I’ve got no problem with developing high speed rail to replace some short haul flights (particularly within Britain) – but you’ll be pushed to make it to Tallin and back on your weekend break by train.
And god knows what the fare would be.

Another really negative result of this modern (smug) trend to go ”invading” places like airports (or the House of Commons) is that in places that are already under real security threats, a bunch of kids playing silly buggers is totally selfish.
I remember about one airport invasion, some activist being interviewed on the radio said access to getting ”airside” at the terminal was easy, as they had just run down the exit channel and were then able to cause the airport to be thrown into turmoil for sometime. Also, setting off the fire alarms got everything grinding to a hault and all kinds of sirens going off.

It’s not about CO2 with me (as I accept that governments and industry have to do something about emissions) – but like the Spiked people might say about this continuous moral hectoring …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cqJMo50zQc
”Enough already!”

I went to the Heathrow airport climate camp last summer (just for a look about) and wasn’t really that impressed with what this movement looked like.
Now I’ve got nothing against peaceful hippy types (in fact they some of my favourite kinds of people – like I met at a ”Rainbow festival” in the Czech Republic some years ago), but if they start getting political then I think they loose the plot a bit.

For example: I was in a big marquee watching them practicing direct action tactics for breaking through police lines. It involved focusing large numbers of people at one point of a police line and trying to break through by overwhelming the police in that one particular area.
They were due to do it for real the next day. ”How daft” was my reaction to seeing this.

Is this action going to save one square meter of low lying coast in Bangladesh?

Seeing stuff like that and then reading Spiked’s coverage of the Beijing Olympics protests by western pro-Tibet supporters where there was an article that went:
”Putting the ‘I’ into internationalism
The arrest of four Free Tibet protesters in Beijing shows that Tibet still fulfills the fantasies of posh, disillusioned Westerners.”
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/5563/

It makes me think they might have a point about enviromental and pro-Tibet like campaigners.
Particularly ones that go chaining themselves to things, and go about with bicycle locks and rope carabiners on their person.

Posh Plane Stupid insists that it is not picking on poor people. So why is it so madly obsessed with cheap flights?

Because many of those cheap, short-haul flights are the ones that could be almost as easily carried out over land – causing many times less emissions, and at a much less damaging altitude – if only the investment was put into high-speed rail networks instead of airports. That’s why.

How dare they think that they can disrupt Stanstead airport? (like they did last january or sometime when the charged onto the runway and chained themselves to fences and stuff they had brought with them)

Their excuse to disrupting people already in the unworldly situation of being at an airport at the crack of dawn (having travelled long distances to get to this airport for early morning departures) is: ”Sorry folks, this is just another reminder from us people out trying to save the world, that your weekend citybreak to Barcelona or Prague (or Riga) is totally selfish, and so … sorry about the inconvenience, but we are talking about bigger things than your immediate distress and discomfort.”

That’s why I had some time for what Brendan O Neill said about this on Spiked.
”Class hatred at Stansted Airport
Posh Plane Stupid insists that it is not picking on poor people. So why is it so madly obsessed with cheap flights?”
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/6008/

How on earth do you possibly draw that conclusion?

Because although the outcome of Plane Stupid’s actions occasionally inconveniences individuals, the targets of their direct action are strictly corporations and government, as far as I’m aware?

I don’t recall people acting under the Plane Stupid banner telling individuals what to do (or not to do), but perhaps I am wrong about this.

As I mentioned, I am nothing to do with Plane Stupid. I have criticised them a few times in the past when I thought they were alienating the public, and this has been the times when their actions (against corporations) have inconvenienced members of the public too much.

Perhaps, but like radical feminism before it, the thing becomes a tautology. Remove yourself from the ‘real world’ (for want of a better description), indulg in collective group think and you can start to believe anything. That does not mean it survives a brush with the world as it is rather than as you would like it to be.

What is your point? The Climate Camp is not putting out an authoritarian Green message, and nor do I believe it has ever. If anything, it has been too anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist for the mainstream to really comprehend.

Now this is a better point. You have a stonger argument here, but isn’t this more to do with inequality rather than the environment per se?

No, this is very much to do with the environment. Every time I hear somebody say “why bother cutting our own CO2 emissions when China are increasing theirs?”, I feel the urge to point out the phrase “Made In China” on just about every piece of consumer junk in existence.

Now, that’s no insult intended towards the Chinese people, but more of just an observation that if it weren’t for the fact that capitalists are using their country (and thus the Chinese people’s share of emissions) to produce mountains of unnecessary crap to sell worldwide, then their emissions would be considerably lower.

