Eco Fascism, Doom Porn, and the Politics of Fear

Recently I've received a bunch of emails and private messages urging me to add my signature to a petition that the government declare a state of 'climate emergency'.
 

Sorry if I sound cynical but this sounds a lot like fear peddling to me.

I don't think it's drawing too long a bow to recall that in the aftermath of 9-11 there was lots of fear peddling as well. This led to a War on Terror in which we completely destroyed the Middle East and North Africa at a cost of MILLIONS of lives. Libya, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan have been practically wiped off the map and many more countries impacted indirectly. The War on Terror was also backed up by a ton of ‘irrefutable evidence’ from a conga line of experts. Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, Qaddafi was giving his men Viagra to rape women, Assad was gassing his own people. Not to mention the empirically falsifiable official account 9-11 itself. 'Evidence' which we happily swallowed because we've been taught to fear brown people and Muslims.

Anyway, suppose we declare a climate emergency. What will we do then? Have a war on climate change? How would we prosecute such a war? There is lots of talk about the need to reduce CO2 emissions, but little evidence that this will actually achieve anything. CO2 accounts for 0.04% of atmospheric gases - an figure so low that it must be measured in parts per million. Supposing we set aside the laws of thermodynamics and accept the climate change hypothesis as it currently stands – that greenhouse gases, in particular human CO2 emissions, are capturing heat in the atmosphere and re-emitting it, thus warming the earth’s surface. It requires an enormous amount of energy for a gas to heat a liquid or a solid, and given the volume of total sea water is about 1.35 billion trillion liters, 1 degree of atmospheric cooling would take literally thousands of years to cool the oceans by the same amount.

Given that we don't have that much time before melting polar ice and rising sea levels potentially drown us all, what policies do we have beyond reducing CO2 emissions? What policies do we have to deal with the refugees from 'climate change'? We are talking about mass migration here. What policies do we have to make sure there will be enough of food and water, employment and housing, education and healthcare for everyone? What I see at the moment are two responses. One is to build border camps and put up walls. The other is to assume dictatorial power over all natural resources and deny poor countries a pathway out of poverty.

It all seems, if I may say so, very convenient. Also more than tad racist.

The eco-lobbyists tell us we cant afford to bring any more coal fired power plants online. But which do you suppose produces more CO2: One coal fired power station powering 10,000 homes in a third world country, or 10,000 households burning wood and dung to prepare their daily meal? Then think about the REAL cost of the alternative energy sources being proposed. Lithium batteries and solar panels? Are you kidding me? I'll take Congolese child labour for 200 please. And just for good measure, here's a picture of a diesel generator fueling an electric car.

If we’re not simply waging another war on brown people under the rubric of climate action, then the real question we should be asking is how do we decrease our reliance on fossil fuels while ensuring that the global south has a sustainable path to development? And please don't tell me "those Indians don't really need much electricity", or that they can make do with lead acid batteries. Frankly I'm not so attached to my western lifestyle that I wouldn't make do with less if it meant helping people in the developing world to get a leg up. But that isn't what the current solutions on offer are about. Just as the profits of war go to the super-rich, so do the profits of disaster capitalism.

If on the other hand we are willing to step up and admit that we are actually waging war on brown people under the rubric of climate action, then why hold back. Let’s give it a catchy name that we can really pitch. How about Radical Islamic Climate Change? A little awkward at first, but I'm sure it's something we could quickly get used to.