by the Reverend Philip Foster
I was invited to debate with Craig Bennett Director of Policy for Friends of the Earth last Tuesday afternoon before 6th form students at Brentwood School (as it turned out Craig Bennett is an old boy of Brentwood school). There were about 40 present plus two or three staff members. It was chaired by a student (who did it very well). It was not a formal debate as no votes were taken. We each had about 15 minutes to present our cases for and against: ”We must take urgent action to avoid the effects of Climate Change• Craig Bennett, unfortunately for him, spent rather too much time saying what sceptics would be telling them and then just trotting out the familiar alarmist material. This placed me is a good position to present the facts about actual climate behaviour, past and present, and the minimal impact that CO2 had. As much of my material was IPCC data it was very difficult for Craig to challenge.
The teacher who had invited me (confessing that he was a ‘warmist’ before the meeting) later emailed to say he’d never seen the data I’d presented and neither had another teacher and were consequently revising their opinion on the matter. At least one student came up and said much the same. Craig Bennett wanted to have the PP I’d presented – doubtless to try and pick holes in due course – but that’s perfectly fair, so that has been forwarded! The meeting was good tempered.
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No doubt “Friends of the Earth” are still anti nuclear – thus making their anti C02 emissions stance a total sham.
Instead of the deregulation of nuclear power (allowing, for example, the deployment of one piece nuclear generators the size of a truck – but still able to supply the power needs of a reasonably sized town), “Friends of the Earth” favour more subsidies for wind (a total failure) and solar……
In the United States solar power stations have proved to be a con – in yet another scandal Google, J.P. Morgan Chase (and the rest of the “usual suspects”) are demanding taxpayer grants to pay back their taxpayer loans for the latest Californian failure (what is about the word “loan” they do not understand? and why should the Federal government even make loans anyway?).
Many billions of Dollars have already been thrown away on “renewables” (basically Corporate Welfare) – yet “Friends of the Earth” demand yet more.
And, of course, for oil from Canada to the United States to continue to be transported on Mr Warren Buffett’s trains – rather than via the Keystone Pipeline (so much for REDUCING C02 emissions as transportation by train is much less efficient than transport by pipeline).
In both Germany and Japan the “Green” attack on nuclear power has meant an increase in COAL use (again so much for a sincere opposition to C02 emissions) and the regulations and taxes in Germany are directly hitting German manufacturing (not so long ago German manufacturing was the envy of the world).
I suspect that the destruction of large scale manufacturing (the economies of scale that are the basis of the modern world) is the true objective of the “Greens” – under the mask of concern with C02.
The Greens are the most reactionary (in the bad sense of the word) Luddite group in the world today.
Thank you, Paul!
There are many scenarios within which I disagree with you, and your whingeing about various kinds of stuff irritates me beyond measure sometimes.
But this is not one of those times.
Indeed, there may even be two libertarians on the planet who agree about _at least one thing_ . A red-letter-day for sure!
Um, David, can’t you count to three? 😉
(Vis-á-vis your last para, to be clear.)
Ah, so there’s another one then? We’ll have to be splitting the movement now…. lol
‘Tis a sad thing to see
Libertarians three
(Inclusive of me),
Who’ve come to agree. 🙁
Surely we can come up with at least some minor point of contention to hold the movement together.
The late Chris R Tame used to say:-
“THERE MAY BE TWO LIBERTARIANS SOMEWHERE ON THE PLANET WHO AGREE ABOUT EVERYTHING, BUT I’M NOT ONE OF THEM!”
Your experience in this debate illustrates two important points.
1) The scientific facts are not on the side of the AGW alarmist side and can persuade people who are allowed to hear them and are willing to follow those facts to logical conclusions.
2) That first point being true, we have the explanation for the alarmists’ reliance on emotional arguments based on, at best, misrepresenting the science. And the usual Left tendency, in an ironic twist on freedom of speech, to shout down those who disagree with them.
Actually, Paul, as you know: I’d “penally-transport” the “greens”. I did think for some years about the South Sandwich Islands. (Not South Georgia, which has some vegetation in short periods in Jan/Feb, and also a lot of animals they could eat instead of each other, but the “other ones” where there is nothing at all at any time.) They’d be happy there, for they’d have each other to kill/butcher/eat, for a little time, and of course nothing of what they say they don’t like.
But then, there’s not enough space there for all of them to not scrag, shag, butcher and eat each other in a too-short time for their full and longish enjoyment of their “green lifestyle”. So I have now decided to do a deal with shootinputin187, who’ll let them go to Novaya-Zemlya, and be walled off there where they can’t upset anyone else, for ever and ever, on condition that we buy his gas for a few years (we will.)
David if I “whinge” about the followers of Thomas Hobbes and so on (the traitors to humanity – to the very idea of humans as free moral agents) what am supposed to do instead? Hang them? That does not seem very libertarian to me.
By the way – if an enemy of liberty (of human agency and such things as the Bill of Rights – for the politics of the latter depends, absolutely and completely, on the philosophy of the former) is open about their wickedness, I do NOT “whinge” about them. It is only if such a person (who denies the very concept of personhood) pretends to be a “liberal” or (even more absurd) a “libertarian” that I complain.
I will not pretend to be an ally of those who, for example, regard the fall of the Berlin Wall (the 25 anniversary is tomorrow – so we should try to remember this event during the Sunday services marking the end of the Great War against historicism and relativism, as can be seen in the background to the document that is the German Declaration of War upon France in 1914) as a predetermined event (predetermined from the very beginning of the universe), and the humans who then crossed from East to West Berlin as not human BEINGS, but as predetermined machines (like wind-up clockwork toy ducks) moving without any choice to do otherwise than they did.
I will not send such anti libertarians (such traitors to humanity) to Hell myself – but I am not going to hide my opposition to them either.
Absolutely David (we all have disagreements) – but I draw the line at the denial of personhood, the denial that a human is a being (a reasoning “I”) who can choose between good and evil.
That is the basis of libertarianism – philosophical as well as political.
I am especially concerned about such matters (our existence as moral agents – and the choice between good and evil) today – for obvious reasons.