Here is a link to the hour long session. He is a highly revered figure and this can be seen in the way he is treated by the committee of MPs. Unfortunately he is therefore not given the tough questioning that he should have had. He was able to conflate a number of issues, such as plastic dumped in the oceans, deforestation and other habitat loss along with climate change. This allows for much less detailed look at the extent of man made global warming and much greater resonance with the public. We can all agree that allowing plastic to be dumped in the sea is disgraceful and that we need to retain more natural habitat, but we are not concentrating on these issues enough as we become obsessed with the fiction that we can control the climate.
Update: The article below is from 'Not a lot of people know that'. It is taken from the Daily Telegraph and describes David Attenborough's appearance in parliament.
Update: The article below is from 'Not a lot of people know that'. It is taken from the Daily Telegraph and describes David Attenborough's appearance in parliament.
David Attenborough “A National Disgrace” – Telegraph
July 11, 2019
Is the Telegraph growing a backbone?
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They have this piece by Matt Kilcoyne today:
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For someone who purports to be a national treasure, Sir David Attenborough’s select committee performance yesterday was more of a national disgrace. He should be applauded for educating millions about the natural world, yet he now wants to control our lives, cut down our choices, and shut us out from experiencing these same wonders.
The broadcaster said that he wants people to pay more for airfares – removing the newly found opportunity to travel from millions of lower income families – and warned that other parts of life would have to be cut back for environmental reasons too. When asked about the greater effects of his proposals on poorer families he coldly responded: “Yes. I’m afraid that is the case.”
Rather than a hero of the conservation movement or smooth-voiced demigod, we should see Attenborough as the fallible and clearly flappable man he is. Just because he can describe the world beautifully does not make him an expert on public policy.
That has not stopped Attenborough from trying to control our lives, however. He is the patron of the 21st century Malthusian group Population Matters, who campaign for a lower world population. In the spirit of China’s one child policy, they want to halve the current birthrate, with a special emphasis on the developed world, while curtailing migration to keep those born in poverty in their place and not emitting much carbon.
We have been here before. In 1798, English scholar Thomas Malthus claimed that population growth would soon trigger mass starvation. Since then, the global population has grown seven-fold, yet fewer people are malnourished than ever before.
Just like Malthus, today’s apocalypse evangelists are deeply misguided. We’re not running out of the world’s resources. In fact, we have continuously developed technology to find more resources and use them more efficiently. Our market system helps us apportion cost to activity and, so as prices rise resources are put to their best use.
Nor can Sir David decide what is good and what is evil. His diatribe sought to assign all of us in the West, and particularly Britain, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, the ‘original sin’ of carbon emissions – a sin for which there can be no redemption. He overlooked the billions lifted out of abject poverty over the last two centuries, the development of new technologies that have made our lives easier or medicines that have doubled the length of our lives.
Of course, Attenborough doesn’t believe what he says applies to him. When questioned about his own situation which involves considerably more flying than the average person, he simply described it as a “paradox”. It wasn’t of course. It was mere hypocrisy. This same hypocrisy was on view in the Noughties when Sting and Al Gore jetted around the world lecturing us about climate change. So too when Emma Thompson flew from LA to London to join Extinction Rebellion’s protests. Inevitably, there is one rule for the multimillionaires and another for the little people.
They have developed ways of dismissing such concerns, however. In the case of Extinction Rebellion flights are allowed in crisis situations. With the Guardian and now the Government branding climate change an “emergency”, they can travel whenever and wherever they want while trying to permanently ground the rest of us. Sadly though, our political system, and the luvvie-Left media, does little to persuade Attenborough and his fellow evangelists to abandon their insulting, overblown language and illiberal policy recommendations.
Hyperbole was certainly on display yesterday when Sir David compared concern for the environment to the turn away from slavery two centuries ago. This careless comparison may generate headlines but it also makes a mockery of the human suffering of that evil system. But a national treasure, who sides with the left on environmental issues, receives none of the hate that was directed at the likes of Ann Widdecombe when she used similarly careless language last week.
The trouble is that Attenborough and his ilk give a veneer of reasonableness to radical, authoritarian and impractical ideas. Young people, especially those of richer backgrounds, are indeed coming round to the opinion that throwing plastic into the ocean is unacceptable, that taking lots of foreign jaunts in jets has repercussions. That’s their prerogative. When the alternative to straining every sinew to survive is no food on your family’s table, however, then the environment tends to receive short shrift.
In reality, prosperity is the solution. As we get richer, we care about the rivers we live near, the air we breathe, the planet we share. By bringing nature directly into our homes, Attenborough’s documentaries can even make us care about plant and animal life all over the world. But if we start to control everyone else to fit our worldview, it’s hard to see how we’ll encourage anything other than poverty and resentment in their lives. Removing the vital freedom to choose the lifestyles environmentalists believe are so rational will simply cause people to turn away from the cause altogether.
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