Voices from the Hive 4

This week’s newsletter is slightly later than usual due to the huge amount of data and stats that have been rolling in following Thursday’s UK Election. The big political and environmental story of this week was of course the re-election of another toxic Tory government in the United Kingdom. The fact that a Party with perhaps one of the worst environmental records in British history, led by a Prime Minister who, when he was Mayor of London, said openly that he would like to frack for gas directly under the City, is back in power illustrates just how we far we will now all have to go in order to bring about satisfactory change within a broken and toxic system.

Friday’s demonstrations in Central London and outside Downing Street in particular not only illustrated the levels of dissatisfaction with the result among Climate Change and Environmental Activists generally, but also the huge chasm that appears to have opened up between young and old in the wake of Thursday’s events. As Extinction Rebellion joined Fridays For Future in a Solidarity Action @ COP 25 Madrid on Friday afternoon, things were getting underway for a weekend of protest organised by XR in association with Greenpeace NL at Schiphol Plaza, Amsterdam International Airport. An event which had previously been reported on the GardaWorld Security Services website.

For XR members and affiliates unaware of who GardaWorld are, GardaWorld claims to be the largest privately owned security services company on the planet. Earlier in the year the Financial Times reported that GardaWorld had singled out UK Government Security Contractor G4S as a takeover target for its rival, ‘sending shares in the world’s biggest publicly listed provider of security services sharply higher’ according to the FT website. Previous acquisitions by the company include Kolossal Security, now GardaWorld BEST special event; the Aegis Group, which, according to the company website provides ‘specialized protective services in 10 countries in Africa and the Middle East’, including ‘challenging missions protecting Iraqi oil fields’; and NYA, ‘a UK-based crisis management consulting firm’. In view of the fact that XR actions are now being reported in advance of when they occur clearly illustrates the impact that XR have been making in relation to global awareness of the negative impacts of Climate Change.

In spite of this the high level denialism continues. On Thursday, as the UK election was getting underway, Dr. Emily Grossman of Scientists for XR took part in a radio discussion with Climate Change denier Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk Radio in the company of Brendan O’Neill, a ‘reformed’ toxic Marxist now working for Rupert Murdoch. The twin subjects of Greta Thunberg and Climate Change were perhaps a give away for the toxicity that was to emanate from the airwaves courtesy of the woman who, back in August, had expressed her annoyance at the fact that people who had witnessed her effective trolling of the teenage climate activist on Twitter had the audacity to complain about it! In view of the fact that a proven Right Winger appears to have needed the support of a former member of the Revolutionary Communist Party and contributor to ‘Living Marxism’, who now writes for Rupert Murdoch’s ‘The Australian‘, itself in the media vanguard of Climate Change Denialism, almost certainly indicates that even denialists such as Hartley-Brewer are starting to realise that there is no intellectual or scientific basis for their arguments.

Meanwhile, scientific journals and the quality press have presented a steady stream of stories from Australia’s Climate Change front line throughout 2019 effectively destroying the validity of Hartley-Brewer’s arguments. Then, earlier this month the Vice News website reported on a ‘mega fire’ the size of Sydney which had shrouded the city with thick clouds of smoke so dense that it was ‘setting off smoke alarms and sending asthmatics to….hospital. Finally, on Friday, in the immediate aftermath of the UK general election, further revelations in the Australian Courier Mail suggested that the country could be heading for temperatures in excess of 45 degrees ‘from Wednesday onwards!’. These developments would tend to further undermine Ms. Hartley Brewer’s assertions in relation to all matters relating to Climate Science. However, the fact that she is still intent on promoting a denialist agenda may have something to do with her links to Nigel Lawson, Lord Lawson to you and I, whose links to a little known organisation that calls itself ‘The Global Warming Policy Forum‘, a London-based think tank, may put her willingness to act as a mouthpiece for the Climate Change Denialist ‘Aristocracy’, some of whom have featured in an earlier newsletter, into proper perspective.

One major story that won’t be featuring on the Global Warming Policy Forum website, with its reports on Big Oil’s involvement with the Fracking Industry, is anything about the latest revelations from the Scientific American that a ‘newly identified jet-stream pattern could imperil global food supplies. The report, published on-line in the journal’s ‘Eye of the Storm’ blog whilst the #COP25 was still in progress seems to suggest the onset of a twenty-fold ‘increase in the risk of simultaneous heat waves in major crop-producing regions when the pattern is in place’. In spite of this, the #COP25 Climate talks in Madrid have concluded with a wholly inadequate agreement merely to ‘ask’ countries to adopt more ambitious targets to scale back emissions as a means of compliance with the terms of the 2015 Paris Accord; but no pledges for concrete affirmative action. More on this and other major news stories in our next bulletin!

Newcomers to this newsletter can catch up with our previous issues here at this link.