.
One thing that really annoys me is when people talk about the “demographic crisis” in the west and how we need mass migration to fix it. We don’t have a demographic crisis, we have a pensions crisis, where too many able bodied workers spend 20-25 years on an extended vacation , on grossly unsustainable pensions , paid for by today’s workers. The old age pension was supposed to be insurance against invalidity, not to pay for retirees to sit on cruise ships for decades at our expense.
Or sit on motorways and block workplace entry for that matter.
It wasn’t for invalidity or that’s what it would be called – an invalidity payment.
We have both a pensions and a demographics crisis. Getting rid of the old age pension or even increasing the age is political suicide. The Tories gave only abandoned the triple lock recently.
The original pension age was greater than the average life expectancy so was designed for only those deemed too old to work anymore. I definitely don’t advocate a return to that but I do think something has gone seriously wrong when in the office I used to work in, all the senior staff retired before 60, such was the generosity of the defined benefit pension, which now has been withdrawn.
A colleague of mine who had been in the job for many years, was on 25% more than the rest of the team, which was impossible to obtain on the new pay bracket, despite not occupying a management role; such was the fall in wages paid to the next generation of workers to cover these pensions.
Today’s low wages are in part a direct result of businesses but mostly government bodies, paying for early and overly generous retirements. Why should fit and capable individuals economic inactivity be subsidised by younger or less fortunate workers?
But like you say. The gray vote is a substantial barrier to any meaningful reform.
I know some who’ve been on pension longer than they’ve worked. It’s staggering.
And I am a grey vote – still working and a net taxpayer.
Cos-play Christian martyrdom if ever there was
They are the frontline troops of the Police State which is just forming up, and are too stupid and sheeplike to see how they are being used as useful idiots so gov can control your house, and so your money and freedom.. They are the pleasant and kind face on the horror coming, of Big Brother.
C02 mandates are the foot in the door which will end up with the whole West being a giant concentration Camp. If they can lock down and destroy the world for a bad flu – for climate change they can make you all total serfs and prisoners of the coming Global Police state – for your own good….to save the planet….
“Yet there seemed to be a curious mismatch between the apocalyptic scale of the climate threat — which absolutely accords with the scientific consensus“
I’m a great admirer of Roussinos’ writing but on this point he is completely wrong. The “code red” slogan was just the, a ridiculous piece of hyperbole, designed to give the press further leverage to spread the fear narrative to pressure politicians. It was not back up by the science.
I would urge him to look at some of the reviews of the most hysterical predictions made about climate change on Climate Feedback. Where climate scientists give their opinion on both the writing of both the sceptics and fear-mongers.
Here’s what Christopher Colose, Research Scientist, SciSpace LLC, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies thinks about the apocalyptic predictions of “The Uninhabitable Earth”by David Wallace-Wells, who’s beliefs I suspect the author also subscribes to.
“Many of the nightmare scenarios in this article, such as no more food, unbreathable air, poisoned oceans, perpetual warfare, etc. are simply ridiculous… A “business-as-usual” climate in 1-2 centuries still looks markedly different than the current one, but there’s no reason yet to think much of the world will become uninhabitable or look like a science fiction novel.”
Fear-mongering will only push the energy transition too fast, hurting economies and destroying public support. The best thing supporters of it can do is to silence the prophets of doom in their ranks and let those with a level head get on with achieving the task.
Was going to make that exact point myself. A rare miss from AR.
The excellent Scott Alexander touched on this in passing recently (the title speaks for itself, people really are that terrified): https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/please-dont-give-up-on-having-kids
“The current scientific consensus, as per leading scientific organizations like the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is that climate change will be very bad, but not world-endingly bad.
Climate change will cause worse hurricanes, fires, and other disasters. It will lead to increased spread of invasive species and diseases. It will hit subsistence farmers in poor agricultural countries very hard, and some of them will starve or become refugees. But it won’t cause the collapse of civilization. It won’t kill everyone. Life in the First World will continue, with worse weather and maybe a weaker economy, but more or less the same as always. The people who say otherwise are going against the majority of climatologists, climate models, and international bodies.
