Eamon Dyas  

The whole issue of climate change has long been hijacked by the liberal lobby and they have effectively debilitated any effective response by pushing it into the stable of virtue signalling. This has meant that those who are concerned about the issue are now preoccupied with it as an abstract cause that is easily dismissed by the population as something that will only effectively impact on them to any great degree at some point in the future. This positioning of the issue as an abstract cause also justifies all kinds of gimmicky actions that have no real relation to the world people actually live in (throwing substances at works of art, etc.) and even when they do engage with the world people inhabit they inevitably do so in ways that simply alienate people (blocking motorways, deflating tyres etc.).

We have to ask ourselves the question why these ever so militant people are not investing their energies in pushing for definite and more immediately realisable objectives that are likely to positively contribute to their objective such as a more efficient and affordable public transport system. 

Why is that? Could it be that the way in which the issue has been framed as requiring a global response means that it is inevitably pushed (as far as possible) outside any effective practical measures that demands the State interfering in the markets in those areas where a genuinely effective outcome is more realisable?

As long as the issue is framed around totalities like eradicating the use of fossil fuels or meat-eating, particular and more easily realisable solutions are kept beyond the reach of practical politics. 

Regarding meat-eating. Just like fossil fuels it’s traditionally been the “advanced” global north that has been by far the greatest consumers of meat. But as the global south becomes more affluent it too is experiencing a rise in meat consumption. And, just like fossil fuels the over-consuming global north is now expecting the rest of the world to take the hit for the solution to a problem it has been exclusively responsible for.

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 I think what we say is that the current way it is being presented, and acted upon, by those who are most vociferous is doomed to fail. They should be concentrating upon the actual manifestations of the issue as they impact the population in terms that relate to practical politics. Grand causes are all well and good but unless they are experienced in terms that the population can relate to, grand causes remain the exclusive moral property of the vociferous and outside the realm of the possible.

Unfortunately the vociferous are so immersed in the idea of saving the planet – was there ever a cause couched in such grand terms? – that they are not only failing to see what is possible, but actually inhibiting the arrival of measures that would actually contribute to a solution. In my opinion as a non-car owner and a non-meat eater these people are a nuisance and in fact the enemy of the cause they claim to espouse.