The sowers of discord?

Canto XXVIII: Circle Eight, Bolgia 9, The Sowers of Discord: 

The Sowers of Religious and Political Discord Between Kinsmen, from the series of Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno by Robert Rauschenberg (1959-60).

Just Stop Oil pissing off rich people

DeSmog have a guide to the occupants of 55 Tufton Street and neighbouring proprties in Westminster, London, located just outside of the Westminster Abbey precinct. It was built by Sir Richard Tufton during the 17th century. Today it hosts a number of right-leaning lobby groups and thinktanks. As a result, the street name is most often used as a metonym for these groups.

As one of many targets for Just Stop Oil performative direct actions Tufton Street represents a lobbying network that is both sinister and extreme when it comes economic policy and climate crisis denial. Tufton Street is not so much about "rich people" as it is a centre for disinformation funded to defend the interests of global super-capital in the United States mobilising right-wing and anti-democratic ideological ordure. 

Martin Rowson of the Guardian on the IPCC’s bleak report on the planet’s future – cartoon

The Westminster building located at 55 Tufton Street is home to a small but influential network of libertarian, pro-Brexit thinktanks and lobby groups, including the UK‘s principal climate science denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation. The building itself is owned by Richard Smith, a businessman whose company HR Smith Group supplies electronic systems to the aviation industry. Smith is also a former trustee of the pro-Brexit Politics and Economics Research Trust founded by former Vote Leave and Taxpayers’ Alliance CEO Matthew Elliott. While he keeps a low profile, Smith is perhaps best known for flying former Prime Minister David Cameron to his home in Shobdon, Herefordshire, in 2007. Smith donated to the official Vote Leave campaign, previously located at the same Tufton Street address. Many of the groups meet monthly to discuss “strategy and tactics”, according to an openDemocracy investigation, while Brexit campaign whistleblower Shahmir Sanni has accused nine of the organisations of running a coordinated campaign for a “hard Brexit” by agreeing on a “single set of right-wing talking points.” The building is home to several groups that either spread misinformation about climate science or lobby against government action to reduce emissions.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) exists to combat what it describes as “extremely damaging and harmful policies” designed to tackle climate change and regularly publishes reports rejecting the scientific consensus on the issue. It was founded in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009 by former Conservative Chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson. Several of the GWPF‘s members and funders are affiliated with other groups located at 55 Tufton Street.

Civitas is an educational charity and publisher specializing in health, education, welfare, and economics. The thinktank has published reports arguing against policies to tackle climate change, including a 2013 report by current Energy Editor of the GWPF John Constable. It claimed a shift to renewable energy would mean “more people would be working for lower wages in the energy sector, energy costs would rise, the economy would stagnate, and there would be a significant decline in the standard of living.” Sir Alan Rudge, an advisor to the GWPF, and Lord Nigel Vinson, a GWPF funder, are both trustees. The group has been criticised by Transparify for its “opaque” operations.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance is a free-market pressure group and thinktank formed in 2004 by Matthew Elliott to campaign for a low tax society. It advocates the removal of various measures designed to reduce emissions, including the Climate Change Levy. In 2016 the TaxPayers’ Alliance, along with US climate science denying lobby groups the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and the Heritage Foundation, held a free trade event at the Conservative Party Conference. The group was, as of November 2015, a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a climate science denial umbrella group run by the CEI, but is no longer listed on its website. The Taxpayers’ Alliance belongs to an international coalition of anti-tax, free-market campaign groups called the World Taxpayers Associations. Other members include the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance, Americans for Tax Reform, the Austrian Economics Center and the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation.

The New Culture Forum is a right-wing thinktank working to change cultural debates it believes are dominated by “the left.” According to the ConservativeHome blog, Matthew Elliott serves as an advisor to the forum, while Michael Gove, former UK Environment Secretary, has spoken at its events. Its founder and Director is Peter Whittle, former UKIP leader in the London Assembly and former Culture and Communities Spokesperson (2014-2018) and Deputy Leader (2016-2017) for the party.

57 Tufton Street, the building next door to 55 Tufton street also houses several other like-minded thinktanks.

The Centre for Policy Studies is a free market thinktank, co-founded by Margaret Thatcher in 1974, five years before she was elected Prime Minister. Lord Vinson was another co-founder of the organisation and subsequently served as Director. It regularly publishes work by climate science denier and anti-renewables advocate Rupert Darwall and runs the CapX news and comment website, which has published numerous articles by GWPF members criticising clean energy. Ahead of the UK‘s adoption of the Climate Change Act in 2008, it published a report casting doubt on climate science and arguing that energy policy should be based on long-term energy security rather than emissions reduction. The group is chaired by the billionaire financier and Conservative donor, Michael Spencer, with Sir Graham Brady, Chair of the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservative MPs, acting as Deputy Chair. More recently the group has published a series of essays from Conservative politicians which called on the party to show leadership in tackling climate change and argued in favour of a carbon border tax.

Down the road at 11 Tufton Street the address is occupied by Public First, a PR firm which aims to help its clients “understand and influence public opinion through research and targeted communications campaigns”, crafting “policy ideas that Governments can realistically apply to difficult issues”, according to its website.

The company was founded by James Frayne, a Conservative political strategist who has held roles at other PR companies such as Westbourne Communications and Portland Communications, as well as having worked as Campaign Director at the Tufton-based Taxpayers’ Alliance and as Director of Policy and Strategy at the right-leaning thinktank Policy Exchange.

Natascha Engel, former Labour MP known for her strong pro-fracking stance, became a Partner at the firm in July 2019, leading the company’s “infrastructure and regulation” division.

At 2 Lord North Street, just around the corner from Tufton Street is Lord North Street, which is home to the Institute of Economic Affairs.

The Institute of Economic Affairs is a free-market think-tank and “educational charity” founded in 1955 by the late Sir Anthony Fisher and Lord Harris with the mission “to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.” Trustees linked to 55 Tufton Street organisations include Lord Vinson, Neil Record, and Michael Hintze. The IEA has received significant amounts of funding from anonymous donors through DonorsTrust, as well as yearly donations from oil giant BP, as revealed by Unearthed in 2018. It has also taken donations from tobacco companies.

23 Great Smith Street houses the Adam Smith Institute, a libertarian thinktank founded in 1977 to promote free-market ideas. It has published numerous articles and reports casting doubt on climate science and downplaying the potential of alternatives to fossil fuels, calling solar power in Britain an “impossible dream.” The group has also taken donations from tobacco companies. Co-founder and Director Eamonn Butler sits on the Economic Advisory Board of the now dormant Tufton Street organisation Global Vision.

40 Great Smith Street accommodates Open Europe, a Eurosceptic thinktank that has been accused of stoking anti-EU sentiment in the UK media. In 2010, the Economist described it as a “political campaign outfit” made up of a team of young researchers who “translate and link to stories that show the EU in a bad light, in a daily press summary that has very wide circulation among political reporters.” In 2014, it published a report criticising EU renewable energy targets which it said should be dropped “immediately”, recommending that the EU should “suspend its micromanaging energy policy-prescriptions.” In February 2020, it became part of the thinktank Policy Exchange, where its team will lead a new “Britain in the World Unit.” 

The Sowers of Discord?

In Dante's poem The Divine Comedy, Hell is depicted as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth; it is the "realm ... of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen".

This detail of a drawing by Botticelli shows one of the Bolgia, or"Evil Ditches", in the Eighth Circle of Hell, called Malebolge. This is the Ninth Bolgia, where the Sowers of Discord are hacked and mutilated for all eternity by a large demon wielding a bloody sword; their bodies are divided as, in life, their sin was to tear apart what God had intended to be united; these are the sinners who are "ready to rip up the whole fabric of society to gratify a sectional egotism". The souls must drag their ruined bodies around the ditch, their wounds healing in the course of the circuit, only to have the demon tear them apart anew. 

If only?

Meanwhile . . . 

. . . two Just Stop Oil protesters who scaled a bridge on the Dartford Crossing, forcing police to close it to traffic, have been sentenced to more than two and a half years each for causing a public nuisance.

Helena Horton and agencies reported for the Guardian (Fri 21 April 2023) under the headline:

Just Stop Oil protesters jailed for Dartford Crossing protest

Under the subheading "Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker scaled bridge over River Thames, forcing police to stop traffic", she writes:

Morgan Trowland, 40, and Marcus Decker, 34, used ropes and other climbing equipment to scale the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links the M25 between Essex and Kent across the River Thames, in October last year. The police closed the bridge to traffic, causing gridlock.

Trowland was sentenced to three years in prison, while Decker received two years and seven months. Spokespeople from the activist group said these were the longest sentences for peaceful climate protest in British history.

Judge Collery KC handed down the sentence, commenting that it was a strict punishment because he wanted to deter copycat actions. Both defendants were unanimously found guilty of causing a public nuisance.

Collery said: “You have to be punished for the chaos you caused and to deter others from copying you.” The judge said Trowland, who has six previous convictions relating to protests, had a “leading role”. Decker had one previous protest-related conviction.

He told the pair “[you] plainly believed you knew better than everyone else”, adding: 

“In short, to hell with everyone else.

“By your actions you caused this very important road to be closed for 40 hours,” the judge said, noting that the disruption affected “many tens of thousands, some very significantly”.

Lawyers for the men told the court they did not plan to take part in any similar climate actions in future, but the judge said he saw “no signs” the defendants were “any less committed to the causes you espouse than before”.

The prosecutor Adam King said the bridge was closed from 4am on 17 October last year to 9pm the following day, with jams forming as traffic was forced to use the tunnels under the Thames instead.

Other climate activists criticised the sentence. An Extinction Rebellion spokesperson told the Guardian: “This is absolutely devastating news. These men took incredibly courageous action to raise the alarm on the greatest crisis of our time and they should be celebrated for their bravery, not thrown in prison and brushed under the carpet.

“The majority of the UK public wants what they’re asking for, urgent and far-reaching action on the climate and ecological emergency, and this news today is a slap in the face to everyone in the UK and globally who are being impacted by climate change right now.”

Speaking outside the courtroom, Stephanie Golder, a JSO spokesperson, said: “Just Stop Oil will not be deterred by these draconian sentences. Where they imprison one of us, 10 more will take their place. When they imprison 10 of us, 100 will stand to take their place.”

The activists plan more actions from Monday next week, including “slow marches” to disrupt traffic around London.

Since the Just Stop Oil campaign began on 1 April 2022, more than 2,000 people have been arrested and 138 have spent time in prison. There are currently two Just Stop Oil and five Insulate Britain activists serving time in prison for actions taken with the campaigns.

Sectional egotism? 

When it comes to Hell it is unlikely we will find Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker anywhere among the circles of Hell, let alone in the Evil Ditches of the Eighth Circle of Hell. 

On the other hand it might be expected to find Judge Collery KC in the evil ditch reserved for Hypocrites in the sixth Bolgia: 

"The Poets escape the pursuing Malebranche by sliding down the sloping bank of the next pit. Here they find the hypocrites listlessly walking around a narrow track for eternity, weighted down by leaden robes. The robes are brilliantly gilded on the outside and are shaped like a monk's habit – the hypocrite's "outward appearance shines brightly and passes for holiness, but under that show lies the terrible weight of his deceit", a falsity that weighs them down and makes spiritual progress impossible for them. Friar Catalano points out Caiaphas, the High Priest of Israel under Pontius Pilate, who counselled the Pharisees to crucify Jesus for the public good (John 11:49–50)." 

Canto XXIII Hypocrites

This is one of a series of transfer drawings by Robert Rauschenberg that illustrates the thirty-four cantos of Dante’s Inferno. Using John Ciardi’s translation of the poem, Rauschenberg worked with Dante scholar Michael Sonnabend to develop one composition for each of the thirty-four cantos. Combining his own drawings and watercolours with images transferred with a chemical solvent from glossy magazine reproductions, Rauschenberg provided a contemporary context for Dante’s poem. 

Don't look down!

Bodycam Footage of the QE2 Bridge "intervention" on 18 October 2022 by Just Stop Oil activists Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker.

Don’t Look Up!

Don't Look Up is a 2021 American apocalyptic political satire black comedy film written, co-produced, and directed by Adam McKay from a story he co-wrote with David Sirota.  

The plot centres on Kate Dibiasky, an MSU doctoral candidate, discovers a previously unknown comet. Her professor Dr. Randall Mindy confirms that it will collide with the Earth in about six months and is large enough to cause a planet-wide extinction event. NASA confirms the findings and their Planetary Defense Coordination Office head Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe accompanies Dibiasky and Mindy to present their findings to the White House. 

They are met with apathy from President Janie Orlean and her son/Chief of Staff Jason. Oglethorpe urges Dibiasky and Mindy to leak the news to the media, and they do so on a morning talk show. When hosts Jack Bremmer and Brie Evantee treat the topic frivolously, Dibiasky loses her composure and publicly rants about the threat on national television. 

Mindy receives public approval for his looks; conversely, Dibiasky became the subject of negative internet memes. Actual news about the comet's threat receives little public attention and the danger is denied by Orlean's NASA Director Jocelyn Calder, a top donor to Orlean with no background in astronomy. 

When news of Orlean's sex scandal with her Supreme Court nominee Sheriff Conlon is exposed, she distracts from the bad publicity by finally confirming the threat and announcing a project to strike and divert the comet using nuclear weapons. The mission successfully launches, but Orlean abruptly aborts it when Peter Isherwell, the billionaire CEO of BASH Cellular and another top donor, discovers that the comet contains trillions of dollars worth of rare-earth elements. 

The White House agrees to commercially exploit the comet by fragmenting and recovering it from the ocean, using technology proposed by BASH in a scheme that has not undergone peer review. 

Orlean sidelines Dibiasky and Oglethorpe while hiring Mindy as the National Science Advisor. Dibiasky tries to mobilize public opposition to the scheme but gives up under threat from Orlean's administration. 

Mindy becomes a prominent voice advocating for the comet's commercial opportunities and begins an affair with Evantee. 

World opinion is divided among people who believe the comet is a severe threat, those who decry alarmism and believe that mining a destroyed comet will create jobs, and those who deny that the comet even exists. 

When Dibiasky returns home to Illinois, her parents kick her out of the house and she begins a relationship with a young man named Yule, a shoplifter she meets at her retail job. 

After Mindy's wife confronts him about his infidelity, she returns to Michigan without him. Mindy questions whether Isherwell's technology will be able to break apart the comet, angering the billionaire. 

Becoming frustrated with the administration, Mindy finally snaps and rants on live television, criticizing Orlean for downplaying the impending apocalypse and questioning humanity's indifference. 

Cut off from the administration, Mindy reconciles with Dibiasky as the comet becomes visible from Earth. Mindy, Dibiasky, and Oglethorpe organize a protest campaign on social media, telling people to "Just Look Up" and call on other countries to conduct comet interception operations. 

At the same time, Orlean starts an anti-campaign telling people, "Don't Look Up,". Orlean cuts Russia, India, and China out of the rights for the comet-mining deal, so they prepare their own joint deflection mission, only for their spacecraft to explode. 

As the comet becomes larger in the sky, Orlean's supporters start turning on her administration. The BASH's attempt at breaking the comet apart goes awry and everyone realizes that humanity is doomed. 

Isherwell, Orlean, and others in their elite circle board a sleeper spaceship designed to find an Earth-like planet, inadvertently leaving Jason behind. Orlean offers Mindy two places on the ship, but he declines, choosing to spend a final evening with his friends and family.  

As expected, the comet strikes off the coast of Chile, causing a worldwide disaster and triggering an extinction-level event. The shockwave strikes Mindy's house, killing everyone inside. 

In a mid-credits scene, the 2,000 people who left Earth before the comet's impact land on a lush alien planet 22,740 years later, ending their cryogenic sleep. 

They exit their spacecraft naked and admiring the habitable world. Orlean is suddenly killed by a bird-like predator, one of a pack that surrounds the planetary newcomers. 

In a post-credits scene, back on Earth, it is revealed that Jason managed to survive the impact. He records himself, declaring himself the "last man on Earth" and saying to "like and subscribe".

"I went on TV to explain Just Stop Oil – and it became a parody of Don’t Look Up" 

So says Miranda Whelehan in a Guardian opinion piece (Wed 13 Apr 2022).

"I wanted to sound the alarm about oil exploration and the climate crisis, but Good Morning Britain just didn’t want to hear." 

I hadn’t seen the 2021 satirical film Don’t Look Up when I went on Good Morning Britain on Tuesday. I was there on behalf of Just Stop Oil – a group that has been engaging in direct action by blockading oil terminals. We’re demanding that the UK government ends all new oil licences, exploration and consent in the North Sea. It’s a simple message that’s in line with science.

But the simplicity of our demands seemed to annoy my interviewer, Richard Madeley. “But you’d accept, wouldn’t you, that it’s a very complicated discussion to be had, it’s a very complicated thing,” he said. “And this ‘Just Stop Oil’ slogan is very playground-ish isn’t it? It’s very Vicky Pollard, quite childish.” I then proceeded to talk about the recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which confirmed that it is “now or never” to avoid climate catastrophe. But they didn’t seem to care.

People were quick to point out the parallels with a key scene in Don’t Look Up, when Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence’s characters, both astronomers, go on a morning talkshow to inform the public about a comet that’s heading to Earth, potentially leading to an extinction-level event. The newsreaders don’t care about what they have to say: they prefer to “keep the bad news light”.

Now that I’ve watched the film, I understand the references people have been making. The worst part is that these presenters and journalists think they know better than chief scientists or academics who have been studying the climate crisis for decades, and they refuse to hear otherwise. It is wilful blindness and it is going to kill us.

The response to the interview on social media has been very supportive, but we need to translate that support into action. If the thousands of people on Twitter who disagree with Madeley’s approach joined the actions of Just Stop Oil, the possibilities for change would be endless. When the interview finished, I tried to speak more to Ranvir Singh and Madeley to stress how serious this is; Madeley just told me to be quiet and watched the weather presenter.

My fear is that they will only understand the reality of the climate crisis when it is on the doorstep, perhaps when the floodwater is uncontrollably trickling into their homes, or when they can no longer find food in the supermarkets. Maybe then the brutal reality of losing a “livable planet” means would actually sink in. Maybe then the journalists, presenters and climate delayers would think: “Oh, maybe we should have listened, done something.” And, of course, it will be too late.

Given the government’s inaction, which I believe will be judged as criminal in the near future, there are no longer any options left than to take clear direct action in the form of civil resistance. Some of my best friends are now preparing for their next action. This will be their fourth in 12 days, perhaps also leading to their fourth time sleeping in a police cell. They are between 20 and 23. They have degrees and jobs. They should be enjoying their final weeks at university and preparing to celebrate their graduation; instead, they are putting their bodies in the way to grind the distribution of oil to a halt. No matter what the government or the media say, these are good people who are terrified for their future. They are refusing to just sit by while their government pours more fuel on their dreams and lets them go up in smoke.

Civil resistance is really not about protests or marches, it is about responding to a situation beyond our worst nightmares. At Cop26, the people who run things effectively confirmed that they were going to let billions of the poorest people on this planet die in order to keep business as usual going.

Well, to that we say no. We will not continue as generations have before and allow our actions today to have devastating consequences on those tomorrow. It is time to break that cycle and stand up for what is right. “If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal, from now – from this year.” That is a direct quote from Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. He said that last year. Time has quite literally run out. It only takes one quick search on the internet to see what is happening. Somalia. Madagascar. Yemen. Australia. Canada. The climate crisis is destroying lives already and will continue to unless we make a commitment to stop oil now.

Miranda Whelehan is a student and campaigner with the Just Stop Oil coalition

Sowers of discord? 

Fleet Street's last dinosaur of climate change denial is The Daily Telegraph as critiqued in this Commentary by Bob Ward on 23 April, 2021 produced by The London School of Economics and Political Science and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

The leader writers at The Daily Telegraph have demonstrated once again that their deeply ideological opposition to climate change policy makes them an unreliable source of information on the topic.

Many of Britain’s national newspapers now accept the causes and potential consequences of climate change, including, belatedly, most of the right-leaning titles. But there is one remaining dinosaur which, like The Spectator magazine, desperately clings to climate change denial: The Daily Telegraph.

Over the past few years, the newspaper, for which I worked very briefly as a science reporter during the 1990s, has published at regular intervals inaccurate and misleading polemics about climate change in its Comment section and its leading articles.

Some of these have continued the newspaper’s longstanding rejection of the scientific evidence for climate change, including an infamously daft article in 2006 which claimed that global warming stopped in 1998.

More recently it has promoted ‘lukewarmer’ climate change denial, reluctantly accepting the basic physics of the greenhouse effect, but still promoting the myth that climate change will not have much of an adverse impact.

These have included an error-filled leading article in June 2019 which plagiarised, from prolific ‘lukewarmer’ Dr Bjorn Lomborg, bogus figures about the economics of the UK’s plans to cut its greenhouse gas emissions.

This week The Daily Telegraph published a leading article that was also critical of the UK Government’s efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But it was full of sloppy errors and false arguments, revealing that the newspaper’s leader writers still do not know what they are writing about.

The article was prompted by the UK Government’s announcement this week that it would accept the advice of the UK Climate Change Committee and legislate a Sixth Carbon Budget that would mean our annual emissions will be cut by 78 per cent by 2035 compared with 1990.

It was widely welcomed as a bold move by Boris Johnson’s Government as it seeks to lead by example ahead of the 26th session of the Conference of Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, due to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.

But the Telegraph’s leading article chose to snipe instead. Its final paragraph states: “When ministers grandstand in order to demonstrate their green credentials they make little mention of the bills to be paid. They need to be more honest with the voters who will be asked to pay for these pledges.”

I agree that the Government should be honest about the significant investments that are required to achieve the UK’s target of reducing its annual emissions to net zero by 2050. But the Telegraph’s article was not honest in addressing this issue.

Detailed analysis by the independent experts at the Climate Change Committee for the Sixth Carbon Budget found that annual investments to realise net zero emissions will need to rise from about £10 billion in 2020 to about £50 billion by 2050. These are large sums, but equivalent to less than 1 per cent of the UK’s projected GDP over this period.

The Committee’s calculations also show that much of this investment will be balanced by savings, mainly by avoiding the expensive import of fossil fuels. It estimated that, for instance, electrification of the UK’s road transport would save the country over £20 billion a year by 2050.

The Committee’s report concludes: “By 2050, aggregate operating cost savings will be similar to the annual investment requirements for the Net Zero transition.” And these calculations do not include the huge economic benefits of avoided climate change impacts and other severe consequences of fossil fuel use, such as local air pollution. However, none of these economic benefits are mentioned in the Telegraph’s article. It is not clear whether this was the result of ignorance or dishonesty.

The article included several other factual errors. It stated: “A parliamentary report says replacing gas boilers with green alternatives could cost homeowners up to £25,000.” There has been no parliamentary report that makes such a claim. There was a letter on 21 December 2020 from Philip Dunne, the Chair of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, to Kwasi Kwarteng, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which addressed the cost of heat pumps and measures to make homes more energy efficient so that they do not waste as much heat. The letter stated: “The Northern Housing Consortium told us it will cost an average privately owned household £19,300 for retrofit and £5,000 for a heat pump.” These retrofits include new radiators, insulation and underfloor heating.

However, the response from Lord Callanan, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, indicated that the costs would be much lower. His letter stated: “Some homes will inevitably require upgrades to the heat distribution system for a heat pump to operate effectively, which could cost between £500-£1,500, but most homes in the UK are technically suitable for a heat pump with no improvements to the fabric efficiency of the building. That being said, lowering heat losses by investing in energy efficiency will improve the performance of a heat pump and reduce the overall cost of heating.”

Of course, this information was ignored by the writer of the Telegraph article. The newspaper has never shown much enthusiasm for measures that would improve the energy efficiency of the UK’s homes, even though it would save its readers significant sums of money from wasted heat.

The article also stated: “New boilers are to be phased out within just 12 years and 600,000 heat pumps installed.” This is plain wrong. The Government set a target in November 2020, as part of the ‘The Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution’, to increase the number of heat pump installations every year to 600,000 by 2028. There are no plans to phase out gas boilers in the UK’s 29 million homes “within just 12 years”. The Climate Change Committee did point out in its advice to the Government about the Sixth Carbon Budget that its ‘Balanced Pathway’ assumes no new gas boilers will be installed after 2033, unless they can be converted to run on electricity or hydrogen.

The leader writer could have avoided these mistakes by reading the article by Telegraph Environment Editor, Emma Gatten, who reported the correct information just a few pages further forward in the same edition of the newspaper.

The article contained one further mistake. It stated: “Boris Johnson has agreed with his advisers that carbon dioxide should be cut by 78 per cent by 2035 compared with 1990 levels. The previous target was a 68 per cent cut by 2030.” Again, this exposes a fundamental lack of understanding. The 68 per cent reduction in annual emissions by 2030 is not “a previous target” but instead is a separate commitment made by the UK in its ‘nationally determined contribution’ to the Paris Agreement, which was announced on 12 December 2020. Unlike the Sixth Carbon Budget, it does not include the UK’s contribution to international aviation and shipping, but both targets are consistent with each other and with the goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

All these inaccurate and misleading claims appeared in a leading article that was less than 300 words in length. It demonstrates either huge incompetence or dishonesty, and a remarkable contempt for the newspaper’s readers.

The Telegraph published this video "Driver blocked by Just Stop Oil threatened with fine for beeping horn at protesters" on Dec 14 2022.

Who are the "sectional egoists" in this video? 

The Telegraph frames the video to make a series of negative points about Just Stop Oil, but the footage itself reveals a more nuanced reality. This is the Telegraph's text on YouTube:  

• Police asked Just Stop Oil to do them a "favour" by ceasing to block the road of nine cancer patients on their way to hospital.
• In their latest rush hour chaos, the eco group blockaded four lanes of traffic as they marched slowly for 90 minutes along the A503 in north London on Wednesday morning.
• A transport carrier with nine cancer patients inside was stuck in the mass gridlock for at least 30 minutes, as drivers again clashed with police for refusing to arrest the group. 
• It was only allowed to pass when the driver told the dozens of police officers strolling alongside and behind the group that they were running late for crucial appointments.

The Sowers of Discord in the eighth circle of Hell

Bolgia 9 by William Blake 1824-27

Inferno XXVIII, 103-42. Still in the ninth chasm of the eighth circle, Dante and Virgil are shown with Bertrand de Born on the left, now holding out his head like a lantern, and Mosca de' Lamberti, raising the stumps of his handless arms. Bertrand de Born had set Henry II of England against his son, while Mosca de' Lamberti's murder of Buondelmonte had begun the conflict between the Guelph and Ghibelline factions in Florence. 

Extinction Rebellion - Sectional egoists?

At the beginning of 2023 Extinction Rebellion announced it would temporarily; 

move away from disruptive tactics

Robert Booth, Social affairs correspondent for the Guardian reported (Sun 1 Jan 2023) that the climate protest group says temporary shift will; 

‘prioritise relationships over roadblocks’

He writes:

The climate protest group Extinction Rebellion is shifting tactics from disruptions such as smashing windows and glueing themselves to public places in 2023, it has announced.

A new year resolution to “prioritise attendance over arrest and relationships over roadblocks”, was spelled out in a 1 January statement titled “We quit”, which said “constantly evolving tactics is a necessary approach”.

The group admitted the move would be controversial. Other environmental protest groups, such as Just Stop Oil, have stepped up direct actions, notably throwing paint at art masterpieces.

New legal restrictions on protests were introduced by the government after a wave of direct actions by climate protesters closed motorways and other infrastructure. The introduction of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act in 2022 gave police greater powers to restrict protests that cause disruption. The new public order bill is due to introduce offences of “locking on” and “interference with key national infrastructure”, which can both be punishable by imprisonment. There could be new “serious disruption prevention orders” targeting protesters “determined to repeatedly inflict disruption on the public”.

Activists with XR, which launched in 2018, became known for civil disobedience, from planting trees on Parliament Square to superglueing themselves to the gates of Buckingham Palace. Some smashed windows at bank headquarters and at News UK, the publisher of the Sun and Times newspapers. But the group became disliked by more people than liked, according to polling by YouGov.

“In a time when speaking out and taking action are criminalised, building collective power, strengthening in number and thriving through bridge-building is a radical act,” the group said.

“XR is committed to including everyone in this work and leaving no one behind, because everyone has a role to play. This year, we prioritise attendance over arrest and relationships over roadblocks, as we stand together and become impossible to ignore.”

Meanwhile, dire warnings about global heating continue: 2022 was the warmest on record in the UK, the Met Office has said, and the 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 2003. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has warned: “We are headed for economy-destroying levels of global heating.”

XR is calling for 100,000 people to “leave the locks, glue and paint behind” and surround the Houses of Parliament on 21 April.

“What’s needed now most is to disrupt the abuse of power and imbalance, to bring about a transition to a fair society that works together to end the fossil-fuel era,” the XR statement read. “Our politicians, addicted to greed and bloated on profits, won’t do it without pressure.”

The government has said that “over recent years, guerrilla tactics used by a small minority of protesters have caused a disproportionate impact on the hard-working majority seeking to go about their everyday lives, cost millions in taxpayers’ money and put lives at risk”.

XR also called for greater collaboration between different protest groups while admitting this may be “uncomfortable or difficult”.

“The conditions for change in the UK have never been more favourable – it’s time to seize the moment,” it said. “The confluence of multiple crises presents us with a unique opportunity to mobilise and move beyond traditional divides.

“No one can do this alone, and it’s the responsibility of all of us, not just one group … As our rights are stripped away and those speaking out and most at risk are silenced, we must find common ground and unite to survive.”

Unite to survive! Can't say fairer than that! 

Gustave Doré who famously illustrated Dante's Inferno depicts the "Sowers of Discord" (1866) in the eighth circle of Hell.

In his series of images titled London: A pilgrimage, Gustave Doré depicts the common occurrence of a traffic jam on Ludgate Hill (1872). These days, and for some time now, the Dartford Crossing has been an accident hotspot, causing extensive traffic disruption as in the example of a lorry crash causing delays of up to 45mins in the image below. 

Frequent delays motorists have learned to accept as "normal"!

The Dartford crossing is the busiest in the United Kingdom, with an average daily use of around 160,000 vehicles. The crossing has high levels of congestion, especially at peak times - with high levels of air pollution impacting neighbouring Thurrock and Dartford. 

The crossing is the busiest in the United Kingdom, with an average daily use of around 160,000 vehicles. The crossing has high levels of congestion, especially at peak times - with high levels of air pollution impacting neighbouring Thurrock and Dartford.

Pollution levels around the Dartford Crossing have been excluded from government air quality assessments because it was classed as a "rural" road, the BBC discovered (26 March 2017).

Despite carrying 50 million vehicles a year, the status meant nitrogen dioxide recordings were not reported to the EU.

Consisting of the Dartford Tunnel and QEII Bridge, the crossing - officially known as the A282 - connects the M25 north and south of the River Thames. It has now been reclassified.

In a letter obtained by the BBC, government minister Therese Coffey conceded the error.

Dr Coffey - responsible for improving air quality on behalf of the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) - said: "The A282 in Dartford does not appear in the national air quality plan for nitrogen dioxide because it was classified as rural and was, therefore, excluded from Defra's air quality modelling assessment."

She added that the Department for Transport (DfT), which is responsible for road classification, confirmed the rural status "was incorrect".

However, the DfT told the BBC it was Defra that designated the A282 as a rural road.

The error was only recognised because Dartford Borough Council noticed the stretch of road was not included in the government's National Air Quality plan.

For 15 years the council has carried out its own air quality measurements, and each year the area around the crossing has been above the EU's target for nitrogen dioxide.

It said it passed the data to Defra, but no action was taken.

Councillor Keith Kelly, the council's head of transport and infrastructure, said the revelation was "shocking" as for years key pollution data was not seeing the light of day.

He added he was "hugely concerned" about the state of people's health because, despite the crossing being labelled as an A road, the eight lane dual-carriageway was effectively a "motorway running through the middle of our town".

