© Off-Guardian
Last week, a senior member of Parliament for the UK's Labour Party went on television demanding the UK - maybe even the entire world - be on a "war-like footing" to combat climate change.
Speaking on the BBC's
flagship political magazine Newsnight, Barry Gardiner MP argued for unity of purpose against
climate change's "existential threat":
"...if this were a war we wouldn't be arguing about whether the Labour strategy or the Tory strategy were better, we would be working together to try and win [...] Well, it is a war. It is a war for survival and climate change threatens everything [...] So actually instead of playing party political games about who is up, who is down, what we need to be doing is saying let's get together, let's mobilise on a war footing and that is what is needed..."
Two days later, the exact same thoughts were expressed in
a Financial Times column by Camilla Cavendish, former head of David Cameron's Downing Street policy unit and Kennedy School of Government alumnus:
The answer is surely to invoke a wartime spirit, and make the fight against climate change a joint endeavour against a common enemy. If the public and political will is there, human ingenuity can prevail, with remarkable speed. In the second world war, America transformed its manufacturing base to produce tanks and ammunition. The Covid pandemic resulted in the discovery and development of vaccines at scale, saving millions of lives.
It's interesting to note the comparison to Covid, but we'll come back that.
The campaign isn't isolated to the UK, in fact it kicked off on the other side of the Atlantic, with the
Inquirer running an article headlined
"President Biden should address the nation and declare war...on climate change" on July 16th, which argued:
Biden and his aides need to grab that metaphorical bullhorn and call the TV networks to announce a prime-time address from the Oval Office that will declare a national emergency — in essence, a state of war — to fight climate change.
Joe Biden himself called climate change an
"existential threat" on July 27th.
The invocation of metaphorical war is of course nothing new.
"War" is a very important word in the world of politics and propaganda. It has - or is assumed to have - an immediate effect on the collective public mind; an instant connection to generations of shared memories, that promotes feelings of conformity and solidarity.
Some psychological study or focus group clearly figured this out decades ago, and as such
the word "war" is frequently used to control narratives.
Comment: It's interesting that there are currently uprisings in many African nations given that 40+ nations expressed interest to join BRICS and Senegal is sharing closer ties with China. Senegal was also part of the African Union peace initiative Zelensky brushed off back in June. It would fit the "Color Revolution" strategy the West so loves to employ in nations who try to go their own way.
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