Thursday
Sep032015
by 
Josh
Josh A Prime Review - Josh 343
Ruth Dixon's excellent book review of "Why are we waiting?" by Nicholas Stern is well worth reading. You can download a pdf version here.
As the cartoon notes, the question 'Why are we waiting?' has already been answered by David Cameron. But today we read that Naomi Klein disagrees with Stern - Naomi thinks the only solution is a 'public uprising' to end capitalism.
Something they might like to sort out before Paris, eh.
Reader Comments (35)
I often wonder how the anti-capitalists square their views with the regular arrival of green (!) stuff in their bank accounts.
Excellent cartoon, BTW.
How strange, that the ONLY solution to AGW is the adopting of radical Global Socialsm, & nothing else will do, not even a moderate alternative! They really do think we were all born yesterday!
The Green Blob are now fighting each other. Some want to be the biggest joke in the run-up to Paris. Others are anticipating the cuts in funding, in the fall-out from Paris.
I am not going to suggest they curtail their childish behaviour. Parisian fall-out is a dish best served regularly, irrespective of temperature.
Has the Dead parrot talked yet? No!
So, Paris will be just like the Monty Python sketch with a lot of people trying & failing to deny the pause.
The bottom line is that Naomi Klein is making a lot of $$$ out of scaremongering something she probably knows is nonsense. 'The Shock Doctrine' pulled its punches on the Demmycrats and in particular Al Gore who is the most successful 'gangster' in the history of American politics.
I personally pushed her again and again (on twitter) to write the new book 'This Changes Everything' using my anti carbon trading website as evidence. Whether it had anything to do with me or not, she did, then turned round and accused anyone opposed to carbon trading of being a right wing nut. This is the divided corporate mindset that can only see in black and white. She is corporate and in my opinion, a waste of space apart from one thing. She exposes the Greens as being in the pocket of big oil.
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/05/naomi_klein_big_green_groups_are_crippling_the_environmental_movement_partner/
esmiff
NK is truly ghastly - waste of space is a bit too passive - she's an oxygen thief. iirc she blamed a miscarriage on deniers?
Is there anywhere that enumerates how well madam has done financially out of her blatherings?
If Naomi Klein wants to end capitalism, why does she charge for her books?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=%22Naomi+Klein%22&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3A%22Naomi+Klein%22
In some ways I agree with Klein. To seriously cut CO2 it would take huge changes in society. Where she goes wrong is in thinking there is anyone ready to do it. Her public uprising isn't there. It turns out we like capitalism. A lot. And we distrust climate alrmism. A lot.
tomo
NK is a kind of Miliband figure. Her parents were Jewish Marxists / communists. Like the Milibands, she is just pretending and making a profitable career out of it.
Quite, TinyCO2, if the only solution is a public uprising then the alarmists have no chance. These people really live in a bubble, they speak at echo chambers like the Festival of Dangerous Ideas and delude themselves that these lefty gatherings are a reflection of how ordinary people feel about climate change. She'll eventually fall into the 'people must do as we tell them' camp when she realises that the majority prefer to man their BBQs rather than the barricades.
North Korea has a low carbon footprint and despise capitalism.
It can also be abbreviated to NK.
Looks like the two NKs have lots in common!
DocBud, funny that you should mention barricades. I was thinking that Les Miserables was somewhat apt. The students were sure that everyone was behind them but it turns out they weren't.
Stern, Klein, etc are tempted by the idea that western countries will go first because we've somehow had our share. Does anyone in their right mind think the general public will get behind that idea? They already moan about the cost of the stuff we do now. I laugh my socks off at the reaction I get whenever I suggest that warmist take the lead in reducing CO2.
esmiff
ahhhh.... figures... a hereditary member of the progressive "in" crowd. With a pedigree like that it's no wonder that the gits at The Guardian et al fawn over her.... Lauded as a "great thinker" - eeesh... a princess no less.
One of Sterns suggestions for selling CO2 reduction to the public. "Those communicators should not only be scientists and political leaders but include ‘actors, celebrities, and sports stars’, religious leaders, academic societies, the medical community, royalty and so on"
Is he daft? Those people can implore people to give more to charity. THey can persuade many to buy expensive clothing. What they cannot do is lull people into accepting massive bills and reductions in standards of living. He makes a lot of Brits and Americans supporting reducing CO2 - sure they do. They also support World Peace but it doesn't mean they'll pay for it.
@Bitter& Twisted: There is that wonderful yet disturbing picture of NK at night, hardly a light anywhere! The poor ordinary folk, I bet the party leaders & their entourages have all they need.
But is Nicholas Stern a very naughty boy for selling a hardback version of his book?
He must know how much extra CO2 will end up in the atmosphere as a result, or maybe even partly as methane were they to end up in landfill sites.
"disturbing picture of NK at night"
I think she looks even worse by day.. :-)
Naomi Klein is the typical pink cadillac communist. Espousing socialist, activist drivel while rolling in capitalist rewards and trappings. I believe she doesnt see the dichotomy.
Her husband is an ex-Al Jazeera journalist who,went there after getting drummed out of the CBC. His father is an entrenched canadian socialist politician and a frequent UN appointee to whiny but well paid postings.
That the Sterns and Klein types are now turning on each other is great. It needs to be encouraged.
As I pointed out in a comment over at WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/03/thursday-thought-josh-on-why-are-we-waiting/#comment-2020323
its like this:
http://www.thecomicstrips.com/properties/bloom/art_images/cg4f7e0ee266182.jpg
CJ
Thanks for the link(s). WRT Paris, I rather liked Phillip Bratby's remark about “peak realistic last chance”. That eponymous saloon must be full of Greens...
BTW, it may be my eyes, but I need some help reading the cartoon...