In any case, it’s the per-capita emissions which are the best measure, and despite the amount of crap that they produce for us to buy capitalists to sell, the Chinese per-capita emissions are still something like ten times lower than ours in the UK.

Ten times lower – just think about that for a second.

What does that say about how much unnecessary energy we may each be consuming in this country? What on earth are we doing with it all?

And of course, that doesn’t include the energy consumption that we’re effectively “outsourcing” to China because they are making our stuff.

Energy consumption / unnecessary work / free time – they’re very much linked together.

(Afterthought: I’m not sure that really answers that part of your question? Does it?)

Sure, the two are not mutually exclusive but I struggle with the idea that if we remove the shareholders or ‘equalise’ top managers the same desires for travel, wealth and the like will diminish. Maybe they do in a climate camp, I don’t know.

Humanity is underrated.

I agree. But surely if humanity is underrated, then it’s not too optimistic to think that in a world where our basic needs were met by our immediate surroundings and community, the desires for travel, wealth and the like would diminish? I know they have in my case, and will continue to do so a lot more once we get properly established at our new place.

For example: points 1 to 5 are just laughable.
And as for point 6 ???
”In 1988, it set up a magazine called Living Marxism, later LM. By this time, the organisation, led by the academic Frank Furedi, the journalist Mick Hume and the teacher Claire Fox, had moved overtly to the far right. LM described its mission as promoting a “confident individualism” without social constraint.”

What an idiot…. ”had moved overtly to the far right” he says. Far right? That’s how we describe the likes of the BNP.

”(7) It campaigned against gun control,(8) against banning tobacco advertising (9) and child pornography,”

Point 7 is a subject that is open to having various (legitimate) views on, in my opinion, and one that should be open for debate. (Just like is fox hunting, where I remember them writing an article titled ”Fox hunting is fun”)
http://web.archive.org/web/20000304100503/www.informinc.co.uk/LM/LM108/LM108_Foxes.html
On a previous left/liberal website that I was on, views like that were reviled so much, that the moderator of that site banned further talk of fox hunting. A couple of rural pro-hunters (before I had ever joined the site) had so ”wound up” some of the anti-hunt regular leftists of that site, that passions had to be cooled by banning further talk of the issue.
(I found such passion about such an non-issue to be laughable)

Point 8 should also be up for debate. I’m not particularly enamored with all of the anti-smoking developments in recent years myself.

And as for point 9 and the idea that they defend child pornography, I think you have to know what it was that they actually said here. As I remember it, it was more a libertarian argument about controls over the freedom of viewing internet without having to explain what you were doing to some authority.

Having got that far through Monibiot’s spurious accusations against them, some of the later ones in that article … points 17 to 35 – (that I knew less about), I tended to wonder if they were built on sand as well.

And as I finish off this post, I’m looking at an article from Frank Furedi from today’s output which says:
”People should not be punished for their beliefs
The proposal to ban British National Party members from teaching in schools is a far bigger threat to democracy than the BNP itself.”
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7070/
Whether you agree with what he says or not, I think it’s a fair to view to take.

Yes. I believe in human inegnuity and in the resulting technological progress which has delivered (where it has been allowed to) extraordinary advances in human welfare.

That may be so. But can you not see that nearly all of this has come off the back of using up fossil fuels (and other natural resources) that have taken several hundred million years to form? Literally, in 200 years, we have taken all of that embedded energy – placed here by the Sun and transformed through various reactions over millennia – and used it up.

What will sustain your way of life in the future, when those resources are gone?

Not only that, but our “advances in human welfare” are still ripping off those in the majority (poorer) parts of the world, because our welfare comes at the expense of theirs.

So ultimately, our current way of life comes at the expense of future generations, and at the expense of others in our generation who do not have access to the same amount of resources that we have.

Is that in any way just?

Is that in any way sustainable?

I believe both answers are “no”.

In fact I am self-employed.

Well, good on you!

Still, as you will be claiming some small share of them for a while it seems you are not really that fussy yourself!

On the contrary, I am extremely bothered by this, and thinking about it (and ways away from it) sometimes keeps me awake at night. I don’t want to depend on the state in any way, but I have been raised in a country where it’s been deliberately made nigh-on-impossible NOT to depend on the state in some way.

I plan to transition away from this dependency over a period of about 5-10 years – the sooner the better. But like all transitions, it’s not just going to happen over night.

