Bishop Hill Greens and the rule of law
Feb 28, 2013 Greens Yesterday, Ben Pile and I were having a somewhat fruitless exchange of views with Mark Johnston, who seems to be a Senior Advisor at the European Policy Centre, whatever that is. Johnston seemed to be of the view that the "No Dash for Gas" activists who had occupied EDF's West Burton gas plant were somehow justified because of global warming. He claimed that there is "a moral duty to act".
By coincidence, the US Ninth Circuit court has been considering just this argument in a case involving the Sea Shepherd, the ship that has taken it upon itself to harass and attack Japanese whaling vessels. Overturning the decision of a lower court, the judge ruled, in the following rather amusing terms, that the Sea Shepherd's actions constituted piracy:
You don’t need a peg leg or an eye patch. When you ram ships; hurl glass containers of acid; drag metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders; launch smoke bombs and flares with hooks; and point high-powered lasers at other ships, you are, without a doubt, a pirate, no matter how high-minded you believe your purpose to be.
Legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy examines the decision here, here and here, concluding that the judge's decision is "obviously correct" in law.
This is obviously an American case rather than a British one, but I imagine the precedents in these areas are not very different between the two countries, something the greens would do well to remember.
Reader Comments (67)
Martin A. and Mailman,
Thank you for the fantastic data points. A very good counter point to those who attribute the 14,802 French deaths in 2003 to GW/CC/EW.
"This is obviously an American case rather than a British one, but I imagine the precedents in these areas are not very different between the two countries, something the greens would do well to remember."
The Ninth Court's ruling cited British Admiralty decisions as precedent.
Re the 9th circuit being bad: You mean worse than the g**d***ed 5th's? OMG!
Feb 28, 2013 at 7:02 PM | Mooloo
Thanks for the info. I watched the American TV program just long enough to see that it was about some activists harassing whaling ships. I heard the name "Greenpeace" and assumed that the activists were from that organization.
@Martin A
wasn't the winter that data is for a particularly mild one by recent standards and aren't more people in fuel poverty now too So perhaps Mailman won't be far off the mark when the latest figures are published?
Quote from your link:
There were an estimated 24,000 excess winter deaths in England and Wales in 2011/12 – an 8 per cent reduction compared with the previous winter.
And yet, is it really right to allow people to kill those magnificent creatures? They are intelligent, sentient social creatures. And they are being hunted to the point of extinction and in the most inhumane ways, for uses which are fundamentally frivolous - anything we get from them we could obtain equally well by other means.
Occupying power stations is obviously absurd and wrong. Trying to save the whales before it is too late however? I have to support them.
Feb 28, 2013 at 8:12 PM | michel
The problems are found in their methods not in their end of saving whales - if that is their end.
RE blocking comments
Awhile back I followed a link to a post on Desmog blog. Wanted to point out that the author of the paper they were touting was also the auther of another paper on second hand smoke which had been thoroughly taken apart as poor work. This was the response I received:
Thank you for registering at DeSmogBlog. Due to the continuing abuse of our regular users by very determined trolls we are now manually approving requests for new accounts. We will do our very best to ensure the delay is short. Once your account has been approved, you may log in to http://www.desmogblog.com/user using the following username and password:
It will be 3 weeks come Monday without hearing back from them. Either they utilize one of the most comprehensive background checks on the internet, or they are pussies whose strong point is smugness. By all accounts they do not get much in the way of traffic. What could possibly be their excuse for taking so long?
I'm not sure I agree that Greenpeace is innocent of any violence. All these activists tie in together and it might just be that Greenpeace publicly distances themselves from violent activism, or that pirates distance themselves from Greenpeace (I'm sure it's agreed on as to who does the distancing), to keep Greenpeace "clean" in the public eye. They don't want to lose Save-the-Whales or Save-the-Polar-Bear money coming in from the gneral public.
Activism, like warmists' blogs, are broken down into "cells" to spread the word and make it all look bigger than it is and also keeps some sections "purer" than others. I don't see alarmist organizations being any different.
I don't have the links but I'm sure some do. I just feel if we look under the blankets we might see more clearly who's in bed with whom.
Feb 28, 2013 at 7:53 PM SandyS
SandyS,
Excess winter deaths in England and Wales is a statistic that fluctuates from year to year depending on weather, incidence of influenza and other factors. I have no idea what the latest will show but its general trend is to diminish year by year.
