GWPF Newsletter: World’s Leaders Turn On Greta Thunberg After She Sues France And Germany

UN Climate Summit Flops Despite The Children’s Crusade

In this newsletter:

1) World’s Leaders Turn On Greta Thunberg After She Sues France and Germany
The Times, 26 September 2019
 
2) UN Climate Summit Flops Despite The Children’s Crusade
Jo Nova, 25 September 2019

 
3) EU Showdown: Poland Warns Macron To ‘Watch His Language’ After ‘Untruthful’ Claims
Daily Express, 26 September 2019 
 
4) Poland Plans New Coal Mines Despite EU's Call For Carbon Neutrality
Reuters, 25 September 2019
 
5) Fridays For Hubraum: Germany's Facebook Sensation
Dirk Maxeiner, Achse des Guten, 25 September 2019 

6) Climate Change Not A Top Issue For Americans
Inside Sources, 25 September 2019
 
7) And Finally: Global Warming Is Now A ‘Big Religion’
Sky News, 26 September 2019 

Full details:

1) World’s Leaders Turn On Greta Thunberg After She Sues France And Germany
The Times, 26 September 2019

National leaders have rebuked Greta Thunberg after the climate campaigner criticised their inaction and started a legal challenge against France and Germany’s environmental policies.



President Macron and Angela Merkel, who had both previously endorsed Ms Thunberg’s Fridays for Future school strike movement, were stung into reacting to what one French minister termed her “despair . . . verging on hatred”.

Scott Morrison, 51, the prime minister of Australia and a fossil fuels enthusiast, also accused her of stirring up “needless anxiety” among his country’s children.

Ms Thunberg, 16, rose to global celebrity in the space of 12 months after a solitary protest outside parliament before last year’s general election in Sweden.

Last Friday she mobilised an estimated four million demonstrators in more than 100 countries to join protests after sailing across the Atlantic to address a UN climate summit in New York.

In an uncompromising speech she told the world’s politicians that they had “stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words”. She accused governments of betraying young people. “You are not mature enough to tell it like it is,” she said. “You are failing us.”

She joined 15 other child protesters in filing a formal complaint to the UN that nations including Brazil, Germany, Turkey and France had violated international children’s rights by failing to take sufficiently bold measures to reduce carbon emissions. This step appears to have provoked some governments that might otherwise have counted themselves among her allies.

Mr Macron, 41, who adopted Fridays for Future as the motto for the G7 summit he hosted in Biarritz last month and said that the movement had “fundamentally changed” him, abruptly turned on Ms Thunberg.

“All the movements among our youth, or the less young, are useful,” he told Europe 1, a French broadcaster. “But now they must concentrate on the people who are further away [from their position], those who are trying to block them. These radical positions will naturally antagonise our societies.”

Brune Poirson, the French ecology minister, questioned whether Ms Thunberg could succeed in “mobilising people with despair, with what is verging on hatred, setting people against one another”. […]

Yesterday Boris Palmer, 47, a prominent figure in the German Green party and the mayor of the university city of Tübingen, said he was worried that her movement was becoming “radicalised” and urged her followers to ignore her call to “panic” about the climate.

“If you’re panicking, you’re no longer in a position to deal with things thoughtfully, and therefore you don’t achieve your goals,” he told Die Welt.

Full story (£)
 
2) UN Climate Summit Flops Despite The Children’s Crusade
Jo Nova, 25 September 2019

The Childrens Rent-a-crowd Crusade didn’t bring in the money

We all know why the climate picnic last Friday was not held on the weekend — hardly anyone would have come. When adults are too bored to go out and save the world, the only option is children. Butter them up, tell them they are heroes and rebels if they do what they want to do anyway and take the day off school.

Climate protests have been shrinking for years, so the adults in charge needed to change strategies, and with a compliant media, it worked — it was a grand theatre.
Great PR. But it came to nothing today anyhow.

The UN asked for climate plans. Major economies failed to answer

Chloé Farand, Climate Home News

World leaders were asked to come to the UN with concrete plans to cut emissions to net zero.

But on Monday, the presidents and prime ministers of the world’s largest emitting economies stumbled. Signalling just how difficult the work of removing CO2 will be compared to setting targets.

The tougher 1.5C goal of the Paris Agreement, backed by UN chief António Guterres and the majority of the world’s nations, requires achieving net zero global emissions by 2050.

