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Free Speech Union Highlights New Risk to Free Speech in the Workplace: Carbon Literacy Training

by Toby Young
25 August 2023 1:00 PM

The Free Speech Union has just published a briefing on carbon literacy training by Thomas Harris, its Director of Data and Impact. The FSU is concerned that it will have a chilling effect on free speech in the workplace in the same way that unconscious bias training and anti-racism training does, with employees reluctant to challenge the ideas behind it for fear of jeopardising their careers.

Carbon literacy training is spreading rapidly across UK offices and places of study, with over 67,000 citizens certified as ‘carbon literate’ according to the Carbon Literacy Project (CLP), the main organisation behind the initiative. (Between financial year-end September 2021 and September 2022, CLP’s income grew from £183.8k to £637.7k, an increase of nearly 250%.) The training takes it for granted that we’re in the midst of a ‘climate emergency’ and recommends that employees embrace various radical solutions, including net zero.

The Free Speech Union is concerned that this training is embedding a particular orthodoxy about climate change in British workplaces, leaving employees feeling unable to challenge it. While it’s indisputable that average global temperatures have increased since the mid-19th Century people hold a range of views about the causes and severity of climate change and that in turn influences their opinion about the best way to tackle it – or, indeed, whether tackling it is possible or necessary. Different solutions to the problems created by climate change are informed by different values and recommending one approach over another inevitably involves making a political choice. There is no-such thing as an apolitical, ‘scientific’ solution. Consequently, employees should not be put under pressure to endorse a particular approach or threatened with disciplinary action if they fail to adjust their behaviour to follow this approach, particularly in their private lives.

In those companies seeking accreditation as a ‘Carbon Literate Organisation’ (CLO), up to 80% of staff are expected to become ‘carbon literate’. Carbon literate accreditation requires employees to embrace a particular view about climate change and identify at least one action they can take to reduce their own carbon footprint, as well as at least one action involving other people. The FSU fears that employees may be penalised if they refuse to comply with these requirements because they do not share a particular point of view.

The FSU first became aware of this new threat to free speech in the workplace when it was contacted by a member who is concerned about his career after he challenged the carbon literacy training provided by his employer. The FSU believes he was right to be concerned. To secure CLP’s platinum, gold, and silver CLO accreditation, companies are expected to embed carbon literacy in the annual targets of staff members and evaluate their performance accordingly. This means that employees who don’t subscribe to a particular view on climate change could find themselves missing out on pay awards or promotion unless they self-censor or pretend to hold convictions they don’t have.

If you’re being forced to undergo carbon literacy training in your workplace and are worried you might get into trouble for challenging the climate activist agenda behind it, you can contact Thomas Harris at the Free Speech Union here. And if you’re not already a member of the FSU, you can join here.

Tags: Carbon Literacy ProjectCarbon Literacy TrainingFree Speech UnionThomas Harris

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23 Comments
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transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago

Whereas you could justify all the DIE stuff on the basis of workplace harmony and treating your customers and suppliers correctly (though clearly that’s not the intention and the desired and actual effect is to promote disharmony), this initiative is more obviously (hopefully to most) blatant political propaganda.

93
0
stewart
stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

To those who know how the world really is, it’s very clear.

To the millions who accept the climate story unthinkingly it makes perfect sense.

And so the two camps drift further apart.

68
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

I think there is a significant number who fall into neither camp, some of whom I hope will smell a rat.

When Khan calls people who oppose the ULEZ far right conspiracy theorists, I think he’s doing us a favour because it will alert people to the fact that his agenda is political and nothing to do with saving lives.

96
0
stewart
stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

I agree with that. They are becoming more and more desperate in their actions and their aggressiveness should put off those who are ambivalent or simply so far uninterested.

56
0
RW
RW
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

To the millions who accept the climate story unthinkingly it makes perfect sense.

Reality is that nothing anybody in the UK does or doesn’t do will affect global CO2 emissions in a significant way. Even when accepting the global climate emergency story, workplace political activism in England is both a pointless distraction and completely out of place.

41
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NeilofWatford
NeilofWatford
1 year ago

Indoctrination.
If you’re invited to attend, make yourself popular by asking these questions…
1. What % of atmosphere is CO2? (.04%)
2. What % of total CO2 is man made? (.4%)
3. What % of man made CO2 is produced by UK? (1%)
4. At what level of CO2 do plants suffer? (Less than .03%)
Then make your excuses and leave.

121
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stewart
stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  NeilofWatford

I love the stats. They are very illuminating.

HOWEVER,

4% of 0.4% is 0.016%

So actually, if you eliminate all man made carbon, plants won’t suffer from it. At least based on your stats.

So I wouldn’t argue that our reducing carbon is dangerous.

The far stronger argument which I think is the accurate one is that we humans are basically inconsequential to the climate of our planet.

Last edited 1 year ago by stewart
53
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SimCS
SimCS
1 year ago
Reply to  NeilofWatford

The numbers I’ve seen are:
1) 0.04%
2) 3%
3) 1%
4) 0.015% (150ppm), but in the same ballpark.

This means man’s contribution is 0.0012%, and the UK’s contribution is 0.000012%. The next question of them therefore is: How is this even measurable?

31
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varmint
varmint
1 year ago
Reply to  SimCS

But facts don’t matter. Tyranny doesn’t debate facts. It coerces you into submission.

42
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psychedelia smith
psychedelia smith
1 year ago

Even the title of this is scheme is designed to brainwash and lobomize. Oooh, is it that stuff in the human body and BBQs…? Or is it the bubbles in my Coke Zero..? Or is it those evil black lumps in the air that Sadiq Khan is in brave hand to hand combat with..?

