Angry in the Great White North

We know, for a fact, that climate alarmists have a difficult relationship with democracy.

David Suzuki called on elected officials to be arrested if they refused to bend to the will of scientists in the global warming camp, and instead listened to the whole of scientific opinion, or worse yet, their constituents.

Green Party leader Elizabeth May has long advocated changing Canada's electoral system in such a way as to guarantee her a seat in Parliament, having failed repeatedly to convince a plurality of Canadians in ridings of her choosing that the Green Party would best represent their interests.

Phil Jones, former head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, wrote in emails how he would destroy raw meteorological  data rather than had it over under a Freedom of Information request (FOI playing a key role in maintaining transparency in government and so allow the citizenry to see what their elected officials, and the people paid for out of tax dollars, are up to).

But the disdain for the democratic process will pale in what comes next, I suspect, because the evidence suggests that the majority of Canadians and Americans are decidedly skeptical of the snake oil being offered by climate alarmists:

As the climate change talks in Copenhagen appear to be deadlocked with only one day remaining, there are indications that the public is simply not engaged. Dimitri Pantzopoulos of Ottawa-based Praxicus Research (he is a former Conservative Party pollster) says that among Canadians "levels of concern over the environment are on the decline."

"There has been a change over the past few years from the attitude that 'we have to do all we can' to one of 'let's do things that make sense.'," he says. "This means people will place the environment in their calculus when they buy things, but they will not dramatically alter their lifestyle. It also means that these ideas of wealth transfers to developing countries will not be well-received."

And a recent Angus Reid Global Monitor poll that shows that fewer Americans - 44 per cent compared to 51 per cent in July - believe that global warming is caused by vehicle emissions and industry. This compares to 22 per cent of Americans who believe "global warming is happening but mostly caused by natural changes," says the report. That is up two percentage points from November and up 5 percentage points from last July.

That skepticism is likely to grow.  Clearly the momentum is in that direction.  Former Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion's attempt at a primarily environmental agenda for a major political party failed spectacularly at the ballot box.  The full impact of the Climategate revelations has yet to be felt, but has already shifted public opinion.  The looming failure of the Copenhagen negotiations will add to the effect as people wake up the next morning to a world that appears no worse off despite that failure.  And finally, as people come to realize that the Copenhagen conference was primarily a shakedown of wealthy countries by developing countries, with the United Nations acting as the muscle, people will rightly wonder just how giving billions to criminals like Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe is supposed to alter the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (not that we really know much about the true state of the atmosphere or how it affects global temperature, given the fraud perpetrated by the climatologists at CRU, and likely by other climatologists at other centres).

So the climate alarmists are facing a changing world.  Not a world in which the temperature is changing because of human activity, of course.  That has been shown to be so much codswallup.   I mean a world in which they can take it for granted that a majority of the citizenry, at least in Canada and the United States, will accept their alarmist declarations at face value, and nod at their absurd solutions.  Instead, the majority will look at the alarmists with skepticism, if not with outright hostility.

That in turn will embolden elected officials to stop bowing and scraping in front of environmentalists.  Instead, there will be difficult questions asked by politicians of the alarmists. 

And we know from the East Anglia emails how much climate alarmists enjoy being asked to substantiate their wild claims.  That is to say, not at all.

So what will be the reaction of climate alarmists?  In the case of David Suzuki, it is to take global warming out of the realm of science and politics, and into the realm of morality, where he thinks it will remain unassailable:

CBC's EVAN SOLOMON: And by the way, they're saying because it is, by the way, because the oil sands creates jobs, creates money that is transferred to other provinces, and that's their notion of the balance.

DAVID SUZUKI: You know, that's what they used to say in the southern states. We can't give up slavery because it'll destroy our economy and slavery gives us jobs and we have to have slave runners and all of that. Some things you do because they're right. And you know, the problem is...

So skeptics are the moral equivalent of slave owners?  This is not as crazy as it sounds.  I mean, clearly it's ridiculous.  But the strategy is consistent with a movement that is losing the political battle.  They are trying to shift the battlefield to a question of morality.

Expect skeptics to be compared to slave owners, Nazis, child molesters, rapists, genocidal war criminals, and more.

If you blog on the subject, and express any measure of skepticism, expect to see some of that in your comments.   In a sense, this is not new.  The label "global warming denier" is an obvious attempt to equate skepticism with Holocaust denial.  But it's going to get worse, and more blatant.

A denier merely denies.  These new labels, like the one used by David Suzuki, are going to accuse those who are not following the lead of climate alarmists of actively participating in advancing an evil agenda.

The climate alarmists have no choice but to take this step.  Democracy is failing them.  So democracy must be side-stepped.

That is why Greenpeace has returned to disruptive tactics, unfurling the banner on Parliament Hill.  That is why other activists interrupted debate in the House of Commons with a mini-riot in the gallery.  That is why we've seen the return of violent mobs at the Copenhagen conference.

Even the Green Party, ostensibly dedicated to using the political process to promote their enviro-centric agenda, is using a moral argument on their website:

Dear Canada,

Thank you for your letter. Usually I don't have time to respond to letters personally because I'm a little busy right now, but your note caught my attention.

I was shocked to see that you were right, and that almost no cards have been sent to you this year. There were a couple of nice big ones from China and India, and some very expensive looking gifts from Mr. Shell and Exxon, but that's it.

I hate to tell you this, but your name appears more often than anyone else's on the naughty list this year - for some of the very un-Canadian things that seem to have gone on in Afghanistan, to the beating you are getting in Copenhagen right now.

It seems that most of your friends just don't like or respect you much anymore. I can only imagine how uncomfortable and shamed you must feel at the moment, but you still have time to put things right.

I would advise you to do the right thing in Copenhagen and become a good neighbour again, just like you used to be. Your children will think it's the best Christmas present ever.

Your friend,
Santa

Santa Claus is good.  Santa Claus wants Canada to bend over at Copenhagen, shut down the economy and give whatever money is left to Hugo Chavez.  If you don't do what Santa Claus wants you to do, you're a bad, bad person.

The name-calling will get worse.  The comparisons more extreme.  More worrisome will be the increase in so-called direct action (a euphemism for trespassing, vandalism, rioting, and assault).

It will happen because the political leadership of the environmental movement has begun to give violent protest their tacit approval.  Why not?  Politics has failed them.

We've seen that tacit approval being granted already.  When activists disrupted debate in the House of Commons, Elizabeth May praised them:

"Those were our children we threw out of the House of Commons today....the most responsible young adults in Canada."

Right.  Responsible.

Indeed, the relationship between the Green Party and the David Suzuki Foundation and others on the one side, and the pool of violent protesters and anarchists on the other, will mirror the relationship between Sinn Fein and the Provisional IRA. 

The political face of the movement, which does very little politicking, provides justification for the actions of the "direct action" wing, as Elizabeth May did for the gallery rioters. 

But will it merely be a verbal shield?  Will it grow to be more?  Is it so hard to imagine that the political side will act as a funnel for organizational support (and perhaps even funding) directed to the violent "direct action" wing?  The political side can still tap into legitimate sources of funds. 

"Direct action" is not cheap.  To be effective, a lot of people have to feel the impact of those actions, and the bigger the action, the larger the cost to pull it off.

And the alarmists want to impact a lot of people, for the simple reason that the majority of the people have switched sides and joined the forces of evil.  In the mind of a climate alarmist, the people are getting what they deserve.

Bad people deserve to have bad things happen to them.