Over the weekend there apparently wasn’t much going on in Australia, so Sky News host Rita Panahi used it as an opportunity to take a cheap shot at Jason Momoa for a speech he gave at the end of September to the UN. In it, he criticizes the lack of climate action as island nations are “drowning.”
But according to Panahi, Momoa shouldn’t talk about climate change, because earlier in the year there was a fire on his private jet. And according to her panelists, the response that the point of climate activism is to generate systemic change is just proof that it’s really a front for Marxism.
So, obviously, anyone who flies on private jets but talks about climate change is a great big hypocrite. Clearly, then, Momoa shouldn’t be flying (he’s Aquaman, not Superman, after all!) if he wants to be taken seriously. Instead, he should consider, say, taking a boat.
But even then, would he be safe from these sorts of attacks? Judging by the response Greta Thunberg got from the deniersphere, it wouldn’t make any difference. Over at the Washington Times, Valerie Richardson cobbled together some tweets and a press release from CFACT for a story criticizing Greta’s return to Europe for daring to use a boat made of plastics.
So, apparently, you can’t fly or sail if you’re a climate activist.
You can’t take a train, or eat, either, apparently. Deniers have photoshopped an image of Greta having lunch on a train to look like she was cruising by some black children, in order to make the deliberately deceptive argument that her “you have stolen my dreams and my childhood” speech is insensitive to children suffering in developing nations. This is despite the fact that her very next sentence acknowledges just that: “And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying.”
It’s that point exactly that deniers are desperate to distract the public from when they’re leveling these sorts of attacks.
They don’t like it when you talk about climate change while on a train. They don’t like it when you talk about it on a boat in the rain, and you can’t talk about it if you’ve ever boarded a plane.
They don’t like it if you talk about climate if you use an iPhone, or if you’ve eaten non-plant foods with a bone.
They don’t like you to talk climate if you wear clothes, ones that aren’t from a dumpster but bought new from Kohl’s.
They don’t like it when you talk climate if you’ve had more than one child, and you can’t talk climate if the weather is currently rather mild.
They don’t like it if you talk climate but drive a car, preferring that you just shout, from afar; ideally, far enough away that you’re never heard.
Because if anyone who is part of the system is unable to criticize it without being a hypocrite, it’s obvious that what they really want isn’t some sort of purity, but silence.
Top Climate and Clean Energy Stories: