Honest Common Sense: November 2021

Political governments all over the world today are treating people as if we were mere animals to be exploited, or even objects to be used and manipulated at will. And this is the case even in so-called democracies.

In the United Kingdom, from which I write today (and which is neither a kingdom nor in any way united – but I digress), levels of taxation are now higher than at any time since the immediate aftermath of the second world war. Bad tax laws have been made and used to ruin the careers of many innocent people, including my own as a one-man software consultant. And those same bad laws have recently been used to disrupt the lorry driving industry, precipitating a national supply chain crisis. Meanwhile, taxes are heading higher yet.

Our rights and freedoms were already being routinely violated, even before the arrival of the COVID virus. For example, for many years now there have been cameras watching our every move to catch us out in the smallest indiscretion. There have been data snoopers watching what we do on the Internet, and tracking the movements of mobile phones. And our freedom of speech is under serious threat. We are in constant danger of being accused of nebulous “hate crimes.” And there is a bill going through parliament to allow bureaucrats powers to order removal of on-line material they consider to be “harmful misinformation,” with huge fines for non-compliance. Even if the material is simply telling factual truth! Moreover, they are proposing to exempt officially sanctioned “news publishers” from these rules.

Since COVID arrived, the establishment and its political class have missed no excuse to lock us down, or to take away our right to choose, or to disrupt our economy, or to put obstacles or formalities in the way of people simply going about our lives. They have been particularly hard on the “little people,” such as small business people. The more independent you are, so it seems, the more the establishment hate you and want to hurt you. Meanwhile, they award their cronies multi-million-pound contracts without any proper tendering process. And our right to protest has been seriously curtailed. But most of all, they have continued and even accelerated their green agenda of draconian – and totally impractical – energy, transport, environmental and taxation policies, that go against the needs and the well-being of ordinary people. Meanwhile, we are assaulted by barrages of lies, scares and hype intended to “nudge” us into conformity, or propaganda about “staying safe” or “protecting each other.”

On the day I began this essay, tens of thousands of delegates were flocking in to a United Nations “Conference of the Parties” (CoP) meeting in Glasgow, Scotland. Many were from governments, internationalist organizations and green or “woke” pressure groups all over the world. A lot of them arrived in private jets, and the more pretentious among them travelled from the airfield in huge motorcades. The UK had even relaxed COVID restrictions for high-ranking attendees at the conference: [[1]].

This gabfest lasts (by the time you read this, lasted) 13 days, beginning on Sunday October 31^st 2021. Its stated purpose: “to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.” And its theme statement: “uniting the world to tackle climate change.”

That theme statement is in George Orwell’s Newspeak. So, let me translate it into English for you. “Uniting the world” means setting up a Big Brother style world government of unelected, unaccountable élites, with absolute powers to do anything to anybody. And “to tackle climate change” means to take actions up to and including the destruction of human industrial civilization, for the sake of nothing more than an unspecific, unproven and unlikely-to-be-true accusation that humans are causing some kind of big problem with the Earth’s climate.

This will be a long, long essay. It will also be provocative! To make it as readable and easy to understand as possible, I’ll divide it into three parts. This first part, Indictments, covers the woeful tale of what is being done to us today under the banner of climate change and other aspects of today’s political agenda. Because it is very much an evidence-based essay, this part will include many external links; skip them if you wish.

In the second part, Diagnosis, I’ll tell you what I think is going on underneath. And in the third, Cure, I’ll offer some (radical) suggestions as to how we might start to move things in the right direction.

A dark green background

First, some background to the latest CoP meeting. Taking my cue from the stated purpose of the meeting, I’ll begin with the “UN Framework Convention on Climate Change” (otherwise known in UN-speak as “the Convention”), to which the delegates signed up at the Rio “Earth Summit” conference back in 1992. Here’s the text: [[2]]. This was a follow-up to the “Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment,” which they signed in Stockholm in 1972: [[3]].

The Stockholm declaration of 1972

The 1972 Stockholm document seeks “to inspire and guide the peoples of the world in the preservation and enhancement of the human environment.” And it claims to be “for the benefit of all the people and for their posterity.” Sounds good, doesn’t it?

