This post is adapted from a recent Twitter thread, based on a Telegraph article, in which it is suggested:

Police may have to enforce strict  environmental laws as part of Government’s ambitious Green agenda

Ambitious climate change targets set by the Government will see a raft of new lifestyle restrictions being imposed

Some have said the article is ‘clickbait’. I think it’s understatement. More on the article shortly.

It’s relevant to me, because I’ve had a a number of conversations with people recently, who are of the mind that, as soon as the government realise the Net Zero agenda has hit material and political reality, it will be withdrawn.

‘Material reality’ means blackouts and huge expense. ‘Political reality’ means the backlash that expense and scarcity cause, which could be anything, protests, riots, or new political movements taking the initiative. The last is a moot point, because there is almost zero possibility of a new party emerging, convincing a majority and taking power before the Net Zero agenda is all but fully implemented. The dominant Westminster parties are members of near-formal consensus on climate change, and are adamant that the public should have no say.

Another version of the argument goes something like, “you can take my car/boiler from my cold dead hands”, but from people who (presumably) have no gun with which to protect their property from policies. The fact is, nobody is going to physically take away your car or boiler. You can keep them. But they will be reduced to useless lumps of metal (or perhaps museum artefacts) by policies which will switch off fuel supplies, after making them ruinously expensive.

It’s going to take, from very many millions of people, that which is essential. And it will hand back only that which is necessary for subsistence, in return for compliance.

Climate technocrats, lobbyists and campaigners of all kinds know that this is the eventuality. They even have a term for what they believe will mitigate the political fallout. They call for a “just transition”.

The problem is that the definition of ‘just’ depends on the generosity of those who stand to gain. The consequence of ruling out democracy is that the principles and policy of “transition” are untested, and nothing holds any promise-maker to their promises — which been nothing but a cascade of unsubstantiated upsides. When the promises fail, it is, of course, going to make very many people very angry. I believe that it risks creating a division in society deeper and wider than anything we have ever seen before: deeper than the miners strikes of the ’70s and ’80s, and deeper than the 1930s, following the Great Depression.

Why? Because it is a draconian agenda, requiring an unprecedented expansion of the state, the reorganisation of the entire economy and of society, which is untested democratically, from which all opposition has been excluded from public debate, and because it relies on technology which does not exist — unicorns — and the green sector’s hollow promises. People are going to lose their jobs, their livelihoods, their homes, their pensions and savings, their stuff, and the things they had planned for their lives. (If such things have even survived government’s and Parliament grotesque Covid-19 failures.)

That’s not something which is going to be resolved in the way that the climate debate has hitherto been resolved: by shouting “DENIER!” at people. The question it will raise is ‘is climate change policy worse than climate change?’. It is going to set people against the state and against each other, not just on the blogosphere, and on the pages of the Guardian — in real life.

The agenda is explicit in requiring the surrender of political sovereignty — the same issue that Brexit was fought over. There will be no mechanism for addressing the inadequacies of green politics. And it is explicit in stating that it will have a material impact on people’s lives — that it will require ‘behaviour change’.

If you disagree, show me the mechanism by which we can, in the event that either the ‘science’ or political design for the post-carbon future turn out to be flawed, withdraw from what politicians who are intent on a ‘global agreement’ between governments call “our commitments”. There is no such exit. There will be no means to switch off *their* power.

The job of managing such differences within society falls to the police, and sometimes the army. Hence, as the Telegraph explains,

Police officers could have to enforce unpopular environmental laws as part of Britain’s increasingly radical Green agenda, a senior officer has suggested.

That is the future of democracy in Britain. The Police *know* it. It’s not an ‘if’. It’s not really a question.

… there are questions around who will enforce the measures with senior police leaders expressing concern that the burden may fall on their shoulders.

[…]

There are concerns that if enforcement by local authorities fails to change people’s behaviour sufficiently, the Government will turn to the police to act.

That’s the answer to people who say that nobody is taking your car/boiler/livelihood away. They are. They will take your stuff away, and charge you for doing so.

Paul Griffiths, the President of the Superintendents’ Association, said this had the potential to create a backlash from the public.

He said: “There are certainly questions around the role that the police will play in enforcing environmental laws in the future.

“We always see with governments and policies, that if they are not keeping pace with their own targets they will look at stricter ways to try and achieve them.

“And of course the police are always a potential avenue of enforcement that is all too easily and readily available.”

[…]

“Whenever we are asked to deal with an enforcement process that has an implication on individuals – as we have seen it in such a stark way this year with the infringements of people’s liberties and freedom of movement – there is a natural backlash.

“The police are the front face of the State in that sense and some of the ambitious green targets that have been set will involve a number of different state agencies in terms of driving environmental change, but at what point on that journey might the police be required to play a role in terms of enforcement? These are issues that should be being discussed now.”

Remember… NOBODY voted for this.

There are indications from the USA, that lawfare — the use of courts, rather than democratic politics, to secure the green agenda’s advance — is to take a new direction, as Anthony Watts reports:

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) will be pushing the Biden administration, calling for prominent climate skeptics, and climate skeptical organizations to be put on investigations and “show trials” for daring to question the consensus. There may be worse than that coming, as he seems to genuinely believe we’ve committed some sort of crime and should be punished for it. Make no mistake, it’s coming.

Climate activists have long fantasised about criminalising their opponents. And these are no idle fantasies, either, from isolated green weirdos. They are academics’ fantasies, politicians fantasies, and extremely rich people’s fantasies. In 2011, they acted out their fantasies by hiring the UK Supreme Court, to hold a mock trial of oil executives charged with ‘ecocide’.

Others have called for the death penalty, for Nuerumberg trials. Professor of Political Theory at the University of Exeter, Catriona McKinnon, more recently argues:

Climate denial has increased the risk of catastrophic global change. Should international criminal law be used against those who promote this dangerous trend? Economic and political leaders can no longer pretend it is business as usual. Whether they actively induce environmental harm or just ignore the existential threat against the survival of the human species, states and corporations must be held accountable for their actions or inaction regarding climate change.

[…]

Climate denial has seriously impeded aggressive mitigation efforts that could have averted our present climate emergency. It has magnified the risk that humanity locks in to catastrophic global climate change. The people in positions of authority in states, or industrial groups whose lies have put us and our descendants in peril, should be held accountable. The damage that climate deniers do is heinous, and they have no excuses. The time has come to prosecute them for postericide.

The ambition behind this histrionic rhetoric has been given a trial run during the pandemic. Scientific voices that depart from the political consensus have been slandered, censored and fired. Tech giants have abolished all mention of alternative perspectives. Ordinary people who protest against the measures that have destroyed their lives have had their faces introduced to the pavement.

The ‘science’ proving itself to be so much bunk, scientific debate has been abolished. The institutions of ‘science’ revealing themselves to be entirely political organisations, criticism of scientific claims has been prohibited, by soft power, by harassment, by financial might, by weight, and by law. The government’s claims to be following the ‘science’ collapse in the face of fearmongering academics and self-aggrandizing TV news anchors, authority clutching to sustain itself by revoking longstanding freedoms and belittling the capacities and competences of ordinary people.

What is true of covid-19 is true of climate. If you can invent a projection to use as the basis to protect “half a million lives” by forcing millions of people out of work, then you can use any old hockey stick to justify smashing just as many heads into pavements. They are saving the planet, and they have the charts to prove it. Anyone who would say otherwise will be locked up, censored, fired, cancelled, deleted, fined and disappeared.

Do not underestimate the climate change agenda.

Happy Christmas and new year!