The first step is to recognise the problem, and the second is to make a plan away from it. I’m at the beginning of the third step, which is to take action to make that plan a reality.

Listen, in a way I admire what you are doing and am to some extent jealous. And I understand enough to know that the secret of happiness is in the suppression of appetite.

That’s an interesting way of putting it! But “suppression” is not really how I feel it, because that implies that I am giving something up, when in fact, I’m not “giving up” anything – just stopping my involvement in it.

But I would not welcome a return to a world of subsistence farming.

Neither do I! Which is why the other day when replying to you, I mentioned forest gardening and permaculture.

It seems to me that you are of the opinion that it’s a straight choice between “industrial capitalism” or “subsistence farming”, when really, that’s quite a false dichotomy.

Using human ingenuity, we can factor out hard labour and masses of energy from our food production systems, and use design and nature (who never sleeps) to do all the hard work for us.

It really is that simple – all we need is land to do it on.

And please, I implore you to watch “A Farm For The Future”, which I also linked to in that previous post – it’s very inspiring.

I don’t want you to feel jealous – you can do this too, if you really want to. (Though I can admit it’s not particularly easy to get started at the moment, which is why we’re going to try to make it easier.)

1) ‘Even groups like Plane Stupid (of which I am not involved) are not about telling individuals how to live their lives.’

How on earth do you possibly draw that conclusion?

2) ‘You could even go as far as to say that the Climate Camp is organised specifically as an alternative to authoritarian tendencies within the green movement, and that many people involved with it are well aware of authoritarianism, and actively take measures to spot it, prevent and counteract it.’

Perhaps, but like radical feminism before it, the thing becomes a tautology. Remove yourself from the ‘real world’ (for want of a better description), indulg in collective group think and you can start to believe anything. That does not mean it survives a brush with the world as it is rather than as you would like it to be.

3) ‘Just think what we could do with our lives if we eliminated all unnecessary work – you know, the type of work which is involved in producing things that nobody really needs, and which makes massive profits for a few wealthy shareholders.’

Now this is a better point. You have a stonger argument here, but isn’t this more to do with inequality rather than the environment per se? Sure, the two are not mutually exclusive but I struggle with the idea that if we remove the shareholders or ‘equalise’ top managers the same desires for travel, wealth and the like will diminish. Maybe they do in a climate camp, I don’t know.

Humanity is underrated.

Yes. I believe in human inegnuity and in the resulting technological progress which has delivered (where it has been allowed to) extraordinary advances in human welfare.

which power the corporation I’m guessing you might work for

In fact I am self-employed.

Persuade me that your earnings aren’t just a type of legalised theft

Your oxymoron already suggests I won’t be able to.
Still, as you will be claiming some small share of them for a while it seems you are not really that fussy yourself!

Listen, in a way I admire what you are doing and am to some extent jealous. And I understand enough to know that the secret of happiness is in the suppression of appetite.
But I would not welcome a return to a world of subsistence farming.

cjcjc – I never realised until just now when Katy pointed it out to me, but I always thought your nickname here was “cjcjcj“. Sorry for the extra “j” – it was just a brain fart of mine!

and I’d much rather you were very very slightly inspired than jealous. Will jealousy inspire you?

As Katy says.

Though aren’t “tax credits” just a convenient euphemism for adding extra state control into a system which just won’t admit that the lowest earners shouldn’t pay taxes on their earnings?

Or also a convenient way of taxing people, and only paying it back to those with the nouse to navigate their way through the confusion, find out what they are actually entitled to, and fill in the paperwork to claim it? (I mean, I’ve got a Computer Science degree and didn’t exactly find the tax credits forms a breeze to complete.)

I am self employed, and only work to earn as much money as I actually need to live off. As it is with nuclear power, so with money – we will always find ways to use up what we have available to use up. So I’m starting from the other end of the question – what’s the very least amount of money I can live off, and how can I best utilise my available budget without wasting it? I’m also working to reduce that amount, and perhaps in time, will not be working enough hours to qualify for working tax credit. When that point comes, it is fine by me, because we will have become largely self-sufficient.

For all intents and purposes, my objective is to become what is termed “economically inactive”, as far as is humanly possible. There are other ways to live, and we will be living them.

But personally, I think no individual should pay any income tax at all, and that all taxation should be based on corporate taxation and individual spending.

That way, if you resent paying taxes so much – just consume less! (Or, if you are a corporation, reduce your profits.)

