//Whether NJ was intending to "lie", or was merely using poetic licence...//
Yes I did exaggerate – quite deliberately. It was intended to demonstrate why the “boy wolf” phenomenon is apparent with the latest warning from “intellectuals” rather than challenge or discuss that topic. When they are sceptical in what they are told “Non-intellectuals” tend to take what they’ve been told and embellish it. Hence my exaggeration. But when speaking of the copious warnings of Armageddon they have received that embellishment comes to the fore. To see why such scepticism abounds let’s look at what people are being told they must or must not do to save the planet and what else happens:
- People are told that they must not burn fossil fuels. New homes are to be built without gas boilers (to mention just one such nonsense). Meanwhile China is opening a new coal fired power station about every ten days.
- They are told that flying is environmentally damaging. Taking a family holiday in Mallorca is tantamount to drowning a sack of kittens in the canal. Meanwhile the hypocritical proponents of this idiocy manage to excuse their galivanting. One of ER’s leading lights, Robin Boardman-Pattinson pontificated that flying “should only be used in emergencies.” Among his emergencies in the last two years were three skiing trips and trips to Italy and Croatia, all taken by air. At the same time huge quantities of unnecessary goods are shipped and flown across the globe. Among them are green beans from Kenya to satisfy European tastes for produce that are out of season here (and so could simply be unavailable when suitable winter alternatives are available). From the same country huge quantities of cut flowers are flown in for Valentine’s Day and Mothers’ Day. Last week I ate some prawns which were caught in Norway, flown to China for packing and returned here for consumption.
- Consumers are told to turn their heating down and a scheme is in place (costing consumers £11bn+) to fit devices which will tell them their electricity bill will be lower if they turn the lights off than if they leave them on. Meanwhile shops are allowed to heat the street in January when using 25Kw curtain heaters with their doors wide open.
- “Biomass” has replaced coal in some of the country’s largest power stations. Biomass is wood (calorific value half that of coal by weight and considerably less than that by volume) sourced from mature trees on an industrial scale (forestry of an area the size of Wales being denuded each year) which is processed and shipped 4,000 miles from the USA and Canada to be burnt in Yorkshire. The burning of wood has laughingly been declared “Carbon Neutral” by the EPA but it cannot be all that good for the environment as the government is legislating to restrict the use of wood burning stoves.
- Motorists are told driving their fossil fuel powered cars is damaging. They are encouraged to switch to electric vehicles which, for many people, are totally unfit for purpose, the charging facilities for which are not available and the capacity to meet the increased power demand unavailable and unlikely to be. Meanwhile the EU Parliament (which produces many schemes to “reduce carbon”) shifts itself once a month from Brussels to Strasbourg. All 751 MEPs and their staff relocate by train, plane or bus. Meanwhile their goods and chattels are transported by a fleet of diesel lorries to meet them when they arrive.
I could go on – the list is endless. But perhaps you can understand why, when people are asked to make ridiculous and unnecessary adjustments to their lives, they remember the warnings they’ve received in the past, they remember that so far as they are aware they survived and they look around at what is happening elsewhere. As a result of all that many "non-intellectuals" turn round and say “D’ya know what? I couldn’t really give a stuff!”