The only speaker in the room that “resonated” was the only one in the room who had no responsibility
Greta could say any darn thing at all and none of it would have to be costed, or make sense:

And yet, incrementalism was the main theme at the UN climate action summit, as heads of state took to the podium one after the other. The speeches failed to resonate, except for Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who brought the hall to tears as she called out leaders for their inaction. “Yet you all come to me for hope? How dare you,” she said.

Full post
 
3) EU Showdown: Poland Warns Macron To ‘Watch His Language’ After ‘Untruthful’ Claims
Daily Express, 26 September 2019 

POLISH leaders have hit back at Emmanuel Macron after the French President accused them of blocking his bid to make the European Union carbon neutral by 2050.

Mr Macron sparked outrage when he suggested France’s climate activists should move their protests from Paris to Poland. Poland relies on coal for 80 percent of its energy and is wary of drastically cutting coal production. It has a long tradition of coal mining which supports tens of thousands of jobs in the southern Silesia region.

He told Polish television: “President Macron did indeed speak. I believe that it was at least inelegant, because it is not a truthful statement.

“The Katowice Rulebook document - the Katowice rules - which talks about how to implement the Paris Agreement, was adopted by consensus.

“It was and is our great success precisely on the way of climate protection, but at the same time we have also adopted the Just Transition declaration, just transformation.

“I believe that we should pursue development and climate protection goals, but in a way that does not harm citizens. That’s what it’s all about.

Full story
 
4) Poland Plans New Coal Mines Despite EU's Call For Carbon Neutrality
Reuters, 25 September 2019

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party plans to introduce legislation that will allow the government to open new coal mines without the approval of local authorities, its energy minister said on Wednesday.
 
PiS wants to build new mines as it expects half of the country’s electricity to be generated from coal by 2050. That would be down from 80% coal-powered tricity currently but goes against European Union calls for member states to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050.

“This special legislation, which is being prepared by lawmakers is related to the fact that local authorities are not interested in new mines being built in their areas while we will need new coal deposits to secure supplies for the energy industry,” Energy Minister Krzysztof Tchorzewski told reporters at the opening of a new coking coal mine at state-run miner JSW.

Full story 
 
5) Fridays For Hubraum: Germany's Facebook Sensation
Dirk Maxeiner, Achse des Guten, 25 September 2019 

“Our group would like to counteract the out-of-control climate madness with fun.”



Yesterday a colleague called me and drew my attention to a “bizarre” movement.

“The Ruhrbarons report about a Facebook group called "Fridays for Hubraum” (piston displacement). As an avowed lover of engine humming, I liked the name immediately. The Ruhrbarons reported:

“Many new outlets may get excited about Fridays for Future, yet on Facebook the Petrolheads are ahead. The Facebook group Fridays for Hubraum, founded on September 22nd, managed to playfully pass their ecologically correct counterpart Fridays for Future with 74,484 members to 74,102 followers within a few days, and they added:

“The fun of cars with a lot of cubic capacity is in the foreground, those who don’t tolerate Greta jokes should avoid the group”.

The latter can be understood as a warning or as a recommendation, most people apparently understood it as a recommendation. This morning Achgut.com author Gunter Weißgerber wrote to me, as a country dweller urgently dependent on some cubic capacity in front of the log cabin:

“I am a member of Fridays For Hubraum. Fine creamDiesel fillet so to speak”. And he reported: “Since two days there is the Facebookgroup Fridays For Hubraum short FFH. Currently this group has 228 700 members”.

As of 9 o’clock this morning, there are already 263,000 members, which is several times the number of Greta followers. And this despite the fact that the site has meanwhile been converted into a closed Facebook group, which slows down the growth, otherwise it would be even more. This was done because, of course, a lot of idiots want to sit on something like this and with stubbornness and resentment only achieve that this no longer tender little plant is immediately introduced to the parking lot to the right of Genghis Khan (Running a combustion engine without a bad conscience is already a proof of right mind anyway).

LZ-Online writes about the Facebook shooting star:

“The demands of the Fridays-for-Future movement are not well received by everyone. Not least car drivers feel threatened in their freedom – after all, the protests of climate activists could lead to massive restrictions on their freedom. On Facebook, the opponents of the youth movement are now trying to counteract and have set up their own Facebook group to do so. Their name: Fridays for Hubraum (piston displacement). Their goal: to have more members than the official Facebook page of Fridays for Future Germany in as short a time as possible”.

