Britain is the home of a surprising number of environmental-activist groups. If you follow the links to the “partners” of British climate-doom website One Hundred Months (“We have 100 months to save our climate“) you’ll start to grasp the extent of it. One organization, Plane Stupid, (“Bringing the aviation industry back down to earth!“) demands a ban on domestic flights and aviation advertising; another protests against renewable (bio) fuels, while another suggests we can get “free energy from air.”
If you spend enough time tooling around these sites it becomes apparent that in many, if not most cases, the activists’ concern for the environment pales in comparison to their level of self-righteousness and self-obsession. This recycling, eco-village-building whiz (gallery here), who describes herself – in the third person – as someone whose “life is organized on a logical basis,” and who “tends to control life, organising systems and people,” is fairly typical of those for whom environmental activism is essentially a tool used to draw attention to their too-too special selves.
When you look at the middle-or-upper class “activists” on display here and here, you have to wonder: if they honestly and truly believed that their actions were being undertaken in the interest of saving the planet – the baby animals, and the third-world poor – from a looming climate apocalypse, would they be acting so amused, and having so much giggly fun? If they were instead protesting, say, an ongoing genocide, would there be so much celebratory, “look-at-me” merrymaking?
Sounds like an Onion News article. “Plane Stupid, (“Bringing the aviation industry back down to earth!”)
I’m convinced this eco-paranoia crisis state, is directly a result of recreational drug use while these enthusiasts were receiving their post secondary educations.
I’d put money on it.
Drugs DO induce, temporary or otherwise, schizophrenic changes to the human brain.
Delusions, feelings of persecution,anxiety,paranoia… all hallmarks of the attitude of radical groups of ALL KINDS.
Just my opinion mind you, what the f%ck do I know?
Any medical, or psychology experts care to comment??
Thanks for your (now-deleted) comment, Eeyore.
I owe you a pitcher of beer.
They say they do it for the planet, but they do it to feel good about themselves…or to feel superior to other people.
Or because they like playing “little dictator”
I know a few leftist – the hippy/greenie type – and they are mostly self centered people, a few of them have dictator-type presonalities.
They will only have a conversation about equality and fairness if they can lecture you while wagging their finger at you.
They are above, you are beneath.
They dominate, take control of the conversation while telling you capitalist are control freaks.
Oh yes I know them, I have some of them as family members…
They are pretty much all the same.
I know one who goes to David Suzuki events yet rents a big bus to carry only 12 people…
I’ll remain polite; something is dysfunctional in their head.
I recall the massive anti-ware and anti-nuke and anti-cruise missile protests of the ’60’s.
Many in the FREE World’s governments interpreted these as indicators of public sentiment….despite polls indicating otherwise….
I was the same age as most of these allegedly committed individuals…..who have over the years admitted they really didn’t give 2 hoots about the cause….it was “a lark”, and excuse for skipping school or work or an opportunity to be anti-social and get a free pass. It was not the cause but the excitment of the event.
I have often wondered how much these factors effect our large assembly’s. I detect a difference and a similarity….depending on the political orientation of the crowd.
It seems the current trend is that leftist demonstrations are small, violent and destructive with only the ring leaders expressing any reference to the cause.
The right wing protests are huge, non violent and orderly.
The biggest demonstrations in Canada have been the “Fed UP” rally’s.
This new phenomina the “TEA Parties” unhing the left because they are calm, orderly, tidy and generally of unprecedented size.
This past weekends’s lefty Washington rally was a fail in size and commitment. It seems the attendee’s were paid, bused in participants.
That’s IT!!The gloves are off dammit, Janet!
We have to knock the greeenieeees off balance!!
Where’s my club?
Alas, baby seals are 2,000 kill-ometrs, from where I live, in green Alberta.
Well, maybe I can find some oily ducks…
They’ll do in a pinch….
It appears Damn Anita Roddick died in 2007. Thankfully … one less twit nipping at my duel exhaust pipes. The other twit seems to hate the oil industry.
