You And Your Family Will Die Horribly - Soon

One of the funniest accusations ever targeted at those with a libertarian bent surely has to be that of over-dramatising threats to our freedoms.

Forthright, yes, that's fair. Attaching importance to what is being done to us and emphasising it as loudly as possible. Yes, that too. But over-dramatising?

Not really when you consider the quite hysterical hyperbole emanating from the authoritarian and plain daft.

I mean, seriously, what fucking planet is Sweet-cheeks Miliband on?

The spectre of a 4C warmer world, with alligators basking off the coast of Sweden, a vast desert surrounding the Mediterranean and a largely uninhabitable mainland Europe, is to be presented to European Union countries by the foreign secretary, David Miliband.

Swedish alligators? Mediterranean deserts? Uninhabitable Europe?

OK, he's a Labour sock puppet, which automatically makes him a bit (or a lot) dozy and therefore subject to allowances being made, but this is the level of debate directed at us. The only thing missing from this crock of sci-fi bullshit is Charlton Heston rocking up and screaming 'Damn you all to hell'.

Davy-boy. You know those films you have watched about the gulf stream packing up, of alien invasions, and detailing meteorites showering down on us? They weren't real. They were the work of a fertile imagination, OK? They were designed to scare for a short while and then - snap - back to real life.

Oh yeah, and just in case you weren't aware, Dave, Eight Legged Freaks was not a documentary, either.

Can we laugh at the twat? Well, maybe a decade or so ago, we could have done. Except that now, such scaremongering fantasy is influencing idiot journos to spout the same alarmist cockwaffle, and by extension, easily-led half-wits who believe all they read.

Mark Lynas: Do you care about your children? Then stop flying

Here's a thought experiment. An evil terrorist plants a time-bomb in a school classroom. He sets the timer for six years' hence, and, in six years time the bomb duly explodes, killing and maiming a class of five-year-old children.

It would perhaps be simplistic to use this example of the moral challenges of intergenerational equity – first posed by the late American moral philosopher Joel Feinberg – as a reason to tell people to stop flying.

But what, in moral terms, is the difference? Each time we take a long-haul flight, we are personally responsible for emitting several tonnes of carbon dioxide – which will remain in the atmosphere for a century of more, warming the planet all the time, and potentially contributing to global warming so disastrous that it undoubtedly infringes the rights of future unborn generations to life and property. We would all instinctively condemn the terrorist planting the time bomb. But the climate-change time bomb we help plant every time we step on a plane is still not recognised by most people – least of all the aviation industry – as a moral issue at all.

Step on a plane and you are a terrorist mass child-murderer. There is even a timeline, this will happen six years from now.

Truly folks, the past 10 years of unchanged weather patterns are merely a lull before the storm of the Alps being conquered by monumental sand dunes, reptilian predators feasting on bikini-clad Scandinavian nubiles, and the certain extinction of anyone under 16 years of age.

How can you hold a reasoned debate with psychotic moon-howlers who imagine ever more outlandish bogeymen each week that their doom-laden scenarios are ignored?

By way of comparison, libertarians appear positively calm and reasoned.

UPDATE: Thunder Dragon has a good article along similar lines.