Climate change sparks verbal onslaught
DARE any of us put mouse to screen on the issue of climate change without risking a verbal onslaught from those who know best?
Is the vocabulary used by that side in this debate designed to help us understand its complexity, e.g. ‘idiot, fanatic, zealot, deranged, madness, malign, secretive, sanctimonious, puritanical...’?
From at least the time of ancient Greece, participants in debate believed that their purpose was to persuade those of a different view that their side had more reliable information, greater accuracy with facts and a deep commitment to truth.
However, it seems now that two ‘environmentalists’ from North Devon are happier with something like the Trump approach to debate.
Mr Griffin (September 15) has joined Ms Bell. As he replaces so much fact with invention he must be in the Joe Lycett camp of comedians, where you quote the most extreme versions of the side you pretend you are supporting in order to show how threadbare their arguments are.
This used to be known as satire when words had solid meanings. Now this language is being used to bully or confuse us. I had thought that we kept the King’s English in order to retain British values, but it seems that Monty Python is back in fashion and we are all profoundly worse off for this.
Even the simplest terms must retain meaning. The Oxford Dictionary defines a factory as “a location where goods are manufactured or assembled” but we are continuously told that turbine factories “cover the Devon countryside” and are even off the coast. If we can’t even agree as to what we see in the landscape, there can be no decisive debate. Therefore action is delayed... and the temperature and sea levels rise, ice melts and our children...
As for the facts, we are told that Citizens’ Assemblies would be “a charade of self-elected partisans”.
Citizens’ Assemblies (CA)are not self-appointed; examples abound: 2018, CA organised by the UK Parliament to give views on social care; 2019, CA organised by the Scottish government on the political future; 2019, CA organised by Oxford University on Climate Change; 2020, CA organised by the UK parliament team on climate (108 diverse members)...
Bird murder is repetitiously chanted, but the RSPB tells us: “Provided they are sighted away from major migration routes and breeding grounds, wind turbines have a minimal effect on bird life”.
Figures provided by the Advisory Organisation to the Spanish government (from a nationwide survey in Denmark) gave the following: birds killed by turbines per year: 30,000. Birds killed by cars per year: 1,000,000. Conclusion?
Will these European stats be instantly dismissed because they are European? And just to note that other coastal nations are pushing ahead with this energy source – Denmark is erecting the single largest offshore turbine so far which will, at full power, provide electricity for 18,000 homes. Not bad... but the anti-progress camp say “windmills belong to the 17th century.”
We are also told that Extinction Rebellion’s aim is “indoctrination of the young... demoralise the young”. Child development research departments in the US, Norway,
Bath University and Imperial College London all state that the way to avoid chidren’s depression over the climate crisis is to provide age-appropriate information and to discuss this information, allowing emotions out. If kids are afraid because of what they see and hear from so many sources, are we to tell them that powerful demos, one of many tools that might help us, have only one message – that “the world is about to end”?
Then there are the flights of fancy: to quote just two – it is implied that XR demos in Parliament interrupt police action and therefore enable actions such as the murder of PC Keith Palmer (2017). Even better – the success of the Nazi Party was due to Hitler’s popularising of fresh air and dogs!
If some adults want to rubbish the debate on the single most threatening issue of our time, they should, in order not to depress young readers, write to The Oldie magazine, which, appropriately, from their point of view, is
“crammed with intelligence and delight”.
Jeremy Hall Exeter, Devon