My question is … do any of these idiots have any idea what their very meaningful lives will be like without oil?
I can tell you … It will exactly what life was like for the all the peasants in history. Short and with little freedom, lots of petty, back-breaking toil just to survive and eat.
Also, there will not much help from former caring socialist governments who will be the only ones with oil and guns.
Their naiveté is boundless.
“My question is: do any of these idiots have any idea what their very meaningful…” — love that description – “…lives will be like without oil?”
Paul, I honestly don’t think that they truly give it any thought, because they’re just too busy being special. Seriously. Watch the last two links (videos) and tell me that those aren’t entirely modern-day children of the west who – undoubtedly – use the same resources as everyone else, and whose sensibility is entirely incubated in the western manifestations of prosperity that have been built on cheap energy for transportation, health, communication, shopping, etc etc etc.
They wouldn’t be so giggly and self-important if they couldn’t go wherever they want, and heat their homes, and use their electrical outlets, and….
It’s a fashion that gets an extra “kick” from the fact that they’re, you know, saving the planet.
Treehugger, a Discovery Company, thinks this advertisement of a young girl with a noose around her neck is cool.
Wow, Ron, that’s macabre in a living, wet-slap kinda way. I’m convinced that we’re not yet quite understanding, as a society, what kind of people we’re dealing with. These people are Moonies of a sort, propagandized tools walking amongst us, who don’t have in them the usual sorts of restraints that sane people generally have. They’re crazy, wide-eyed, earnest nutbars who invent new prophecies to fill in the gap left by the abandonment of western faith, without the slightest understanding that that’s what they’re doing. It’s like faith is an essential part of the human brain, and when it goes all this crud comes flooding in.
Here’s another link fanned out from the One Hundred Months site: note the assertion that – what we know to be – entirely politicized “scientists” are seers, and how multiple bald-faced lies are asserted as facts, as a way to justify aggression and control:
“Humanity has never before faced a threat quite like it. Our scientists, the brainiest people on the planet are saying and have been saying for years that the planet , our life support system is endangered by our habitual use of fossil fuels. Consensus was reached long ago, indeed Jim Hansen head of NASA’s climate science unit testified before Congress that he was 99 per cent certain that the signal for anthropogenic climate change was being detected above the background noise. That was in 1988. Since then the political football has been kicked in to the long grass. And the science has become more exact , the warnings more stark. But the public are, to this day, largely misled into doubting the science that prophesies the demise of life as we know it.”
Like a never ending vicious cycle of one upmanship at a gang rape, such is the fierce competition amongst enviro-wacko’s to make front page copy. It won’t end until our way of life is dead.
Ron in Kelowna and EBD – did you notice the Hanging Little Girl poster was actually done by a group calling itself, get this, Act Responsible. It appears the definition of responsible has changed dramatically, it now means hanging little girls, blowing up children to bits, and leaving babies in bathtubs to die.
This is the mindset that the culture of death – abortion and euthanasia has produced – throw away life, these coupled with targeted desensitizing through extremely gory slasher video games and movies aimed at dope smoking teens who were raised in day cares by people who could care less about them has successfully produced a generation of narcissists and sociopaths who only care about the environment due to the conscious and subconscious messages promising them that they will finally get to control and kill people for real so all thier carefully planned training will not be in vain.
Even the children in Sodom and Gomorrah were said to be corrupted beyond redemption, at the rate our society is going “we will owe Sodom and Gomorrah an apology.” Can’t recall who first quoted that last sentence, but IMO, it’s true.
People who feel they have no control over their lives, usually compensate by trying to control the lives of others.
They mean well, however they’re horribly misinformed and misdirected.
Because of what passes for an ‘education’ system, they’re easily manipulated by propaganda. Unfortunately they lack the basic skills to discern truth from fiction. They know how they feel and don’t want those feelings challenged by inconvenient facts.
Eastern Paul:
I’m convinced this eco-paranoia crisis state, is directly a result of recreational drug use while these enthusiasts were receiving their post secondary educations.