The road, according to Highways England, is routinely "full to capacity". It is "one of the least reliable sections of the UK's road network" and "congestion at the crossing quickly backs up to affect local roads".

Public Health England has estimated Dartford has one of the highest percentage of deaths that can be attributed to long-term exposure to particulate air pollution in Kent.

Particulates are the deadliest form of air pollution due to their ability to penetrate deep into the lungs and blood streams unfiltered.

Thurrock, at the northern end of the crossing, has the highest estimated percentage in the East of England.

Defra has now promised to include the data "in any future assessments reported to the EU".

Because the design capacity has been exceeded, the crossing is subject to major traffic congestion and disruption, particularly when parts are closed because of accidents or bad weather. Though the government was adamant that the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge should be designed to avoid closure due to high winds, the bridge has nevertheless had to close on occasions. On 12 February 2014, during the winter storms, it was closed owing to 60-mile-per-hour (97 km/h) winds, and again on the evening of 13–14 February 2014. 

Extreme weather events 

The high winds during the winter storms that closed the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge on the Dartford crossing in February 2014 were extreme weather events, but not necessarily the result of climate change and global heating. However, in a warming world such storms could lead to extreme weather events resulting in catastrophic consequences compared to temporarily closing the QE II bridge.

Storm Ulysses 

Storm Ulysses (26-27 February 1903) was probably the most severe to affect Ireland since the Night of the Big Wind, with an estimated 1000–3000 trees uprooted in Phoenix Park, Dublin. Following a stormy period between the 18–26 which saw several depressions pass close by to the west coast of Ireland. The storm's low pressure was estimated at 975 mb (28.8 inHg) (Lamb, 1991). A quote from Ulysses by James Joyce is likely based on the aftermath of this storm - "O yes, J.J. O'Molloy said eagerly. Lady Dudley was walking home through the park to see all the trees that were blown down by that cyclone last year and thought she'd buy a view of Dublin." 

A recent study of this event by the University of Reading and the National Centre for Atmospheric Science using modern forecasting to analyse paper records shows both the severity of event – and how much worse consequences would be today due to climate change and global heating.

Kevin Rawlinson reports on the results of this study in the Guardian (Mon 24 Apr 2023). He writes:

It was a storm sufficiently severe to rip up thousands of trees, leave several people dead and to warrant a mention in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses – subsequently taking its name from there.

However, it is not until now that researchers have been able to say that the 1903 tempest whipped up winds of a force seen less than once a century – making Storm Ulysses one of the worst ever seen.

“We knew the storm we analysed was a big one, but we didn’t know our rescued data would show that it is among the top four storms for strongest winds across England and Wales,” said Prof Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading and the National Centre for Atmospheric Science.

His research team has analysed paper records of the historic extreme weather event – which would have resulted in gusts in excess of 100mph in some areas – digitised them and applied modern weather forecasting methods. “This study is a great example of how rescuing old paper records can help us to better understand storms from decades gone by. Unlocking these secrets from the past could transform our understanding of extreme weather and the risks they pose to us today,” Prof Hawkins said.

The consequences if it were repeated in future would be much worse than they were in 1903 due to the effects of the climate crisis, Hawkins said. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We can translate these past events into a modern context, in our warmer world. So, for example, we know that sea levels have already risen around our coastlines, so the storms that happened in the past would today be more damaging, because the storm surge around our coasts will be higher.

“Also, because we live in a warmer world, our atmosphere is warmer and more humid, and so has more moisture in it. And so the storms will rain more than they would have done in the past.

“We can understand how the risks are changing through time as the world is warming from understanding these past events.”

The researchers said many storms that occurred before 1950 were left unstudied because billions of pieces of data exist only on paper. For their study, they looked at Storm Ulysses which heavily damaged infrastructure and ships when it passed across Ireland and the UK between 26 and 27 February 1903. They compared that with independent weather observations, such as rainfall data, as well as photographs and contemporaneous written accounts.

Hawkins said he planned to apply the method to other historical storms. “We have lots of diaries and handwritten records in the UK and Ireland, going back well into the 1800s, which cover lots of these other storms and other extreme events that we had in the past. And so reconstructing those storms in the past will also be a very valuable initiative that we’re pursuing.”

Along the LODE Zone Line in Australia, Graham Readfearn, an environment reporter for Guardian Australia, covers an alarming story about scientists concern over the world’s ocean surface temperature as it hits a record high, warning of more marine heatwaves, leading to increased risks of extreme weather events across the planet (Sat 8 Apr 2023).

A global map using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showing areas in orange and red where temperatures have been above the long-term average. 

Graham Readfearn reports:

The temperature of the world’s ocean surface has hit an all-time high since satellite records began, leading to marine heatwaves around the globe, according to US government data.

Climate scientists said preliminary data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) showed the average temperature at the ocean’s surface has been at 21.1C since the start of April – beating the previous high of 21C set in 2016.

“The current trajectory looks like it’s headed off the charts, smashing previous records,” said Prof Matthew England, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales.

Three years of La Niña conditions across the vast tropical Pacific have helped suppress temperatures and dampened the effect of rising greenhouse gas emissions.

But scientists said heat was now rising to the ocean surface, pointing to a potential El Niño pattern in the tropical Pacific later this year that can increase the risk of extreme weather conditions and further challenge global heat records.

Dr Mike McPhaden, a senior research scientist at Noaa, said: “The recent ‘triple dip’ La Niña has come to an end. This prolonged period of cold was tamping down global mean surface temperatures despite the rise of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

“Now that it’s over, we are likely seeing the climate change signal coming through loud and clear.”

La Niña periods – characterised by cooling in the central and eastern tropical Pacific and stronger trade winds – have a cooling influence on global temperatures. During El Niño periods, the ocean temperatures in those regions are warmer than usual and global temperatures are pushed up.

According to the Noaa data, the second-hottest globally averaged ocean temperatures coincided with El Niño that ran from 2014 to 2016.

The data is driven mostly by satellite observations but also verified with measurements from ships and buoys. The data does not include the polar regions.

More than 90% of the extra heat caused by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels and deforestation has been taken up by the ocean.

A study last year said the amount of heat accumulating in the ocean was accelerating and penetrating deeper, providing fuel for extreme weather.

England, a co-author of that study, said: “What we are seeing now [with the record sea surface temperatures] is the emergence of a warming signal that more clearly reveals the footprint of our increased interference with the climate system.”

Measurements from the top 2km of the ocean show the rapid accumulation of heat in the upper parts of the ocean, particularly since the 1980s.

Dr Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist and distinguished scholar at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, said observations showed the heat in the tropical Pacific was extending down to more than 100 metres.

He said that heat would have knock-on effects for the atmosphere above, creating more heat, adding energy to weather systems and causing marine heatwaves.

Dr Alex Sen Gupta, an associate professor at the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre, said satellites showed that on the ocean surface, temperature rises had been “almost linear” since the 1980s.

“What’s been surprising is that the last three years have also been really warm, despite the fact that we’ve had La Niña conditions,” he said. “But it is now warmer still and we are getting what looks like record temperatures.”

Sen Gupta is part of an international team of scientists studying marine heatwaves – which are classified by his group as an area of the ocean where temperatures are in the top 10% ever recorded for that time of year for at least five straight days.

Current observations show moderate to strong marine heatwaves in several regions, including the southern Indian Ocean, the south Atlantic, off north-west Africa, around New Zealand, off the north-east of Australia and the west of Central America.

“It’s unusual to see so many quite extreme marine heatwaves all at the same time,” said Sen Gupta.

While marine heatwaves can be driven by local weather conditions, studies have shown they have increased in frequency and intensity as the oceans have warmed – a trend forecast to worsen with human-caused global heating.

Hotter oceans provide more energy for storms, as well as putting ice sheets at risk and pushing up global sea levels, caused by salt water expanding as it warms.

Marine heatwaves can also have devastating effects on marine wildlife and cause coral bleaching on tropical reefs. Experiments have also suggested that warming oceans could radically alter the food web, promoting the growth of algae while lowering the types of species that humans eat.

Prof Dietmar Dommenget, a climate scientist and modeller at Monash University, said the signal of human-caused global heating was much clearer in the oceans.

“Obviously we’re in a fast-warming climate and we’re going to see new records all the time. A lot of our forecasts are predicting an El Niño.

“If this happens, we’ll see new records not just in the ocean but on land. This data is already suggesting we’re seeing a record and there could be more coming later this year.”

Fire and floods associated with extreme weather events caused by global heating!  

Along the LODE Zone Line in Australia a repeat of bushfires, as in this one around Nowra during the so-called black summer, prompted experts to hope that a predictive picture of the fire situation and its impact on health and the economy will aid prevention strategies. 

Melissa Davey, Medical editor for Guardian Australia, reported at the beginning of 2023 (Sun 1 Jan 2023) that experts predict: 

More than 2,400 lives will be lost to bushfires in Australia over a decade 

She writes: 

In the decade to 2030, more than 2,400 lives will be lost to bushfires in Australia, with healthcare costs from smoke-related deaths tipped to reach $110m, new modelling led by Monash University suggests.

The lead health economist with the university’s Centre for Medicine Use and Safety, Associate Prof Zanfina Ademi, who headed the analysis, said it was important to get a predictive picture of the bushfire situation in Australia and its impact on health and the economy.

“This will underline preventive investment strategies to mitigate the incidence and severity of future bushfires in Australia,” she said.

The black summer bushfires in 2019-20 saw almost 20m hectares of land burnt and 34 lives lost directly. One analysis estimated 417 excess deaths resulted from longer-term consequences of the fires and smoke exposure.

Ademi said it was unclear what the health and economic burden of bushfires in the future may be. She and her team constructed a model that simulated follow-up of the entire Australian population yearly from 2021 to 2030, capturing bushfire deaths and years of life lived. The population in the model was updated each year by considering births, deaths and net inward migration.

The impact of bushfires on gross domestic product over this period totalled $17.2bn, the model predicted, while 2,418 lives would be lost to bushfires. The model made conservative predictions, as it assumed no changes to GDP over the time period given uncertainty regarding inflation in the current economic climate.

The model also did not estimate the health burden of bushfire smoke due to non-physical conditions, such as mental health, nor the burden borne by community-based healthcare services, and did not capture the impact on GP consultations nor the increased dispensation of medications for respiratory conditions. The costs of devoting healthcare resources away from other conditions was also not considered.

“Even based on conservative assumptions, the health and economic burden of bushfires in Australia looms large,” the paper, published in the journal Current Problems in Cardiology, concluded.

“Human-induced climate change is increasing the likelihood of catastrophic wildfires. This underscores the importance of actions to mitigate bushfire risk.”

Ademi said measures such as improved fuel reduction and prescribed burning practices would be crucial to reduce health and economic burdens. While individual action was important, such as reducing fuel around property, adhering to total fire bans and reconsidering living in areas likely to be affected by fire – which she said for many people was not a “choice” – these individual actions were not enough to mitigate risk.

“We need urgent involvement of government to speed up implementation of green and sustainable technologies, and we need to use collective actions at our disposable for effective social change,” she said.

Dr Arnagretta Hunter, a cardiologist and Human Futures Fellow at the Australian National University, said there were many opportunities to change the trajectory of increasingly severe health and environmental impacts due to fires.

“It’s not a recipe for despair,” Hunter said.

“We should be empowered to see the opportunities for change that will actually make our lives better, and to harness community-based collaboration to prepare for things that haven’t happened before.

“The air that we breathe, the food that we eat, the water that we need, the prices that we pay, the loss of housing, the loss of community, all these things are connected and directly impact our health and wellbeing. Especially with the change of government this year we are seeing opportunities again to discuss all of this and to reinvest in health and climate change. There’s a lot of things that are changing in the landscape.

“I think what has been most powerful is that we can actually say ‘climate change’ out loud now, it’s losing its political, partisan power, and we can now acknowledge the science and discuss it intelligently and robustly, engaging our community in that discussion. And that’s an extraordinarily important part of how we prepare.”

Floods 

In 2022 devastation for 33 million people in Pakistan came as catastrophic levels of rainfall, caused by global heating, resulted in the inundation of vast areas of the country.

From 14 June, through to October 2022, floods in Pakistan killed 1,739 people, and caused ₨ 3.2 trillion ($14.9 billion) of damage and ₨ 3.3 trillion ($15.2 billion) of economic losses. The immediate causes of the floods were heavier than usual monsoon rains and melting glaciers that followed a severe heat wave, both of which are linked to climate change.

On 25 August, Pakistan declared a state of emergency because of the flooding. The flooding was the world's deadliest flood since the 2020 South Asian floods and described as the worst in the country's history. It was also recorded as one of the costliest natural disasters in world history.

The Pakistan floods of 2022 were ‘made up to 50% worse by global heating’ according to a study by scientists published 14 September 2022 by World Weather Attribution, concluding that the climate crisis is likely to have significantly increased rainfall and made future floods more likely.

This study was flagged in the Guardian by the Environment correspondent Fiona Harvey (Thu 15 Sept 2022). She writes: 

The intense rainfall that has caused devastating floods across Pakistan was made worse by global heating, which has also made future floods more likely, scientists have found.

Climate change could have increased the most intense rainfall over a short period in the worst affected areas by about 50%, according to a study by an international team of climate scientists.

The floods were a one in 100-year event, but similar events are likely to become more frequent in future as global temperatures continue to rise, the scientists said.

The scientists were not able to quantify exactly how much more likely the flooding was made by the climate crisis, because of the high degree of natural variability in the monsoon in the region. However, they said there was a 1% chance of such heavy rainfall happening each year, and an event such as this summer’s flooding would probably have been much less likely in a world without human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.

Friederike Otto, senior lecturer at the Grantham Institute for climate change and the environment at Imperial College London, said that the “fingerprints” of global heating could be clearly seen in the Pakistan floods, which were in line with what climate scientists had predicted for extreme weather.

“We can say with high confidence that [the rainfall] would have been less likely to occur without climate change,” she said. “The intensity of the rainfall has increased quite a bit.” Historical records had shown heavy rainfall increasing dramatically in the region since humanity had started pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the scientists found.

Otto added: “Our evidence suggests that climate change played an important role in the event, although our analysis doesn’t allow us to quantify how big the role was. This is because it is a region with very different weather from one year to another, which makes it hard to see long-term changes in observed data and climate models.”

About a third of Pakistan has been affected by the flooding, with water covering more than a tenth of the country after more than three times the average rain fell in August. Nearly 1,500 people have died and 33 million people have been affected, with 1.7m homes destroyed.

For the country as a whole it was the wettest August since 1961, and for the two southern provinces of Sindh and Balochistan the wettest on record, with about seven to eight times as much rain as usual.

While the increased rainfall was influenced by the changes to the climate, local factors also played a role in the flooding and its impacts. For instance, forests in the region have been cut down over many decades, and mangrove swamps removed, while human-made dams, irrigation and other changes to the watercourses have also had an impact on natural flood patterns. Poor infrastructure, such as homes flimsily built in places prone to flooding, has also meant more people suffering as a result of the floods.

Ayesha Siddiqi, assistant professor at the department of geography at Cambridge University, said: “[Flooding] has hit places where local socio-ecological systems were already pretty compromised. This disaster was the result of vulnerability constructed over a number of years, and should not be seen as an outcome of one single event.”

Pakistan faces a cost of at least $30bn in damages, with the loss of food crops alone coming to about $2.3bn, a particularly heavy burden at a time of rising food prices around the world. About 18,000 sq km of cropland have been ruined, including about 45% of the cotton crop, one of Pakistan’s key exports, and about 750,000 livestock have been killed.

The report on the Pakistan floods came from World Weather Attribution, a grouping of scientists from around the world who try to discern the influence of human-caused climate change on extreme weather events. They analyse such events in real time to produce quick responses on whether climate change has influenced extreme weather, a process that used to take years.

Previous studies have found that climate change exacerbated the heatwaves in India, Pakistan and the UK earlier this year, and floods in Brazil. WWA found last year that the heatwave in the Pacific north-west region of the US would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.

A recent analysis by the Guardian revealed the extent to which the climate crisis is “supercharging” weather events, with devastating consequences.

