Extinction Rebellion is worst threat to environment

THIS week brought mixed signals about the environment. On the one hand, the scenes from towns such as Tenbury Wells in the aftermath of Storm Dennis, indicate that extreme weather seems to be getting more frequent.

On the same bulletin, there were accounts of a new kind of pebble, made of toxic plastics – the latest in the almost daily stories that make you think you must remember to stick the recycled bags in the car.

Then came the footage of Extinction Rebellion, digging up the lawn of Trinity College Cambridge, where they have been blocking the roads, vandalising buildings and impeding ambulances. Their displays of criminal damage and obstruction of the highway were enabled by the police, who announced that they would make no arrests unless there were cases of violent assault.

Even on social media, where the “climate emergency” is an article of quasi-religious faith, many thought that these antics were enough to make you want to turn on every light in the house and insist on plastic straws with every drink.

A more constructive proposal would be to arrest them all and sentence them to community service, preferably involving some form of hard labour building flood defences, breakwaters and defences against coastal erosion.

The most serious obstacle to action to improve the environment now comes not from those who challenge the science (they are ignored), nor from giant corporations, public institutions, or governments (who have all signed up to targets which involve enormous social and economic upheaval, on timetables that seem at the very least optimistic).

It comes from the arrogance, overstatement and counterproductive behaviour of what is now a cult, making claims as readily dismissed as those of climate deniers.

Those who deny climate change, or more moderately, accept it, but are sceptical about the degree to which it is caused by human actions, have to contend with the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community, evidence of physical changes in glaciers and polar ice, desertification and apparent increases in extreme weather. These all seem incontrovertible.

That is presumably why companies – especially those seen as typical polluters – are investing in greener technology on a huge scale, and governments go in for shindigs like COP26, which comes to Glasgow later this year.

The Tory government’s plans may not be enough for Extinction Rebellion, but they’re hardly unambitious. Getting rid of cars as we know them in 10 years is a tall order.

Overstating the case undermines the credibility of real problems, such as the recent floods

Ranged against this work actually being done to improve stewardship of resources, work on conservation, find cleaner fuel, and stop trashing the environment with unnecessary waste – all of which ought to appeal to small C conservatives, just as much as superannuated hippies – are the hysterical proclamations and criminal behaviour of people who have adopted environmentalism as an excuse to smash capitalism.

Helpfully, to demonstrate that “the science” requires the abandonment of policies that have reduced infant mortality, increased life expectancy, and given us the lowest ever level of absolute poverty, while the population of the planet has increased eightfold since the beginning of the Industrial Age, they keep making specific, testable predictions of disaster. Unhelpfully, these predictions have almost all been wrong.

No one denies there are problems. Or that it’s taken too long to address them. But overstating the case – as groups such as Extinction Rebellion do – undermines the credibility of real problems, such as the recent floods.

In the 1960s, population growth would lead to global famine by 1975, in the 1970s, there would be global winter by 2000, by the 1980s, rising temperatures would lead to whole nations being submerged by the ocean. Figures from George Monbiot to Prince Charles, David Attenborough to Greta Thunberg, to Al Gore have been predicting disaster on a scale not even measured in decades, but years, or months. It keeps not happening.

There are two reasons: first, they wildly overstate their case. Second, defying the anticapitalist eco-movement’s prescriptions, improvements have come from economic growth, technology, and people’s rising incomes and quality of life. Globalism, trade and innovation are the solutions.

The problem is nonsensical exaggeration, measures that would impoverish billions, and criminality.