One way to think of this is to notice that we’ve already gotten about 25-30% of the global warming we’re likely to see by 2100…It’s hard to tell how many people have died of climate-change-related causes. Maybe thousands? Maybe tens of thousands? Probably trillions of dollars have already been lost to disasters and agricultural problems. But tens of thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars lost is completely compatible with the average person in the First World not really noticing much of a change to their daily lives. The next 75 years of global warming are going to be worse than we’ve gotten already…in aggregate, they’re going to be a giant disaster. But the average person in the First World, probably including your child, still won’t notice much of a change to their daily lives.”
So basically, Keep Calm and Carry On.
Steve Koonin’s Unsettled is also an excellent resource. As is Schellenberger’s Apocolypse Never. They come at the utterly ridiculous proposition of a climate emergency from opposite ends.
Agreed. I spotted that. A link to a BBC article – sigh.
There is a strange asymmetry in the way that left and right protest, and in the police response to them.
Left/liberal/radical protesters don’t like fracking, nuclear power, GM crops or the breeding of animals for medical research. If these things are not stopped by the courts they feel entitled to take ‘direct action’. This means trespass and vandalism. The police are remarkably solicitous.
If right-wingers attempted similar acts they would be ‘terrorists’. The right don’t invade mosques, or migrant hostels. A Bristol man got a 12 month sentence for tying bacon to the door of a mosque.
If hunts ride out in defiance of the law the huntsman lands in court.
Is the whole judicial process slanted to the left now?
Policing has been captured by the state and is part of the progressive political agenda which denies property rights. Hence half the police’ reason to be has gone.
Good article. That could be applied to BLM here in the US.
Sad and mad like all religious extremists. It is only a matter of time before a frustrated driver snaps and causes some serious injuries. Surely the police must know that the longer the allow this nonsense to go on the more likely this is to happen.
I wonder if Judy, who laments the disappearance of the country she remembers while growing up (“I also remember what the world was like when I was young and what the countryside was like, what it was like to travel and the beautiful places and the wildlife, which is all being destroyed by what we’re doing”) ever protested about the uncontrolled immigration that has seen huge tracts of the countryside destroyed in order to meet the demand for housing, not to mention all those extra consumers in the vastly inflated population on this small island?
Anyway, Aris – who is paying for that conveniently located Edgware Road flat? Same landlord as Steve Bray?
There are reports today they on the M25 walking towards the traffic. Martyrdom or (putting myself in the position of the driver and consequences for others on the road) simple Terrorism?
Like so many other things fetishised by the BBC Guardinista Left I have a simple question – can you show me a successful working model anywhere of this fantasy world you embrace?
This COP26 farce ends on 12th November unless a plague of rats end it first, and it’s getting colder. Hang in there everyone, not long to go.
These idiots are putting innocent people’s lives at risk by their antics. It is unconscionable and they must be stopped. Why do we pay our taxes when basic law and ordered cannot/will not be maintained?
This bunch of the deluded is not unakin to the believers in Him, the communist dogma, or even the exceptionality of the Germanic (or any other race), they are not rational thinkers, they are believers. If only they were to ponder on what it is the creed is anchored in, they may regain sanity again.
The only pillar upon which this imbecility stands is the CO2 increase in the air in the last three hundred years or so from 0.02% to 0.04%. How could this infinitesimal change be the cause of the climatic change?
In the past the density of CO2 has been by far higher, life flourished, we the humans could easily live in an atmosphere of anything up to 8%, the planet’s flora, the feedstock of the herbivores thrives in high CO2 conditions, it is in turn the feed for the carnivores including the humans, what the heck’s not to like?
We should adapt to the climatic changes, this the great Darwin got right, adaptation has been the route for any species to survive, those that haven’t adjusted perished, do we want to be amongst them.
CO2 is 0.04%, but humans only contribute 3%of this. That means we are only responsible for 0.0012%.
A teacher from Cambridge, quelle surprise.