But there are some nasty things in there, too. For example, Principle 6 required that “the release of heat, in such quantities or concentrations as to exceed the capacity of the environment to render them harmless, must be halted.” Odd words, those, in the light of the global warming accusations that came later. And particularly since, at the time, global cooling was seen as the likely problem, not warming. Moreover, Principle 16 provided apparent justification for the Chinese communists’ inhumane and failed one child policy.

The Rio framework convention of 1992

The 1992 framework convention, on the other hand, sought to achieve “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” And it defined “climate change” as: “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.”

Moreover, Article 3(4) required “policies and measures to protect the climate system against human-induced change.” And developed countries, including the UK, committed to “the return by the end of the present decade [the 1990s] to earlier levels of anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol.”

Two big changes seem to have happened between 1972 and 1992. First, the focus on the human environment had been entirely lost. Something called the climate system, and a project to “solve” some claimed problem by reducing human-caused emissions of certain gases, had been elevated so that they now took precedence over the rights, freedoms, prosperity and aspirations of human beings. Something called “the environment” was now to be seen as more important than the human environment. And second, representatives from Western countries, that were supposedly democracies, had signed up to an internationalist project that, inevitably, would cause great pain to the people they were supposed to be serving.

The Tory manifesto of 1992

In the UK at least, they did all this without a referendum, or even any consultation with the people. Perhaps the Tories thought that the general election of April 1992 had given them a mandate for such actions. Their 1992 manifesto [[4]] makes, with hindsight, interesting reading. They said: “Other parties promise the earth. We have taken action - both nationally and internationally - to preserve it.” And then: “Environmental protection can impose financial costs on producers, consumers and taxpayers, so we must make sure the threat of damage is a real one. But we also accept the precautionary principle – the need to act, where there is significant risk of damage, before the scientific evidence is conclusive.”

Now, the first sentence, about costs, is spot on. But the second is nonsense. It contradicts the words “make sure” in the first. And it misconstrues the precautionary principle. In its true form, the principle says “Look before you leap,” or even “First, do no harm.” It ought to imply that you must not do anything that causes significant harm to anyone, without first being fairly sure that the harm they would suffer if the action was not taken would be greater than the harm caused to them by the action. That is exactly the opposite of what the Tories were claiming. (Of course, there are occasions, particularly in real emergencies, where you should leap. I’m thinking, for example, about the story of an eminent Victorian clergyman, who wrestled a society woman to the ground because her crinoline dress was on fire.)

But governments have – or ought to have – time to make the best possible decisions for those they serve. They ought to make decisions rationally, on the best information they have, and taking full account of what they don’t know. So, I’ll go further than my statement above. Except in proven emergency, no government should ever implement any policy that imposes any burden on the people they are supposed to be serving, without first making, publishing, and obtaining consent for, an objective, unbiased, accurate, fully justified assessment of the costs and benefits of that policy. And most of all, no democracy should ever do such a thing.

When you look back, it is obvious that the Tories had been moving in a green direction for years before 1992. The parliamentary debate on the matter [[5]] shows this. And it shows that, as early as the 1980s, the UK Tory government had been a primary agent pushing for world-wide green policies. And Labour were no less eager than the Tories; if anything, even more so. Only Teresa Gorman made anything like a protest on behalf of ordinary people.

The Paris agreement of 2015

The text of the Paris agreement is here: [[6]]. Frankly, it is a revolutionary document; and I don’t mean that as a compliment. The main commitment is in Article 2.1(a), “Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels…” Never mind that they don’t bother to say exactly what “pre-industrial levels” means. Or exactly how the global temperatures are to be averaged.

But there are several more discomforting things in there, too. Taking account of “imperatives” including “a just transition of the workforce” – what the hell does that mean? If I read Article 4 right, they committed to making progressive greenhouse gas reductions that will go on and on for ever! And the further through the document you read, the more it sounds like an Enabling Act for a world government in all things environmental, in which the “Conference of the Parties” and the United Nations together play the part of Big Brother.

And let’s face it, the UN is well cut out for that role. It is an unelected, politicized and unaccountable élite, with a strong controlling and globalist tendency. Having only just managed to get (barely, and as yet incompletely) out of the clutches of one unelected, politicized, unaccountable, control-freak élite, the European Union, the good people of the UK now need to start thinking about UNexit, too.

