It’s showtime, everybody. Anyone that’s spent much time observing the ever-more bonkers climate dialogues has suspected a day of reckoning would come when the irresistible force/fear of climate change meets the immovable object of people trying to live their lives. It looks like we’re here; get ready to watch the fireworks.
For the past several years, climate activists have become ever more emboldened because no one has made any effort to slow their progress. In fact, the opposite has happened – in stunned disbelief, we’ve seen law-breaking protesters be coddled by politicians who apologize profusely to the anarchists for the existence of lifestyle-related emissions that upset them so very much. We’ve seen politicians at all levels of government in Canada adopt the language of climate extremists, that we are in a “climate emergency”. We’ve seen our police forces protect activists while they impinge on the rights of everyday citizens to move about as they choose to and as our laws (normally) allow. Just the other day a man on Vancouver Island was arrested for dismantling a blockade on a public highway.
Protests are part of life in democracies. But one can’t get away with such activities as climate activists get away with under the name of a political party. And yet climate activist groups are now overtly political, and, because they’re flying under the banner of a climate emergency, these same governments that allowed themselves to be bullied into extremist climate language are now cornered and unable to control the beast they helped create. It’s Frankenstein’s monster all over again.
But these activists are far more nimble and clever than that old lumbering monster, and now our authorities are virtually powerless to stop them – because these cowed governments said they agreed with their underlying premises. How can a government that declared a “climate emergency” in any way stand in the way of groups that are taking their words literally?
Across Canada, bands of activists flying under the banners of various native groups are bringing to life the anarchy they’ve long dreamed of – blocking railroads, ports, roads, and bridges, while our once-proud police forces stand by and protect the anarchists (except at certain Coastal Gaslink sites, where courts have ordered the police to act).
The irony (and, to a certain extent, comedy) goes much deeper if one digs into the news, normally a painful thing to do these days but there are nuggets of gold. In Maine, a similarly obstructive group has banded together to halt the development of…a high-voltage power corridor that would bring Canadian hydroelectricity to the state. Guess who’s behind the protest, at least in part? Maine’s renewable energy lobby, worried that some other renewable energy (as hydro is labelled) is going to rain on their parade. That’s right, green energy climate hounds are turning on each other (the power corridor is part of Maine’s plan to green up their energy supplies; the utility knows full well that if hydrocarbon-based power is eliminated a stable source of 24/7 alternate power is necessary) because they don’t understand how electrical grids work either, and they assume that activists have the right to rebel but those power-starved citizens somehow don’t. Or that they won’t. You can’t make this stuff up.
The genie’s out of the bottle. A decade of coddling, pacifying, mollifying and appeasing climate activists has given them the courage to do whatever the hell they want, firm in the knowledge that the worst that will happen to them is a night or two in jail followed by a hero’s welcome back at activist HQ and most likely some sort of financial award for their courage in battle, like an anarchist purple heart.
But like many banana-republic coup attempts, the warriors have done the easy part. Forming mobs and smashing things is easy; so is blockading. Anyone that can lay down on concrete can do it, and most of the activists seem to have mastered the technique.
But soon will come the hard part. The anarchists have been banking on what they call the “3.5 percent tipping point” – a theory that non-violent protests lead to massive social change once as little as 3.5 percent of the population join the protest.
Climate anarchists believe, based on polling or Twitter likes or word on the street, that a majority of Canadians (or Americans, or whatever) believe so strongly about climate change that it will not be much of a hurdle to get 3.5 percent to join the protest and the cause. It’s a simplistically beautiful theory and worth taking a shot at; should they succeed, their golden path to power – this is a rabidly political movement after all, and not so much about the environment anymore – is within sight.
A fairly major problem though, one that activist/anarchists seem to have a large blind spot about, is that professed support for climate change action evaporates rather rapidly once there is a true cost associated with those actions, or a sacrifice of anything material. That will not fly.
But the activist/anarchists aren’t stupid, and perhaps they know this and know that their window to act is not open for long. This would explain their full-court press of late – Extinction Rebellion, port/ferry/road/rail blockades, the fight to block Teck, etc., and their frantic social media onslaught.
And this is what makes the whole situation so wildly fascinating. The activist/anarchists have gone all in. This is it. They’re not just blocking a pipeline anymore, or chaining themselves to a bulldozer. They’re keeping hundreds of dock workers from their jobs and their paycheques. They’re preventing people from travelling from city to city, no matter the severity of the travel requirement. They are emboldened and they just don’t care. They can smell power, and they’re going for it.
If their obstructionist plans work, and the court of public opinion comes down on their side, Trudeau et al will have effectively handed power to a radicalized, unelected goon squad, and he’s shown no sign whatsoever that he can either stand up to them or has the intellectual firepower to figure this all out (and the likes of his advisor and external brain Gerald Butts, while as cunning as a den of foxes, will be of zero help when it comes to trying to put the genie back in the bottle).
But if their obstructionist plans don’t work and citizens rebel, the whole house of cards might come down on their heads. The scent of power has apparently dulled the anarchist/activists’ survival instincts, because this is overwhelmingly the most likely outcome. A theoretical fear of a slightly warmer planet in 30 years is of no consequence to a harried parent trying to get to work to feed their family, or a person trying to get home to see an ailing or dying parent. The odds are remarkably high that this is going to blow up spectacularly, and soon. But not soon enough.
Time to stop disinformation in its tracks. Say no to the politicization of critical environmental issues, and yes to balanced discussions. Pick up a copy of “The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity” at Amazon.ca, Amazon.com, or Indigo online. These Amazon reviews may be the wisest material you’ll find on the internet (except that one loser).
Read more insightful analysis from Terry Etam here, or email Terry here.