Another day, another car-crash interview for Boris Johnson.
Today he was challenged over his decision not to wear a mask while sitting next to “national treasure” David Attenborough, who is 95 years old and therefore highly vulnerable to Covid-19.
Just because Johnson has been vaccinated, it doesn’t mean he cannot pass the virus on to other people and his masklessness has attracted huge criticism on the social media.
But just look at his face when an interviewer raised the matter. It seems he did not have the self-awareness to realise people would talk about it, and he quite clearly panics at the thought of the harm he has done to his own public image.
His answer, when it eventually came, was infantile:
The instant a reporter diverts from the script, he flails, eyes darting, desperately searching for help, like a toddler lost in a supermarket.
Has anyone told Johnson what M. Macron did while he was enjoying his hangover nap (still maskless) next to Mr Attenborough while the speeches droned on? This could not have happened if he had only put a piece of cloth over his face:*
*Amazingly, to avoid criticism from the hard-of-thinking, I have to make it clear that this image is satirical.
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David Attenborough at COP26: at 95, he knows he doesn’t have much time left – and he’ll die in despair for the future of the world if COP26 turns out to be just another gust of hot air.
This Writer opened Twitter today to be met by this from the acceptable face of Countdown femininity:
Word of the day is ‘bloviation’ (19th century): empty rhetoric and a good deal of blah.
I bet she’s been monitoring the progress of COP26 – or lack of it.
Here’s the problem:
100 corporate giants are responsible for over 70% of the global emissions. It is not ordinary people who need lectured about their climate responsibilities, it is greedy corporate elites & the Governments they control.
Sadly, it was the governments controlled by the corporates who were on display at COP26 – with predictable results:
Come to Glasgow to see deckchairs being rearranged on the Titanic, just don't mention the iceberg.
— 🇵🇸Sir Norman of Potemkin Island, KBE💚🏴☠️ (@Normanjam671) November 1, 2021
Leading the parade of meaningless speeches was the UK’s prime minister Boris Johnson, a personality vacuum who could do most good for the planet by sucking all the harmful CO2 emissions into the gaping hole where his soul should be.
So far the PM has made a speech about James Bond, done a car crash interview about cutting tax on domestic flights and new coal, fallen asleep, and announced he’s flying back to London tomorrow.
Oh! So tackling climate change is a matter for local planning authorities, is it? Then why did all those world leaders create so many more greenhouse gas emissions by flying and driving to Glasgow so they could drink all that Scottish booze and wag their chins at each other?
As for taking a plane back to London, Downing Street has claimed that he needs to be mobile in order to be where he needs to be at all times, that the plane uses a mixture of 35 per cent renewable fuel and 65 per cent regular (meaning it’s greener) and that the remaining carbon footprint is offset in other ways.
But this is just one flight among many. How many forests are being planted by the government in order to offset them all?
Boris Johnson has taken more luxury private plane flights per day in office than any previous UK prime Minister.https://t.co/k8OuoKZw5E
I'm getting fed up now watching Johnson stumble about, talk absolute gibberish and fall asleep p*ssed at COP26…Why are his fellow Tories accepting this like its normal? He's destroying this country single handedly and Tory Ministers/MP's are just as bad for letting it happen 😡
I see Richard Madeley was salivating at Joe Biden resting his eyes at #COP26 yet no mention of Boris Johnson having a full on hangover kip, yet again @GMB following @BBCNews in protecting this embarrassment of a PM, would they be so protective if it were a Labour PM? No way..
If they were all so great at cutting CO2 emissions – the greenhouse gas mostly responsible for the Earth’s increasing atmospheric temperature that is threatening us all – then COP26 would not have been called.
US President Joe Biden turned out to be another weapons-grade hypocrite (as I suggested yesterday). Look at how he turned up to a conference on reducing greenhouse gas emissions:
(Mind you, he wasn’t the only one who turned up to a conference about saving the environment in a gas guzzling mechanical monster. Hypocrites all…)
Side streets around #COP26 are choked up with chauffeur-driven cars and vans, many with their engines idling. Interesting look for a climate conference. pic.twitter.com/9NO83ydN0w
Exactly. If there was a “market-based solution” to the climate crisis, it would have been implemented long ago and there would have been no need for a summit.
The most sense was spoken by someone who wasn’t even invited…
David Attenborough speaks at Cop26 but they would not allow Greta Thunburg to speak. They are ok with an old man but are shit scared of a young girl.
— Dicky Sparks, Reluctant Citizen of Plague Island (@Dickysparks) November 2, 2021
“My expectation is that we will hear many, many nice speeches, we will hear many pledges that – if you really look into the details – are more or less meaningless but they just say them in order to have something to say, in order for media to have something to report about, and then I expect things to continue to remain the same.
“The COPs as they are now will not lead to anything unless there is big, massive pressure from the outside.”
Wise words – especially when coupled with the big announcement about saving the world’s forests, and the reaction to it.
The headlines today are about a "landmark" pledge to stop deforestation by 2030. The only problem? World governments made *exactly* the same pledge in 2014 and deforestation increased by 40% pic.twitter.com/Pmz5wA5XMC
And check out this dialogue between Labour’s Clive Lewis and Tory Zac Goldsmith on the relative responsibilities of the haves and have-nots:
. It’s not party political Clive. This is an alliance of countries around the world from left to right. It is a turning point for the planet that you and I and everyone else shares.