The “Green Industrial Revolution” proposals of 2020

Fast forward now to November 2020, and the UK government’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution [[7]]. As I’ve written before, the phrase “green industrial revolution” was lifted by the Tories straight out of Labour’s 2019 manifesto. And these “net zero” proposals are, in no particular order: Not properly costed. The benefits are unsure. Pie in the sky. Very expensive. Seriously reducing, or even destroying, freedom and mobility for many ordinary people. Disruptive and potentially dangerous. Not properly thought through. Being forced on people with only a sham of a “consultation,” and no chance to oppose the proposals. Likely to raise the costs of travel and of trade. Requiring huge investments of money that people don’t have, in order to bring about a lower standard of living than we have now. Already been tried and failed. Requiring huge tax rises. All but certain to tank. I have set out my own views on these matters here: [[8]].

Not surprisingly, the notion of holding a referendum on the whole “net zero” idea has been gaining traction in recent weeks among sane people in the UK. And yet, the establishment are having none of it; telling us that “the country” has “probably had enough” of such campaigns, and that we “should not be concerned” about the eye-watering costs. Oh, the arrogance of those that are used to spending other people’s money!

But frankly, I can’t see the establishment ever allowing a referendum, or even a fair, free and open debate, on this issue. For they know, as do I, that the climate agenda is nothing but a huge scam. And to allow debate would risk bringing out enough truth for people to start to see the scam for what it is.

Today’s green madness

The political establishment (both national and international), almost all of the media, many of the rich, and most of the generally well connected, seem to have succumbed to a madness. They think that human industrial civilization, which we have developed so laboriously over the last several centuries, is like a scab or a cancer. They think of it as “unsustainable.” And they seem to think of us human beings, not as naturally good, and fit and ready to make our Earth into the peaceful, beautiful home and garden we deserve, but as naturally bad and a blight on the planet.

They are seeking to implant these hateful lies in people’s minds, with the aim of destroying our industrial civilization and taking away all economic freedoms and independence from the ordinary people of the world, leaving themselves in total control. And because of their long reach in media and education, and the implicit trust that many people have in “the system,” they have instilled them into the minds of far too many of the gullible.

The climate change madness

The gabfest taking place in Glasgow is a key element in this strategy of destruction. Like bidders at an auction at which they are spending other people’s money, politicians fall over each other to make commitment after commitment on behalf of the people they are supposed to (but fail to) represent. These commitments, they must know, if carried out will cause severe pain and inconvenience to very many ordinary people. And those ordinary people have never even been consulted on the matter. But drunk with their sense of power, they plan to go on regardless; for it’s our money they are spending, not their own. And we are the ones who are and will be suffering the pain and inconvenience, not them.

Oh surely, there are a few countries in the world where there is some, albeit far too little as yet, resistance to these plans for civilizational genocide. Putin stayed at home in Russia. Xi, likewise, stayed home in China. Modi went home to India, having announced plans that will surely disappoint the extremist agitators. And remember, China and India between them account for 36% of the world’s population. But the die-hard alarmists, including the UK – most of all the UK! – carry on, pressuring the rest to play their game of “anything you can do to harm innocent people, we can do better.”

This is no laughing matter. Already, there is chaos in energy markets. Four UK gas suppliers went bust in a single day on November 2^nd. Indications are that the price of heating our homes will go through the roof this coming winter; and it isn’t by any means certain that there will be enough gas and electricity to keep the heating and the lights on at all. Unaffordability and unreliability in energy supplies are not a good combination.

And a lot of the blame for this must be laid at the door of the green alarmists. For only just recently does it seem to have been generally recognized that green “renewable” energy sources can never be reliable enough to satisfy real-world energy needs. They need to be backed up by other, more dependable, sources; and the cost of those back-ups needs to be included in the costs of the renewable energy sources. Hell, that should have been common knowledge decades ago! Even I could have told them: “When the wind don’t blow, the power don’t flow.” And: “When the sun don’t shine, there’s no juice on the line.”

The climate change backstory

There is a long, sordid backstory behind the global warming or climate change accusations against us. I have documented this backstory, as far as I know it, here: [[9]].