Otto said that countries meeting this November for the Cop27 UN climate conference in Egypt should take note of the extreme weather the world has seen this year and in recent years. “The lesson is that this will become more likely, probably a lot more likely. Becoming more resilient is very important.”

Good COP! Bad COP! 

The UN environment programme announced on 22 NOV 2022 that COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh had ended with the promise of an historic loss and damage fund. 

Good COP 

In negotiations that went down to the wire over the weekend, countries reached a historic decision to establish and operationalize a loss and damage fund, particularly for nations most vulnerable to the climate crisis.

The agreement was struck early Sunday morning as leaders concluded talks at the two-week-long United Nations Climate Conference (COP27).

While many details remain to be negotiated, the fund is expected to see developing countries particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of the climate crisis supported for losses arising from droughts, floods, rising seas and other disasters that are attributed to climate change.

While the negotiated text recognized the need for financial support from a variety of sources, no decisions have been made on who should pay into the fund, where this money will come from and which countries will benefit. The issue has been one of the most contentious on the negotiating table.

Adapting to the climate crisis — which could require everything from building sea walls to creating drought-resistant crops — could cost developing countries anywhere from US$160-US$340 billion annually by 2030. That number could swell to as much as US$565 billion by 2050 if climate change accelerates, found UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP’s) 2022 Adaptation Gap Report.

“This COP has taken an important step towards justice,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Sunday. 

Bad COP 

While many praised the creation of the fund, many also worried not enough was done at COP27, held in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El Sheikh, to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) responsible for the climate crisis.

Here is a closer look at the other key takeaways from the conference and what they could mean for the future of climate negotiations.

Countries failed to decisively move away from fossil fuels

Countries repeated the “phase-down-of-coal” phrase featured in last year’s agreement at COP26 in Glasgow. While the final text does promote renewables, it also highlights “low emission” energy, which critics say refers to natural gas - still a source of GHG emissions.

There were continued concerns about rising emissions

The key result of the climate COPs is the final agreement, which is deliberated by delegates from almost 200 countries. This is usually the focus of intense negotiations, and this year was no exception, with talks lasting until Sunday morning. The final agreement did mention “the urgent need for deep, rapid and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions” to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the most ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement. Yet there were concerns that no real progress was made on raising ambition or cutting fossil fuel emissions since COP26. That was considered bad news for a rapidly warming world.

The Emissions Gap Report 2022, released by UNEP just before COP27, painted a bleak picture, finding that without rapid societal transformation, there is no credible pathway to a 1.5°C future. For each fraction of a degree that temperatures rise, storms, droughts and other extreme weather events become more severe.

Why Not Just Stop Oil?

When Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker used ropes and other climbing equipment to scale the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links the M25 between Essex and Kent across the River Thames, in October last year, they intended that the police close the bridge to traffic, causing gridlock. 

Why? 

Because without rapid societal transformation, there is no credible pathway to a 1.5°C future. For each fraction of a degree that temperatures rise, storms, droughts and other extreme weather events become more severe, according to The Emissions Gap Report 2022, released by UNEP just before COP27.

For attempting to draw society's attention to this bleak picture Trowland was sentenced to three years in prison, while Decker received two years and seven months. These were the longest sentences for peaceful climate protest in British history. 

Four days of peaceful activism led by Extinction Rebellion fail to elicit pledge from the UK government to ban new oil and gas projects.

Sandra Laville of the Guardian reports (Mon 24 Apr 2023): 

After four days of peaceful demonstrations, climate activists gathered in Parliament Square as a deadline for the government to act to end all new fossil fuel projects was reached.

The actions involved a wide range of groups, including Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, as well as the Christian climate coalition, with thousands gathering for Earth Day in London on Saturday.

The former archbishop John Sentamu was refused access to the Shell headquarters in London as he tried to deliver a letter to its chief executive, Wael Sawan. Police were present as he tried to hand over his message.

Lord Sentamu said it was the most arrogant experience he had ever had. “Climate change is the greatest insidious and brutal indiscriminate force of our time. The people suffering the most have done the least to cause it,” he said in a message in support of the climate protests taking place over the weekend.

“That is why continuing to search for new sources of fossil fuels, despite explicit warnings against this from the International Energy Agency, is such an offence against humanity.”

The series of actions culminated on Monday with people gathering outside parliament as a deadline for the government to meet the climate demands approached.

XR was demanding that by 5pm ministers agree to stop new fossil fuel projects – including halting the more than 100 new oil exploration licences being offered to companies – the first set of licences offered since 2019-20.

They also want to see the setting up of emergency climate assemblies as part of a citizen-led democracy to put an end to the fossil fuel generation.

After the deadline passed, the XR co-founder Clare Farrell vowed the organisations involved would step up their campaigning.

“The government had a week to respond to our demands and they have failed to do so,” she said. “Next we will reach out to supporter organisations to start creating a plan for stepping up our campaigns across an ecosystem of tactics that includes everyone from first-time protesters to those willing to go to prison.”

An XR spokesperson said more than 200 organisations were involved in the coalition and the support would only grow. “We have to unite to survive like never before as this government pursues increasingly repressive tactics.”

The naturalist and TV host Chris Packham addressed the crowds over the weekend to make a rallying call for every last person who cares about the planet to join the community of activists.

He spoke just hours after two men who scaled a bridge on Dartford Crossing as part of the Just Stop oil actions were jailed for three years and two years seven months in a sentence condemned by XR as a “slap in the face” to everyone in the UK and globally who was being affected by climate change.

Judge Collery KC, who handed down the sentence, said it was designed to deter copycat actions.

Morgan Trowland, 40, and Marcus Decker, 34, were convicted of public nuisance for scaling the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links the M25 between Essex and Kent across the River Thames, in October.

Ministers had not responded to the XR demands by Monday afternoon, as demonstrators prepared to encircle parliament.

Focussed and unfocussed anger?

Gustave Doré who famously illustrated Dante's Inferno depicts the fifth circle of Hell, the swampy, stinking waters of the river Styx where the actively wrathful fight each other viciously on the surface of the slime, while the sullen (the passively wrathful) lie beneath the water, withdrawn,"into a black sulkiness which can find no joy in God or man or the universe". At the surface of the foul Stygian marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers writes, "the active hatreds rend and snarl at one another; at the bottom, the sullen hatreds lie gurgling, unable even to express themselves for the rage that chokes them". 

Road rage?

Focussed anger directed toward climate crisis protesters features in a number of video clips found on print media hosting channels on YouTube.

Road rage is not an official mental disorder, however, the behaviours typically associated with road rage can be the result of a disorder known as intermittent explosive disorder.

Intermittent explosive disorder (sometimes abbreviated as IED) is a behavioural disorder characterised by explosive outbursts of anger and/or violence, often to the point of rage, that are disproportionate to the situation at hand (e.g., impulsive shouting, screaming or excessive reprimanding triggered by relatively inconsequential events). Impulsive aggression is not premeditated, and is defined by; 

a disproportionate reaction to any provocation, real or perceived.

As a working definition, road rage may be described as a constellation of thoughts, emotions, and behaviours that occur in response to; 

a perceived unjustified provocation while driving.

A number of nonspecific psychological factors may contribute to road rage, as well. These include; 

the tendency to displace anger and attribute blame to others.

Are these clips reflective of the attitude of the consumers or the producers. Or is it just more "clickbait" monetised to sell advertising? 

Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère!

(Hypocrite reader! — My twin! — My brother!) 

This is a famous line found in Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, a modern "evil ditch" in a modern "Inferno", where the accusation of hypocrisy (Eighth circle of Hell, and Bolgia 6) is pointedly addressed to the reader: Au Lecteur

The last verse of the poem runs:

C'est l'Ennui! L'oeil chargé d'un pleur involontaire, II rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka. Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat, — Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère!

And has been translated many times with different emphases. This is a translation of the last three verses by Eli Siegel.

"But among the jackals, the panthers, the bitch-hounds, The apes, the scorpions, the vultures, the serpents, The monsters screeching, howling, grumbling, creeping, In the infamous menagerie of our vices,

There is one uglier, wickeder, more shameless! Although he makes no large gestures nor loud cries He willingly would make rubbish of the earth And with a yawn swallow the world;

He is Ennui! — His eye filled with an unwished-for tear, He dreams of scaffolds while puffing at his hookah. You know him, reader, this exquisite monster, — Hypocrite reader, — my likeness, — my brother!"

My consumers, are they not my producers? 

Interestingly, it is evident in many of these encounters that the long suffering protesters do not come across as particularly aggressive when subjected to various forms of abuse. 

Q. Pissing off the public? 

A. Yes

But in this clip the heartfelt emotion being communicated is; 

anguish!

When it comes to abuse, the line was crossed when the Hertfordshire police abused their powers in unlawfully arresting journalists at a Just Stop Oil protest on the M25.

Damien Gayle reported for the Guardian on the targeting of journalists by police in Hertfordshire during November 2022 (Wed 21 Dec 2022). He writes under the subheading:

Exclusive: Force says it falsely imprisoned photographer covering M25 climate action

A regional police force has admitted it unlawfully arrested and violated the human rights of a photographer who was held while covering climate protests on the M25.

Ben Cawthra was one of four journalists arrested by Hertfordshire constabulary while covering protests by Just Stop Oil last month. Supporters of the climate campaign had climbed gantries to disrupt traffic on London’s orbital motorway.

A previous investigation, commissioned by the Hertfordshire force, concluded “police powers were not used appropriately” in making the arrests, but stopped short of admitting they were unlawful.

Now, after Cawthra began legal action, Hertfordshire constabulary have admitted their officers acted unlawfully by arresting him and violated his right to free speech, and the force has accepted liability for false imprisonment over his detention.

Cawthra’s lawyer, Jules Carey, of Bindmans, said the case represented an important clarification of the principle of freedom of the press. “It is vital to the health of a democracy that journalists can work without fear of arrest or detention by the police,” he said.

“We welcome the prompt admission by the chief constable of Hertfordshire that Mr Cawthra’s arrest and detention for 16 hours was unlawful and constituted a false imprisonment, and we strongly support the recommendation that all public order officers undertake the College of Policing/National Union of Journalists’ training, which explains the rights of reporters and photographers during public order situations.”

On 7 November, Cawthra, a director of the picture agency London News Pictures, who has been a photojournalist for two decades, drove to Hertfordshire after becoming aware that protests on the M25 were planned by Just Stop Oil, according to a letter before action sent to the Hertfordshire constabulary.

After spotting police officers lying in wait in an unmarked car close to the town of London Colney, Cawthra parked his car and stationed himself nearby on a public footpath on a bridge overlooking the motorway.

From his vantage point, he saw and began taking photographs of a man climbing a gantry. As more police began to arrive, an officer came over and asked Cawthra to stay where he was.

“Mr Cawthra responded to say that he was on a public footpath, and that he had the right to leave at any point, though he said that he would comply with the officer’s request,” the letter said

The officer then asked to see Cawthra’s press ID. However, the officer did not call the number on the card to confirm his credentials, and instead asked to see his driving licence, as Cawthra continued to photograph the protest.

Minutes later, the officer returned and arrested Cawthra on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. He was taken to Hatfield police station and held for 16 hours.

Two other journalists were arrested that day, and a third the next day. Outrage grew after Charlotte Lynch, an LBC reporter, went public about her arrest, leading to criticism from ministers and human rights organisations.

Amid the outcry, Hertfordshire constabulary asked an outside force to review the circumstances around the arrests. The investigation concluded frontline officers had been directed to arrest journalists by their seniors, without developing sufficient grounds to do so.

Cawthra and the other arrested journalists have already received a letter of apology from the Hertfordshire chief constable, Charlie Hall. But now, after the legal action, the force will pay Cawthra compensation for his unlawful detention. He has also called on the police to ensure officers complete training on the rights of journalists during public order situations.

A Hertfordshire constabulary spokesperson said: “The chief constable has apologised to the journalists arrested in connection with the matter of policing M25 protests, and he had asked for a review, which was undertaken by Cambridgeshire constabulary. The recommendations made in the review regarding learning have been accepted.

“Our officers acted in good faith throughout, but mistakes were made. The police do not wish to comment any further on individual cases which are under legal consideration.

“The police force is committed to protecting the public and businesses in carrying out their lawful activities.”

Rich Felgate says this footage shows his and Tom Bowles's arrests on Monday (7 October) on a footbridge over the M25. 

"I'm sorry officer you can't arrest me. I'm here as a member of the press," Mr Bowles can be heard telling a policeman as he was arrested. 

Mr Felgate is then also put in handcuffs and told he is being detained. He later tweeted that they were held for around 13 hours.

Q. Pissing off the rich? 

A. Well Rish! seems to be over-reacting a bit! 

The Telegraph posted this video on YouTube with the title: 

Bizarre 'North Korean-style' escort for Rishi Sunak's motorcade in London

The description runs:

Rishi Sunak was escorted through central London by a “North Korean-style” motorcade featuring dozens of jogging police officers in a bid to evade Extinction Rebellion.

A fleet of cars containing the Prime Minister was spotted on Sunday - the day of the London marathon - surrounded by one set of policemen on bicycles and another on foot.

A video shared on Twitter showed one police officer on a bike leading the convoy, shouting “out of the way please”.

Meanwhile . . .

McDonald’s restaurants offered the Metropolitan police cut-price burgers and free hot drinks during Extinction Rebellion protests – but senior officers warned staff not to “flaunt” it, documents show.

The decision to offer hot drinks to the Met, as well as the staff discount, lies solely with individual McDonald’s franchises and not the head office, the Guardian understands.

Extinction Rebellion’s autumn uprising in 2019 planned to bring maximum disruption to the capital to draw attention to the climate emergency. About 1,820 arrests were made from 6-18 October 2019.

The Met dropped more than 100 cases against protesters after a high court ruling found a London-wide ban on any assembly linked to the Extinction Rebellion autumn uprising to be unlawful.

McDonald’s produces slightly more greenhouse gas emissions than Norway, according to a 2021 report. The fast-food chain serves between 1 and 2% of the world’s beef at its 38,000 stores. According to a 2021 study in Nature Food, beef is responsible for a quarter of all emissions produced by raising and growing food.

A spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion said: “Polluting multinational corporations being in league with the authorities is nothing new. In fact, it is the reason why the government is not acting urgently on climate change and signing off new fossil fuel projects instead.

“It is also the reason why we are demanding citizens’ assemblies to break this deadlock of corporate capture. We encourage everyone who is concerned about climate breakdown and our broken democracy to join us this weekend to build pressure on the government to accept our demands.”

Kevin Blowe, a campaigns coordinator for the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol), said: “The Met obviously needed somewhere to feed and water its officers in 2019 before sending them back out on to the streets to unlawfully restrict people’s rights to freedom of assembly.

“Policing in Britain likes to pretend it is neutral but is always more comfortable taking sides with corporate interests. Campaigners successfully targeting climate-wrecking businesses are immediately seen as a threat that justifies intrusive surveillance.”

The Metropolitan police have been contacted for comment.

A McDonald’s spokesperson said: “In support of the communities where they operate, some of our restaurants offer support to emergency services on an ad hoc basis during large-scale events or emergencies in the area. It is not an official policy and is done at the discretion of the franchisee or restaurant team. We do, however, offer an official discount to NHS staff nationwide.”

Q. Pissing off corporate interests? 

A. Possibly! But what about the working class? 

Back in 2019 (Wed 2 Oct 2019) Lisa Nandy warned in her opinion piece for the Guardian on the climate crisis that: 

The climate protest movement must not alienate Britain’s working classes

Lisa Nandy writes: 

Rooting calls for action in the reality of people’s lives is vital if the likes of Extinction Rebellion are not to fuel further division

Next week thousands of Extinction Rebellion protesters will descend on Westminster, the latest example of direct action in a year when committed women, men and children across the world have pushed climate change to the top of the global agenda, where it belongs. Although London will again be the focal point, the movement mustn’t overlook the committed activists in places such as Bolton, Wigan, and Sunderland who are also spreading the message across the country. For the climate movement to succeed we have to build a broad coalition that covers our nation’s towns as well as our cities, and reaches out across class divides.