If there is to be any sort of tax system at all, it should be one which discourages unnecessary spending and consumption of natural resources. But of course, that way lies the inevitable collapse of the global economy, doesn’t it?

Never mind that this current way lies the inevitable collapse of the global economy too though, eh?

Global economic collapse is coming, and it’s really going to bite. The more we depend on the economy for our life and limb, the more it’s going to hurt us. I’d like to find a painless way out, before it gets to that point. I believe the answer is to consume a lot less, work for other people a lot less, and meet our actual needs directly by producing a lot more ourselves.

(Or are we modern humans so useless and de-skilled that we can’t grow our own food, build our own houses, and produce our own heat and energy from our surroundings – doing all this freely in small communities without state involvement? Is that so unrealistic?)

While we’re on the subject of benefits, I presume you know full well who the biggest state welfare claimants are?

Immigrants. Single mums. The unemployed. The incapacitated. Pensioners. Oh wait, it’s… corporations!

Those figures are from before the credit crunch, when the state paid billions of pounds of our tax money in the way of corporate welfare to prop up the failing banks. (Or have you been asleep for the last year?)

Funny that you seem quite prepared to scoff the “benefits” insult a self-employed person and a parent, who are working their way towards self sufficiency, while simultaneously overlooking the abso-fricking-lutely HUGE benefits paid to corporations. (Do you work for a bank, per chance?)

Incidentally, I often find that you are rather glib in your criticism and dismissal of the things I post on this site, while revealing very little about yourself, or what you stand for instead.

So, let me ask you, if I may: What do you actually stand for, cjcjcj? Do you believe your way of life – whatever it is – can be continued into the future?

If I understood a little more about where you’re coming from and how you see the world, perhaps it would be easier not to jump to the conclusion that you’re just knee-jerking against what I’m saying because it doesn’t sit well with you.

It’s pretty easy to criticise, but I’m genuinely interested in your alternative suggestions to mine, if you’d care to enlighten me a bit about what you actually believe in?

Also, if I may – where do “your” wages come from? I mean, where do they really come from? How do you know they are really “yours”?

Because those natural resources which power the banks which power the corporation I’m guessing you might work for, which in some a round-about way produce the consumer goods I presume you like so much… those natural resources actually belong to nobody. Or rather, they are a gift which we have been given stewardship of for a time, and which it is our responsibility to pass on to future generations in the way we best can.

How do you know they are “yours” for the taking? We can’t just use them all up now, because we feel like it and have the means to. What does that leave for the future!?

So I’m afraid, unless you’d like to persuade me otherwise, those earnings of “yours” (and everybody, including me) amount to little more than theft of something which belongs to future generations, and which we in the “rich” parts of the world are already stealing the fair share of from those of our own generation, who by nothing but blind luck-of-the-draw happened to be born elsewhere to different parents.

Persuade me that your earnings aren’t just a type of legalised theft, and maybe you can sit on the moral high-horse for a while.

Me, I’m withdrawing from this scummy system as much as I possibly can, and I’d love to give you a hand, should you ever decide to do the same.

Well it doesn’t come from the money tree, does it?!

PS – yes I am (very very slightly) jealous.

As an aside, I find it amusing how people think that their hard-earned money is going straight into a pot labelled ‘benefits’. When who knows where that money comes from? I don’t. I assume all of our money goes into paying off our colossal national debt.

But to be totally frank with you, yes we will be claiming benefits – if working tax credits and child tax credits are seen as benefits?

I was getting incapacity benefit for a year until recently (for mental health problems) until the DWP in it’s wisdom, sent me for a medical assessment in which the person who did the assessing said that she didn’t think me capable for voluntary work at that time, let alone employment, and then was ‘failed’ on the points system (I got 8 when I needed 10) based on a “decision maker’s” conclusions who is not a medical professional or someone who has ever met me before. Incidentally, looking at the questions and answers there are at least 2 questions that are wrong, worth about 4 points. I am going to appeal, but not very hard because I don’t have the energy needed to do a long hard slog. That’s probably what they count on. But I digress.

Neither of us wants to be on benefits in the long term. But we have both worked and paid taxes. Dave still works as a self employed person. But we simply don’t consume as much as the average person, and we plan to become producers, rather than consumers. All Dave is trying to do is inspire others to find ways of making themselves freer and happier, and in the process, cause less unwitting destruction.

Oh, I’m Dave’s partner, if you hadn’t already guessed!