Naomi and buddies have a busy run up to Paris.
"On September 10th, Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein and others will be joined by global movement leaders in New York City for an evening that will help set the stage for this dramatic season of climate action that will lead straight through the big Paris conference in December and beyond. The event is called Off and On, and it will be held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on September 10th at 7 PM.
Then on September 26th communities across the globe will hold workshops to plan for the coming months of action. After that, I think we'll see several months of escalating activity as communities drive the message home that we can't wait for action.
The talks in Paris start on November 30th, and run for 2 weeks. But before the talks start, the world will stand together in a weekend of global action, paired with an enormous march in the streets of Paris."
Flying to New York, then Paris...
As Glenn "Instapundit" says, "I don't want to hear another goddamn word about my carbon footprint".
Love the comments on Naomi's views, One bright spark had this to say
"Climate change is normal on Earth but none of the usual causes are involved now, in fact we were very slowly heading for an ice age in 10-20,000 years until the Industrial revolution uptick in temperatures. "
In all honesty I can't think of a better argument for continuing to burn fossil fuels.
“Today we can seriously set about destroying capitalism once and for all. Nay, more; not merely are we today in a position to perform this task, nor merely is its performance a duty toward the proletariat, but our solution offers the only means of saving human society from destruction” (Rosa Luxemburg 1919).
Naomi thinks she’s Rosa Luxemburg reincarnated — up to a point.
hang on, brandon hasn''t arived to say this is misleading........
But Ban ki-Moon has called a meeting of world leaders at the UN in New York for September or October to try to thrash out a deal prior to Paris. I think he and the UN are getting desperate. But it means that Paris is rather irrelevant. All the hangers-on don't need to turn up as their discussions won't really count if Moon gets his way.
In the meantime Denmark has seen the light and is doing U-turn
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-01/denmark-s-government-readies-u-turn-on-ambitious-climate-targets
What amazes me about Naomi Klein and her ilk is that they continue to spout off about socialism (communism) being the answer to the world's environmental problems when it has been the communist countries which have created the most egregious environmental disasters that the world has ever seen. The capitalist countries are the ones which have made the greatest strides in environmental areas. This is a reality which NK can not see, since she only sees what she believes.
NK et al long for a utopian form of communism which meets their definition of perfection. The problem with her thinking (if indeed she is foolish enough to believe the drivel she produces) is that all governments are administered by human beings. Consequently, no government will ever be perfect. From my own experience living and working in multiple counties, the more toward the left a government leans, the greater the level of corruption in that government. Every major communist country has been totally corrupt. Such governments breed arrogant leaders who are not held accountable for their actions, unless their enemies are strong enough to have them purged. Why would an arrogant and corrupt leader care about solving environmental problems when they only need pay lip service to their noble (and failed) efforts to solve environmental problems. After all, in a communist government whistle blowers are typically rewarded with a bullet to the head, thus they leaders only need to say they are solving problems. They do not really need to do anything.
"Looks like the two NKs have lots in common!" --Bitter&Twisted
I'd suggest that they be combined and that the little one be forced to live in the big one henceforth, since it meets all her important criteria for paradise on earth.
@Brooks Hurd
This is exactly the point made by Thomas Sowell when he speaks of the "Unconstrained Vision".
People such as Klein who subscribe to the Unconstrained Vision believe that society can be perfected if the "right" kind of people (i.e. them) , with their extra wisdom, knowledge and moral nobility, are in charge and everybody follows their strictures.
They regard themselves as inhabiting a higher moral universe than the rest of us, one of the reasons they routinely employ the most vulgar abuse to vilify people who dare to disagree with them.
"disturbing picture of NK at night"
I think she looks even worse by day.. :-)
Missed that completely, well observed, & yes I agree!
from http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/voices/michael-shellenberger-and-ted-nordhaus//its-not-about-the-climate/
quote
Climate change can only be solved by "fixing everything," says McKibben, from how we eat, travel, produce, reproduce, consume, and live. “It’s not an engineering problem," McKibben argued recently in Rolling Stone. "It's a greed problem." Fixing it will require a "new civilizational paradigm," says Klein, "grounded not in dominance over nature, but in respect for natural cycles of renewal."
Climate skeptics are right, Klein cheerily concludes: the Left is using climate change to advance policies they have long wanted. "In short," says Klein, "climate change supercharges the pre-existing case for virtually every progressive demand on the books, binding them into a coherent agenda based on a clear scientific imperative."
endquote
When will politicians wake up and realise that there is no rational way to deal with such zealots. It doesn't matter how green or lukewarmer you proclaim to be because it will never be enough until for them until we are all living in mud huts, burning dung and eating magic mushrooms while the leftist elites lord it over us from a haughty distance. Of course they hate democracy - the electorate has resoundingly rejected them on the simple basis that they are effing idiots.
The truly scary thing about people like Klein is that they don't understand that taxes come from...profits from capitalism.
Non-profitable companies don't pay taxes (ok, admittedly, too many profitable companies don't pay taxes either, but that's another discussion), and with payroll taxes, even companies that don't make a profit pay taxes. And they play their employees with pre-tax income. Who then pay...income tax.
"NK is a kind of Miliband figure. Her parents were Jewish Marxists / communists. Like the Milibands, she is just pretending and making a profitable career out of it.
Sep 3, 2015 at 1:11 PM esmiff "
Please refrain from using 'Jewish' in this context.
Jan Stunnenberg
I thought twice before I wrote that. There was no racism intended. 'Jewish Marxist / communist' was 'a thing' at one time.
I apologise if I caused offence or made you believe I was being in any way derogatory. I promise that I didn't think of it that way.
@ essmiff:
Þnx for recognising.
Race or religion has nothing to do with it.
It's just: Marxists / Communists.
Grϧ