Calls for individual action can’t just be modelled on the lifestyles of middle-class city dwellers. Telling people to get out of their cars can’t be the solution in those parts of the country where decades of chronic underinvestment have left us without public transport. In towns such as Wigan, jobs have disappeared as investment flowed into cities, creating lengthy commutes on public transport for most working-age people. Trains are overcrowded, deeply unreliable and ceased to function entirely for a large part of last year, while the buses are few and far between, and often more expensive than getting a taxi. Demanding people abandon their cars isn’t realistic if the alternative is a round trip of 42 miles a day on foot or by bike, just to get to work. Campaigns to tackle climate change need to link up with campaigns for better transport and fairer funding for it, particularly for buses.

Rooting calls for action in the reality of people’s lives is essential if the battle against climate change is not to become a battle against each other. It is galling to be lectured on not eating meat when you and your family are struggling to get by and relying on help from friends and local food banks. It isn’t fair to ask families to forfeit the one foreign flight they have saved for all year, while we have global corporations whose business models rely on frequent air travel and governments that refuse to tax them for it.

Climate activists must also rethink their language. Phrases such as “dirty coal” are profoundly condescending to communities in which generation after generation did dangerous, backbreaking work down the mines to build the country’s wealth and influence at great cost to themselves; pneumoconiosis victims are still fighting for justice decades after the mines closed. We are owed new clean energy jobs, and the infrastructure to create them. In Wigan and Barnsley, the desire for good jobs that provide a sense of purpose is palpable. Positive movements for change, such as the One Million Climate Jobs trade union campaign, provide an antidote to the stark warnings about climate scenarios that often leave people feeling powerless to act.

We must not let the climate crisis become a further source of division in Britain. The last Labour government’s decision to load the cost of clean energy subsidies on to energy bills left the poorest people paying six times as much of their disposable income on energy bills as their wealthy counterparts. If climate change becomes a major cause of migration it may prove fertile ground for the far right looking to exploit disillusion in towns that have experienced rapid, relative decline.

Instead, let’s seize this as an opportunity to rebuild our towns so they can play a major and significant part in our national story once again. Fighting for a better environment was always part of socialist tradition, as working-class people living among the smoke and soot of industry fought for parks, protection of the countryside, wildlife conservation, clean air and fresh water.

The first Bolton Extinction Rebellion meeting saw people queueing out of the door on a hot summer evening, and I get more letters about the environment from my constituents than any other single issue. Building an environmentally sustainable future will require the talent, intellect and hard work of the whole of our society – so it’s time for the climate movement to break out of the cities to make itself a movement for the many, not just the few. 

This is an abridged version of an essay in a special climate change edition of the latest HOPE not hate magazine.

Lisa Nandy is the Labour MP for Wigan and Wigan is one of many places situated along the LODE Zone Line. 

Wigan Pier is an area around the Leeds and Liverpool Canal in Wigan, south-west of the town centre. The name has humorous or ironic connotations since it conjures an image of a seaside pleasure pier, whereas Wigan is inland and a traditionally industrial town.

The original "pier" at Wigan was a coal loading staithe, probably a wooden jetty, where wagons from a nearby colliery were unloaded into waiting barges on the canal. The original wooden pier is believed to have been demolished in 1929, with the iron from the tippler (a mechanism for tipping coal into the barges) being sold as scrap.

A telling of the origin of what really was 'Wigan Pier' goes that in 1891, an excursion train to Southport (with its famous seaside pier) got delayed on the outskirts of Wigan not long after leaving Wallgate Station. At that time a long wooden gantry or trestle carried a mineral line from Lamb and Moore's Newtown Colliery on Scot Lane, to their Meadows Colliery in Frog Lane (where the Council refuse centre is now). This gantry was quite a structure, as it had to span the Douglas valley, crossing the river, the canal and the main rail line to Southport. As the delayed train waited for the signals to change, one of the travellers remarked;  

"where the bloody hell are we?" 

The reply became the basis for the immortal joke about Wigan's Pier. George Formby, Sr. perpetuated the joke around the turn of the century in the music halls in Wigan, adding that when he passed the Pier he noticed the tide was in (referring to the constant flooding in the low-lying area). Formby died in February 1921, and with the demise of the collieries in the area, the gantry had long passed out of existence. Therefore when people looked for the Pier, the tippler for coal wagons at the canal terminus became the chosen object of the joke. The tippler became the favoured location when people subsequently wanted to see it. There are references to it in songs such as George Formby Junior's On the Wigan Boat Express. The Ballad of Wigan Pier, written by local journalist Jack Winstanley, is a comic song written in the 1980s in the style of George Formby Junior. It was recorded by The Houghton Weavers and was regularly performed by them. Its lyrics perpetuate the idea of Wigan having a pier in the style of seaside resorts like Blackpool, and encourage you to look for it. References also include a mythical visit by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, fishing for tripe using locally produced sweets Uncle Joe's Mint Balls and refer also to George Formby Senior as the origin of its mythical existence.

In 1937, Wigan was featured in the title of George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier, which dealt in large part with the living conditions of England's working poor. In response to a critic, Orwell insisted "He [Orwell] liked Wigan very much — the people, not the scenery. Indeed, he has only one fault to find with it, and that is in respect of the celebrated Wigan Pier, which he had set his heart on seeing. Alas! Wigan Pier had been demolished, and even the spot where it used to stand is no longer certain." Some have embraced the Orwellian link, as it has provided the area with a modest tourist base over the years. "It seems funny to celebrate Orwell for highlighting all our bad points, but Wigan wouldn't be anywhere near as famous without him," said the Wigan Pier Experience's manager, Carole Tyldesley. "In the end George Orwell has proved to be a strong marketing tool." Others regard this connection as disappointing, considering it an insinuation that Wigan is no better now than it was at the time of Orwell's writing.

Gibson's Warehouse was built in 1777 and is now The Orwell at Wigan Pier

NO NATURE - NO FUTURE 

Time for a new survival strategy? 

Ellie Mae O'Hagan asks: 

Can Extinction Rebellion really be the new centre ground of the climate movement?

She writes (Mon 24 Apr 2023):

Three years ago, XR was hanging by a thread – the Big One protest suggests the movement has learned from its mistakes

Over the weekend, tens of thousands of climate activists and concerned citizens converged on Westminster for “the Big One”, a climate demonstration with more than 200 participating organisations, including trade unions, community groups and charities, and led by Extinction Rebellion (XR). The demonstration’s convivial atmosphere was somewhere between a county fair and Glastonbury: participants tried out screen printing, ate together on College Green and took part in talks about the climate crisis.

It was easy to forget that in 2020, XR was hanging by a thread. The pandemic decimated the movement on the ground – because its members could no longer meet, recruit others or plan activities. Also, the actions of a handful of protesters who blocked a London commuter train used by working-class people in October 2019 were received very badly, and did lasting damage to the group’s reputation (an XR spokesperson later apologised). “People are very keen to talk about the climate crisis,” one XR member recently told me, “but when they find out we’re from Extinction Rebellion, they don’t want to know.”

In the post-lockdown era, XR has been re-evaluating its strategy in light of harsher protest laws, smaller numbers on the ground and the emergence of radical grouplets such as Just Stop Oil. For a group that was once itself an insurgent movement that successfully overturned the conventional wisdom on how climate activism should work, this is unfamiliar territory.

In the 2000s, climate activists focused less on public opinion and more on stopping new oil, gas and coal projects from being built. But by the end of the decade, that tactic came unstuck in the shadow of the 2008 global financial crisis.

Activists became “keenly aware of the fact that they were talking about climate change in the shadow of the most significant financial disaster of our generation”, one activist from that era tells me. Eventually, many members of the climate movement redirected their work into the anti-austerity protests of the 2010s and climate activism took a backseat to protesting about public services being cut.

But something was happening during those years that is rarely acknowledged: young anti-austerity campaigners were, for the first time, learning about the disastrous consequences of global heating from the climate activists they were meeting at anti-austerity protests.

It was this nascent coalition of economic and environmental interests that led to new movements such as Green New Deal Rising and the Labour for a Green New Deal group, which successfully lobbied the party under Jeremy Corbyn to develop its green industrial revolution policy.

Yet in the midst of all of this Extinction Rebellion burst on to the scene in October 2018, with little connection to the movements that had come before. It broke all the understood rules of winning people over to a movement. It rejected hope in order to speak about the climate crisis in the starkest possible terms, was willing to upset other groups that were potential supporters (its first protest was to occupy Greenpeace) and created a prohibitively high bar to entry by encouraging people to get arrested.

It shouldn’t have worked. But in April 2019, thousands of people flocked to central London to shut down the city as part of XR’s first big action. By May 2019, UK polls were revealing a surge in concern about the climate crisis. It seemed that XR had captured the quiet angst many people had been feeling about an increasingly serious climate crisis that had been repeatedly ignored by the people in power.

Over the six months following the April 2019 protests, XR gained momentum. But like any movement, it contained contradictory views about tactics, strategy and where to go next. From 2021 onwards, activists frustrated at XR’s apparent inadequacy as a vehicle set up Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil, campaigns that focused on attention-grabbing, disruptive protests – such as throwing soup at priceless artworks. And it was this decision that inadvertently presented an opportunity for XR to reinvent itself.

Faced with increasingly draconian protest legislation and being outflanked in terms of radical tactics, XR put out a provocative statement on New Year’s Day 2023 announcing “we quit”. In it, the group pledged to stop focusing on arrest as a tactic, and instead grow a mass movement by concentrating on activities that are more commonly associated with political parties – such as canvassing, phone-banking and hosting local events and meetings. The Big One is best understood in this context. It was not the culmination of lots of organising, as protests often are, but an opening salvo of this new strategy in action.

The purpose of the weekend’s events was to act as a giant recruiting exercise. It was a message to the millions of people who are worried about climate change but don’t know how to respond: we are here, and you are welcome. It was a focal point for coalition building: there was a trade union hub (North Sea oil workers have recently been on strike), Green New Deal Rising brought representatives of the youth movement it has been quietly building, Just Stop Oil left the Van Goghs alone in favour of picketing government buildings and Greenpeace’s new directors were there with a stall showcasing the organisation’s desire to build relationships with the grassroots.

While Just Stop Oil has been overwhelmingly successful in achieving its aim of drawing attention to climate change, there is undoubtedly also a need for a grassroots movement that welcomes people who may not be ready or daring enough for protests that could well land them in prison. So will it succeed? The answer to that question lies in your hands. XR has invited you to become part of a new, thriving campaign to protect and restore our world. About 60,000 people accepted that invitation over the weekend. I am one of them. Will you?

Ellie Mae O’Hagan is a writer and head of external engagement at the Good Law Project

 

This article was amended on 24 April 2023 to make it clear that it was Labour for a Green New Deal, not Green New Deal Rising, that successfully lobbied the Labour party to change its policy.

So, "where the bloody hell are we?"  

To quote the railway passenger on the way to Southport via Wigan Pier. There have been multiple references to Hell in this and other posts. In this post it is the hierarchical "geography" of Dante's Inferno, and in particular the location of the evil ditch where Dante places "The Sowers of Discord", that has provided a dialectical "thread" in the linking of recent stories to the "bigger picture" in a "world landscape". After all, that's what the LODE project has been about for the last thirty years. 

According to the Wikipedia article the phrase "going to hell in a hand-cart/handbasket" has been used in sermons since at least 1841, as can be seen in the publication, Short Patent Sermons: "[Those people] who would rather ride to hell in a hand-cart than walk to heaven supported by the staff of industry"

The aforesaid article also mentions 

Hieronymus Bosch's painting The Haywain, circa 1515, which portrays a large cart of hay being drawn by "infernal beings that drag everyone to Hell". 

Just look Up! What do you see? 

Little is known of Bosch's life or training. He left behind no letters or diaries, and what has been identified has been taken from brief references to him in the municipal records of 's-Hertogenbosch, and in the account books of the local order of the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady. Nothing is known of his personality or his thoughts on the meaning of his art.

In the 20th century, when changing artistic tastes made artists like Bosch more palatable to the European imagination, it was sometimes argued that Bosch's art was inspired by heretical points of view (e.g., the ideas of the Cathars and/or putative Adamites or Brethren of the Free Spirit) as well as by obscure hermetic practices. Again, since Erasmus had been educated at one of the houses of the Brethren of the Common Life in 's-Hertogenbosch, and the town was religiously progressive, some writers have found it unsurprising that strong parallels exist between the caustic writing of Erasmus and the often bold painting of Bosch.

Others, following a strain of Bosch-interpretation datable already to the 16th century, continued to think his work was created merely to titillate and amuse, much like the "grotteschi" of the Italian Renaissance. While the art of the older masters was based in the physical world of everyday experience, Bosch confronts his viewer with, in the words of the art historian Walter Gibson, "a world of dreams [and] nightmares in which forms seem to flicker and change before our eyes". In one of the first known accounts of Bosch's paintings, in 1560 the Spaniard Felipe de Guevara wrote that Bosch was regarded merely as "the inventor of monsters and chimeras". In the early 17th century, the artist-biographer Karel van Mander described Bosch's work as comprising "wondrous and strange fantasies"; however, he concluded that the paintings are "often less pleasant than gruesome to look at".

In recent decades, scholars have come to view Bosch's vision as less fantastic, and accepted that his art reflects the orthodox religious belief systems of his age. His depictions of sinful humanity and his conceptions of Heaven and Hell are now seen as consistent with those of late medieval didactic literature and sermons. Most writers attach a more profound significance to his paintings than had previously been supposed, and attempt to interpret them in terms of a late medieval morality. It is generally accepted that Bosch's art was created to teach specific moral and spiritual truths in the manner of other Northern Renaissance figures, such as the poet Robert Henryson, and that the images rendered have precise and premeditated significance. Bosch's paintings often represent visual translations of verbal metaphors and puns drawn from both biblical and folkloric sources. However, the conflict of interpretations that his works still elicit raises profound questions about the nature of "ambiguity" in art of his period.

More recently art historians have added a further dimension to the subject of ambiguity in Bosch's work, emphasising ironic tendencies, for example in The Garden of Earthly Delights, both in the central panel (delights), and the right panel (hell). They theorise that the irony offers the option of detachment, both from the real world and from the painted fantasy world, thus appealing to both conservative and progressive viewers. According to Joseph Koerner, some of the cryptic qualities of the artist's work are due to his special focus on social, political, and spiritual enemies, whose symbolism is, by nature, obscure because it is intended to conceal or to harm. 

The sowers of discord and the pathway to Hell?

In this detail of the triptych's central panel it appears that frolics on the back end of the hay cart descend into brawling between the cart wheels, while the rightward bow of these figures around the wagon provides for the viewer's eye to move with them on their journey, and the cart, as it is drawn by infernal beings, dragging everyone to Hell. Hell itself is depicted on the right hand panel. 

Don't Look Up! Sixteenth century style! 

Riding on top of the hay cart is a disparate group of characters. An angel is either looking up to the sky, seeing Christ in the clouds and praying, or distracted by a container dangling from a pole being handled by a mysterious figure hiding in a nearby tree. No one else in this group is looking up. 

A lute player makes music with a couple, as does an infernal character blowing upon a pipe, while a couple take the opportunity to fondle each other in the foliage. 

None of them "look up"! Meanwhile . . . 

. . . they are all going to hell on a haywain. 

A reprise of the ending of the 2021 American apocalyptic political satire black comedy film Don't Look Up is in order here. 

In a mid credits scene, following the destruction of Earth, and 22,740 years hence, remnants of a chosen people, chosen from the capitalist and political elite, land on a new Earth only to be devoured by the bird-like predators inhabiting the planet.

The capitalist/political elite's tendency to invest in personal survival strategies, rather than take on a collective or societal responsibility, is evident in the recent behaviours of a number of Silicon Valley billionaires and the plans they have been undertaking along the LODE Zone Line on New Zealand's South Island.

The Guardian Long Read: Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand, by Mark O’Connell (Thu 15 Feb 2018) sets out the beginnings of this story.

