Eric Worrall on WattsUpWithThat

Over the years, I’ve noticed pretty much every establishment attempt to push a climate agenda is accompanied by a call for people to unite. What if fear of change, of loss of control, and a desire for social unity and predictability are the real driving force behind the climate push?

Does the UK need a referendum on climate change pledges?

Critics say net-zero target has been imposed by ‘elites’ without electoral mandate

27 OCT 2021

A large proportion of the British public are in favour of a referendum on the government’s net-zero proposals, according to a new poll by YouGov.

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The Tony Blair Institute’s Tim Lord rejected the idea that “elites” are behind the drive for climate action. He said “there is irony in this – as it is the poorest who will be most severely affected by unconstrained climate change”.

Lord agreed that the net-zero target was introduced in the summer of 2019 with minimal debate in the Commons and no mention of the plan in the 2017 election – but it was included in the Conservative manifesto ahead of the December 2019 election.

While delivering net zero is a “complex task” that “cannot be achieved without public support for both the overall goal, and the policies required to get there”, this “cannot mean everyone supports every measure”, he said. Consent must be drawn from a broad base and “net zero has to be based around a politics of unity, not division”.

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Read more: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/954591/does-the-uk-need-a-referendum-on-net-zero-pledges

Here’s another call for unity;

Pope Francis praises youth activists in fight to tackle climate change

“It is said that you are the future, but in these matters, you are the present. You are those who are making the future today, in the present,” the pontiff said.

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The pope said solutions to climate change, including sustainable development and production, must be built on unity and a shared sense of responsibility.

“There must be harmony between people, men and women, and the environment,” he said. “We are not enemies. We are not indifferent. We are part of this cosmic harmony.”

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Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/pope-francis-praises-youth-activists-fight-tackle-climate-change-rcna2401

China wants unity too;

China releases white paper on climate change response

Updated 18:47, 27-Oct-2021

China on Wednesday released a white paper on the country’s policies and measures for responding to climate change. China has set a goal of peaking carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.

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The white paper states that climate change is a cause shared by all of humanity. Faced with unprecedented challenges in global climate governance, the international community needs to respond with unprecedented ambition and action. We need to act with a sense of responsibility and unity, take proactive measures, and work together to pursue harmony between humanity and nature.

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Read more: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-10-27/China-releases-white-paper-on-climate-change-response-14Hs1nziBe8/index.html

Unity, unity, UNITY. Plenty more examples where they came from.

When you think about it, a child could see through the nonsensical claims of climate alarmists. If slightly warmer temperatures are so terrible, why aren’t slightly warmer places already suffering all the problems alarmists say will happen? But climate alarmism, as a potential source of social unity, is far too valuable allow it to be defeated by mere logic.

What has caused this sudden upsurge in fear amongst global elites, that they are losing control?

I believe the trigger for this panic amongst the global elites was the fall of the Soviet Union. The Soviet State, right up until the very end, seemed all powerful, enormous, an unstoppable juggernaut with its terrifying state security apparatus and apparently complete control of communication.

But the Soviets failed to adapt to the information revolution.

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“Truth is good,” goes an old Russian proverb that Shane quotes, “but happiness is better.”

The earliest stirrings of free thought were nurtured on the radio broadcasts of Voice of America and the crude, self-published books and tape recordings of the Samizdatand Magnitizdat movements. By the end, of course, it was CNN and cellular phones that finally defeated the Soviet Union.

“The exploding arsenal of electronics–cellular telephones, fax machines, VCRs, satellite dishes, computers with modems–demonstrated a trend for technology to become more compact, portable, versatile and inexpensive,” Shane explains. “As such, the new machines seemed to be weapons the citizen could wield against the state as readily as the state could use them on the citizen.”

As Shane points out, the phrase “information revolution” takes on an entirely new meaning in this context. And he helps us understand how stirring but also how bizarre it must have been for a Soviet citizen to turn on his television set and see the top brass of the KGB on a call-in show: “Tonight they will be answering the questions,” the host announced.

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Read more: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-05-11-ls-56160-story.html

China has survived more successfully than the Soviets, because they had more money. Deng Xiaoping’s capitalist economic reforms in the 1980s gave the CCP the financial resources they needed to buy monitoring equipment and expertise, which made them more able to keep up with the information revolution. But even the Chinese are struggling to contain the free flow of information which is undermining state control of public narratives. Global freedom initiatives have provided systems like the TOR Project, which are used by Chinese citizens who want to sneak past the Great Chinese Firewall, so they can keep track of what is really going on in the world.

If global elites cannot control communication technology, the next best thing is to try to dominate the conversation, through a fear campaign and a call for global unity. The focus point for that push for global unity didn’t have to be climate change, but I believe they chose climate alarmism because it was convenient and available, and already had a significant following at the time the elites took an interest. Mikhail Gorbachev, after he lost his old job as the last dictator of the Soviet Union, spent a lot of time in the early 90s supporting United Nations climate initiatives.

The desire by elites to cling on to control, in my opinion, is why climate alarmism has survived repeated embarrassing predictive failures.

Normally when a scientific theory produces a disastrous series of wrong predictions, the theory withers and dies. But in my opinion global elites are keeping climate alarmism on life support, with vast infusions of taxpayer’s cash for compliant researchers, and en entire renewable energy industry which only exists because the governments of the world keep diverting taxpayer’s cash to pay the bills.

So long as a significant portion of the population believes in the climate crisis, this powerful source of social unity is too useful for spooked global elites to surrender.

The elite desire to hold back the information revolution at any price does nothing good for ordinary people.

Frightening kids with false climate doomsday narratives might buy the elites a little time, by helping the elites to retain their grip on power in the face of the technology driven growth of free speech and open communication, but the kids who accept the climate lies endure tremendous personal suffering.