NO! Recreational drug use is universal and has been since the first humans found that eating over-ripe fruit made them feel pretty good, poppy sap helped ease aches and pains and certain mushrooms helped people commune with the spirit world. Most fanatics have generally been anti-drug rationalizing that time spent stoned is time that isn’t spent on {put extremely important cause in here}.
What we’re seeing here is the mobilization of useful idiots by groups with a radical statist agenda. It’s no secret that Gorbachov is a senior guru in the environmental movement; in 1988 when the USSR appeared to fall I suspected there was a longer term plan in the works. We now know the plan is the creation of a world-wide totalitarian state through the demonization of a trace gas essential to human life. What the USSR couldn’t do from without, namely the fall of the West, it chose to do from within Western societies. Because almost all energy currently comes from oxidation of hydrocarbons, by campaigning in support of legislation to reduce CO2 emissions, one gains control of the energy supply. If these groups were consistent in their beliefs, then they would be campaigning for the construction of nuclear power plants which produce some of the cleanest power available with an absolutely minimal environmental footprint. The fact that they aren’t tells one everything one needs to know. Also, Russia not buying into the AGW meme is another very significant piece of evidence.
Many young people go through a phase where they think that adults have totally f****d up the world and that it is up to them to change things. It doesn’t help that part of the statist agenda has been to dumb down the educational system to produce non-reasoning barely literate students who are far easier to manipulate than well educated students who have been taught to doubt everything and verify the veracity of claims through their own independent researches rather than taking the word of “experts”. The statists have taken control of the education system and are creating a generation of children who think that being told what to do is very natural. Read Dewey’s works on education to find out how far back this process goes.
Controlling people is very easy and for a catalogue of the means to influence people see Cialdini’s book Influence. All of the techniques that Cialdini talks about are being used to sway public opinion.
I was a hard-core environmentalist at age 16 and was handing out literature on the first earth day in 1970. Where I began to differ with other “environmentalists” was that I thought nuclear power was the way to go as coal generated electricity was far too dirty and was going to bring on the next ice age from increased earthly albedo from sulfate aerosols. (There also didn’t seem to be much agreement back then on my suggestion to use neutron bombs for population control). I liked my electronic toys and also believed that getting off the earth into space was what we should be doing with all heavy industry relocated to space with goods coming down on space elevators in geostationary orbit. Things got a bit strained as I had no desire to live a medieval lifestyle and I soon parted company with the “environmentalists” although habits such as composting and recycling have continued.
My experience with individuals who are either “environmentalists”, “anti-nuclear war activists” or one of the numerous forms of irrational “activism” that occur every decade or so is that the vast majority of people are unable to engage in a logical discussion about the fundamentals of their position. Either they end the discussion by calling me a capitalist imperialist swine or they get totally muddled when I start point out logical inconsistencies in their arguments. Their attachment to their causes is primarily emotional (fundamentally all positions are emotionally based and I consider the US Constitution to contain self evident truths).
In 1980 I believed the theory of AGW as it was being supported by scientists and generally one believes the viewpoints of people one trusts. In keeping with my skeptical nature, I began to look into the details of AGW, especially when catastrophic predictions about global warming were combined with rabid anti-nuclear pronouncements. Studying the underlying science brought me to a firmly skeptical position although during the process I became acutely aware of just how chaotic Earth’s climate can be. I happen to now believe that it is a matter of some urgency to increase human energy production by several orders of magnitude so that we can deal with sudden shifts in the Earth’s climate. We don’t want to be in the position of the Viking settlers in Greenland at the end of the MWP who didn’t have the capability to control their local climate and died off. This is the position in which the ecofascists are proposing to put all of humanity.
One additional factor in leading to the proliferation of whacko “environmentalist” groups is the generous welfare system that exists in Western nations. If people actually had to work for a living they wouldn’t be able to spend time on ecofascist causes.