I wonder how much coverage there would be if a teacher from Cambridge organised an anti vaccine event.
Headline in this morning’s Telegraph.
“Insulate Britain: Climate campaigners cancel M25 protest plan because it’s raining”
Is climate catastrophy on hold because Insulate Britain left their brollies at home?
Glue don’t work as well in the rain. They know they’d be cleared off too quickly by Joe Public.
The author opens with the statement ‘Where XR aimed to build a broad-based coalition of support’ …
Really? XR set out to be extreme – rebellion is in the name …
There’s noting broad based about XR and even less about these self deluded idiots
Personally I’d withdraw the police and let the public sort them out, that would quickly help them understand the level of support they have in the community.
“I’m prepared to lose my liberty, lose my home that I love, not see my family, have everything taken away by the government,”
Were it only that our criminal justice system might grant him his wish.
“Yet there seemed to be a curious mismatch between the apocalyptic scale of the climate threat — which absolutely accords with the scientific consensus”
This line is unbearable tripe. There is not an ounce of validity in that statement. Complete propagandist nonsense.
“scientific consensus”: How can any rational person include this phrase in a form other than sarcasm? But I guess, changing the meaning of words is simply the post-modernist way. Change the lexicon, win the argument.
There is NO Climate Crisis and not 97% of Climate scientists agree that the very moderate warming (about 1C since the Industrial Revolution) is man made. This number was picked from a survey, in which only 0.3% of Scientists said that Climate Warming is entirely man made and most of the others responded, that CO2 “might” be a contributing factor. Also a link of the above article, shows burning forests by the BBC website next to the apocalyptic IPCC report. Not only the BBC but most of the MSM represent CO2 Emission with dirty smoke coming out of chimney stacks, although CO2 is an odourless and invisible gas and food for plants, which makes it possible for us to live. Somebody should tell those old hippies, that the increased CO2 emissions made the planet greener according to a report by NASA.
I also would like to ask ‘Insulate Britain’ members, how they explain, why in the latest IPCC’s doomster report the fake Hockey Stick graph was back. That graph was already abandoned in the other reports, as it left out the Medieval Warming Period, followed by the Little Ice Age. Also why is the Report only showing the Climate of the last 2000 years and not a million years ago (after all the planet is 4 billion years old) when dinosaurs lived in NCanada, Greenland was green and there was no ice on both poles.
Dinosaurs in Canada a million years ago? Is that a typo? Or young earth creationism?
Yes it is a typo. Meant to say 100 million years ago.
Thank you SS – this needs saying loud and clear! I am a retired Baby Boomer and I am deeply ashamed of IB.
Spot on Steph.
Oh dear. If the author thinks that proof of a scientific consensus is a link to a BBC website then he needs his bumps feeling. There are very good scientific arguments as to why CO2 doesn’t cause the temperature of the planet to increase, very good scientific arguments as its severity and of the effects of any increase. Furthermore, there are those scientists that do believe that CO2 is the issue but that instead of trying to reduce it we should just mitigate against the risks.
The scientific debate hasn’t even been had properly because Big Tech routinely censor any opposition to the chosen view just like they do with Covid related viewpoints such as the Great Barrington Declaration.
Maybe a referendum on net zero will encourage proper debate on these matters just like the Brexit referendum encouraged proper debate regarding the consensus view on membership of the EU
I really do expect a better standard of journalism from UnHerd than this and it’s starting to get a little monotonous now. More like following the herd!
Maybe people aren’t on board with the organized lunacy of retired college professors gluing themselves to the road because we as individuals experience the climate as a pretty stable thing that is more or less just like it was when we were kids. The climate change industry has proven itself over the last thirty years to be good at one thing only: failed predictions of doom. The fact that it is only people on a comfortable pension who are inspired to perform radically absurdist gestures in service of predictions that are always wrong should give us hope in humanity’s future.
Indeed, I think these people are just bored and need a hobby to throw themselves into, In the past it would be something like train spotting or bird watching. Today it’s political activism.