How an extreme libertarian tract predicting the collapse of liberal democracies – written by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s father – inspired the likes of Peter Thiel to buy up property across the Pacific

If you’re interested in the end of the world, you’re interested in New Zealand. If you’re interested in how our current cultural anxieties – climate catastrophe, decline of transatlantic political orders, resurgent nuclear terror – manifest themselves in apocalyptic visions, you’re interested in the place occupied by this distant archipelago of apparent peace and stability against the roiling unease of the day.

If you’re interested in the end of the world, you would have been interested, soon after Donald Trump’s election as US president, to read a New York Times headline stating that Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist who co-founded PayPal and was an early investor in Facebook, considered New Zealand to be “the Future”. Because if you are in any serious way concerned about the future, you’re also concerned about Thiel, a canary in capitalism’s coal mine who also happens to have profited lavishly from his stake in the mining concern itself.

Thiel is in one sense a caricature of outsized villainy: he was the only major Silicon Valley figure to put his weight behind the Trump presidential campaign; he vengefully bankrupted a website because he didn’t like how they wrote about him; he is known for his public musings about the incompatibility of freedom and democracy, and for expressing interest – as though enthusiastically pursuing the clunkiest possible metaphor for capitalism at its most vampiric – in a therapy involving transfusions of blood from young people as a potential means of reversing the ageing process. But in another, deeper sense, he is pure symbol: less a person than a shell company for a diversified portfolio of anxieties about the future, a human emblem of the moral vortex at the centre of the market.

It was in 2011 that Thiel declared he’d found “no other country that aligns more with my view of the future than New Zealand”. The claim was made as part of an application for citizenship; the application was swiftly granted, though it remained a secret for a further six years. In 2016, Sam Altman, one of Silicon Valley’s most influential entrepreneurs, revealed to the New Yorker that he had an arrangement with Thiel whereby in the eventuality of some kind of systemic collapse scenario – synthetic virus breakout, rampaging AI, resource war between nuclear-armed states, so forth – they both get on a private jet and fly to a property Thiel owns in New Zealand. (The plan from this point, you’d have to assume, was to sit out the collapse of civilisation before re-emerging to provide seed-funding for, say, the insect-based protein sludge market.)

In the immediate wake of that Altman revelation, Matt Nippert, a reporter for the New Zealand Herald, began looking into the question of how exactly Thiel had come into possession of this apocalypse retreat, a 477-acre former sheep station in the South Island – the larger, more sparsely populated of the country’s two major landmasses. Foreigners looking to purchase significant amounts of New Zealand land typically have to pass through a stringent government vetting process. In Thiel’s case, Nippert learned, no such process had been necessary, because he was already a citizen of New Zealand, despite having spent no more than 12 days in the country up to that point, and having not been seen in the place since. He didn’t even need to travel to New Zealand to have his citizenship conferred, it turned out: the deal was sealed in a private ceremony at a consulate handily located in Santa Monica.

When Nippert broke the story, there was a major public scandal over the question of whether a foreign billionaire should be able to effectively purchase citizenship. As part of his application, Thiel had agreed to invest in New Zealand tech startups, and had implied that he would use his new status as a naturalised Kiwi to promote the country’s business interests abroad. But the focus internationally was on why Thiel might have wanted to own a chunk of New Zealand roughly the size of lower Manhattan in the first place. And the overwhelming suspicion was that he was looking for a rampart to which he could retreat in the event of outright civilisational collapse.

Because this is the role that New Zealand now plays in our unfurling cultural fever dream: an island haven amid a rising tide of apocalyptic unease. According to the country’s Department of Internal Affairs, in the two days following the 2016 election the number of Americans who visited its website to enquire about the process of gaining New Zealand citizenship increased by a factor of 14 compared to the same days in the previous month. In particular, New Zealand has come to be seen as a bolthole of choice for Silicon Valley’s tech elite.

In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s election, the theme of American plutocrats preparing for the apocalypse was impossible to avoid. The week after the inauguration, the New Yorker ran another piece about the super-rich who were making preparations for a grand civilisational crackup; speaking of New Zealand as a “favored refuge in the event of a cataclysm”, billionaire LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, a former colleague of Thiel’s at PayPal, claimed that “saying you’re ‘buying a house in New Zealand’ is kind of a wink, wink, say no more”.

Everyone is always saying these days that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Everyone is always saying it, in my view, because it’s obviously true. The perception, paranoid or otherwise, that billionaires are preparing for a coming civilisational collapse seems a literal manifestation of this axiom. Those who are saved, in the end, will be those who can afford the premium of salvation. And New Zealand, the furthest place from anywhere, is in this narrative a kind of new Ararat: a place of shelter from the coming flood.

Early last summer, just as my interests in the topics of civilisational collapse and Peter Thiel were beginning to converge into a single obsession, I received out of the blue an email from a New Zealand art critic named Anthony Byrt. If I wanted to understand the extreme ideology that underpinned Thiel’s attraction to New Zealand, he insisted, I needed to understand an obscure libertarian manifesto called The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State. It was published in 1997, and in recent years something of a minor cult has grown up around it in the tech world, largely as a result of Thiel’s citing it as the book he is most influenced by. (Other prominent boosters include Netscape founder and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, and Balaji Srinivasan, the entrepreneur best known for advocating Silicon Valley’s complete secession from the US to form its own corporate city-state.)

The Sovereign Individual’s co-authors are James Dale Davidson, a private investor who specialises in advising the rich on how to profit from economic catastrophe, and the late William Rees-Mogg, long-serving editor of the Times. (One other notable aspect of Lord Rees-Mogg’s varied legacy is his own son, the Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg – a hastily sketched caricature of an Old Etonian, who is as beloved of Britain’s ultra-reactionary pro-Brexit right as he is loathed by the left.)

I was intrigued by Byrt’s description of the book as a kind of master key to the relationship between New Zealand and the techno-libertarians of Silicon Valley. Reluctant to enrich Davidson or the Rees-Mogg estate any further, I bought a used edition online, the musty pages of which were here and there smeared with the desiccated snot of whatever nose-picking libertarian preceded me.

It presents a bleak vista of a post-democratic future. Amid a thicket of analogies to the medieval collapse of feudal power structures, the book also managed, a decade before the invention of bitcoin, to make some impressively accurate predictions about the advent of online economies and cryptocurrencies.

The book’s 400-odd pages of near-hysterical orotundity can roughly be broken down into the following sequence of propositions:

1) The democratic nation-state basically operates like a criminal cartel, forcing honest citizens to surrender large portions of their wealth to pay for stuff like roads and hospitals and schools.

2) The rise of the internet, and the advent of cryptocurrencies, will make it impossible for governments to intervene in private transactions and to tax incomes, thereby liberating individuals from the political protection racket of democracy.

3) The state will consequently become obsolete as a political entity.

4) Out of this wreckage will emerge a new global dispensation, in which a “cognitive elite” will rise to power and influence, as a class of sovereign individuals “commanding vastly greater resources” who will no longer be subject to the power of nation-states and will redesign governments to suit their ends.

The Sovereign Individual is, in the most literal of senses, an apocalyptic text. Davidson and Rees-Mogg present an explicitly millenarian vision of the near future: the collapse of old orders, the rising of a new world. Liberal democracies will die out, and be replaced by loose confederations of corporate city-states. Western civilisation in its current form, they insist, will end with the millennium. “The new Sovereign Individual,” they write, “will operate like the gods of myth in the same physical environment as the ordinary, subject citizen, but in a separate realm politically.” It’s impossible to overstate the darkness and extremity of the book’s predictions of capitalism’s future; to read it is to be continually reminded that the dystopia of your darkest insomniac imaginings is almost always someone else’s dream of a new utopian dawn.

Davidson and Rees-Mogg identified New Zealand as an ideal location for this new class of sovereign individuals, as a “domicile of choice for wealth creation in the Information Age”. Byrt, who drew my attention to these passages, had even turned up evidence of a property deal in the mid-1990s in which a giant sheep station at the southern tip of the North Island was purchased by a conglomerate whose major shareholders included Davidson and Rees-Mogg. Also in on the deal was one Roger Douglas, the former Labour finance minister who had presided over a radical restructuring of New Zealand economy along neoliberal lines in the 1980s. (This period of so-called “Rogernomics”, Byrt told me – the selling off of state assets, slashing of welfare, deregulation of financial markets – created the political conditions that had made the country such an attractive prospect for wealthy Americans.)

Thiel’s interest in New Zealand was certainly fuelled by his JRR Tolkien obsession: this was a man who had named at least five of his companies in reference to The Lord of the Rings, and fantasised as a teenager about playing chess against a robot that could discuss the books. It was a matter, too, of the country’s abundance of clean water and the convenience of overnight flights from California. But it was also inseparable from a particular strand of apocalyptic techno-capitalism. To read The Sovereign Individual was to see this ideology laid bare: these people, the self-appointed “cognitive elite”, were content to see the unravelling of the world as long as they could carry on creating wealth in the end times.

I was struck by how strange and disquieting it must have been for a New Zealander to see their own country refracted through this strange apocalyptic lens. There was certainly an ambient awareness that the tech world elite had developed an odd interest in the country as an ideal end-times bolthole; it would have been difficult, at any rate, to ignore the recent cascade of articles about Thiel acquiring citizenship, and the apocalyptic implications of same. But there seemed to have been basically zero discussion of the frankly alarming ideological dimension of it all.

It was just this ideological dimension, as it happened, that was the focus of a project Byrt himself had recently got involved in, a new exhibition by the artist Simon Denny. Denny, a significant figure in the international art scene, was originally from Auckland, but has lived for some years in Berlin. Byrt described him as both “kind of a genius” and “the poster-boy for post-internet art, whatever that is”; he characterised his own role in the project with Denny as an amalgamation of researcher, journalist and “investigative philosopher, following the trail of ideas and ideologies”.

The exhibition was called The Founder’s Paradox, a name that came from the title of one of the chapters in Thiel’s 2014 book, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future. Together with the long and intricately detailed catalogue essay Byrt was writing to accompany it, the show was a reckoning with the future that Silicon Valley techno-libertarians like Thiel wanted to build, and with New Zealand’s place in that future.

These were questions I too was eager to reckon with. Which is to say that I myself was interested – helplessly, morbidly – in the end of the world, and that I was therefore interested in New Zealand. And so I decided to go there, to see for myself the land that Thiel had apparently set aside for the collapse of civilisation: a place that would become for me a kind of labyrinth, and whose owner I was already beginning to mythologise as the monster at its centre.

Within about an hour of arriving in Auckland, I was as close to catatonic from fatigue as made no difference, and staring into the maw of a volcano. I was standing next to Byrt, who’d picked me up from the airport and, in a gesture I would come to understand as quintessentially Kiwi, dragged me directly up the side of a volcano. This particular volcano, Mount Eden, was a fairly domesticated specimen, around which was spread one of the more affluent suburbs of Auckland – the only city in the world, I learned, built on a technically still-active volcanic field.

I was a little out of breath from the climb and, having just emerged in the southern hemisphere from a Dublin November, sweating liberally in the relative heat of the early summer morning. I was also experiencing near-psychotropic levels of jetlag. I must have looked a bit off, because Byrt – a bearded, hoodied and baseball-capped man in his late 30s – offered a cheerful apology for playing the volcano card so early in the proceedings.

“I probably should have eased you into it, mate” he chuckled. “But I thought it’d be good to get a view of the city before breakfast.”

The view of Auckland and its surrounding islands was indeed ravishing – though in retrospect, it was no more ravishing than any of the countless other views I would wind up getting ravished by over the next 10 days. That, famously, is the whole point of New Zealand: if you don’t like getting ravished by views, you have no business in the place; to travel there is to give implicit consent to being hustled left, right and centre into states of aesthetic rapture.

“Plus I’ve been in the country mere minutes,” I said, “and I’ve already got a perfect visual metaphor for the fragility of civilisation in the bag.”

I was referring here to the pleasingly surreal spectacle of a volcanic crater overlaid with a surface of neatly manicured grass. (I jotted this observation down in my notebook, feeling as I did so a smug infusion of virtue about getting some literary non-fiction squared away before even dropping my bags off at the hotel. “Volcano with lawn over it,” I scrawled. “Visual manifestation of thematic motif: Civ as thin membrane stretched over chaos.”)

I remarked on the strangeness of all these Silicon Valley geniuses supposedly apocalypse-proofing themselves by buying up land down here right on the Pacific Ring of Fire, the horseshoe curve of geological fault lines that stretches upward from the western flank of the Americas, back down along the eastern coasts of Russia and Japan and on into the South Pacific.

“Yeah,” said Byrt, “but some of them are buying farms and sheep stations pretty far inland. Tsunamis aren’t going to be a big issue there. And what they’re after is space, and clean water. Two things we’ve got a lot of down here.”

The following day, I went to the gallery in downtown Auckland to take a look at The Founder’s Paradox. Denny, a neat and droll man in his mid-30s, talked me through the conceptual framework. It was structured around games – in theory playable, but in practice encountered as sculptures – representing two different kinds of political vision for New Zealand’s future. The bright and airy ground floor space was filled with tactile, bodily game-sculptures, riffs on Jenga and Operation and Twister. These works, incorporating collaborative and spontaneous ideas of play, were informed by a recent book called The New Zealand Project by a young leftwing thinker named Max Harris, which explored a humane, collectivist politics influenced by Māori beliefs about society.

Down in the low-ceilinged, dungeon-like basement was a set of sculptures based around an entirely different understanding of play, more rule-bound and cerebral. These were based on the kind of strategy-based role-playing games particularly beloved of Silicon Valley tech types, and representing a Thielian vision of the country’s future. The psychological effect of this spatial dimension of the show was immediate: upstairs, you could breathe, you could see things clearly, whereas to walk downstairs was to feel oppressed by low ceilings, by an absence of natural light, by the darkness of the geek-apocalypticism captured in Denny’s elaborate sculptures.

This was a world Denny himself knew intimately. And what was strangest and most unnerving about his art was the sense that he was allowing us to see this world not from the outside in, but from the inside out. Over beers in Byrt’s kitchen the previous night, Denny had told me about a dinner party he had been to in San Francisco earlier that year, at the home of a techie acquaintance, where he had been seated next to Curtis Yarvin, founder of the Thiel-funded computing platform Urbit. As anyone who takes an unhealthy interest in the weirder recesses of the online far-right is aware, Yarvin is more widely known as the blogger Mencius Moldbug, the intellectual progenitor of Neoreaction, an antidemocratic movement that advocates for a kind of white-nationalist oligarchic neofeudalism – rule by and for a self-proclaimed cognitive elite – and which has found a small but influential constituency in Silicon Valley. It was clear that Denny was deeply unsettled by Yarvin’s brand of nerd autocracy, but equally clear that breaking bread with him was in itself no great discomfort.

Beneath all the intricacy and detail of its world-building, The Founder’s Paradox was clearly animated by an uneasy fascination with the utopian future imagined by the techno-libertarians of Silicon Valley, and with New Zealand’s role in that future. The exhibition’s centrepiece was a tabletop strategy game called Founders, which drew heavily on the aesthetic – as well as the explicitly colonialist language and objectives – of Settlers of Catan, a cult multiplayer strategy board game. The aim of Founders, clarified by the accompanying text and by the piece’s lurid illustrations, was not simply to evade the apocalypse, but to prosper from it. First you acquired land in New Zealand, with its rich resources and clean air, away from the chaos and ecological devastation gripping the rest of the world. Next you moved on to seasteading, the libertarian ideal of constructing manmade islands in international waters; on these floating utopian micro-states, wealthy tech innovators would be free to go about their business without interference from democratic governments. (Thiel was an early investor in, and advocate of, the seasteading movement, though his interest has waned in recent years.) Then you mined the moon for its ore and other resources, before moving on to colonise Mars. This last level of the game reflected the current preferred futurist fantasy, most famously advanced by Thiel’s former PayPal colleague Elon Musk, with his dream of fleeing a dying planet Earth for privately owned colonies on Mars.

The influence of the Sovereign Individual, and of Byrt’s obsession with it, was all over the show. It was a detailed mapping of a possible future, in all its highly sophisticated barbarism. It was a utopian dream that appeared, in all its garish detail and specificity, as the nightmare vision of a world to come.