And they have succeeded in doing so. The administrators of the group write:

“We are more! First goal is to get more members than “Fridays for Future Germany. This group would like to counteract the out-of-control climate madness with fun. Climate change has existed since the Earth’s history. We cannot save the world in Germany at the expense of thousands of jobs. The environment should protect however everyone as well as he can. Please be nice in this group”.

The gigantic echo on this action teaches equal several things. Those, who pay taxes in this country, drive daily to work and mostly with the car, are tired of being shown everywhere as suspended fools and climatic sinners. The tone in this country is now set by tiny groups of people who contribute zero to value creation and 100 percent to word creation. And nobody opposes this tyranny of convictions. On the contrary. [...]

Humour has always been the sharpest weapon of doubt and makes it difficult for political opponents to swing the moral cudgel, because they run the risk of getting themselves hurt. And above all: humour is connectable for everyone. Most people who no longer feel represented by current politics and the published opinion are by no means dumb-heads, but open-minded people who stand in the middle of life and are the first to feel the effects of insane political campaigns. “Fridays for Hubraum” is a sign in this respect. I don’t want to overestimate that, but it’s a little throat clearing of an elephant that’s been in the room for some time.

Also in Germany the longing for an opposition, which one can join as reasonable people, is huge. This longing will find ways, which ways do I not know, because such things often depend on coincidences and unforeseen events. But when the time comes, it will happen very quickly. In climate science people like to talk about so-called “tilting points”. This means that a complex system that seems stable for a very long time suddenly and very quickly starts to slip. And the same applies to the political climate.

Addendum on 25 September at 18:15: The number of members now stands at 394,349.

Addendum on 25 September at 19:08: Fimico reports: “Fridays for Hubraum” was archived today with nearly 400,000 members in only three days by an own administrator. This can be a temporary procedure. It was not Facebook that intervened, but the participants themselves closed the group for the time being. According to our editorial observations, several 10,000 new members have joined the group in recent hours. After the group had experienced a wide-ranging media echo and a huge rush in the past three days, it is reasonable to assume that the group of administrators will first consider how to deal with this.”

Full post
 6) Climate Change Not A Top Issue For Americans
Inside Sources, 25 September 2019

Climate change barely registers as a priority issue for most Americans who are more concerned about the economy and national security, according to new polling from the American Council for Capital Formation.

The poll, conducted by Morning Consult, also found that while most Americans distrust the federal government, Congress, and corporations to find effective solutions to climate change they do want to see bipartisan solutions.

“People do want to see Democrats and Republicans at the table,” said Pinar Çebi Wilber, chief economist for the council. “There has to be a balanced solution. You can’t just say we’re going to switch to 100 percent renewables in 10 years. It’s almost impossible to change the grid in that timeframe without hurting affordability for reliability.”

The percentages from the poll are dire for political foes of oil and natural gas: 70 percent are not willing to pay more on utility bills; 67 percent do not want to pay more for transportation costs; 67 percent do not want higher food costs; and 66 percent say no to higher taxes.

That could put a dent in Democrats’ plans, which primarily call for higher costs across the board to force a phase-out of fossil fuels.

“It’s hard to say to low-income people that you’re going to have to pay more to switch to 100 percent renewables,” Çebi Wilber said, adding that it’s shortsighted to exclude energy sources like natural gas and nuclear power from models.

Of the 2,198 adults polled from Sept. 13 to Sept. 15, 57 percent identified themselves as earning less than $50,000 per year. The largest age demographic are Boomers but Generation X and Millennials combined for more than half of the respondents.

Full story
  
7) And Finally: Global Warming Is Now A ‘Big Religion’
Sky News, 26 September 2019 

Global warming is now a religion and facts don't matter, according to Sky News host Andrew Bolt. 



Mr Bolt said that instead of the truth, seemingly what now matters are people “wanting to seem more passionate, idealistic and holier than though” on the issue of climate change. He continued to reference Swedish activist Greta Thunberg saying that it is this very reason why “a depressed 16-year-old is the messiah of global warming”. Global warming is “a movement that attracts the haters and the mini totalitarians," he said. Mr Bolt made the point that ultimately, what green activists want are “laws to control you, [laws] to control the economy. "Some will say, we want you to stop eating meat, and we want you to stop flying so much, and we want you to turn off the street lights, and we want you to close coal-fired electricity,” he said.

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The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.