Tom Nelson, the producer of the social media blockbuster Climate: The Movie, often tweets in reply to woke Net Zero nonsense: “It’s not about the climate, is it?” Edinburgh City Council is to ban adverts for cruise ships, airports, airlines and internal combustion engine cars. “It is just basic common sense that if the council is serious about its commitment to climate justice, we cannot allow council advertising space to be used to promote fossil fuel companies,” said Ben Parker, a councillor for the Scottish Greens, who is reported to have spearheaded the policy. Curiously missing from the banned list are medicines and plastics, along with other common products such as clothing, food preservatives, cleaning products and soft contact lenses. Together with countless other useful and essential items in widespread use, they are all derived from hydrocarbons, courtesy of oil and gas.
It’s not about the climate, is it?
The ban echoes similar advertisement crackdowns by local councils in Sheffield, Bristol, Cambridgeshire, Coventry, Liverpool and Somerset. The Financial Times notes that Edinburgh is committed to becoming a Net Zero city within barely more than five years.
Interestingly, all the councils who are moving to deprive their ratepayers of large amounts of advertising revenue, except Coventry, are signed up to the billionaire-funded UK100. This green operation targeting local authorities was founded by Polly Billington, a former BBC reporter and aide to Labour’s Net Zero fanatic Ed Miliband. Its main backer is the European Climate Foundation (ECF), a front funding operation for many of the largest names in climate activism. These include Bloomberg Philanthropies, the vehicle used by Michael Bloomberg to promote banning oil and gas production, and the Children’s Investment Fund, promoting the charitable good works of hedge fund manager Sir Christopher Hohn, former paymaster of eco vandals Extinction Rebellion. Other billionaire funders of ECF include names that crop up regularly in the promotion of Net Zero global collectivisation including Hewlett, IKEA, KR, Grantham and Rockefeller. One of five board members of UK100 is Madeline Carroll, described as a communication and campaigning specialist for ECF.
Local councils around the U.K. have signed up to a UK100 pledge, which commits them to “acting sooner than the Government’s goal” and making substantial progress towards Net Zero in the next decade. “We are closer to the people who live and work in our communities, so we have a better understanding of their needs,” says UK100, a debatable proposition given who is funding this waffle. “This means we can collaborate with them to build consensus for the solutions we need to transition to a Net Zero society that delivers multiple benefits and is fair, just and works for everyone.” Try telling that to the less affluent car owners forced off the roads in London by Mayor Sadiq Khan’s punch-down Ulez policy, backed by the notorious statistical construct of saving 4,000 lives a year. Khan is the current chair of C40, a group of 100 city mayors striving for similar goals as UK100, and backed by substantial grassroots donations from concerned citizens – no just joking, it’s backed by Michael Bloomberg and Sir Christopher Hohn.
Meanwhile, applications are currently being solicited for a three weekend, all expenses paid, residential course for elected officials at UK100’s Climate Leadership Academy later this year. Here, the officials will be groomed, or in UK100’s words given a “unique coaching opportunity”, to develop their political skills, knowledge and confidence “to become leading climate pioneers in local government”. Rather oddly, UK100 says it particularly encourages applications in Wales and Scotland, where you’d think that bonkers Labour/SNP/Greens Net Zero policies are already pretty advanced. There is a promise that ‘graduates’ of the course will have the opportunity “to act as spokespeople for UK100 in national advocacy initiatives”.
It is clear that all this green advocacy is being heavily funded by global billionaires carefully curating the agenda in the mainstream media, as well as academia and in political circles. Removing hydrocarbons in just a few years from human society is insanity on steroids, and support is starting to wane across the world as the full implications of the policy become clear. But it remains popular with the controlling elite who are clearly committed to a process of world de-industrialisation under the guise of a scientifically unproven climate emergency.
One of the outfits campaigning for the Edinburgh ban, notes the FT, was Adfree Cities, a “volunteer group” lobbying for the reduction of “harmful adverts”. According to its web site, Adfree Cities is a network of bodies challenging corporate outdoor advertising and reclaiming public space for art, community and nature. Another interpretation might be removing the rights of a citizen to promote lawful products in favour of plastering public spaces with hideous Banksy-inspired illegal graffiti. According to Adfree Cities, advertising impacts us in many conscious and unconscious ways, “damaging our environment and wellbeing”. Of course, all of this juvenile attention-seeking requires outside funding and in this case it is supplied by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
This Left-wing money mountain sprays funding across a large numbers of activist groups, including operations claiming climate motives. Among recent beneficiaries is Climate Outreach which received £157,112 for work on climate change and migration, DeSmog which was helped with £157,257 to run its farcical ‘blacklist’ of sceptical scientists and writers, Faith for Climate, which was given a £170,000 grant for its Faiths for Climate Justice project, Fossil Free Pride given £164,500 to help sever ties between “queer culture and the fossil fuel industry”, and People and Planet which received a handsome £355,931 for climate justice.
It’s not about the climate, is it?
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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