In summary, there have been lots of shenanigans going on. For example: Politicization of science. Adjustments, often poorly documented or not at all, to the data on which the science depends. Failure to use the scientific method properly. Grafting together data to make their case look scary (as in the “hockey stick”). Dropping data inconvenient to the alarmist cause. Trying to minimize or suppress the Mediaeval Warm Period. Refusing to release data to allow replication of work. Plotting to delete data to avoid freedom of information requests. Trying to suppress skeptical papers, to attack the reputations of skeptical scientists, and to get skeptical journal editors sacked. Claiming the science is settled, when it isn’t. Being unclear about what the accusation against us actually is. Biasing costs and benefits to favour alarmist action. Three UK government inquiries into the Climategate e-mail releases, all of which whitewashed the real issues. Moving the goalposts again and again, always in the direction of increasing restrictions on us.

Important in this story, from the point of view of the present essay, are two episodes from the period of New Labour government in the UK. One was this 2002 report [[10]] from the “Interdepartmental Liaison Group on Risk Analysis.” The other was the decision, in 2009, to drop the use of the “social cost of carbon” (and its replacement, the “shadow cost of carbon”) in making cost-benefit analyses of anything involving carbon dioxide emissions. A government web page [[11]] provides links to various documents on the subject. The documentation and links specifically for the 2009 change can be found here: [[12]].

The 2002 report includes the following: “The purpose of the precautionary principle is to create an impetus to take a decision notwithstanding scientific uncertainty about the nature and extent of the risk.” “The precautionary principle should be invoked when... there is good reason, based on empirical evidence or plausible causal hypothesis, to believe that harmful effects might occur, even if the likelihood of harm is remote.” “‘Absence of evidence of risk’ should never be confused with, or taken as, ‘evidence of absence of risk’.” “Invoking the precautionary principle shifts the burden of proof in demonstrating presence of risk or degree of safety towards the hazard creator.”

I do not think I overstated my case when, in summary of all this, I wrote here [[13]]: “First, the activists have inverted the burden of proof, and require the defendants (that’s us, who want to do things like heat our homes and drive our cars) to prove a negative. Proving a negative is often impossible. How, for example, would you prove there are no fairies at the bottom of your garden? Second, they want the judge to rule, and to find us guilty, before all the evidence has been heard. And third, even if there’s no evidence at all that our activity causes any harm to anyone, they wouldn’t accept that fact as evidence! In essence they have decreed, in contradiction to the norm of presumption of innocence, that absence of evidence of guilt is not evidence of absence of guilt. We’ve been had, haven’t we?” This 2002 ruse wrote into official UK government policy the perversion, indeed inversion, of the precautionary principle that was already apparent in the Tory manifesto of 1992.

The web page for the 2009 change includes this revealing statement: “The old approach based on estimates of the social cost of carbon should be replaced with a target-consistent approach, based on estimates of the abatement costs that will need to be incurred to meet specific emissions reduction targets. The change will have the effect of helping to ensure that the policies the government develops are consistent with the emissions reductions targets that the UK has adopted through carbon budgets, and also at an EU and UN level.” Reading between the lines, they had worked out that they couldn’t do a credible, rigorous cost-benefit analysis that could possibly justify any political action. But they had already committed to political action. So, it looks as if what they did was make up numbers to match the commitments, and hope that no-one noticed.

One effect of these shenanigans was to make it impossible to answer a vital question, which should have been asked before any policies were even contemplated. That question is: If we took no political action at all, what would the costs have been? Without an answer to this, it is impossible to assess objectively whether or not there ever was a real problem. Even as late as 2019, the UK government had failed to do anything like an objective cost-benefit analysis on the “net zero” project, either on the side of costs of acting or costs of not acting.

Where is the hard evidence of our guilt?

We human beings and our industrial civilization stand accused of causing some huge problem in the climate system. So, where is the evidence against us? Where is the hard evidence, that can be objectively checked by anyone with the skills and the time, and that leads to the inescapable conclusion that we must be punished by having our freedoms, our economy and our industrial civilization forcibly taken away from us? Where is the proof, beyond reasonable doubt, that we are guilty as charged? I’ll say this right at the outset: I have never seen any.

By hard evidence, I don’t mean computer climate models. Such models are, at best, tools. And they are too easily rigged, consciously or unconsciously, to produce whatever result the programmer (and/or the paymaster) desires. Nor do I mean biased reports or “scientific” papers from organizations with vested interests in political outcomes. In particular, nothing in which the UN, its “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” (IPCC), or political governments have had a hand, can be taken as hard evidence of anything. Nor do I mean reports from the mainstream media, virtually all of which is biased in favour of the green scam. Most particularly, nothing from the BBC – the Biased Broadcasting Corporation, which has long done its utmost to exclude skeptical voices from environmental debate, as at [[14]] – can be taken as being evidence. No; evidence is that which can be seen to be so. And hard evidence is evidence from the real world. Hard evidence consists of measurements made objectively and honestly, and rational deductions from them; and nothing more.

