- Sep 16, 2012
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The IPCC Report & the Pivot from Covid to Climate The New Normal brigade are prepping us for a change of direction.
The IPCC Report & the Pivot from Covid to Climate
Kit Knightly The latest IPCC report on climate change was released last week, and has signalled a sea-change in the ongoing “big issue”. The Pandemic was fun while it lasted, but itR…
off-guardian.org
". . .Usually, when there’s a big narrative shift looming, you can find one key article that tells you everything you need to know about the plan. For the IPCC report, it’s this iNews article by Andrew Marr. Where he literally uses the phrase “hinge to climate from Covid” several times:
There is a great turn coming, a change in the terms of political debate, a period of hinge. We are swinging from the many months of coronavirus obsession into an autumn which will be dominated, rightly, by the climate emergency. But much of what we have learned from Covid-19 – about the state, authority, journalism and civil society – is directly applicable to what’s coming next.”
The media have, naturally, been full of headlines on the IPCC report, with varying degrees of alarmism and insanity.
“It’s now or never!” screams the Guardian as a “climate reckoning” is upon us. The Sun calls it a “full fledged arson attack on the planet!”
But none of them outline just what the next few months have in store for us better than Marr. The goblinoid face of the establishment, who nauseatingly cheered on Blair in Iraq, can always be relied upon to keep on message.. . . "
<snip>
"So what comes next?
It’s not hard to see exactly where this all leads. Mostly because they’re telling us.
Establishment voices have already talked about “climate lockdowns”, and the UK’s Science Advisor Patrick Vallance wrote, last week, about how:
nothing short of transforming society will avert catastrophe”
This isn’t new. This has been bubbling along in the background for months (I have already written two articles about it), but the message is being refined into a simple three-step process:
- Point out all the ways Covid and climate change are similar.
- Emphasise that Climate Change is much more of a threat than Covid. Use the word “existential. A lot.
- Argue that since we were willing to change to fight Covid, we should do the same for climate.[optional]
You can see it in Marr’s article.
The comparison:
The interesting thing is that so much of the world’s experience during the pandemic relates quite closely to the climate crisis – our human interrelatedness, the importance of effective governance, the centrality of science and its communication.
Followed by the “covid is worse” [my emphasis]:
Of course, the two challenges are different. So far, a little over 4.3 million people have died from Covid. Australian and Chinese academics estimate that around five million people are dying each year from the effects of climate change […] Suffice it to say that even if the Delta variant is the most infectious disease mankind has so far faced, the climate emergency is at another level – a reshaper of geography, highly unpredictable and, in short, existential for the planet and its inhabitants.
Patrick Vallance does the same in his article in the Guardian, and then again in The Times. There are several others along the same lines, such as this one from the Hill, or this one from the International Monetary Fund.
It’s also apparent that the same tactics of demonising any opposition and attempting to turn it into an opportunity to virtue-signal will be used. There are lots of articles comparing “covid denial” and “climate denial”, or otherwise attempting to politicise the issue.
So, the way they’re going to talk about (or should we say say “market”?) climate change action is fairly clear. But what are these hypothetical actions going to be?
Are we seeing any hints as to what this “transformation of society” might entail? Or what these “tough decisions” could be?
Well, there were whispers of climate lockdowns, but they have died away since the outraged reaction. There’s always talk of other schemes, like limiting flights, outlawing beef and “personal carbon allowances”, but these are hardly new.. . . . "