Fear was the UK government’s weapon of choice when it came to fighting Covid. Throughout the pandemic, scare tactics were used to keep us in our homes and socially distanced from others.
Covid has now lost its sting, but fear is once again being deployed to try to change our behavior. Only this time, we’re told it’s for the sake of saving the planet. [emphasis, links added]
Don’t just take my word for it. In my book, A State of Fear, I interviewed an adviser for the Independent Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B).
When I asked him about how SPI-B planned to dial back the Covid fearmongering and move towards normalcy after the pandemic, he replied:
‘There’s a climate crisis coming and that’s going to have to be dealt with. The way we have gone about adapting to the virus has been quite beneficial in terms of working patterns and reducing carbon – all the things we are going to have to go through to adjust to the new future.’
This was truly chilling to hear. He could not have been more explicit that he wanted the behavioral techniques deployed during Covid to be redeployed for climate change.
The aim is to bring us to a ‘new future’ of supposedly eco-friendly and sustainable behaviors. What’s actually meant by this is traveling less, consuming less, and leading a more austere lifestyle.
This SPI-B adviser is not alone in thinking like this. Even as early as 2020, House of Commons speaker Lindsay Hoyle was calling for us to make drastic changes to our lifestyles to tackle climate change at the G7 Speakers’ Meeting.
He observed that people were ‘prepared to accept limitations on personal choice and lifestyle’ for Covid, so why not climate?
In 2021, environmental psychologists from the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST), noting that the lockdown had reduced carbon emissions [but not CO2 levels], urged the government to take advantage of the disruptions caused by Covid.
They said we should ‘lock in’ green behaviors, like staying indoors, as people’s ‘habits [were] weakest and most malleable to change‘ during lockdown.
Now that the pandemic is a distant memory, fearmongering about the so-called climate emergency is inescapable. Just look at the panic over the summer heat waves that has been drummed up by the media.
Warm weather in July was treated as an end-of-the-world scenario, with above-average temperatures in Europe portrayed like something out of a disaster film.
The UN has even declared that we are entering ‘the era of global boiling’. And in case you needed it spelled out, the New York Times told us last month that ‘Heat is the new Covid’.
However, not everyone is persuaded by the constant ramping up of the rhetoric of fear. Many of us remember past predictions of environmental armageddon that didn’t come to pass.
We were told that Siberian weather would hit the UK by 2020 and that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2015. You do not have to be especially observant to notice that the UK remains unfrozen and the Arctic still has plenty of ice.
And while our world leaders claim that the ‘devastating forest fires’ in Greece are due to climate change, it is easy to find news reports showing that the local authorities suspect arsonists are actually to blame.
This is where nudge and other psychological techniques come in. The aim is to circumvent rational debate and skepticism. Education, academia, the media, entertainment, and social media have all been enrolled in an effort to try to change our behavior.
Read rest at spiked
Get the people so afraid of a false idea that the Earth will catch fire unless we surrender our Nations Soventry toa central Government run by the UN.
This article reveals the thinking of liberals on many issues. They consider human behavior like clay as something that can be molded to whatever they desire. This is part of the central planning paradigm. They will never understand that humans have their own minds and values.
There have been many comparisons between COVID and advocacy of climate change. I’m a good example of how they don’t compare. I get extremely sick with the ordinary flu and have a history of pneumonia, and I’m a higher risk age group. I’m still convinced if I had gotten COVID before a vaccine was available I wouldn’t have survived. This is a real reason for fear. My family did a lot of things to protect me. Climate change on the other hand is a fraud. In order to compensate for the problem not being real, its advocates are using fear.
Amen to your vital reference to the AGW Scam, the biggest fraud/misunderstanding/lies/CCP and Russian weapon since WW2-STYLE Nazism.
A disastrously effective con, fooling the authorities West of Suez.