Places like SDA and WUWT are great forums for the debunking of ecofascist ideology. I’ll take this opportunity now to thank the oil companies for the hundreds of millions of dollars they’ve donated to these web sites to further the cause of rationalism;-)
You can’t make this stuff up:
The URL at Julia Howe’s website:
http://earthchantday.julie/
lowe.co.uk/about_me/about_me.htm
Her ” life is organized on a logical basis” ? She has no idea!
Mao Stlong Lepolt:
Moi nephew, “Liberal leader” MP Bob Rae, say, No letleat.
…-
“Enviro Groups Retreat From Violent Advocacy Video
New York Times ^ | Andrew C. Revkin”
“U.S. environmental groups — including those that had counted 10:10 among their partners — are recoiling.
Among them is 350.org, the group founded by environmentalist Bill McKibben, which released a statement saying it had nothing to do with the video and denouncing it as “the complete opposite of everything we and this movement stand for.” See The rest of the article in comments.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com …”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2601728/posts
So… what happens at the end of that 100-month countdown? I suspect that a lot of these people will be snapping at that point and going out on a rampage.
Who needs zombies when you have environmentalists.
Actually, they anti-biofuel folks are pretty much dead-on right…
“Britain is the home of a surprising number of environmental-activist groups.”
Indeed.
As a Canadian who lived in the UK (London area) for many years until 2007, let me offer my thoughts on this.
Britain is a small country; most of its population is concentrated in very large urban agglomerations (the population base of the London area encompassed by the M25 motorway is two-thirds of the entire population of Canada!).
It is extremely easy if you live somewhere like, say, Croydon (in south London) to come to the conclusion that the world is somehow a cramped, overpopulated, over-industrialized, over-polluted place filled with cracked concrete and vehicle smog.
Many Brits appear to have no real sense of just how vast and empty the world actually is.* Those British tourists who get out to Banff, or to the Australian outback – or the occasional intrepid Englishman who ventures to Siberia – are often simply gobsmacked by the sheer unpopulated natural SPACE.
* If more Brits actually cared to venture out from the city and head to the Highlands of Scotland, they’d perhaps begin to realize that even their own small island is really quite empty too!
My first reaction to all this is “whatever”.
That’s how much impact these oh-so-special people and their oh-so-special concerns are having on me. They’re internet trolls writ large. Ignoring them drives them even crazier than mocking them.
My second reaction is to quietly not cooperate. My favorite form of non-cooperation is getting a larger vehicle.
I was toying with the idea of picking up a nice 1960’s classic in AZ this January when I go to Barret Jackson. Instead, I think I’ll try to find a nice, big gas annihilating Ford Excursion. That’s the biggest SUV on the road to my knowledge. Three grand and I can drive a rolling bill board for “I Am Not Cooperating!”
Added bonus, it doesn’t come from Government Motors.
License plate holder will say “Too close for missiles, switching to guns!”
I will drive it to my second favorite form of non-cooperation, shooting. Where I will add lead to the fragile environment. In copious amounts.
Just my contribution to the cause. ~:D
Great line lickmuffin; this massive stupidity brought on by the useless of society has gained all this traction because of jello spined polititians like Prentice and Obongo, Renner etc. Any polititian with half a brain can see this SCAM for what it is, and it seems only Klaus and a few other electeds have the BALLS to turn the tide of stupidity that will enslave all our offsppring into taxing seritude to the green gaia. It must be so embarassing to be a nutless wonder in a position of power and instant media access and never take a stand. Oh look James Cameron is in town lets all bend over!
Well said loki!
A brief addendum to my earlier post on the UK.
The other thing is that, with just under twice the population of Canada crammed into such a small area, it’s not surprising the UK would have exponentially higher concentrations of ecofascists and environmental crackpots.
It’s a religion to them.
Its a frickin’ fashion statement. Currently fashionable to be a greenie, used to be fashionable to be anti-war (look how quiet those idiots got since Barry took over as Prezzy), presently some other stupidity will be fashionable. Most likely racism, seems the Lefties are getting on that bandwagon right now with their Joooo! hatred.
Solving actual problems never seems to be the fashion. Probably because it requires work.
Arrrgh!