It’s just that in the interim I don’t want the local powerstation closed down while we pursue a will-o-the-wisp. I’d like to think I can moderate my own power use, I don’t need or want protesters to do it for me. They may not be arguing about my right to use electricity, but they they can skate very close to saying that their views matter more than mine.

Disclaimer: I am not involved in organising Climate Camp. I’m just somebody who attended the first two camps, and was involved in running one of the workshops and doing some cooking. I can’t speak for Climate Camp – there is no such formal “organisation” to speak for, really. I do speak as someone who can at least say that many of the people involved hold very similar views to mine.

Climate Camp is not (and has never been) about telling individuals how to live their lives. In fact, I was at a very well attended (200+ people) discussion at the second (Heathrow) Climate Camp, where Aubrey Meyer (quite a well respected environmentalist) suggested that our only chances of survival were in strictly controlling the environmental impact of individuals – green authoritarianism, basically. He was severely condemned (with his points thoroughly dismantled) by a sizeable number of the audience, including myself. It went so far in fact, that someone made an announcement at the end to say that this way of trying to solve the problems was not at all in the spirit of the Climate Camp, which has always been about individuals freely, joyfully and collectively taking control of their lives and their world.

Climate Camp is not 100% anarchist, but it is organised entirely on anarchist principles and has a deafeningly loud anti-authoritarian slant on the way green issues are presented and discussed. You could even go as far as to say that the Climate Camp is organised specifically as an alternative to authoritarian tendencies within the green movement, and that many people involved with it are well aware of authoritarianism, and actively take measures to spot it, prevent and counteract it.

I don’t blame anyone who hasn’t actually been to Climate Camp and experienced this first hand, because chances are you wouldn’t pick it up from the mainstream press.

Climate Camp is not about telling individuals how to live their lives. Even groups like Plane Stupid (of which I am not involved) are not about telling individuals how to live their lives.

Certainly, some folks involved with many environmental movements including Climate Camp and Plane Stupid make the mistake (perhaps out of frustration, desperation or just plain fear?) of thinking that the only way we’re going to survive is through green authoritarianism, or guilt-tripping individuals. They are entitled to their views, but I believe they are mistaken, and they are a minority within Climate Camp at least.

It has been clear to me for some time now that authoritarianism is not a way forward in the slightest; that you can’t use guilt, fear or coercion to motivate the masses, and that such tactics are always doomed to eventual, colossal failure – without exception. Green authoritarianism is every bit as undesirable as any other form of authoritarianism.

Climate Camp is about tackling the corporations and capitalists who are driving climate change. In the context of direct action against a coal-fired power station, it is about pointing out that if it weren’t for corporations pushing consumerism in the name of profits above all else, then we absolutely would not even “need” these coal fired power stations.

If consumer capitalism were abolished, we could easily meet all our genuine electricity and energy needs from renewables alone – many times over.

Which is why, again, most within the “Green movement” (if there is such a thing) are opposed to nuclear power – because aside from the mountains of radioactive toxic waste for future generations to deal with using considerably less resources than we’re currently using to avoid dealing with it – nuclear power is completely unnecessary with regard to meeting our actual energy needs. The only reason for “needing” so much electricity is to power the industries which make big profits for a minority of capitalists, at the expense of us all.

Just think what we could do with our lives if we eliminated all unnecessary work – you know, the type of work which is involved in producing things that nobody really needs, and which makes massive profits for a few wealthy shareholders.

Wouldn’t we enjoy life more if we all just did a lot less, and had less “stuff” in our lives?

I don’t know. I can’t speak for anybody other than myself, but the less stuff I own and the less stuff I “have” to do, the more time I have for things which really matter to me – like friends, producing my own food, making and listening to music, writing, enjoying the company of my daughter!

My friends! The work ethic and endless drive towards “progress” (what sort of progress?) is killing us from inside and out.

We can have environmental justice, social justice, freedom, time to do whatever we want, and an incredible quality of life. It all starts from rejecting the idea that we “need” all this stuff that people are trying to sell us, and from finding our own ways to live.

Please – just do less, and co-operate with others to enable them to do (or not do) the same!

On the other hand, I don’t mind if you don’t, because next week I am moving out of the city, to the countryside, to do exactly as I have described above. I already feel better for necessarily having to give away quite a lot of the possessions that I really didn’t need – like quite a large weight has been lifted from my shoulders. The things that I own still own me, but to a lesser degree already, and thus I am already happier from downsizing.

