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<\/p>\nKit Knightly<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Canadian wildfires are all over the headlines, but this latest dose of climate-related fear-porn is just another stage in a propaganda campaign aiming to\u00a0\u201cpivot from covid to climate\u201d<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n Now, first things first, let\u2019s discuss the fires themselves.<\/p>\n Forest fires, or wildfires, are a perfectly natural phenomenon and a vital part of the ecosystem, enabling fresh regrowth and putting nutrients into the soil.<\/p>\n They happened for\u00a0hundreds of millions of years before humans existed<\/a>, and will continue to happen long after we\u2019ve gone the way of the Dodo.<\/p>\n Are these current fires especially bad? Or especially widespread?<\/p>\n We don\u2019t know. We DO know, from our coverage of the\u00a02019 Amazon \u201ccrisis\u201d<\/a>, that the media has previously relied on manipulated statistics to make wildfires\u00a0seem worse than they were<\/a>.<\/p>\n We also know there are efforts to associate yearly forest fires with alleged man-made climate change, even when it is freely\u00a0admitted that other factors are likely to blame<\/a>.<\/p>\n We also know this story wouldn\u2019t be on the front pages if it didn\u2019t serve some agenda. So what IS that agenda? What\u2019s the story behind the story?<\/p>\n Well, part of it is the \u201cair quality\u201d narrative.<\/p>\n Do you remember the Gas Stoves palaver from a few months ago? The Blues wanted to ban them and the Reds didn\u2019t, but the real story behind\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0story was a propaganda push to\u00a0regulate indoor air quality<\/a>: I wrote at the time:<\/p>\n I would suggest some new \u201csmart\u201d technology is coming that will monitor air quality and indoor C02 emissions. Like smart electricity and water meters, but for your air.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It turns out I was right\u2026well, actually the tech already existed.<\/p>\n Amazon\u2019s\u00a0\u201cSmart Air Monitor\u201d<\/a>\u00a0is connected to Alexa and sets off alarms if your air quality is poor. Of course, you need Alexa active to use it. Which means you need to agree to Amazon\u00a0harvesting your data<\/a>\u00a0and listening in on your conversations.<\/p>\n In a handy piece of timing, the EU has launched its own\u00a0air quality monitoring app<\/a>. And, in just the last few days, many publications are brazenly running\u00a0ads<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0\u201creviews\u201d<\/a>\u00a0for \u201csmart air monitors\u201d or\u00a0HEPA filters<\/a>.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s likely as much to do with opportunism and corporate greed as anything else.<\/p>\n The real agenda here is climate change \u2013 not just the usual spread of panic, or even constructing false evidence of its existence \u2013 but\u00a0rebranding it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Transforming Climate Change from an\u00a0environmental<\/em>\u00a0issue, into a\u00a0public health<\/em>\u00a0issue.<\/p>\n This is not a new idea, it started almost\u00a0as soon as Covid arrived<\/a>\u00a0and moved onto the front pages when we saw the first\u00a0\u201cclimate change diagnosis\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in late 2021. But it has clearly been gaining momentum for the past few months.<\/p>\n In March, the Council on Foreign Relations published an article on\u00a0\u201cManaging the Health Risks of Climate Change\u201d<\/a><\/em>, which opens with:<\/p>\n Climate change has risen to the top of the global health agenda, threatening individuals and populations through multiple exposure pathways, across a full spectrum of physical and mental health conditions and social determinants of health.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In April the Guardian ran an\u00a0opinion piece<\/a>\u00a0headlined:<\/p>\n Climate emergency is the biggest health crisis of our time \u2013 bigger than Covid<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Then, in late May, the World Health Organization \u2013 having freshly declared the\u00a0\u201cemergency phase\u201d of Covid over<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 made\u00a0\u201can impassioned plea for urgent climate action\u201d<\/em>, with chairman Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus saying [emphasis added]:<\/p>\n The most pressing reasons for urgent climate action are the impacts not in the future, but right now, on health [\u2026]\u00a0The climate crisis is a health crisis<\/strong>, fuelling outbreaks, contributing to higher rates of noncommunicable diseases, and threatening to overwhelm our health workforce and health infrastructure.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Just last week, the Cairo Review of Global Affairs \u2013 a publication of the American University of Cairo \u2013 ran an interview with COP27 Youth Envoy Omnia El Omrani, headlined simply\u00a0\u201cClimate Change: A Global Health Emergency\u201d<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n The article uses the word \u201chealth\u201d over fifty times, and underlines that we need to\u00a0\u201ckeep health at the core of climate change negotiations\u201d<\/em>, claims that Climate Change policy is not\u00a0\u201c[a] response to political or economic incentives, but in anticipation of an evolving health crisis\u201d<\/em>\u00a0and, perhaps most tellingly, draws a direct parallel with Covid:<\/p>\n we saw with COVID-19, which was a health emergency, countries were responding and were mobilizing resources and financing for it. Climate change needs to be the same. It is a health emergency.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Meanwhile, and apparently totally coincidentally, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) just\u00a0published a report<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0\u201cclimate change\u2019s impact on health, warning of dire consequences should the world not act to curb global warming\u201d<\/em>:<\/p>\n If climate change continues to warm the earth unabated, billions of people could experience \u201cheat stress, infectious diseases, malnutrition, flooding, and mental health problems,\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (I know you\u2019re getting tired of me saying \u201cI told you so\u201d, but I did actually\u00a0predict last year<\/a>\u00a0that all kinds of illnesses from water-borne diseases to mental health problems would be re-categorized as \u201cclimate-related health issues\u201d.)<\/p>\n Accompanying the broad-spectrum policy statements is the usual sprinkling of anecdotes and human interest BS to add flavour to the propaganda salad. Stories like\u00a0\u201cClimate change is harming my mental health\u201d<\/a>\u00a0from the BBC just today.<\/p>\n \u2026and so we cycle back to Canadian wildfires, and the poor air quality everyone is talking about. The press are keen to underline\u00a0that the fires were caused by climate change<\/a>, that therefore\u00a0the bad air is due to climate change<\/a>, and that the bad air is a\u00a0massive risk to public health<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ergo, climate change = bad for public health.<\/p>\n People are being encouraged to \u201cmask up\u201d all over the Eastern United States, with New Yorkers being told to\u00a0stay indoors<\/a>. This is more than just further normalization of masks and lockdowns, it\u2019s a psychological trick that causes people to associate \u201cclimate change\u201d and \u201ccovid\u201d in their minds.<\/p>\n As I wrote last year:<\/p>\n Covid worked and climate didn\u2019t. They have been stoking up public fear of \u201ca new ice age\u201d and acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer and myriad other supposedly incipient climate disasters for literal decades, and never touched one-tenth of the level of hysteria created by the Covid19 \u201cpandemic\u201d. Somewhere, some not especially bright public relations executive has decided that the way to push the \u201cpivot from Covid to climate\u201d is to try and turn the long-predicted environmental disaster into a public health issue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u2026and that\u2019s what they are doing. Why? Because they need the right kind of fear.<\/p>\n It\u2019s all about taking the vague background anxiety of climate change \u2013 which most people have simply started to ignore \u2013 and morphing it into the primal fear for the self that washed over the world during the \u201cpandemic\u201d.<\/p>\n The kind of panicked hysteria that saw people\u00a0pepper-spraying strangers<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0taping up plastic sheeting all over the house<\/a>.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the kind of madness they will need in the general population if they\u2019re going to push through the Great Green Reset.<\/p>\n