Green activists want to restrict your ability to fly, but they themselves remain addicted to the UN’s pointless annual beach party.

I received an e-mail yesterday offering me “insight from COP18,” the United Nations’ annual climate change gabfest.

It’s being held this year in exotic Doha, Qatar. Summer (June to September) may technically have finished there, but the weather remains lovely and the beach beckons.

As the New Nostradamus of the North blog observes, locals are being advised to avoid the waterfront during this 12-day conference since it will be overrun with climate folk.

But to get back to that e-mail. It was sent by the Rainforest Alliance and includes a press release that does, indeed, provide insight into what’s going on over there in Doha.

The same sorts of people who think there should be new taxes to discourage the rest of us from flying, who argued successfully that a third runway at Heathrow airport (the world’s busiest) should be nixed because it would exacerbate climate change, and who make films implying that flying kills polar bears nevertheless board planes by the thousands each November.

What do they do after arriving at the latest UN beach party? For what compelling reason do they traverse all those fossil-fueled air miles? Why to set up booths and talk to each other.

The press release tells us that the Rainforest Alliance booth is:

#105 in the official exhibit booth area of the Qatar National Convention Center 

and that its own personnel are among “7,000 NGO delegates” in attendance.

We’re also advised that the Alliance will be taking part in a side-event scheduled for tomorrow.

What we aren’t told is who, exactly, is expected to drop by these booths and side-events. But let’s not be naive. Surely the vast majority of people the Rainforest Alliance reps will encounter over the next two weeks will be activists just like themselves.

We know that members of the Doha public have been warned away. We know that journalists – who’ve also attended these events year after year – have seen all of these booths numerous times before.

In an era in which anyone can access the Rainforest Alliance website in a matter of seconds why would anyone – journalist or otherwise – need to visit a booth in a crowded convention center? Unless they were looking for a date.

Which is really what all of this boils down to, doesn’t it? Socializing. Partying. Hanging out with 7,000 of your closest pals, griping about how the rest of the world just doesn’t get it.

Everyone knows that international climate negotiations are going nowhere fast. The Kyoto Protocol emissions commitments will expire at the end of this year and no replacement protocol is anywhere in sight.

Which means there’s no real justification for those 7,000 NGO representatives to be in Qatar right now. It’s all a sham. It’s all an elaborate drama.

Note this well: when the people who talk loudest about saving the planet lack the self-discipline to avoid pointless air travel and consumption, when even they can’t bring themselves to forfeit their annual getaway in order to spare the environment, the rotten heart of the climate change movement becomes clear.

This is a nasty, intrusive, dangerous movement. This is about certain people persuading themselves that they’re better than the rest of us.

Talking only to each other allows these people to believe it’s their God-given right to dream up a never-ending list of green rules the rest of us need to follow.

Such people deserve our scorn.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here