These are old, retired people, suddenly bored and rudderless. I get it. They have two choices: join a cribbage (train spotting, bird watching) society or transform into a superhero called by a spectral Gaia to save the planet by fixing drafty homes. What self-respecting cuckoo bird wouldn’t choose the latter?
“people on a comfortable pension who are inspired to perform radically absurdist jestures in the service of predictions that are always wrong”
– Quality!
If these lunatics want to reduce their personal carbon footprints, I can offer some suggestions.
The scariest part of the video for me was not the sanctimonious and illogical views of the protestors, but the first couple of minutes before they even started talking about climate change. It started off with the protestors having a big Teletubbies group hug, before going into introductions that sounded like a group confessional. The religious overtones stick out like a sore thumb. I note from other articles that those arrested at IB demos seem to include a lot of clergy. You could get into a very long argument about why the views of the climate change lobby are based more on religion than science, but this is probably not the forum. Those protestors seem more like adherents of a religious cult than people who have actually studied the science of climate change.
I have nothing against religion; I’m more agnostic than atheist and recognise both the good and bad that comes from religious belief. But when you have a new religious or pseudo religious movement that believes in the imminent destruction of the world, with adherents saying they will accept any punishment in pursuit of their cause, and you throw in some political dogma, it never ends well. Think Jonestown. Or even eco-terrorism. I hope the security services are keeping an eye on these people.
I think Joseph Bottum’s book An Anxious Age published 2014 is apposite here: Huge swaths of American culture are driven by manic spiritual anxiety and relentless supernatural worry. Radicals and traditionalists, liberals and conservatives, together with politicians, artists, environmentalists, followers of food fads, and the chattering classes of television commentators: America is filled with people frantically seeking confirmation of their own essential goodness. We are a nation desperate to stand on the side of morality–to know that we are righteous and dwell in the light.
Bourgeois self indulgent narcissism. I would love to see these people do a bit of time inside, but it won’t happen. Better times in the past when middle class white women and their soy husbands indulged their neurosis by militantly monitoring church flower arrangements and baking competitions.
I’ll worry about the climate when it stops changing.
An interesting article that confirmed my preconceptions about many activists: bored people looking for a reason to get out of bed in the morning.
““anybody who understands this problem now, and does not begin to act — not write to their legislator or MP — get out into the streets, make themselves known and tell the Government this is unacceptable, and join with others around the world. They will be in a state of complicity. They’ll just be observing the end of humanity. And knowing that it was coming.”
Isn’t this rather like critical race theory: if you’re not engaged in anti-racism 24/7, you’re a racist.
“British politicians’ time may be better spent focusing on building domestic resilience to the seemingly inevitable disaster than frittering away political capital tinkering at the edges of a process they are more or less powerless to prevent.”
Agreed, except I don’t think disaster is inevitable, and to say so merely plays into these deluded peoples’ fears.
We need to maintain a strong economy so we can make necessary adaptations and do research into technology that will actually help. That definitely includes nuclear fission ideally via SMRs, and for my money a Manhattan/Apollo scale project to get nuclear fusion to work. There are lots of other potential green technologies that are in their infancy that have greater potential than the ones we are implementing at the moment. I suspect that wind turbines will prove to have been a poor investment. Shipping thousands of tons of wood pellets across the Atlantic so we can pretend we are greener than we really are is ludicrous.
Ironically, Insulation probably is the most mature of green technology, and we could be doing a great deal to reduce the energy required for heating, which may involve replacing much of the current housing stock. So Insulate Britain’s objectives are sound and proportionate even if their methods are counterproductive.
Older houses cannot usually be well insulated because their inner and outer walls have too little space. To tear down all the inner walls while the occupants have to live elsewhere is very expensive for a slight improvement in R factor. If you create more space for insulation the whole inner walls and wiring and plumbing have to be rebuilt for a smaller interior.
Replacing all windows and exterior doors is also very costly. Then there are the attic and roofing sources of heat loss. And the boiler replacement with heat pumps. Further massive costs.