The answer is they are deliberately conflating harmless & essential carbon dioxide with particulate pollution and trying to manipulate people into believing that this contrived nebulous cocktail is the evil puppet master to our climate & weather system.

The ONLY carbon dioxide literacy training people need is this:

CO2 Famine.jpg
Last edited 1 year ago by psychedelia smith
75
0
JohnK
JohnK
1 year ago
Reply to  psychedelia smith

A useful graph. For this reason, many growers deliberately try to operate in the optimum zone: https://www.dutchgreenhouses.com/en/technology/co2-enrichment/ Sometimes done by exploring the exhaust gas from heating equipment, rather than spewing it out directly; Makes financial sense.

17
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jeepybee
jeepybee
1 year ago

I have a friend who is totally in the CCC (Climate ‘Change’ Cult). She’s actually intelligent and has great insights into other things, but on the CCC matters she’s totally blinded.

The other day during a non-confrontational conversation about heat-pumps and windmills, I asked her simply “how much CO2 is in the atmosphere then?”

Her response was along the lines of; “a lot, like half of it…I think it’s about 30%”

“Hmm” I said, “we should look that up, it’s important probably…” It was a bit mean, but I wanted her to find out herself…

Seeing that it was 0.04%, and of that humanity make up a tiny amount of that infinitesimal percentage, she had some internal struggles. Cogs were grinding in her head and the logic was fighting her belief.

I then asked what plants “ate”, and the cogs started to grind again as she sort of came to her own conclusions…

Then, the NPC/Matrix lines kicked in and she said “well, it’s better than the alternative”.

And that was it. It wasn’t depressing, because I definitely planted a seed in a crack in her logic. Well, not a crack…the CCC has a chasm in it’s logic…

Last edited 1 year ago by jeepybee
96
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LaptopMaestro
LaptopMaestro
1 year ago
Reply to  jeepybee

Find a more intelligent friend.

55
0
jeepybee
jeepybee
1 year ago
Reply to  LaptopMaestro

Hah! Well, I feel that we have a bit of a duty to shepherd the sheep away from the wolves.

She’s great in so many other ways that I can’t let a stupid belief get in between us.

34
0
stewart
stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  LaptopMaestro

It’s not intelligence we are short of. It’s wisdom. Two very different things.

The number of highly intelligent people who are extremely unwise is staggering.

93
-1
psychedelia smith
psychedelia smith
1 year ago
Reply to  jeepybee

The simple maths part of that leaves the UK prostrating itself at the feet of Gaia over a global CO2 contribution of 0.00001%. Tell her that.

40
0
RW
RW
1 year ago
Reply to  jeepybee

A lifetime of brainwashing can’t be overcome with a single conversation.

33
0
varmint
varmint
1 year ago
Reply to  jeepybee

No matter how many facts you present to her she will not change her beliefs. ——-Wait a second , did I say “beliefs”? ——Yes I did. —-Beliefs do not rely on facts and reason, they rely on faith and emotion. Just as you will never get a Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon on your doorstep to change their beliefs, you will never get someone from the Climate Change Secular Religious Cult to change theirs. ——It is their religion, and you are simply a heretic.

30
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  jeepybee

“I have a friend who is totally in the CCC (Climate ‘Change’ Cult). She’s actually intelligent and has great insights into other things, but on the CCC matters she’s totally blinded.”

The agreed descriptor for these people is “intelligent stupids.” So damned clever – they think – they don’t realise how stupid they are.

22
0
RW
RW
1 year ago

From the CLP website:

Carbon Literacy is a desirable asset for any employer. A Carbon Literate citizen will display compassion for the environment, their health and the health of those around them. This makes them directly more employable.

If anything, people who spend lots of time displaying (NB: not feeling) compassion for the environment, their health and the health of those around them in the workplace are a liability and not an asset because they should be working instead.

44
0
varmint
varmint
1 year ago

“While it is indisputable that average global temperatures have risen since the mid 19th century”——-(1) Climate science does not use an “average global temperature”. It uses “temperature anomaly”. This is NOT the same thing. It would be a difficult task to calculate the average temperature of your house over the last 150 years never mind the whole planet, especially since the thermometer coverage of earth was very sparse, with most thermometers in the wealthy western countries, like the USA, UK and Europe. So there was never extensive thermometer coverage. (2) Even the IPCC admit that it is only after the second world war when the global economy started to explode into life in what economists call the post war economic boom that CO2 could have affected global climate, since there was not much industry before that, no cars, no planes, no cookers, no fridges, no central heating etc etc. So half of the alleged warming since the mid 19th century was NOT caused by us and was really just a change due to the end of the colder Little Ice Age period. These Liberal Progressive tyranny’s have been entering the work place to indoctrinate a mostly unsuspecting public, and the ones who do suspect will be bludgeoned into keeping their mouths shut. But remember that if something has to do with science then you question everything. Science is NOT a dictatorship. Science is not something decided by a show of hands from bureaucrats with an agenda. The fact that this coercion is taking place reveal one very important thing. ———Climate Change, NET ZERO etc has not and never had anything to do with science in the first place.

42
0
dvdcsmth
dvdcsmth
1 year ago

Dictatorial behavior by people in authority is becoming increasingly common. Why now? What changed, and when?

8
0
crisisgarden
crisisgarden
1 year ago

This is like feudal Lords hiring peasants to train other peasants to be good little peasants. A peasant literacy programme.

7
0

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