Thiel himself had spoken publicly of New Zealand as a “utopia”, during the period in 2011 when he was manoeuvring for citizenship, investing in various local startups under a venture capital fund called Valar Ventures. (I hardly need to tell you that Valar is another Tolkien reference.) This was a man with a particular understanding of what a utopia might look like, who did not believe, after all, in the compatibility of freedom and democracy. In a Vanity Fair article about his role as adviser to Trump’s campaign, a friend was quoted as saying that “Thiel has said to me directly and repeatedly that he wanted to have his own country”, adding that he had even gone so far as to price up the prospect at somewhere around $100bn.

The Kiwis I spoke with were uncomfortably aware of what Thiel’s interest in their country represented, of how it seemed to figure more generally in the frontier fantasies of American libertarians. Max Harris – the author of The New Zealand Project, the book that informed the game-sculptures on the upper level of The Founder’s Paradox – pointed out that, for much of its history, the country tended to be viewed as a kind of political Petri dish (it was, for instance, the first nation to recognise women’s right to vote), and that this “perhaps makes Silicon Valley types think it’s a kind of blank canvas to splash ideas on”.

When we met in her office at the Auckland University of Technology, the legal scholar Khylee Quince insisted that any invocation of New Zealand as a utopia was a “giant red flag”, particularly to Māori like herself. “That is the language of emptiness and isolation that was always used about New Zealand during colonial times,” she said. And it was always, she stressed, a narrative that erased the presence of those who were already here: her own Māori ancestors. The first major colonial encounter for Māori in the 19th century was not with representatives of the British crown, she pointed out, but with private enterprise. The New Zealand Company was a private firm founded by a convicted English child kidnapper named Edward Gibbon Wakefield, with the aim of attracting wealthy investors with an abundant supply of inexpensive labour – migrant workers who could not themselves afford to buy land in the new colony, but who would travel there in the hope of eventually saving enough wages to buy in. The company embarked on a series of expeditions in the 1820s and 30s; it was only when the firm started drawing up plans to formally colonise New Zealand, and to set up a government of its own devising, that the British colonial office advised the crown to take steps to establish a formal colony. In the utopian fantasies of techno-libertarians like Thiel, Quince saw an echo of that period of her country’s history. “Business,” she said, “got here first.”

Given her Māori heritage, Quince was particularly attuned to the colonial resonances of the more recent language around New Zealand as both an apocalyptic retreat and a utopian space for American wealth and ingenuity.

“I find it incredibly offensive,” she said. “Thiel got citizenship after spending 12 days in this country, and I don’t know if he’s even aware that Māori exist. We as indigenous people have a very strong sense of intergenerational identity and collectivity. Whereas these people, who are sort of the contemporary iteration of the coloniser, are coming from an ideology of rampant individualism, rampant capitalism.”

Quince’s view was by no means the norm. New Zealanders tend to be more flattered than troubled by the interest of Silicon Valley tech gurus in their country. It’s received by and large as a signal that the tyranny of distance – the extreme antipodean remoteness that has shaped the country’s sense of itself since colonial times – has finally been toppled by the liberating forces of technology and economic globalisation.

“It’s very appealing,” the political scientist Peter Skilling told me, “these entrepreneurs saying nice things about us. We’re like a cat having its tummy rubbed. If Silicon Valley types are welcomed here, it’s not because we’re particularly susceptible to libertarian ideas; it’s because we are complacent and naive.”

Among the leftwing Kiwis I spoke with, there had been a kindling of cautious optimism, sparked by the recent surprise election of a new Labour-led coalition government, under the leadership of the 37-year-old Jacinda Ardern, whose youth and apparent idealism suggested a move away from neoliberal orthodoxy. During the election, foreign ownership of land had been a major talking point, though it focused less on the wealthy apocalypse-preppers of Silicon Valley than the perception that overseas property speculators were driving up the cost of houses in Auckland. The incoming government had committed to tightening regulations around land purchases by foreign investors. This was largely the doing of Winston Peters, a nationalist of Māori descent whose New Zealand First party held the balance of power, and was strongly in favour of tightening regulations of foreign ownership. When I read that Ardern had named Peters as her deputy prime minister, I was surprised to recognise the name – from, of all places, The Sovereign Individual, where Davidson and Rees-Mogg had singled him out for weirdly personal abuse as an arch-enemy of the rising cognitive elite, referring to him as a “reactionary loser” and “demagogue” who would “gladly thwart the prospects for long-term prosperity just to prevent individuals from declaring their independence of politics”.

During my time in New Zealand, Ardern was everywhere: in the papers, on television, in every other conversation. On our way to Queenstown in the South Island, to see for ourselves the site of Thiel’s apocalyptic bolthole, Byrt and I were in the security line at Auckland airport when a woman of about our age, smartly dressed and accompanied by a cluster of serious-looking men, glanced in our direction as she was conveyed quickly along the express lane. She was talking on her phone, but looked towards us and waved at Byrt, smiling broadly in happy recognition.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“Jacinda,” he said.

“You know her?”

“We know quite a lot of the same people. We met for a drink a couple of times back when she was Labour’s arts spokesperson.”

“Really?”

“Well yeah,” he laughed, “there’s only so many of us.”

“The endgame for Thiel is essentially The Sovereign Individual,” said Byrt. He was driving the rental car, allowing me to fully devote my resources to the ongoing cultivation of aesthetic rapture (mountains, lakes, so forth). “And the bottom line for me,” he said, “is that I don’t want my son to grow up in that future.”

We were on our way to see for ourselves the part of New Zealand, on the shore of Lake Wanaka in the South Island, that Thiel had bought for purposes of post-collapse survival. We talked about the trip as though it were a gesture of protest, but it felt like a kind of perverse pilgrimage. The term “psychogeography” was cautiously invoked, and with only the lightest of ironic inflections.

“The thing about Thiel is he’s the monster at the heart of the labyrinth,” said Byrt.

“He’s the white whale,” I suggested, getting into the literary spirit of the enterprise.

Byrt’s obsession with Thiel occupied a kind of Melvillean register, yearned toward a mythic scale. It coloured his perception of reality. He admitted, for instance, to a strange aesthetic pathology whereby he encountered, in the alpine grandeur of the South Island, not the sublime beauty of his own home country, but rather what he imagined Thiel seeing in the place: Middle-earth. Thiel’s Tolkien fixation was itself a fixation for Byrt: together with the extreme libertarianism of The Sovereign Individual, he was convinced that it lay beneath Thiel’s continued interest in New Zealand.

Matt Nippert, the New Zealand Herald journalist who had broken the citizenship story earlier that year, told me he was certain that Thiel had bought the property for apocalypse-contingency purposes. In his citizenship application, he had pledged his commitment to devote “a significant amount of time and resources to the people and businesses of New Zealand”. But none of this had amounted to much, Nippert said, and he was convinced it had only ever been a feint to get him in the door as a citizen.

In a cafe in Queenstown, about an hour’s drive from Thiel’s estate, Byrt and I met a man to whom a wealthy acquaintance of Byrt’s had introduced us. A well known and well connected professional in Queenstown, he agreed to speak anonymously for fear of making himself unpopular among local business leaders and friends in the tourism trade. He had been concerned for a while now about the effects on the area of wealthy foreigners buying up huge tracts of land. (“Once you start pissing in the hand basin, where are you gonna wash your face?” as he put to me, in what I assumed was a purely rhetorical formulation.) He told us of one wealthy American of his acquaintance, “pretty left-of-centre”, who had bought land down here to allay his apocalyptic fears in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s election. Another couple he knew of, a pair of bitcoin billionaires, had bought a large lakeside estate on which they were constructing a gigantic bunker.

This was the first I’d heard since coming here of an actual bunker being built. From the point of view of the modern apocalypticist, the whole appeal of the country – its remoteness and stability, its abundant clean water, its vast and lovely reaches of unpeopled land – was that it was itself a kind of reinforced geopolitical shelter, way down there at the bottom of the world.

The people I spoke to in the property business were keen to portray New Zealand as a kind of utopian sanctuary, but to give as little oxygen as possible to the related narrative around the country as an apocalyptic bolthole for the international elite. Over coffee at his golf club near Queenstown, Terry Spice, a London-born luxury property specialist who had recently sold a large estate abutting the Thiel property on Lake Wanaka, said he felt Thiel had highlighted internationally that the country was “a safe haven, and a legacy asset”. He himself had sold land to one very wealthy American client who had called him on the night of the presidential election. “This guy couldn’t believe what was happening. He wanted to secure something right away.” But on the whole, he insisted, this kind of apocalyptically motivated buyer represented a vanishingly small proportion of the market.

Showing me around the high-end beachfront properties he represented about an hour or so north of Auckland, another luxury property specialist named Jim Rohrstaff – a Californian transplant who specialised in selling to the international market – likewise told me that although quite a few of his major clients were Silicon Valley types, the end of the world tended not to be a particular factor in their purchasing decisions.

“Look,” he said, “it might be one strand in terms of what’s motivating them to buy here. But in my experience it’s never been the overriding reason. It’s much more of a positive thing. What they see when they come here is utopia.”

In one sense, I knew what he meant by this. He meant excellent wine. He meant world-class golf. He meant agreeable climate, endless white sand beaches that scarcely aroused the suspicion of the existence of other human beings. But having lately spoken to Khylee Quince about the historical resonances of the concept of utopia, I wondered what else he might mean, and whether he intended to mean it or not.

In Queenstown, before we set out to find the former sheep station Thiel had bought, we went to look for the house he owned in the town itself. This place, we speculated, must have been purchased as a kind of apocalyptic pied-a-terre: somewhere he could base himself, maybe, while whatever construction he had planned for the sheep station was underway. Nippert had given us the address; we found it easily enough, not far from the centre of town, and recognised it right away from one of the paintings in The Founder’s Paradox. It was the sort of house a Bond villain might build if for some reason he’d been forced to move to the suburbs. It looked modestly ostentatious, if such a thing was possible; the front of the building was one giant window, gazing out blankly over the town and the lake below. There was some construction going on in the place. I wandered up the drive and asked the builders if they knew who their client was. “No idea, mate,” they said. They were just doing some renovation on contract. There’d been a fire in the place a while back, apparently. Nothing sinister, just wiring.

The next day, we made our way to Lake Wanaka, where the larger rural property was located. We rented bikes in the town, and followed the trail around the southern shore of the lake. It got rockier and more mountainous the further we pursued it, and by the time we knew for certain we were on Thiel’s property, I was so hot and exhausted that all I could think to do was plunge into the lake to cool off. I asked Anthony whether he thought the water was safe to drink, and he said he was sure of it, given that its purity and its plenty was a major reason a billionaire hedging against the collapse of civilisation would want to buy land there in the first place. I swam out further into what I had come to think of as Thiel’s apocalypse lake and, submerging my face, I drank so deeply that Anthony joked he could see the water level plunging downward by degrees. In truth, I drank well beyond the point of quenching any literal thirst; in a way that felt absurd and juvenile, and also weirdly and sincerely satisfying, I was drinking apocalypse water, symbolically reclaiming it for the 99%. If in that moment I could have drained Lake Wanaka just to fuck up Thiel’s end-of-the-world contingency plan, I might well have done so.

I suggested I might take a rock, a piece of the place to bring home and keep on my desk, but Byrt warned me that to do so would be a transgression of the Māori understanding of the land’s communal sacredness. We scrabbled up the stony flank of a hill and sat for a while looking out over the calm surface of the lake to the distant snowy peaks, and over the green and undulating fields unfurling into the western distance, all of it the legal possession of a man who had designs on owning a country, who believed that freedom was incompatible with democracy.

Later, we made our way to the far side of the property, bordering the road, where we saw the only actual structure on the entire property: a hay barn. It is the opinion of this reporter that Thiel himself had no hand in its construction.

“There you have it,” said Byrt. “Eyeball evidence that Thiel is stockpiling hay for the collapse of civilisation.” I wish to state categorically that we did not steal so much as a single straw from that barn.

We had made it to the centre of the labyrinth, but it was elsewhere in the end that the monster materialised. In early December, a couple of weeks after I’d left the country, Max Harris, the young Kiwi author whose book Denny and Byrt had used as a counterpoint to Thiel’s ideas, was home for Christmas, and went along to the gallery to see the exhibition.

Down in the basement, in the central chamber – with its low ceilings, its iron vault door, its Führerbunkerishly oppressive vibe – Harris encountered, staring intently downward into the glass case containing the Founders game, a man in shorts and a blue polo shirt, surrounded by a group of younger men, likewise polo-shirted. The older man was doughier and less healthy-looking than he appeared in photographs, Harris told me, but he had little doubt as to his identity.

Harris, who was aware that Peter Thiel had not been seen in New Zealand since 2011, asked the man whether he was who he thought he was; the man smirked and, without raising his eyes from the board game toward Harris, replied that a lot of people had been asking him just that question. Harris asked the man what he thought of the exhibition, and the man paused a long time before saying that it was “actually a work of phenomenal detail”. He asked Harris if he knew the artist, and Harris said that he did, that he himself was in a fact a writer whose work had formed part of the conceptual framework for the show. Of the sheer improbability of these two men– one for whom New Zealand was a means of shoring up his wealth and power in a coming civilisational collapse, one for whom it was home, a source of hope for a more equal and democratic society – just happening to cross paths at an art exhibition loosely structured around the binary opposition of their political views no mention was made, and they went their separate ways.

Thiel left his contact details with the gallery, suggesting that Denny get in touch. He did, and Thiel responded quickly; he’d been intrigued by what he had seen, but claimed to be a little disturbed by how dark his cyber-libertarianism appeared when refracted through the lens of The Founder’s Paradox. In any case, the conversation continued, and they made arrangements to meet on Denny’s next trip to the US.

Denny was eager to keep talking, if only because he was determined to reach a deeper understanding of Thiel’s vision of the future. Byrt, the more straightforwardly political in his antagonism toward Thiel and what he represented, was bewildered by this unexpected turn of events, though strangely thrilled by it, too. For my part, this came as a disorienting rug-pull ending – partly because the monster had materialised, and he was therefore no longer merely a human emblem of the moral vortex at the centre of capitalism, but also an actual human, goofily got up in polo shirt and shorts, sweating in the heat, traipsing along to an art gallery to indulge his human curiosity about what the art world thought of his notoriously weird and extreme politics. A sovereign individual in the same physical environment as us ordinary subject citizens. But it also deepened the mystery of what Thiel had planned for New Zealand, for the future.

There was one mystery that did get solved, though not by me: the admittedly frivolous enigma of what sort of renovations those builders were working on at the apocalyptic pied-a-terre in Queenstown. Nippert, in a recent New Zealand Herald article, had published the architect’s plans for the place. Thiel was making some alterations to the master bedroom. He was putting in a panic room.

The latest news on Thiel's plans has, surprisingly, turned out to represent a spectacular and welcome reversal of fortunes, and where local concerns have seemingly trumped big capital: 

Tess McClure reporting last August for the Guardian (Thu 18 Aug 2022) writes: 

The billionaire Peter Thiel’s plans for an elaborate bunker-like lodge in a remote part of New Zealand’s South Island have been thwarted, after the local council decided the home would have too great a negative impact on the surrounding landscape.

Second Star, a New Zealand company owned by the PayPal co-founder, had applied to build the sprawling lakeside complex in Wanaka, an alpine South Island region known for its natural beauty and isolation. The plans were fiercely opposed by conservationists, who claimed in submissions that the lodge would “destroy our beautiful lake environment”.

On Thursday, Queenstown-Lakes district council refused to grant consent for the lodge to be built.

Thiel – an outspoken libertarian and early Facebook investor – is one of a number of super-rich speculators who began buying up remote boltholes in New Zealand, in preparation for apocalyptic social, political or environmental disintegration. He had previously discussed flying out to the country as a backup plan in the event of a pandemic, or global societal collapse, his friend the entrepreneur Sam Altman told the New Yorker in 2016.