They are truly sick and very dangerous people…Peter Mansbridge’s “One on One” this past weekend was with the Avatar fruitcake J. Cameron.
(Yes I watched it all and survived)
At one point during the interview Cameron uses his Avatar movie as comparaison…Mixing reality with pure fantasy. Delusional.
Mansbridge asked him:
“If you had the choice of 2 gas pumps to fill your car, 1 with Alberta oil, the other with Saudi Arabian oil, which one would you pick?”
Believe it or not, Cameron could not answer…He explained that while Canada has one of the strongest human right record on earth (compared to the killing of women and gays and terrorist activity promotion of the ME), he also stated that Alberta oil was more dirty for the environment.
That’s how deranged this movement has become…The current perceived environmental woes of gaia supercedes humanity.
Mansbridge feebly asked him, being he is now super rich would he stop making movies (The question was an indirect “If you are rich why don’t you stop wasting energy to produce more stuff?”)…Cameron did not get the question instead answering “I’ll make more movies like Avatar because they inform and create awareness…” See, he’s above the message, he’s more important than the average Joe. James Cameron can polute the environment pruducing 1/2 billion dollar movies because it’s good for the common folk.
BTW (Prepare your barfbags)…Avatar 2 and 3 will be coming in the next 5 years or so…You read it here first unless you dared watch Mansbridge this past weekend.
Loki
Interesting…your account of your odyssey towards reason.
I suspect you are overlooking/not addressing the effect that medicine has had on your outlook. Exposure to life and death has an enlightening effect on intelligent people—excluding psycopaths of course.
My epiphany was much quicker….visa vis this AGW thing…instinctively I recognized the very same elements who, many summers past, labled people such as myself baby-killers while turning a blind eye to the atrocities commited by their heros in black pajamas against their very own people.
The Brits used to have a big empire to rule, and
fox hunting for the upper crust. Used up their
excess energy. Now there is nothing for them
except to make
nuisances of themselves.
I love si-fi, so I enjoyed Avatar. I will see his follow up movies too, simply for the entertainment value, plus … 3D is killer.
I can go to a James Cameron movie, eat popcorn and have a great time and … ignore the message. It’s one of my powers.
I enjoyed the Avatar proto-type “Dances with Wolves” and I hate Kevin Kostner. I think it was Kicking Bird and Stands with a Fist characters that I enjoyed most (both Canadians by the by and that was their 15 minutes).
I didn’t care that their primitive way of life was doomed and the whole movie was a guilt trip . … Again, my powers.
There is a line between feeling no guilt at all, ever … For example … Obama, Dodd, Frank – narcissists, sociopaths … and feeling it where it is actually useful and where it can sharpen one’s sensibilities. Taking in a stray animal for example, doing more with the kids … you know … real stuff …
but not saving Africa because it’s a human cesspool beyond any hope and certainly not taking humanity back to the feudal system that only cheap abundant energy freed us from.
Remember people, we’re talking about a nation of cat-lovers here, a land that allows Druids to have a non-tax status and whose Archbishop of Canterbury
claims to be on too, all in the name of ecumenism.
100 Months – sounds like a drinking song to me.
Abe,
Like me and others here at SDA, You are smart enough to “ignore the message” a certain movie or MSM delivers…Can you say the same for young kids or the more ‘naives’ of our society?
Exploiting ignorance is the danger here. Ask any intelligent Venezuelan what they think of Hugo Chavez…Chavez is in power because he succesfully moved the ignorant mass and he is feverously working towards a dictatorship using these people. Obama is trying to do the same, the Liberals and NDP up here too to a certain extent.
I choose not to encourage people like James Cameron from now on…I loved most all of his stuff until Avatar.
I like the entertainment of Avatar but the message is poison thus I now boycott it.
To go further on soccermoms comment:
Enviro is the new religion complete with pious misguided followers.
Think nooses girls is bad, christian pious types spoke of everlasting purgatory.
I would bs interested in a study of these envirozealots parents and grandparents – are they simply carrying on a tradition of overarching piety?