But it is political. Inequality is hardwired into the global & domestic economic system your party champions. & is clearly a driver for the #climatecrisis. The poor cant give up what they dont consume. Asking capitalism to save the planet is akin to asking a tiger to go vegan. https://t.co/pTu6sQwJd7
Goldsmith was trying to dodge responsibility for the problem, on behalf of his rich buddies – but Lewis is right: the poor can’t give up something they don’t consume.
There were good speeches – but they were made by people with absolutely no power.
David Attenborough’s was a barnstormer…
… but he was speaking to a hostile audience. Look at those faces. They really couldn’t care less.
Maori activist India Logan-Riley also made strong points, having been asked to speak at the last minute:
“In the US and Canada alone Indigenous resistance has stopped or delayed greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to at least one quarter of annual emissions. What we do works.”
Logan-Riley was not overstating the actions of Indigenous people in fighting for the environment. A recent report by Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) and Oil Change International (OCI) found that an amount of greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to at least one-quarter of annual US and Canadian emissions had been stopped or delayed due to Indigenous-led resistance to 21 fossil fuel projects in the two countries over the last decade.
The report found that about 1.587 billion metric tons of annual greenhouse gas emissions have been halted. That is the equivalent pollution of approximately 345 million passenger vehicles — more than all vehicles on the road in these countries, or 400 new coal-fired power plants — more than are still operating in the United States and Canada.
Needless to say, she doesn’t have any political power at all.
All in all, COP26 has turned out to be exactly the copOUT we all feared.
This Writer is left in agreement with Tom London:
If the world fails to stop catastrophic climate change it will be for one reason
That reason is GREED
The world has an abundance of resources of every kind right now but a small GREEDY elite has control of a huge amount and will not share any and wants to get more&more&more
They are in control – because we stupidly allowed it.
And they will make us suffer.
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Misguided: David Attenborough’s A Perfect Planet preached the depressing truth that human beings are destroying their own ecosystem – to human beings who either aren’t or don’t have a choice – they must participate in it or starve. Nobody who can make a difference could care less.
Here’s everything that was wrong with David Attenborough’s A Perfect Planet yesterday:
Tuned in to watch a bit of david Attenborough but am now being subjected to propaganda. Yes, I know: humanity is an evil plague on the planet. But can I just look at some elephants please? #PerfectPlanet
Sarah Vine, if you didn’t know, is not only a right-wing journalist but the wife of Michael Gove, who happens to be the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster – a very senior Conservative government politician.
She doesn’t care about the harm her husband and his government’s policies are doing to the planet. She just wants to see pretty photography of elephants before they become extinct due to her husband’s bad decisions.
And, by virtue of being married to him, she has influence over such matters. She would never use it to stop other Tories (and exploiters from other countries and political parties) from ravaging the world for the sake of a quick buck.
Meanwhile, David Attenborough has been on the BBC telling you and me – I can’t do a single damn thing to stop the destruction of our ecosystem in the name of profit; can you? – that we’re responsible.
Doesn’t he recognise the contradiction in his own stance? He’s saying this on a TV channel that is run by supporters of the Conservative government (current BBC chair Richard Sharp has donated heavily to the Conservatives – more than £400,000 by 2010) and broadcasts Tory propaganda instead of news.
Indeed, just to rub it in our faces, the BBC ran an advert for its news programme right after A Perfect Planet, telling us that while we might have had a rotten time for the last few months – and be in for worse in the future, and it’s all very depressing (they’re sure), we are “not alone” and they are on our side.
Mrs Mike and I stared at this in amazement and disbelief and then both uttered the same explosive eight-letter expletive at the television (I’ll leave you to imagine what it was, for your own entertainment).
If Attenborough really wants to change the direction of travel, he would be demanding change from his BBC bosses but he isn’t.
Instead, all he has done is upset millions of ordinary people who have absolutely no say in such matters and cannot do anything about it.
Some of us may even be employed in jobs that worsen the situation, coerced into doing so by the fact that there is no other work available and they must either take part in the long-term murder of the ecosystem or starve in the short term. Attenborough didn’t mention that on his programme last night but it is a policy of the Conservative government that his employer supports.
I’m not saying he doesn’t make a good point, or shouldn’t be warning everybody about what is happening.
I’m just pointing out that his argument is misdirected. The people who could make a difference simply don’t care. They think he should shut up and show them nice piccies of elephants.
Attenborough stated in the film that his hopes now lie in the new generation of human beings – avoiding the fact that the vast majority will be even less able to change anything than his, or mine, due to political policies across the globe that are concentrating power in the hands of very few people.
I remember back in the 1980s, in the Genesis song Land of Confusion, Tory Phil Collins singing that his generation would “put it right”. His generation didn’t.
My generation hasn’t (to my infinite chagrin).
The next generation won’t have the opportunity.
Attenborough, bless ‘im, needs to get to grips with that reality.
Otherwise, he might just as well give up and give Sarah Vine her elephant pics.
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