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.
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A very helpful example of pseudo science.
It’s the kind of garbage collectivists lap up while searching for policies to solve social problems. We’re all, not just the homeless, like little lab rats on which they can act upon to “make the world a better place”.
This is similar to the Universal Basic Income which is another fraud. Hand every person £1K per month on top of the welfare system which sets a minimum level of income. Ridiculous. If you are homeless you cannot be handed cash. You need to repair many other issues first. The Welfare state is broke and broken. Enough already.
UBI would actually be better than the current welfare system. No means test, no discrimination, no perverse incentives.
There are big differences in why people might be homeless (or appear to be). Complex mental or physical health issues make some people unsuitable to ‘normal living’. Given social housing or sheltered accommodation and these people will still find their way back on the streets. Similarly there are the drug addicts and alcoholics that exhibit severe anti-social behavioral traits that money alone wont fix. Then there are the ‘professional’ beggars, there are also those exploited by criminal gangs in what is known as modern slavery.
Only anecdotally, but in a country like the UK with it’s generous welfare system and councils having a statuary responsibility to house anyone – I cant think of any reason why a person could be on the streets for lack of money. The first time in my life I saw real, genuine hardship was on a stag-do in Eastern Europe and ironically also in the supposedly wealthy USA.
FYI, you can watch Eva Vlaardingerbroek’s new (35min) documentary about the sorts of people living on the streets across Germany here. You will not be in a rush to visit after watching this. She speaks German too, clever lass. I can’t see how major cities in the UK would differ much from this tbh. Worth watching.
https://twitter.com/EvaVlaar/status/1703157698219458989
The study may not have been perfect, but Occam’s Razor would say that giving them unconditional cash DOES make them better off on balance, at least at the margin. I know conservatives don’t like the idea of “something for nothing” (unless they themselves benefit directly from it, and not “those people”) and think that everything must have more strings attached than a spider’s web (often conflating the normative with the descriptive), but come on now. Behind such opposition, I detect “the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism” that is causing such cognitive dissonance.
Well this conservative doesn’t like the idea of giving his money away. Occam’s razor would suggest to me that in the long run, giving people money without giving them other help does more harm than good.
1) No one in favor of it, including the authors, is saying they should be denied other help. That is a straw man, as we can walk and chew gum at the same time. 2) The money can simply be created, like all money is when you really look at it, so you don’t have to “give away” your own money if that bothers you. 3) And finally, as the late, great John Maynard Keynes famously said long ago, “in the long run, we are all dead”.
(Mic drop)
“2) The money can simply be created, like all money is when you really look at it, so you don’t have to “give away” your own money if that bothers you”
I don’t have the ability to create money, so giving mine away does bother me. Money can be created with a printing press, value can only be created through work.
This study has already been savaged in the Canadian and other media.
One was the pre-screening – everyone with addiction or mental issues were excluded. Only shorter-term homeless were excluded.
“age 19 to 65, homeless for less than 2 y (homelessness defined as the lack of stable housing), Canadian citizen or permanent resident, and nonsevere levels of substance use (DAST-10) (21), alcohol use (AUDIT) (22), and mental health symptoms Colorado Symptom Index (CSI) (23) based on predefined thresholds”.
There were many dropouts from the study etc.
“Of the 732 participants, 229 passed all criteria (31%). Due to loss of contact with 114 participants despite our repeated attempts to reach them, we successfully enrolled 115 participants in the study as the final sample (50 cash, 65 noncash0”
There were many problems with this study.