A cost-benefit analysis would show massive cost for minor benefit, which explains why most homeowners don’t want to do it. And why the demand is that the government should compel it and pay for it. New housing could be better build, at higher cost, but old housing being effectively insulated would be a crazily expensive mission accomplishing almost nothing.
There are a lot better ways of reducing emissions than this one, at a lot lower cost to taxpayers. Why block traffic for this?
Haha, try 2 foot thick ‘rubble filled’ limestone and brick with rising damp.
And your better ways of reducing emissions are?
As usual, no mention of global overpopulation. Would it be possible to airdrop these people on the global south with pallets of condoms? The pallets would have parachutes, the radicals would not.
The protesters are mad! They don’t have any understanding of the mathematical CHAOTIC theory which describes the climate!
Yet they BELIEVE!
Just like peoples ever since humans could think, sparked disagreements and prophetsies of DOOM ….
Absolutely agree. They’re probably all retired English teachers and other non mathematically literate types who wouldn’t know a complex nonlinear model from a weather forecast.
They are middle-class cranks, almost all of them. Their own actions and words sum up what they are and what this is about.
It is nothing, nothing at all, to do with “climate change”. It is all about attention seeking, virtue-signalling, bored, entitled middle class lefties who have never grown up. Many of them live in large un-insulated draughty houses, and drive to their protests in diesel Volvos, Range-Rovers and so on. Their actions and lifestyles say they don’t actually give a toss about “saving the planet”.
In 2019 they were all at “anti Brexit rallies”. last decade it was rallies protesting Middle Eastern wars and fox hunting, three decades before that it was “Nuclear Power – no thanks” and the “Peace camps”.
It’s just an entitled bunch of middle-class lefties, who hate Brexit, hate the Conservative government, and hate Boris for both of those, and will strap on any flag of convenience in their anti-democratic wish to undermine all three.
Hopefully these goons are not the start of a slippery slope where genteel protest as a leisure pursuit gives way to Rentamob, The Wombles, Black Bloc and finally a sort of Baader Meinhoff outfit!
Interesting. According to one of this group, we have 2 years to avert catastrophe. Love a concrete prediction. Let’s check back in 2023.
We have already crossed half a dozen catastrophe different years.
You are making the error of thinking these people have shame.
Stopped reading at ‘absolutely accords with the science’
“I’m prepared to lose my liberty, lose my home that I love, not see my family, have everything taken away by the government.”
OK, then, I’ll challenge you; go to Beijing and do the same thing. China emits 28% of the world total and increasing, UK 1% and decreasing. A small success there will far surpass a big success here. But I don’t think you’ll find their police helpful.
Complete loons
It is not our government that is at fault, it the arrogance of our academics who have failed to teach the truth about ecological overshoot and to face up to the fact that economic growth has been unsustainable for decades. Can Oxford and Cambridge lead the way to humility at COP26? | by Barbara Williams | Ending Overshoot | Sep, 2021 | Medium
It might help if the government were a bit more pro-active about promoting insulation. Ever thought of installing energy-saving double-glazed windows in a listed building? How much? Don’t ask! But I can tell you the VAT would pay for re-glazing an average house. Yet if you wish to replace your uPVC by wooden windows ‘for aesthetic reasons’ – well that’s zero-rated! I wonder what planet are they on. It may be they don’t really care. After all, it never gets really hot or cold in this country, most climate change will affect somewhere else, we’ve still got oil and gas in reserve, now we’re free from those awful bureaucrats 20 miles away too, and no-one visiting Glasgow in November will have a warming climate at the front of their minds.
Your final sentence sums the situation up brilliantly. Had the German Luftwaffe been better at flattening our Victorian houses during the Second World War we might also have built lots of shiny Passiv houses as in Germany. As it is, it would take a super human effort to insulate our old housing stock effectively….money and installers are both in short supply, not to mention materials.
Catfishing headline. Not infiltration but collusion.