Do you think that someone climbing an endless, wobbly “career ladder”, having to compete and sell themselves “better” than their co-workers in order to get promoted, worrying about pension plans, large mortgages, insurance for their property, interest rates, earning enough to eat and with precious little time or energy left for “leisure” (Origin: “licēre” = to be permitted!! HAH… permitted!?!?!) and all the rest of it will be happier than me in a couple of years time?

I seriously doubt it.

In fact, I know a few city slickers – permanently tied to their Blackberries – who are absolutely riddled with jealousy at what we’re about to do – at the freedom we’re about to taste, even if only for a short while. But the point is – they could do it too, if they’d just stop being such slaves to their careers (which they only “need” in order to purchase stuff that they don’t really need).

While they are sitting in meetings, or popping out to Pret A Manger to grab a quick lunchtime sandwich before heading back for a hard slog at the office in the afternoon – I’ll be off picking wild blackberries (the real ones) with my daughter, or working on our vegetable garden, or building new contraptions to collect heat and generate power, or sitting outside in the sun.

We’re doing this on a shoestring budget too – there is SO much waste around at the moment, that it’s not even difficult to find the things we need – often for free! You just have to let go of your fear, get creative, and learn a few new skills.

A high paying job in the city has nothing – absolutely nothing – to offer me. Because I don’t really need anything, other than myself.

Not to mention that my lifestyle will stand well in the face of environmental catastrophe – which isn’t to necessarily say that I will personally survive it. But what does a career or a large pension mean when the entire financial system supporting it is in ruins, and all those big numbers on a computer are finally shown for the empty nothings that they really are – as will happen when consumer capitalism soon runs out of the resources to support itself.

The writing has been on the wall for ages. That way of life is coming to an end, whether we like it or not, within our lifetimes and probably a lot sooner.

How are you going to adapt, survive and enjoy your life as best as possible?

I know what I’m doing, and I’m getting in there years ahead of you and enjoying it NOW!

And yeah, you can come and steal my food, and I’ll maybe have to start again… but still, I’ll have learned the skills to start again if I must, and the empathy to not resent you for acting out of desperation for yourselves.

Perhaps I’ll even help you to get established on your own – and actually, helping all comers to get established on their own is also a major part of my eventual plan.

So please, don’t call those of us with our eyes open and a positive vision of a future in an increasingly uncertain world “envirotards”, when that is not the case.

The future is bright green, and we can all be a lot freer and happier than we are now. I’m sure one day we’ll look back on this time and be able to laugh at how we thought we had so much, but we actually had so little of any real worth.

But why take my word for it, when you could permanently tell your boss to fuck off, and live the adventure yourself?

PS. I mean really, just look at what cowards we have become to the slavish doctrine of the career, and to the idea of work now for reward later! Why, why, WHY!? My friends, just break free and walk away!

I know I go on about tidal power, but a combination of Severn and Solway Firth barrages would make a huge difference to our use, and dependence on fossil fuels. Whilst the Greens embrace the idea of tidal power, they also give the NIMBY element almost unfettered powers of obstruction.

It is really not good that what should be a debate that involves all of us would be constrained by knee jerk idiocy.

I don’t mind so much Spiked’s writing on liberties and other social and economic issues – I might not agree with everything but the arguments they present need to be heard. I do object though to their treatment of environmental issues. Of course they are right in criticising the wing of the green movement that rejects technology and science but that is hardly a controversial or brave stance, anybody who understands the value of science and evidence will broadly agree with Spiked’s initial arguments. However, where they go wrong, badly so imho, is to make assertions on the scientific understanding of AGW, pollution, biology of pain, etc that go against the scientific consensus. In this they are the mirror image of the greens who fear technology, they adore it so much they overlook the effects or outright disort the evidence (as my look at that smoking article shows). Also, their sweeping dismissal of environmentalism as being the preserve of fruitcakes is grossly unfair, much of the public face may consists of individuals and organisations who mean well but don’t really understand what they are talking about so make basic errors but environmental science and studies of ecosystems make clear that we should be very concerned about the effect of our activities on local and global biodiversity and geography.
It is very telling that Spiked prefer to attack the strawman of Al Gore, a hypocritical politician, rather than the scientific arguments when it comes to climate change. Al Gore’s arguments are simplistic and unsubtle to the point of being almost wrong, the scientific evidence is more nuanced and careful and to criticise it requires an in depth knowledge of the fields, mathematics, statistics, computers, etc. Skills I feel most Spiked writers lack.