Climate change

The TIME magazine ‘Person of the Year’ award is in essence an excuse to have a big old argument. Every year, TIME recognizes an individual who has earned a great deal of attention, in an attempt to attract some of the excess to their publication. In winning ‘Person of the Year’, then, Greta Thunberg sits alongside not just Gandhi, Lech Wałęsa and Pope John Paul II but a rogues’ gallery that runs from Putin and George W. Bush to Hitler and Stalin. If they are going to have this dumb, opportunistic award, then, it makes sense to give it to Thunberg. Who has been at the heart of more controversy? Don't say Donald Trump. Hardly anyone is interested enough to even try understand the impeachment scandal outside the US. The Hong Kong protesters?

‘Four beef burgers is the same as flying to New York and back! FOUR BURGERS!’ When I arrived at the Extinction Rebellion demo, the first person I met was a woman activist, clad from head to foot in ocean-polluting, synthetic fibres, talking absolute nonsense. And because I’m a beef farmer, I felt I should set her straight. I explained that no, my grass-fed beef does not harm the planet, and asked her what on earth she expected the farmers of Britain to do if they couldn’t keep cows. ‘Ah,’ she says, folding her arms, ‘they should just grow trees.’ Trees are fast becoming the answer to everything. Worried about floods? Don’t bother dredging rivers, just plant forests. Anxious about the effect on the environment of flying?

'I wouldn’t be here if you were a climate denier'. This was William Skeaping, spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion (ER), talking to Toby Young on The Spectator podcast. That statement tells us much about the environmental pressure group’s tactics and strategy. It also reveals that, in the battle behind the climate war, Extinction Rebellion has already won. ‘Deny’ these ‘truths’ and we will simply refuse to talk to you. You will be nothing to us. That's the message from ER. Skeaping’s words were a neat framing of his movement’s preconditions for engaging in debate.

I was five years old when the world first ended. That was in 2000, the year that a United Nations official predicted 11 years before that entire nations would be wiped out by rising sea levels. Since then, I have survived the Arctic melting on at least six separate occasions (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2018), to say nothing of the geopolitical chaos that followed the oil shortages of 2015. As of last year, my troubles have been worsened by the complete submersion of the Maldives, which has narrowed my holiday options. This week, as I ventured into London to shop for a woolly jumper and flippers ahead of next year’s 'Siberianisation' of England and disappearance of the Arctic, I was surprised to be confronted with a street full of lively campers with placards.

This year’s Nobel Prize for the silliest piece of scientific research must go to something called the Climate Accountability Institute, for revealing to the world that 35 per cent of all global carbon and methane emissions since 1965 can be traced to just 20 global companies. This week they were named and shamed in the Guardian and revealed to be, er, 17 oil companies and three coal mining companies. Scandalously, they have been pumping all this carbon into the air for their own self-enrichment while the rest of us suffer.

I share Extinction Rebellion’s environmental concerns and I’ve previously joined their protests. My friends and colleagues fill their ranks. I even have a man-bun. But I can’t get behind their latest efforts to coax students to quit the classroom. Pre-empting this week’s disruption in London, Extinction Rebellion released a video recounting why student drop-outs, including marine biologists, gave up university for the movement. 'I left university because someone told me the truth about what was happening and I realised that I had a responsibility to act,' explains one former student. '(I left) because I am scared so many people I love are going to die and a masters won't stop that', says another. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

It is often said that Western culture worships youth. Yet this cult of youth worship has started to mutate into something a bit weirder, as it increasingly seems that ours is a society that now worships children. This year, for instance, has seen the rise to global ascendency of the 16-year-old Swede, Greta Thunberg. She has become the child-saint icon of the environmental movement, whose apocalyptic scorn is fawned over by liberal politicians and woke-conscious big business. Her teenage acolytes bunk school, with the blessing of their teachers, to raise awareness as to the plight of climate change. Elsewhere, we are told that it is imperative to hold a second Brexit referendum 'for the sake of the children' (and even, to make the point clearer, 'our children's children').