Architectural drawings show an undulating building, embedded in the hillside and partly hidden from view. Consent documents described “a series of stand-alone buildings, including a lodge for visitor accommodation for up to 24 guests, accommodation pod for the owner, together with associated lodge management buildings, infrastructure, landscape treatment, water features and meditation space”.

Plans for the meditation pod were scrapped from the final proposal, but the earthworks required to build the lodge would still cover more than 73,700 sq metres (18 acres) of land. The structure was designed by the Japanese architects Kengo Kuma and Associates, who created the Tokyo Olympic stadium.

Thiel’s proposal was to build the lodge at Mount Alpha, which is classed as an “outstanding natural landscape” in New Zealand, and subject to special protections. Independent commissioners who reviewed the consent on behalf of council wrote that when they visited the site, “all members were shocked at the frequency at which substantial parts of the proposal would be in plain and direct view”.

“The proposal will include a large, very long building that … will substantially detract from the quality and naturalness of the outstanding natural landscape … in the context of the Mt Alpha [landscape] they are not appropriate,” they wrote.

Representatives of Second Star argued that the architects “designed the proposal to blend the buildings into the undulating landscape” that surrounded them and that the lodge would “create high-end accommodation in the region, whereby the economic benefits reach across the district and beyond”.

The council received a number of submissions from residents and environmental groups opposed to the lodge being built, or requested changes to plans. In one submission, a local resident, John Sutton, said the lodge would “destroy our beautiful lake environment”. In another, the Upper Clutha Environmental Society said the site was “wholly within and surrounded by … landscape of national importance” and the development was “likely to cause significant adverse physical changes”.

Thiel gained New Zealand citizenship in 2011, despite spending just 12 days in the country. The usual route to citizenship requires applicants to be in the country as a permanent resident for at least 1,350 days in five years – but the government waived the requirement on the basis of his entrepreneurial and philanthropic activities. The decision was only publicly revealed in 2017 and proved highly controversial in New Zealand.

More recently, Thiel has emerged as an increasingly powerful and controversial figure in US politics, using his fortune to pump tens of millions into the campaigns of candidates aligned to Donald Trump’s agenda in the midterm elections.

The Guardian has approached representatives of Second Star for comment. 

One more example of pissing off capitalist interests 

The last of the end credits scene in the film Don't Look Up that follows the mid-credits scene (where the 2,000 people who left Earth before the comet's impact and land on a lush alien planet 22,740 years later, only for President Orlean to be suddenly killed by a bird-like predator), has Orlean's son and Chief of Staff Jason emerge from the ruins of the planet. He records himself, declaring himself the "last man on Earth" and saying to "like and subscribe".

Here is the clip, but it is also followed by a rant on YouTube put out by the Foundation for Economic Education, titled Don't Look Up is a Joke, which of course it is. The suppressed rage and anger in the video's voiceover, that sets out an outrageous version of the motivation for the film, says it all. And where it is coming from, the Foundation for Economic Education, is amongst the worst when it comes to the sowers of discord and back to the UK and the road to Tufton Street via Wigan Pier and the question . . .

"where the bloody hell are we?"  

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is an American conservative, libertarian economic think tank. Founded in 1946 in New York City, FEE is now headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. It is a member of the State Policy Network. FEE offers publications, lectures, and student workshops promoting free market principles.

FEE, founded in 1946, is considered the oldest free-market think tank in the United States. An early aim was to roll back policies of the New Deal. FEE opposed the Marshall Plan, Social Security, and minimum wages, among other American social and economic policies. 

Its founding by Leonard E. Read, Henry Hazlitt, David Goodrich, Donaldson Brown, Leo Wolman, Fred Rogers Fairchild, Claude E. Robinson, and Jasper Crane followed a capital campaign started in 1945 by Crane, who was a DuPont executive, and Alfred Kohlberg. Early contributors included J. Howard Pew, Inland Steel, Quaker Oats, and Sears. As an "intellectual lighthouse", in Read's words, FEE distinguished itself from other business-supported groups by building up the intellectual framework for laissez-faire capitalism as an ideology. 

A closely related name for laissez-faire capitalism is that of raw, pure, or unrestrained capitalism, which refers to capitalism free of any regulations, with low or minimal government interference and operating almost entirely on the profit motive. It shares a similar economic conception with anarcho-capitalism. 

Robert Kuttner states that "for over a century, popular struggles in democracies have used the nation-state to temper raw capitalism. The power of voters has offset the power of capital. But as national barriers have come down in the name of freer commerce, so has the capacity of governments to manage capitalism in a broad public interest. So the real issue is not 'trade' but democratic governance".

The main issues of raw capitalism are said to lie in its disregard for quality, durability, sustainability, respect for the environment and human beings as well as a lack of morality. From this more critical angle, companies might naturally aim to maximise profits at the expense of workers' and broader social interests.

Perversely, disregarding the consequences of raw capitalism, FEE states that its mission is to promote principles of "individual liberty, free-market economics, entrepreneurship, private property, high moral character, and limited government."  

Friedrich Hayek described FEE's goal as "nothing more nor less than the defence of our civilisation against intellectual error."

Hayek encouraged Antony Fisher to found the Institute of Economic Affairs after visiting FEE in 1952. The current address of the IEA is 2 Lord North Street, just around the corner from Tufton Street.

Just look up! Trussonomics and the think tanks! 

Q. Will think tanks be kicked out of Downing Street after the Truss disaster? 

A. Don't you believe it!

Think tanks helped Liz Truss crash the UK economy. Is it over for them? 

This is the question posed by Open Democracy in an article by Adam Bychawski (27 October 2022). 

Rishi Sunak’s old allies at the Institute of Economic Affairs were behind policies that helped crash the economy.

When Rishi Sunak made his first public speech as prime minister on Tuesday, he admitted what his predecessor Liz Truss had failed to just hours earlier. “Mistakes were made,” he said of his former rival’s brief spell in office, adding that he was here to fix them.

Truss might be out of Number 10 but her think tank allies – like the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), who inspired her disastrous economic programme – are not. Sunak has installed several of the pressure group’s biggest supporters in his cabinet and made one of its former staff members his chief spin doctor.

As the economic fallout from Truss’s premiership becomes more clear, Conservative voices are now calling for the IEA to own its mistakes, while leading economists have warned Sunak to jettison its alumni and “stop listening to those mad, mad people”. 

It was just over a month ago that Truss’s first chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced his doomed mini-budget. On that fateful September evening, as he toasted the plans with delighted hedge funders at a champagne reception in Chelsea, there may also have been the sound of corks popping in the offices of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), just a stone’s throw away in Westminster.

The IEA’s long game had finally paid off. Truss and Kwarteng’s rise to the top of the Conservative Party was the culmination of years of grafting behind the scenes. Their budget read like the think tank’s wish list – deregulation, check; tax breaks for the rich and corporations, check; promises to crack down on unions; check.

Ostensibly an educational charity, the IEA was formed in 1955 to evangelise and convert politicians to the doctrine of free market economics – a mission it has had remarkable success with. At its peak in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher credited it for “creating the climate of opinion which made our victory possible”. All the while, it has never disclosed its funders, but journalists have uncovered donations from oil giants like BP and ExxonMobil and the tobacco industry. 

For a time, it seemed as though the IEA would never return to those Thatcherite heydays. That was until it found a fresh crop of Tory politicians willing to champion its cause in 2015. Among them were Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and both Kwarteng and Truss – with whom it formed the Free Enterprise Group, a party within the Conservative Party for free market fundamentalists.

When Truss won the Tory leadership contest in September, it was a victory for the libertarian wing that the IEA had quietly been incubating through the Cameron and May era. “Britain is now their laboratory,” declared prominent Conservative activist Tim Montgomerie on Twitter. Mark Littlewood, the think tank’s director since 2009, responded with just a smiling ‘sunglasses face’ emoji.

At a budget-day press conference, held together with the Taxpayers’ Alliance – another opaquely funded, right-wing pressure group – Littlewood was asked by a reporter if he was anxious about having their policies tested.

“It would be a bit odd, I think, for a think tank to resent or regret that an administration was adopting its policies,” said Littlewood. “If it turns out that these don’t work, I think the IEA has got a lot of hard thinking to do.”

In the weeks that followed, the pound crashed to its lowest point against the dollar since decimalisation, the price of government bonds rose sharply, and the Bank of England was forced to make an intervention to prevent a run on pension funds – narrowly avoiding a repeat of the 2008 financial crash. 

Tory MPs began pointing fingers – and not just at the leadership. “The impression the new government has given is that it is run by libertarian jihadists, blowing up the Conservative Party and the country in the process,” wrote former minister Robert Halfon in the Times.

His colleague, Simon Hoare, told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme that “the mild flirtation with Tea Party libertarianism has been strangled at birth”. 

Truss sacked her chancellor and reversed the tax cuts but in the end it wasn’t enough to save her premiership. As things went from bad to worse, the IEA attempted to distance itself entirely from the policies it had welcomed just weeks before.

“I’m very sorry the PM’s efforts to move the U.K. in a pro-growth, low-tax, pro-enterprise direction has failed. She had a difficult hand to play, but she also played the hand badly,” said Littlewood in a statement on the day of her resignation. Later, he insisted that the IEA’s prescriptions “had not been tried”. 

The think tank did not respond to a request from openDemocracy asking for an interview with someone willing to defend its record.

The sudden shift in tone raised eyebrows even among fellow right-wingers. “I think they need to own their mistakes, frankly,” James Blagden, chief data analyst at centre-right Conservative think tank Onward, told openDemocracy.

“We’ve had comments recently trying to backtrack and rewrite history as if this wasn’t something they were cheerleading for at the time. Mistakes were made economically and politically and those that were calling for that need to have some humility.”

Economists were even less sparing about the think tank’s dalliance with the government’s economic policy.

“They have to fess up to the fact that they’ve been a visitation of evil spirits on the British people,” Danny Blanchflower, a British-American economics professor at Dartmouth College in the US, told openDemocracy.

“Everybody in the UK is poorer because of Trussonomics and the IEA because of the moron premium – the permanent rise in the cost of borrowing that the UK has experienced, completely unnecessary. Their incompetence has lowered the well-being of every single person in the country,” he said.

Blanchflower, who previously sat on the Bank of England’s interest rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee, urged Sunak to “throw out everything the Institute of Economic Affairs says”. But like Truss, the prime minister has been closely embedded in the world of ‘dark money’ political groups from the very start of his career. 

Before becoming an MP, he cut his teeth at Policy Exchange, a right-wing think tank that called for the anti-protest measures currently being considered before Parliament. Soon after he was elected in 2015, he wrote a report calling for the creation of ‘freeports’ around the UK for the Centre for Policy Studies, which enthusiastically endorsed Truss’s budget. Both are now likely to be carried through under his premiership.

Yesterday, Sunak refused to confirm raising benefits in line with inflation, prompting fears that he may continue Truss’s attempt to shrink the state. The new prime minister might have ditched Trussonomics, but whether he will bring the party’s libertarian experiment to an end remains to be seen. 

Don't look up!

David Smith in Washington reporting for the Guardian (Wed 12 Apr 2023) under the headline: 

The lady’s not for learning: Liz Truss tells US group she was right all along 

David Smith writes: 

Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister tries to channel Margaret Thatcher to buff her image – 3,500 miles from her legacy of political chaos and near economic disaster

She’s back. Sort of. Liz Truss, a former British prime minister whose tenure lasted only 50 days, sought to revive her political career and economic agenda on Wednesday with a major speech – more than 3,500 miles from home.

Truss’s unlikely comeback attempt was perhaps guaranteed a warmer welcome at the Heritage Foundation (a somewhat stuffy conservative thinktank in Washington that has its own Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom) than at many places in her native Britain.

Knowing her audience, the ex-PM used her 2023 Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture to assail “wokeism”, praise Ronald Reagan, take swipes at France’s Emmanuel Macron and even borrow from Donald Trump’s playbook by portraying herself as the victim of a vast political conspiracy.

The 47-year-old’s reward after a speech and question-and-answer session lasting an hour was a standing ovation, albeit a short one, and a few autograph requests in an auditorium that was mostly but not entirely full.

Among the spectators was Nicole Robinson, a Heritage Foundation employee focused on the Middle East. “I appreciate Margaret Thatcher and I like her legacy and I think that Liz Truss embodies certain qualities of Margaret Thatcher,” she explained. “She’s a strong leader. She was foreign minister for a long time and during critical times in the world.”

This was certainly a safe space for Truss. Introducing her, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, made no reference to how her vanishingly short spell in Downing Street ended in political chaos and near economic disaster.

Instead he said: “Prime Minister Truss spoke for free people all over the world. For those of us who are Americans, we have a special affection for her because she delivered finally on Brexit. She confronted the big tax, big government establishment in her country and, dare I say, even her own party.”

Truss took office last September after winning a Conservative party leadership contest to replace Boris Johnson. Her pledge to spur economic growth with a mini-budget containing £45bn ($54bn) in unfunded tax cuts – including an income tax reduction for the highest earners – rattled the financial markets and led to her downfall.

Truss gave no indication that, since her banishment to the political wilderness, she has gone through a period of introspection.

She argued that the west has lost its way since the cold war, big government has gotten out of control and accused the legal, education, environmental and agricultural establishments of resisting change to the status quo. “There are people who work in businesses that invoice the government and they’re doing quite fine, thank you very much,” Truss said.

“All of those people are part of the resistance to change we need to see.

“And as prime minister, I simply underestimated the scale and depth of this resistance and the scale and depth to which it reached into the media and into the broader establishment.”

Truss complained further: “We didn’t just face coordinated resistance from inside the Conservative party or even inside the British corporate establishment. We faced it from the IMF and even from President Biden".

In reality, Truss’s abandoned economic plan sent financial markets into a tailspin and caused a sharp drop in the value of the pound. Biden described it as a “mistake”, a view echoed by many economic commentators.

Truss echoed many rightwing American politicians who have stood on the same stage at the Heritage Foundation and warned of an existential threat from creeping socialism and political correctness.

“The sad truth is what I think we’ve seen over the past few years is a new kind of economic model taking hold in our countries, one that’s focused on redistributionism, on stagnation and on the imbuing of woke culture into our businesses. I call these people the anti-growth movement.”

She spoke of a leftwing challenge to “core Anglo-American values” and the danger of “self-flagellation” via identity politics, critical race theory and “the whole debate about ‘what is a woman?’ These are all core beliefs that we have seen being undermined and I’m afraid there hasn’t been sufficient fight back … We need to be intolerant of intolerance.”

The former foreign secretary also devoted a chunk of her remarks to global affairs, calling for Ukraine to be given membership of Nato and for the west to take a tougher stand against China. She condemned Macron’s recent trip to Beijing to ask for support in ending the war in Ukraine as a sign of weakness.

Truss concluded her speech with a hint that she intends to remain in the political arena. “Last autumn I had a major setback but I care too much to give up on this agenda. I think it’s too important … Over the coming months I’ll be setting out ideas about how we together can take this battle forward …

“We need to fight this battle of ideas once again. Mrs Thatcher would have expected nothing less.”

Thatcher was one of Britain’s longest-serving prime ministers; Truss was the shortest. But none of that seemed to matter to an audience that saw Truss as a political martyr fighting the good fight.

Truss’s grip on power was infamously outlasted by a 60p (70¢) head of iceberg lettuce in a bizarre competition set up by a British newspaper with a webcam.

After Wednesday’s event in Washington, guests were treated to mini beef wellingtons, miniature brioche roast beef sliders, nut-free pesto chicken brioche sliders, caprese skewers and spanakopita – but lettuce was not on the menu.

The closed triptych

The exterior of the shutters for Bosch's "The Haywain Triptych", like most contemporary Netherlandish triptychs, was also painted, although in this case Bosch used full colours instead of the usual grisaille. When closed, they form a single scene depicting a wayfarer. Around him is a series of miniatures including the robbery of another wayfarer, a dancing shepherd and shepherdess, and a hanged man. The wayfarer uses a stick to repel a dog.

Coincidently, and emblematic of the entire LODE project, and according to the most recent interpretations, this figure may represent the person, or persons, who follow the road, or "the way", in spite of all the evil acts and the "sowers of discord" occurring around them.