They are no less nuts than the Qanon world government obsessed lunatics. What I find particularly offensive is that they are virtually to a man/woman/person upper middle class yet they hide behind working class spokespeople who are then roundly mocked for their poor media skills. While I think the IB message is risible they should have the courage to present it themselves not hide behind ordinary people in an attempt to make themselves look more broad based than they actually are.
If Insulate Britain want a different government policy, why are they targeting motorists? Why not government buildings where policy is made and where those working are notoriously indifferent about saving energy?
The simple fact is that these people are paranoids. All extreme causes, and extreme behaviour for reasonable causes attract the paranoid personality. These people have been abused in childhood, and find a cause to hate others to compensate for their own self-hatred.
The best book I’ve read on this subject is actually by ex Thatcher Chancellor and Energy Minister, Nigel Lawson. I don’t usually like what Lawson writes but he’s bang on the money here. One of the interesting things is that it was written 20 odd years ago and the data used has now been doctored by the climate activists so that temperature now coincides with CO2 levels which it never did. It’s quite short but packs a big punch. You have to buy it second hand now.
An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming
by Brit_Books
Learn more: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0715638416/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_8V858KXG26388SW141R8?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
Well done Aris Roussinos for giving these people the chance to have their voices heard. I wondered: were they brainwashed or did they brainwash themselves? Did it sound like a cult? Are they amenable to reason? If the latter, and they were given more information, would they change their views, as one has now done? One thing for sure, they may not go away and shouting at them is pointless. The climate problem can be solved, but it will take a while and it is sensible if governments collaborate on global solutions. For example, how will the oil producers fund their economies as oil demand decreases? They have copious sun – could they produce green hydrogen from water? I agree with the correspondent who said to go for a Manhattan/Apollo level project to make nuclear fusion work. It might help if the engineering institutions put together a presentation outlining solutions that could be widely applied with their pros and cons to get people onside.
Having watched the video I’m struck by the utter delusion of most of these self entitled fools. They’re nearly all my age (I’m 61). The irony of a bloke sat in the road with his designer shirt & man bag strung over his shoulder is laughable, if it weren’t so serious. When challenged about whether his house is insulated, he admits it’s partly. This is someone who hasn’t actually done what he expects others to do.
As for the claims that “we’re doing something about it” No you aren’t actually, you’ve not done anything other than disrupt people trying to go about their lawful business & tying up police resources that could legitimately be better used elsewhere.
Probably somewhere a drugs raid didn’t happen that day because the tactical unit was sent to clear these idiots off the streets.
What also struck me was all this alleged ‘passion’ for the climate crisis, yet every single one is dressed in standard, up to date clothes, mostly made by poor people in distant countries with petro chemicals.
In truth these are just selfish people. Every single one could be spending their time helping in their local community. Instead they sit on their well fed backsides in the middle of the road pontificating about their pet issue, oblivious of course, that instead of winning people to their cause, they actually put them off.
What a bunch of deluded morons! There is no climate emergency! This claim is a deliberate strategy to try and terrify the population into accepting supposedly necessary draconian restrictions on economic growth.
By the way, where are the ecoactivists cheering on rising hydrocarbon prices, as of course they should be?
For many of them, the environment comes a very distant second, or third, to their real goal of dismantling capitalism, the only way human societies have ever found to compound increase living standards hugely from the historical norm.
The middle class was a mistake.
Thank you for this sympathetic and quite accurate representation of who is involved in Insulate Britain. You are wrong that our future will be decided by any other country. Our future will be decided by our own acknowledgement of the climate and ecological crisis. This awareness is growing among those who look beyond the distractions supplied by our media outlets. This type of action does not suit everyone but there are an increasing number of well-informed people who have the courage to acknowledge that our growth economic paradigm is fuelling our imminent extinction every day. Both the author and the majority of the readers of this article are somewhat behind the awareness curve which is needed to survive this century, we need to rethink everything. (3) Barbara Williams on Twitter: “For many of us that have been indoctrinated for decades by a coercive consumer culture there is much to learn if we are to embrace a global aspiration for #Degrowth https://t.co/OuMtNpYFRx” / Twitter