Oozing Self-Righteousness Will Put Them Above the Law

Extinction Rebellion

One day it will be impossible to criticise the fanatics of Extinction Rebellion. Until then, I’ll tell the truth about those irrational zealots


Peter Hitchens
Mail on Sunday

It will soon be impossible to criticise the fanatics of Extinction Rebellion.   In fact, I will not be at all surprised if, in years to come, I and others face prosecution for having dared to doubt them.

Soon we will be sitting in an impoverished, dark country, with a trashed economy, incessant power cuts and dismal standard of living, caused by their dogma.  We are like a thirsty man refusing to drink from a tap because of a water shortage, while his local water company leaves hundreds of leaks unrepaired, allowing thousands of gallons to drain away each hour

Putting people on trial for warning against this will be one way to keep warm and occupied.

So, while I still may, I’ll say that this is one of the nastiest and stupidest outbreaks of intolerant, irrational zealotry since mankind emerged from the Dark Ages. I speak as a former intolerant zealot, who grew out of it.  I know the fierce joy which comes from despising others, only too well. And I fear it.


So, off we go into the cold and dark, while the red-clad propaganda mummers simper and gesticulate. Protesters are pictured at a 'grief march' in London last week

Perhaps the most dispiriting version of it is to be seen in the painted, beatific faces of the red-robed mime-artists who are to be found on so many of the demonstrations demanding that this country commits economic suicide.

Who can tell what is going on behind those self-satisfied, ethereal expressions?
But they give these marches a strong whiff of the Age of Inquisitions, which I once thought we had escaped.

I won’t try to argue here on the rightness or wrongness of the Warmists’ theory about the causes of climate change.   I know from long, multiple experience that they respond to reasonable doubt with fury and defamatory cries of ‘denier’.

I spend much of my life in debate, and will take on any rational opponent. But there are some causes you can’t reason with, and this is one of them.   They prefer fury to logic. This is always the sign of someone who is not sure of his own case, and hates to hear his inner doubts spoken.

I have yet to get one of them to respond to this simple point. We recently closed and demolished Didcot ‘A’ coal-fired power station, an efficient, reasonably modern plant with a generating capacity of about 1.44 gigawatts.

Why? Why not at least mothball it? But no such caution is allowed in the great cause of cutting CO2 emissions.  Look at the facts: an enormous 259 gigawatts (180 Didcots) of new coal-fired capacity are under development in China. That’s on top of the 993 gigawatts of coal-burning capacity China already possesses (690 Didcots).

The UK’s whole electrical generation capacity, in all forms of power, is 85 gigawatts (59 Didcots). If we gave up using electricity entirely, it would make no difference at all to the impact of Chinese coal burning on the atmosphere.

None. Not any. Zero. If we completely abolish all our fossil-fuel generation, including gas, it would likewise not matter in the slightest – except to us, our economy and our standard of living.

China’s planned increase, yes, increase, in coal power is three times the size of our whole electricity-generation industry – wind, nuclear gas, and all. India is also increasing coal generation and last March reached a coal capacity of 200 gigawatts (139 Didcots).

I have said it before. I’ll keep saying it. Thanks to the political and media class’s dim acceptance of shouted propaganda, and their rejection of reason, we are already damaging ourselves.   Wind generation only functions thanks to huge hidden subsidies, paid for by the poor, and is vulnerable to power cuts unless it is backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear generation.

We are like a thirsty man refusing to drink from a tap because of a water shortage, while his local water company leaves hundreds of leaks unrepaired, allowing thousands of gallons to drain away each hour.

This is a futile, self-harming gesture. And these demonstrators, ignorant and engorged with self-righteous rage, demand more futility.  Will sane people have to glue themselves to aircraft and bridges to get anyone to listen? And if they do, will they be indulged by our politicised, biased police, as the Warmists are?

So, off we go into the cold and dark, while the red-clad propaganda mummers simper and gesticulate.