@EBD: awesome first paragraph there, I’ve been thinking that myself for a long time.
JJM, likewise on the matter of urbanites being the only people interested in “the environment” because they aren’t even fricking aware of it; it’s a propaganda-based abstraction to them.
Two quotes from Eric Hoffer, magnificent author of “The True Believer”:
It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Loki nailed it. It’s my view that the trait Progressive’s share is intellectual sloth.
“My epiphany was much quicker….visa vis this AGW thing”
Me too. I’ve been a conservative since I was 11. I was interested in politics early as my dad was a Reagan fan. Alex P Keaton (Family Ties) was also a Republican, but I digress.
Anyways, when I was in High School we were all scared isthless about the hole in the Ozone layer. At the time, I was not aware that people were deliberately trying to mislead me. Why would I? Later in years, I saw a blurb on TV that said something like “The hole in the Ozone Layer over the Antarctic has disappeared”- NASA. At the time I thought “That’s great!”, but soon after I thought it was “odd” that I never heard anything of it again.
Then, here comes AGW – and I’m supposed to believe we’re doomed again? Well, like GWB said ” …fool me twice, well, you can’t fool me again”.
loki: Splendid mini-essay.
I especially appreciate your observation, toward the end, of the role of the welfare state in all this. But also general post-war prosperity; surplus; related idleness.
Also, state-subsidized post-secondary education. Were the full and true cost of post-secondary education borne by the student/parent utilizing a much higher take home pay (smaller government), we would have way less of this silliness, and of course far fewer students unsuited for a university education.
Perhaps the Greater Depression will end this madness.
Also, an extremely trenchant point on Gorbachev and the continuation of the cold war by other means. Bingo. This is not a widely understood matter.
EBD: Great post, terrific writing!. I cottoned onto this special specialness at the very beginning of the re-cycling age seeing the words WE RE-CYCLE on those blue boxes.
True enough Abe. I also like Stewart, Colbert and Rock.
RHTT
If I boycotted every artist that preached something I disagree with, I’d be left with Dennis Miller and that gun tote’n 70’s rock guy who wants everyone to speak English(can’t remember his name). People who can’t separate their politics from their entertainment need to take a step back. That said, I do respect your choice to “vote with your dollar” and not support someone who’s operation you think is questionable. Personally, I don’t think the harm Cameron does is enough to warrant my boycott. If I’m going to see a movie chalked full of lefties, it might as well be the best show available.
BTW, Star Wars Ep I, II & III will soon be released in 3d starting with Ep I in 2012. Whoo Hoo! Lucas will have managed to pillage another couple hundred from me.
I thought of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh when I read this post.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Rajneeshee_bioterror_attack
“A 1999 empirical analysis in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases published by the CDC described six motivational factors associated with bioterrorism, including: charismatic leadership, no outside constituency, apocalyptic ideology, loner or splinter group, sense of paranoia and grandiosity, and defensive aggression.”
‘…the middle-or-upper class “activists”…’ – that’s important. Because of their country’s legendary class-obsessiveness, upper-class brits feel a)superior and b)guilty. “Crusaderism” has to do with both those things.
Britain is also home to a surprising large number of jihadists and Islamist organisations. It has become a haven for radicals of every stripe having long ago done away with its heritage of freedom and democracy.
that gun tote’n 70’s rock guy who wants everyone to speak English(can’t remember his name
~Indiana Homez
Ted “the Nuge” Nugent, still living the American Dream, hunting, and Rocking Out.
He’s a big fan of eating meat and burning fossil fuels.
Bottome line is that whem people get bored they do really stupid things. That’s why the generations who lived with difficulties are better people than the last several who haven’t had to go through something like a real famine or a world war.
I think Kate had a swiftian quip about our society needing a good famine. Since 9/11 wasnt’ enough of a wake-up, the recession just had these twits double-down on their idiocy, I say we starve them out like their commie buddies did to the ukranians. Yup, a good famine. Or a good solid month of no power in January. Then they’d see the value of energy.