2011/12 24,000
2010/11 25,700
2009/10 25,810
2008/09 36,450
Going back to the 1950's (when everyone smoked, smog was normal in cities and flu vaccine did not exist) excess winter deaths could be as high as 80,000. See figure 1 in http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_241947.pdf
The excess deaths in France, summer 2003, (around 14,000) can partly be attributed to the lack of preparation for what was largely an unprecedented occurrence.
No-one can say that cold winter weather in England and Wales is unprecedented, so the larger number of excess winter deaths illustrate the principle: too cold is worse than too hot.
In NZ Greenpeace recently occupied an oil drilling ship in Taranaki for several days. The ship was bound for the chukchi sea near Alaska, where the water depth is around 40m I think
Shell Todd were looking for $600,000 in damages, but the activists were sentenced to 120 hours of community work and pay Port Taranaki $651.44 each
The star performer was NZ actress Lucy Lawless, who resides in LA. After being interviewed on the TV, Lawless flew down to Queenstown for some TV or commercial work
link
@Martin A
I agree with you, cold is always more of a problem than heat. I think the French problem was compounded by the fact that the heat wave was in August when the whole country goes on holiday. I hope we both agree that current policy may well see the downward trend halted or reversed as a result of the policies supported by the greens and put in place by all three parties?
SandyS -
Yes, agreed. There can be no doubt that adequate heating is a key factor in reducing excess winter deaths. The winter fuel payment was introduced with the express intention of reducing excess winter deaths (according to the statistics report). So making energy unaffordable is certainly an effective way of killing off oldies.
Of course, power cuts during the coldest weather might be even more effective.
"the whole point of civil disobedience is that they suffer the consequences of disobeying unjust laws to challenge the consciences of ordinary people"
The whole point about civil disobedience is to create publicity. The green "movement" is just one huge publicity machine. They carefully stage these "confrontations" in a manner which has been carefully prepared to create as much media coverage as possible. No doubt for every activist on these ships there are half a dozen camera crew, PR consultants, they probably have onboard media suites ... like the moon landings they will endlessly rehearse the scenes both before and after to get just the shots they want ... and then splice in real action to make it look authentic.
And what do sceptics do? When one group puts up one billboard that finally gets media attention ... they get attacked ... not by their opponents, but by their "friends".
And it all goes to prove, it doesn't matter if you have the facts on your side ... you can win despite the facts contradicting you if you win the media war. And they win by default if one side doesn't even bother to play the game.
Mike Haseler
Difficult one, that. Have you read the report of the Commons Home Affairs Committee in the DT on the behaviour of undercover police officers?
Vaz, needless to say, is horrified and disgusted and shocked, but most people would probably agree that "stealing" the identity of dead babies is a bit "ghoulish". On the other hand if we are going to disapprove of various police practices (or the publicity campaigns of sceptical organisations) then — not for the first time — we are demanding a certain moral standard for "our" side which we know "their" side is not going to adhere to.
How far along the road of "the end justifies the means" do you go before you reach the line marked 'no further'?
You should have asked him about the moral duty of helping stop around 40,000 people a year who die between December and March due to the cold weather here in the UK every year?
Mailman
40,000? I think the Greens would consider that "a good start."
It's time ACTIVISTS are "Held Accountable"
I can see it coming over the hill a time when people are held accountable for unlawful and immoral actions in promoting CAGW theory and Green fantasy solutions, as people realise they have REAL impacts on our energy bills & energy security.
- The West Burton Activists : for overstepping the line of protest by invading the power station & stopping it's completely legal operation
- Politicians like Debden who promote pro-renewable polices while having a financial interest.
- Professional CAGW propagandists : For wilfully lying and distorting science
- Media like BBC, ABC, CBC : for toeing the activists line & wilfully misleading the public
- Peter Gleick : for fraud (& maybe forgery)
- Tim Flannery : For misleading claims like "the rains will never fill the dams"
- Dr Karl for promoting a line that the Earth has warmed 0.3C in the last 16 years.
etc. etc.
Any action/inaction is important for the message it sends.
If the government & EDF don't prosecute when people disrupt a business which is operating completely legally.. this would send the message that if you have a few friends and
the ear of the Guardian then you can break the law.
- The case is not the same as McLibel as those protestors acted within the criminal law, they stayed outside McDonalds and didn't disrupt business. Furthermore they were found to be within the civil law on most counts as most of their claims were found to be true.