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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

To Win the Climate Debate, We Must Use The Same Tools That Were Used To Defeat Science and Common Sense

By Tom Harris

 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Rules_for_Radicals.png

One of the reasons conservatives have steadily lost power to the left over the past 50 years is because we have not made a proper study of the tools used against us. In an effort to help correct this situation, this is part one of a three-part series that will examine what happened and how we can effectively fight back in the climate change debate.

“What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”

So begins “The Purpose,” the first chapter in “Rules for Radicals – A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals.” Written in 1971 by Chicago-based community organizer Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals showed leftists, then on the outside of most institutions looking in but wanting very much to run the show, how to acquire the power to control society.

And, boy, did they ever take Alinsky’s rules seriously. In many ways, it became the “progressive” Bible, guiding their actions as they fought tooth and nail for decades until today the left control vast swaths of our universities, schools, corporations, governments, churches and of course mainstream media. Even before Rules was published, Hillary Clinton recognized the importance of Alinsky’s work writing about his methods in her undergraduate thesis at Wellesley College, a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Her 1969 thesis was titled "There Is Only the Fight: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model" and, after interviewing him, examined his approach and its effectiveness in creating social change. Interestingly, Wellesley sealed Clinton’s thesis at her request during Bill Clinton's presidency.

Today, the roles are reversed from when Alinsky wrote Rules and it is conservatives who are now on the outside looking in at woke institutions that control much of our every day lives. Universities are especially infected. For example, my own alma matter, Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, is apparently now a politically-correct enforcer of woke group-think when it comes to climate change and COVID policies. If conservatives are to stand any chance of getting back in charge of our schools and the rest of society, then we must learn how we lost control in the first place. And one of the best places to start is to carefully read Rules for Radicals in its entirety. It can be read online for free at Rules For Radicals : Saul Alinsky : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.

One of Alinsky’s rules that conservatives should take particularly seriously is Rule #4:

“Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.”

So, what are the contents of the “book of rules” of progressives when it comes to climate change and energy? Well, generally speaking, they want everyone to at least think they support:

  • The science promoted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
  •  Social justice: caring for the poor, the elderly and those who are disadvantaged in society
  •  Protection of wildlife and the environment
  •  Tolerance of alternative lifestyles & opinions
  • Rejection of authority & absolutism

But their blind adherence to the hypothesis that our use of hydrocarbon fuels—coal, oil and natural gas—is causing a climate emergency and only a massive energy transition to so-called green energy will save the planet actually results in a situation where all of these worthy objectives are in fact violated.

Alarmists’ fears about increasing floods, extreme rainfall, heat waves, intense storms and forest fires are not supported by the UN IPCC. In particular, Working Group 1 of the Sixth Assessment Report had “low confidence in the direction of change” of most of the climate impacts that most excite activists, sensational media, and politicians, namely precipitation, drought, fire weather, cyclones, and hurricanes, snow and ice, sea levels, coastal erosion, and ocean acidity, you name it. Generally, it also has “low confidence” that a wider range of detrimental climate impacts will occur beyond 2050, except under “worst case” scenarios.

So, whenever conservatives have the chance to publicly question climate alarmists, be they from government, the press or any other institution that promotes climate fears, we must ask:

“What science are you using to support your claims of climate catastrophe?”

The answer will usually be, “We follow the science of the UN IPCC,” or words to that effect. Then we must say, loud and clear so that everyone in the audience can hear, “The IPCC does not support your claims about x,” where x could be any one of their excited statements about items listed above. You could also add,

“the terms ‘climate emergency’ or ‘climate crisis’ are only mentioned once in the latest IPCC assessment reports, and that is merely with regard to media coverage, not what the IPCC actually says is real.”

And then you could quote the IPCC directly as follows:

“Some media outlets have recently adopted and promoted terms and phrases stronger than the more neutral ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming,’ including ‘climate crisis,’ ‘global heating,’ and ‘climate emergency’ (Zeldin-O’Neill, 2019).”

Few climate alarmists have even read the IPCC reports, relying almost entirely on mainstream media coverage of what is in the reports, so your response will take the wind out of their sails entirely. So it must be done every time they bring up problems with precipitation, drought, fire weather, cyclones, hurricanes, snow and ice, sea levels, coastal erosion, and ocean acidity.

Progressives’ supposed support for “social justice” can also be used against them effectively. After all, the overwhelming focus of the world on climate change “mitigation,” namely attempts to control the climate, is robbing people who actually need help adapting to real world climate change from the funds they need to survive whatever nature throws at them next. Note in the following figure from the San Francisco-based Climate Policy Initiative that roughly 90% of the 1.27 trillion USD dedicated to “climate finance” in 2021/2022 went to mitigation. Only a paltry 5% went exclusively to adaptation.

 

“Is this Social Justice?” conservatives must ask progressives.

Similarly, conservatives need to point out the human rights abuses that accompany the production of electric vehicle batteries as well as wind and solar power. Click on the following image to show an excellent example of someone doing just that—Danielle Maillot, former Ottawa chapter lead for Action4Canada—questioning candidates for mayor about their support for batteries made with cobalt mined by children in the Congo in mines owned and operated by Chinese companies. The answer from the leading candidate for mayor exposed her as completely uninformed about the issue.

Climate alarmists in government, the press, universities, etc. also need to be taken to task for the huge increase in electricity rates that is the natural result of the transition to wind and solar power. After all, it is the poor and those on fixed incomes who most suffer when power rates go through the roof when “green energy” is introduced into the grid.

And of course there are many examples of how renewable energy such as biofuels are seriously violating human rights across the world. Quoting U.N. Special Rapporteur of the right to food, Jean Zeigler makes sense here:

“It is a crime against humanity to convert agricultural productive soil into soil which produces foodstuff that will be burned into biofuel.” (2007)

After citing the above examples of how the climate scare is violating real world “social justice” concerns, conservatives need to ask their opponents point blank in public meetings:

“Is it ethical to enable policies that hurt people today because of the possible benefit to people yet to be born?”

The following editorial cartoon, created on contract for ICSC, sums up the situation perfectly:

 

Note: In part 2 of this series, I will discuss how to apply Alinsky’s rule #4 to take advantage of the left’s supposed support for Protection of wildlife and the environment.

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