Where is the hard evidence that climate is changing on a global scale? The best data we have suggests that measured temperatures have been gradually rising for roughly 350 years, since the depths of the Little Ice Age. Before that, temperatures had been falling from the heights of the Mediaeval Warm Period, which began around 1,000 years ago. A thousand years or so earlier than that, there had been a warm period in Roman times. And that’s about it.

Where is the hard evidence that all, or a significant proportion of, recent warming has been caused by human activity? Where is the hard evidence for just how much global warming has been caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases, as distinct from non-human causes, and from other human activities like land use changes and the urban heat island effect?

Where is the hard evidence, over the years since 1992, of the bad effects the alarmists predicted would happen, such as globally worse droughts or floods, millions of climate refugees, thousands of dead polar bears or millions of square kilometres of dead coral reefs? After all, they have kept on telling us “We have 10 years to save the planet.” So, we must expect there to be at least some objectively detectable bad effects over the 29 years since 1992! Moreover, where is the hard evidence that these bad things (if they indeed did happen) would not have happened, were it not for human emissions of greenhouse gases?

Where is the hard evidence that there is any kind of climate emergency? On what basis did the UK parliament declare an “emergency” on May 1^st 2019, without providing any factual evidence, and without even taking a vote?

And an even more basic question. Where is the hard evidence that a warmer world would be a worse world? For historically, human civilizations have tended to flourish during warmer periods, as for example the Mediaeval and Roman Warm Periods. Where is the hard evidence that a warming of, say, 3-4 degrees Celsius from today would be bad for humanity, not good?

In the UK, we have been paying “climate change levies” and similar taxes for 20 years now. So, where is the hard evidence of damage to the climate, that would have happened without those taxes, but has been avoided because we paid those taxes? Oh, and where is the honest, objective analysis of costs against benefits of these policies, that should have been done in the first place? (We know the answer to that one, of course).

Going forward, where is the hard evidence that the sacrifices the establishment want to force us to make would actually resolve the claimed climate problem? Where is the hard evidence that giving up petrol and diesel cars, giving up flying, eating less or no meat, having less or no children, or paying through the nose for home heating less efficient than today’s, would actually make a measurable and positive difference to anything?

Oh, and where is the hard evidence that a “zero carbon” economy actually would be sustainable? That is, able to endure into the future? Why has no prototype project been undertaken with volunteers, to show that a zero-carbon economy doesn’t inevitably collapse with its inhabitants starving or freezing to death? And why haven’t all the CoP26 attendees volunteered to stay on in Glasgow to be part of such a project?

Oh, the hypocrisy of those that want to make draconian restrictions on how ordinary people should live, while themselves continuing their jet-setting, limo-riding lifestyles, often at taxpayer expense! Not to mention the prat of a prime minister, that flew in a private jet from Glasgow to London for no better reason than a dinner engagement. If you want people to believe your “nett zero” nonsense, you wally, you must live nett zero. You have failed to practise what you preach. That makes you a hypocrite; and no-one with even half an ounce of sense will want to listen to you ever again.

A climate protest

On the Saturday in the middle of the CoP26 conference, I happened to visit Oxford. That afternoon, there was a climate action protest march. I watched and listened as they marched around the centre of Oxford. There was much mindless chanting, like: “What do we want? Action! When do we want it! NOW!!!” I did, though, enjoy one of their banners: “We’re up sh*t creek!” Yes, I thought, you’re right; you’re up shit creek. Without your marbles, too.

Yet I could, perhaps, even partly agree with one of their demands: for “system change.” A system, that allows selfish, corrupt politicians to make taxes and bad laws that harm innocent people, has got to be changed or scrapped. But my idea of the necessary changes – towards maximum individual freedom, objective justice, upholding human rights, and prosperity for all those who deserve it – is in total opposition to theirs. For the climate action they call for will destroy freedoms, violate rights, unjustly harm the “little people,” and kill chances of prosperity for all but the political establishment and their cronies.

