Channel 4 documentary, 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' response

Paul Kingsnorth

15th March, 2007

Another of the reasons included in the Channel 4 documentary, ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’, to explain the current interest in climate change was that disaffected radicals and political activists had latched on to the concept of a warming climate to foreground their anti-capitalists and anti-progress views. Paul Kingsnorth dissects these claims…

Amidst the random scatter of reasons thrown out by Martin Durkin for not believing in human-induced climate change, one stands out. It’s not a scientific claim but it gets to the heart of what he and his programme are really about better than any number of graphs or arguments about ice core samples.

The argument is that climate change – and environmental issues generally – has become a cover under which communists, anarchists, anti-globalisers and other Enemies of Progress can gather, to fire their missiles at development undetected. They’re not really interested in ‘the environment’ at all. They just want to stick it to The Man because they’re bitter and disaffected, and green issues are just the latest excuse for them to do so. The consequences are that dying babies in Africa are denied the fruits of human progress. And it’s all our fault.

This ‘argument’ is slightly weakened by the fact that that Durkin is a self-declared Marxist, and is thus presumably pretty hostile to capitalism himself. But like a good Leninist he views human progress as always and unquestionably a good thing. ‘Progress’, in this context, means the unimpeded...

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