Letters / ‘Misinformation at its most dangerous’
Poor John Tulloch is getting all hot under the collar about children being permitted to protest against climate change in school time (Climate emergency a costly distraction; SN, 1 July 2019).
His frustration is understandable. He has toiled away for the past – what is it now John, ten or maybe fifteen years? – in this, and various other publications, vociferously denying that climate change is something which is worthy of any action at all.
In return all he has ever heard is a few muffled guffaws and snorts of derision.
Now along comes young Greta Thunberg, all of fifteen years old and barely born when John first set out on his anti-climate change crusade. All she must do is spend a day sitting outside her school with a cardboard sign and suddenly all the world is her stage. It can’t be easy for John.
John laments the cost of Theresa May’s commitment to 2050 zero carbon and implores his readers to think about the fuel poor. He places the blame for soaring energy prices and lack of action on fuel poverty firmly at the feet of a 16 year old child and, I quote, ‘vainglorious climate jihad’, (yes really, ‘vainglorious climate jihad’), while bemoaning the money lost to the ‘real problems facing society’.
John conveniently ignores the fact that the primary driver of upward pressure on fuel costs over the past two years is the devaluation of the pound following the Brexit vote; a result for which he himself campaigned long and hard in favour of.
He also ignores the fact that as the value of the pound continues to fall with the ever-increasing probability of a hard Brexit, the cost of heating UK homes will continue to rise, and the suffering of the fuel poor will continue to worsen.
These established facts don’t fit John Tulloch’s pro Brexit/anti climate action narrative, so he ignores them, and deceitfully tries to divert the blame for the suffering of the fuel poor onto school children.
Misinformation at its most dangerous and very worst.
Jim Gilbert
Adelaide
South Australia
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