Fact checks

So, let’s look at the record. Here are fact-checks on some of the doom-and-gloom scares we have been fed with. There are many more.

Despite Al Gore's prediction that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013, the September 2021 minimum of sea ice coverage in the Arctic was almost 50 per cent higher than its lowest value back in 2012: [[15]].

Despite repeated claims that polar bears are in danger of extinction, even according to official sources polar bear numbers have risen from around 10,000 in 1960 to at least 25,000 now. One expert estimated polar bear numbers in 2018 to be over 39,000: [[16]].

The Antarctic continent has not warmed in the last seven decades: [[17]]. For the entire continent, the winter (June to August) of 2021 was the second-coldest on record: [[18]].

There have been claims that low lying atolls like Tuvalu would become flooded and submerged by rising sea levels. But even some of the mainstream media have noticed that, on a multi-decadal scale, many of these islands are actually growing, not shrinking: [[19]]. 80 per cent of all the islands surveyed were either growing, or staying about the same.

Despite the Met Office telling us that “one billion face heat-stress risk” from a 2-degree temperature rise, deaths from droughts, floods and extreme weather have gone down dramatically in the last century or so [[20]], during which time temperatures have risen by almost 1 degree C. The drop in deaths from natural disasters has been even more spectacular when looked at in terms of death rates per 100,000 people: [[21]]. Moreover, a recent paper [[22]] analyzing data from 750 locations around the world concluded that deaths caused by cold were approximately ten times as many as deaths caused by heat.

Even the IPCC finds no trend for global hurricane frequency, and has low confidence in attribution of any changes in hurricane frequency to human activity. Meanwhile, the USA has not seen an increase in landfalling hurricanes since 1900. And global costs of extreme weather have declined 26% over 28 years: [[23]]. This whole paper is very much worth a read.

Despite scares about food sources becoming insufficient for the population, yields of most crops per area farmed have risen over the last 60 years: [[24]]. This may well have been helped by the greening of the Earth thanks to increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide: [[25]].

Other nonsenses

But climate change isn’t the only green nonsense we’re being beaten over the head with. There are – at least – air pollution, species extinction and over-population scares being bandied around, too.

Only four or five years ago, air pollution was being used in the UK as the main excuse for policies to force us out of our cars. I wrote a substantial (and, in places, a bit technical) article on air pollution from cars, here: [[26]]. Now, there are many parallels between the backstories on air pollution and climate change. Huge charges levied against us, out of all proportion to actual costs of any damage caused, for just going about our daily lives. The United Nations is involved again (in this case, via its World Health Organization). A dubious US study, whose raw data was not available, even after subpoena. A strong likelihood that the toxicities of the pollutants have been over-estimated. A novel and unproven “expert elicitation” method, resulting in a factor of 12 between upper and lower cost bounds for the UK. Suppression of air quality reports that went against the then government’s narrative. A sensationalist report, demanding that government “must now act to remove the current toxic fleet of diesel cars, vans and buses from all our roads.” Hyped headlines about air pollution causing “40,000 deaths annually” in the UK.

It’s plain from all this that the plans for “action” on climate change and air pollution were never intended as separate goals. Both are a part of a wider agenda, two major planks of which are to force us out of our cars and to kill off our access to affordable, reliable energy. As I said in the air pollution paper I referenced above, “That’s the deep green agenda. It’s not designed for our benefit, is it?”

Then there is the nonsense about humans “endangering biodiversity” and causing species extinctions. I have many times asked those that spout off about biodiversity to name one species to whose extinction I have contributed, and to say what it was I did to contribute to that extinction. I have never yet got a specific answer! This is typical alarmist conduct. They are never clear about what they accuse us of, but try to keep it vague and general. They always talk of “we,” and they try to make us feel a communal guilt. But they never address the question of whether, or how much, specific individuals are responsible for any problems. And they fail to show any hard evidence that there’s even a problem at all.

Then there’s Extinction Rebellion. This is an all but terrorist organization; and the impression I get is that what they really want to do is extinguish us. Which, ultimately, is what the UN, political governments and the rest of the establishment want to do to us as well. They want to destroy human freedom and happiness, human industrial civilization and the human spirit.

Then there is the old chestnut about the world being over-populated – with human beings. To which, my usual response is: if you think the world is over-populated, get yourself off it! Or even: your grandchildren first, then your children, then you.

Violations of our rights and freedoms

I thought I might make a list of some of the basic rights and freedoms, that political governments, and the UK in particular, are violating or infringing today. As basis for my (incomplete) list, I will use the UN’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” dating from 1948: [[27]]. It may seem strange that, given the key role of the United Nations in the green agenda, I will seek to use a UN document to support my case. But back in 1948, the UN was new, and not quite as corrupt as it is now.

Article 7: “All are equal before the law.” This reflects that all government should be based on the rule of law. And under the rule of law, the rules to which individuals in a territory are to be expected to keep must be the same for every individual. They have violated this by granting exemptions from COVID rules for some CoP26 attendees, and want to violate it also by exempting “news providers” from the clutches of their new on-line censors.

Article 10: “Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.” The penalties, to which they wish to subject us on the climate change issue, must indeed be criminal penalties; since they have not identified any specific harms that we have done which require us to make compensation to any individuals or groups of people. They have not allowed us a fair and public hearing; the BBC, among others, have suppressed our viewpoint; there has been no free, fair and public debate on the issue. And they have failed to ensure an independent, impartial tribunal to judge the matter.

Article 11(1): “Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.” By their re-writing of the precautionary principle, they have stripped us of the presumption of innocence, and required us to prove a negative. There has been no public trial, and no evidence shown that proves our guilt beyond reasonable doubt. And our witnesses, including experts, have been harassed or persecuted. Judith Curry [[28]], Peter Ridd [[29]] and Susan Crockford [[30]] are examples.

Article 12: “No-one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation.” We are stalked with cameras, and our correspondence is intercepted by snoopers, without proof of reasonable suspicion of any real wrongdoing on our part. And scientists who have taken the realist side on climate change and related issues have had their reputations attacked, and their careers adversely affected.

Article 13(1): “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.” We have had our freedom of movement unnecessarily restricted, through COVID restrictions being continued in places and at times when the virus was either not significant, or receding as a threat.

Article 17(2): “No-one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.” The levies and taxes which have been imposed on us over the climate change issue have been arbitrary, and have never been objectively justified. Tax laws have also been used as a weapon to hurt people the establishment don’t like, such as lorry drivers and one-man software consultants.

Article 19: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” This right is being seriously curtailed, particularly with regard to on-line expression.

Article 20(1): “Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.” This right has been seriously curtailed, most of all for those who want to protest against draconian COVID restrictions, like Piers Corbyn [[31]].

Article 23(1): “Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment…” This right has been violated by using tax laws to prevent people from working in flexible ways that suit both the worker and the client.

The results of CoP26

Here is the Guardian’s view (from November 10^th) on the likely end result of the Glasgow gabfest: [[32]]. And here is an update to the evening of November 12^th: [[33]]. It does seem that the green leviathan has, at last, encountered a certain degree of resistance from a few countries that have worked out that it isn’t in their interests to stay on that bandwagon much longer. That’s encouraging, but not nearly enough yet.

We’ll have to wait and see what they ultimately come out with. But as more and more people around the world gradually become aware of the disruption, poverty and suffering to which the drivers of the green juggernaut want to subject them, there will soon be, I think, the start of a vast popular backlash against the “global warming” scam and all those responsible for it.

[[1]] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-23/u-k-eases-covid-travel-rules-for-cop26-climate-conference

[[2]] https://unfccc.int/files/essential_background/background_publications_htmlpdf/application/pdf/conveng.pdf

[[3]] https://www.ipcc.ch/apps/njlite/srex/njlite_download.php?id=6471

[[4]] http://www.conservativemanifesto.com/1992/1992-conservative-manifesto.shtml

[[5]] https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1992/jun/03/earth-summit

[[6]] https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/english_paris_agreement.pdf

[[7]] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-ten-point-plan-for-a-green-industrial-revolution

[[8]] https://misesuk.org/2021/01/24/green-industrial-revolution-or-great-leap-backward/

[[9]] https://misesuk.org/2021/01/31/a-dark-green-background/

[[10]] https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20190701152341/https://www.hse.gov.uk/aboutus/meetings/committees/ilgra/pppa.htm

[[11]] https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/carbon-valuation--2

[[12]] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/carbon-valuation-in-uk-policy-appraisal-a-revised-approach